The fact that “being right” and “being right” can be two very different things has been known in the theater world since the ancient Greeks and a drama like “Antigone”: On the one hand, the abstract legal system concretely regulates the coexistence of people, on the other hand it can In the abundance of heterogeneous needs, we can never do justice to everyone.

Look to Ferdinand von Schirach: The more complicated a situation, the more difficult it is to balance interests.

The “Theater Aufbau Kreuzberg” (tak) in Berlin is now delivering a new chapter in the endless, stage-related history of justice.

The free group “suite42” has researched extensively in matters of German asylum law and developed a piece from it.

“GeRecht” was actually intended to be the start of a four-part series, but was converted into a “walk-in immersive film installation for the theater” due to the corona pandemic. On half a dozen canvases, the happening is shown simultaneously from changing perspectives for almost two hours, while the audience follows him on swivel chairs or strolls through the picture scenery and chooses his own perspective (video artistic implementation: Daniel Hengst). This mobility of perception corresponds to the restlessly flowing story in which a refugee Afghan tries to obtain asylum in Germany. He claims that he worked as a local employee for foreign companies and that he is gay. His hands were injured in a Taliban raid,you can't fingerprint him because of it.

Dream sequences against real chaos

"GeRecht" deliberately leaves open whether that is true, whether he is really gay, whether he has not already been to Germany, as he seems to suggest, and was deported back then, which is why he could not submit a second application now. In his distress, is the man just telling what could get him a residence permit, or is he telling the truth? The typical case is negotiated at an administrative court by a well-known judge who is firmly committed to the law, but who has known since her escape from the GDR how slippery it can be. She is also nervous because her son, with whom she has a difficult relationship, is traveling as a photographer through crisis areas and is suddenly missing. No wonder that she likes to dive into dream sequences from this real chaos,in which ants crawl around in a frantic and well-organized manner. In their eyes they have established an ideal state, an “efficient, perfectly coordinated system that does without a single sheet of paper”.

Scratched armor

Corinna Harfouch plays this factual judge Baumann, which is hurtful despite all her charm, shortly before retirement with unmoved cool compliance with the law. Omar El-Saeidi, as the Afghan Farid Nogol threatened with deportation, can make such a desperate face and Roland Bonjour as his lawyer can at least scratch the judge's armor with little jokes, she remains incorruptible through and through. In the precise, compressed and clear direction by Lydia Ziemke, it is commendable that the other actors, in addition to star guest Corinna Harfouch, are also convincing and can give their characters vivid profiles - like Anke Retzlaff as a stressed young translator who often goes into the water when she is too much empathically transfers the Afghan's words into German and sometimes blurs the nuances without consideringhow important they are for this transnational communication. Similarly, the refugee and his lawyer repeatedly create shifted narrative contours and an unsettling atmosphere of volatile blurriness: terms such as right and wrong lose their clarity, as do facts and figures, places and times.

In the end, a man looks for a home and a mother for her son. But today's world cannot be deciphered as easily as the labyrinth of this installation, divided up by film walls, wants to show sensually. The mixture of analogue and digital theater physically directly illustrates the strangeness between the cultural groups, which can separate - but regardless of this, it could also connect and create something new. Consequently, in the end there are no flawless answers, the images fade away, the sounds fade, life goes on - maybe. It was imperative that suite42 put out this committed production before the federal election. The embarrassing withdrawal of the foreign powers from Afghanistan underlines the relevance of the impressive production.