Dritte Generation

In a work in progress, the Israeli writer and director Yael Ronen and her team, along with a group of German, Palestinian and Israeli actors, analyse the Gordian Knot that binds these three nations.  The participants come from very different familial backgrounds: they were born either side of a once-divided Germany, they are Muslims and Christian Palestinians, they live in Haifa and Tel Aviv and have Israeli passports, or they come from Jewish families that have different provenance, they are from Europe, the Near East or North Africa.  This work concentrates on examining not only the here and now but also the origins of today’s self-image.  The background to terms such as memory, guilt, perpetrator and victim will be scrutinised, as well as their meaning for us today, – in both the public as well as the private arena.  Although it is not about competition between the different national creation myths, rather a way of approaching the foundations upon which our personal identity within the individual national context is based.

The first phase of Dritte Generation took place in June 2008 in Israel and Germany and a first presentation was shown at the Theater der Welt 2008 festival in Halle.  The second step of this project is a further working phase in Tel Aviv and Berlin, during which a performance will be developed based on the research of the first presentation.  In co-production with the Ruhrtriennale, Yael Ronen will show the third phase of her work in progress.