Pieces about menopause at TD Berlin: The pressure is bombproof

Is that really it? “The least funny topic in the world”? At least that's what actress Susanne Abelein will repeatedly describe what it's about over the course of the 90 minutes of "Wind of Change." And she's somehow right about that, after all, none of this is fun, even if the evening at the theater that Abelein performs alone on the TD Berlin stage definitely is.

Right at the beginning, in the pose of the solo entertainer, she lists symptoms, from difficulty finding words to panic attacks, to hair loss, body odor, heat, insomnia, joint pain, loss of libido, depression and gum problems. Around 40 of them, not even the entire list, are associated with menopause in research: “Actually everything except athlete’s foot.” Every single one of them is undoubtedly nasty, and the combination of them is even more so.

“Wind of Change” is a solo about that phase in the second half of a woman's life in which hormones mess everything up, the menopause, which only affects certain species of whales apart from the human species. Conceived by dramaturge and director Sabrina Zwach, realized together with Abelein. Which works out very well. Even if the Berlin audience doesn't make things easy for Abelein at times. Questions are answered only hesitantly; It takes a while to find a partner to fight with. It's not her fault. Abelein is magnificent as she dances around the microphone in her trench coat, pulls props out of the fake Birkin bag, eats a half-eaten banana in her hand, licks it and has her sticky fingers cleaned by a woman in the front row.

“Take it with humor!” she calls out to the packed rows. It is the message of the evening. Not the only one, fortunately. One could have feared that. The evening was announced as “stand-up”. Abelein is without question crazy funny, incredibly present, but also hits the serious stuff in your face with force. Puns come from her lips as easily as hard facts. Sometimes she blurts out the text angrily, sometimes she whispers gently like a coach in a mindfulness workshop. Then throws himself back into the more or less familiar symptoms, into the confusion and forgetfulness, the hot flashes - "Oh God, I'm sweating so much, already" - the exhaustion, the moods.

It's about something important. About the neglect of women's health, the objectification of female bodies, the injustice of nature, which puts a hormonal thwart in women's plans just when their careers could really take off.

Abelein tells the audience that she is 62 years old. What you can't tell from looking at her and what, if you write it down like that, means you're already right in the middle of the complicated situation about finitude and decay, about female aging, which seems to be mandatory to comment on.

As “homework,” Abelein sets out copies of Susan Sontag’s essay “Double Standards: Not all aging is the same.” (“The Double Standard of Aging”). In 1972, Sontag analyzed how differently female and male aging is perceived and evaluated. Some things sound as if they are observations from 2026. The system does not provide for good support through the years, says Abelein, summarizing the status quo. “Wind of Change” sees menopause as a feminist topic; the personal is known to be political. And “the political thing sits in bed at night, drenched in sweat, and googles.”

Has nothing really changed? “This pressure on women is incredibly old, which is why it is so bombproof,” claims Abelein. And so it's a lot about shame, despite the recent hype about menopause and not just on social media. At least on the stages this seems to have been dismantled. This fall, it is not the only production at TD that has taken on this issue.

Just a few weeks earlier, the actress collective Storytelling Engines had dedicated themselves to Miranda July's successful novel "On All Fours" on the same stage. Not as a play, but as an entertaining staged reading, Isabella Bartdorff, Tjadke Biallowons and Lucy Wirth presented the one woman who sneaks out of her life in her mid-40s and, through all sorts of trials and tribulations and pitfalls, finds and reinvents herself, despite the steep drop in hormonal curves.

In the end, July's protagonist gets involved in the uncertainties of life and frees herself, including sexually. “Wind of Change” also ends on a conciliatory note. This is the plot twist that Abelein announced in the first few minutes: “The brain reconnects itself and after the brain fog comes great clarity”. If that's not a good prospect.