Open rehearsal: “Fünf bis sechs Semmeln und eine kalte Wurst”

After a spending a happy childhood with her grandparents in Glonn, eight-year-old Lena Christ is sent to live with her mother at an inn in Munich. From then on, she must slave away in the kitchen and dining room, providing free labour for the family business. What initially feels like a boon quickly becomes a nightmare. Lena’s mother does not allow her to have even one nice day. The “Wirtsleni” (little Lena the innkeeper) suffers from the woman’s indifference and brutal abuse. Time and again, Lena tries to escape; time and again she returns to the inn and to her mother.

After a failed marriage and three children, Lena finally manages to start a new life – as a writer. Sitting on a park bench in front of the Alte Pinakothek art gallery, she begins to write down the story of her life. Her first book, “Erinnerungen einer Überflüssigen” (“Memoirs of a Dispensable Woman”), tells the story of a little girl who races against the wind and tries to out-cry it. The book is about her violent repression at the hands of her mother and the beatings by her husband but also about courageous resistance, about never giving up – and about survival.

More than 100 years later, Annette Paulmann goes in search of Lena Christ and, in doing so, rediscovers her own childhood and what it was like growing up in an inn with her own mother… An associative performance about two lives which looks into the depths of exploitation, dependency and love. We can determine a lot but not who our mother is – and continues to be.