Mittagsstunde

"The world is changing," said Marret Feddersen. Brinkebüll has changed since the land surveyors arrived for land consolidation. Small fields became large arable areas and sandy paths became asphalt roads. "All the narrow, crooked and restricted, the winding and overgrown, the cumbersome" was cleared away. When the surveyors left Brinkebüll again, Marret Feddersen was pregnant. That's how Ginger was born. Because Marret was slightly "three-faced", the grandparents took care of the boy. Early on, Ingwer stood behind the bar of the village pub with his grandfather Sönke, which he would later take over. But Ingwer left the village to study in the city. At almost 50, he returned to look after his grandparents and reorganize his own life. In the village pub, he remembers the time when he stood on Marret's feet and she sang pop songs. Catchy tunes about tears, dreams and broken hearts. "We never want to go apart."

"The North German lowlands between Hamburg and the coast have a literary voice that inspires readers by the hundreds of thousands" (Der Spiegel), prompting critics to call it a "literary event": The author Dörte Hansen from Husum, who, after "Altes Land", tells of the disappearance of the rural world with "Mittagsstunde". It is a novel about the fictional North German village of Brinkebüll, which experiences the structural change in modern agriculture in the 1960s. Dörte Hansen says: "The age of sedentariness is coming to an end. The lively village cosmos has become a dormitory where you can no longer do anything, can no longer go to school, can no longer go shopping, can no longer even get drunk in the pub."

Acting and opera director Anna-Sophie Mahler, who was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen in 2016 with her production of Josef Bierbichler's novel "Mittelreich", will adapt "Mittagsstunde" for the stage of the Thalia Theater.

Duration 2:40h, including one intermission

World premiere June 12, 2021, Thalia Theater