Sparks flew from the campfire. The cracking of the wood mixes with the swinging electric guitar solo that the jazz musician Martin Lejeune pours into the cold Dornbusch November darkness. The theater house has developed an advent calendar for the festive season. The ensemble has collected 24 stories from people from Frankfurt. Until Christmas Eve you can listen to a new story as a podcast every day in December. Some are sad, others exciting or funny. There is only one thing they are not - without perspective. "It's not the time for hopeless stories," says Susanne Freiling, dramaturge at the theater.

In addition to the podcast, the ensemble led by the director Silvia Andringa, consisting of Michael Meyer, Uta Nawrath, Susanne Schyns and Günther Henne, invites you to an event by the campfire on every Sunday in Advent.

They burn in different places, the beginning of the Advent season is celebrated on the adventure playground Colorado Park am Dornbusch.

Here four actors each tell some of the podcast stories.

Around twenty guests, mostly families, crowd around the fire.

“It's nice that you're here,” Meyer calls out to a group.

The atmosphere is informal and cheerful, and it's easy to chat over hot punch.

Two girls nibble on cinnamon stars, their gaze is lost in the fire, they listen attentively.

Stories and background music

The variety of stories - they come from Frankfurters from Italy or Iran, from well-off and low-wage earners, senior citizens and children - should show something especially to the young listeners. "All stories are worth telling," says Freiling. So the program develops a life of its own.

It's not that the actors are chanting off memorized anecdotes; rather, anyone who can think of a story is allowed to share it with the others around the campfire. The audience avidly availed itself of this opportunity. A young girl talks about her mother, who dreamed of coming to Germany as a child in China, an adult listener about an exciting taxi ride in Indonesia, which taught her to trust, and a teenager about how he went to the zoo as a small child was not allowed to feed the rhinos and therefore cried bitterly. Years later, a school friend shows him a video in which, as a little girl, she lets the pachyderms nibble on a bunch of carrots, clearly audible in the background: heartbreaking children's screams.

Between the stories there are musical interludes to sing along, accompanied by guitar and cajón.

Comfortably warm nostalgia is spreading.

Sitting by the fire, listening to each other, singing together - this is how our ancestors killed thousands of years.

Especially at a time when the next lockdown is already hanging on the leaden horizon, the evening satisfies the need for profane humanity nourished by distance.

What Freiling generally wants from digitization in the theater takes place here: an extension, by no means a replacement, because "making theater needs presence".

For the whole family

For the broadly grinning actors, the evening was a complete success.

"I am thrilled that so many stories came from the audience, that was also our goal," summarizes Meyer.

And the audience goes home satisfied too.

One of them says that he will now also listen to the Advent podcast, "we'll make a family happening out of it".

From December 1st you can open a door every day on the website of the Theaterhaus Ensemble with a new story, about ten minutes long.

Every Sunday through Christmas there is also the meeting around the campfire from 5 p.m. onwards, on December 5th, the second Advent, it takes place on the playground on Schäferstraße in Offenbach.

After the premiere there is applause and the director and actor receive the obligatory bouquet of flowers.

And then, as if it had been planned, someone is already preparing for the New Year's Eve: a rocket hisses through the night sky, green and red sparks briefly tear apart the darkness.

Really true!

Advent podcast and campfire from December 1st, further information at theaterhaus-ensemble.de