19 XII 2021

Berlin

Yesterday evening we saw the Divine Comedy made by Florentine Holtzinger, at the Volksbühne.

One should not search for Dante and his Divina Commedia in it. Virgil and Beatrice appear in name and some words, but the rest is circus.

Yet circus is also a wager with death, with risking your competence in survival. People fall off staircases, make dangerous leaps on motorbikes and all are logically in the nude, only wearing their skin as protection.

Meanwhile on a screen one can follow the skinning of an animal which is taking place on stage in real time.

Later real veins are being opened for bloodletting.

Mrs. Hotzinger is quite young and the audacity is still there, but the skeletons on the backs of naked girls are already present. There is no Paradise, only risk and toil. So a kind of inescapability of hell.

As there is no longer any saving grace, the public must have applauded not the message but the effort.