Tove Ditlevsen production in Bremen: “It was very nice to work without men for once”

taz: Ms. Behrens, when did you realize that men had no place on the stage in your production of the “Copenhagen Trilogy”?

Anja Behrens: For me it wasn't clear from the start. It came about in the collaboration with Regula Schröter, the dramaturg, during the development of the piece. It became increasingly clear to us: With the piece, we wanted to get into the shoes of Tove Ditlevsen, the author of these three novels, into her life and her thoughts. The men would have distracted from this if they had appeared as real people.

taz: In the performances where this decision was made differently, the opponents on stage attract a lot of attention. With you everything focuses on the protagonist, who is played by three actors...

Behrens: The three of them belong to different generations of actresses - and were therefore each able to contribute something from their perspective, their own experiences. This protected space was also an advantage. I don't do this out of principle, but it was just really nice to work here without men.

taz: The writing, on the other hand, makes a brilliant appearance, almost as an independent person?

“The Copenhagen Trilogy” based on the novels “Childhood”, “Youth”, “Dependence” by Tove Ditlevsen, Theater Bremen, Kleines Haus, again on September 13th and October 4th at 6:30 p.m. and on September 26th. and October 24th, 7:30 p.m

Behrens: I knew from the beginning that it had to be that way. I got to know Tove Ditlevsen through her poems: When I went to Copenhagen, I didn't know Danish very well, and poetry in a foreign language is often difficult. Ditlevsen's poems were the first that I found access to in Danish. I felt addressed by them, also because I had the impression that this writing has a physical aspect, that she puts her body into the writing.

taz: That's why writing is so present in text banners and why writing itself becomes the most striking stage action?

Behrens: Yes. Of course, this also became more concrete in the interaction with set designer Laura Rasmussen. It also seemed to us to fit very well with the time in which Tove Ditlevsen wrote her novels: That was the era in which artists, in particular, presented their bodies as works of art in happenings and in which a lot of work was done with body prints...

Director, comes from Hamburg, lives in Denmark where she studied at the Danske Scenekunstskole. Her productions have been performed throughout the Danish and German-speaking countries.

taz: ... and yours are in printer's ink instead of Yves Klein blue. This fits with Ditlevsen's fragmenting poetics of memory and somewhat pushes back the linear logic of prose.

Behrens: The fragmentation seems to me to be really important for the way she writes. But I don't see this as necessarily in competition with linear storytelling. She is no stranger to the linear; she has everything down to the trivial or banal. Often it's about simply moving the plot forward. She doesn't want to stand out from it. And I think that's exactly what makes it possible for many people to connect with her. Your readers simply notice: what is going on in these texts has to do with them, with their present, even if it comes from a different time and phase of life.

taz: Then the tripling of the protagonist in the production isn't simply a depiction of the phases of the ego's life in her autofictional novels?

Behrens: No, that would have been boring. It makes sense to find a representation for them, but it is also important that in each of the actors there lives a young girl who does not want to die, as Ditlevsen writes in a poem.

taz: So Irene Kleinschmidt can just as easily be the child as youngster Emma Floßmann?

Behrens: Exactly. Despite the fragmentation of the main character, a unity should still remain perceptible.