Fabian. Der Gang vor die Hunde

“I was sitting in a large waiting area, and it was called Europe. The train was to leave eight days later. I knew that. But where it was going and what was to become of me – no one knew that. And now we are sitting in a waiting area once again, and once again it is called Europe! And once again we do not know what will happen. We are living provisionally!”

When the unemployed advertising executive Fabian wakes up at the city’s popular snack stand after his most recent night of partying (and before the next one), he find himself in a dreadful situation: With the last war behind them and the next one in their heads, the people in the city have wholeheartedly abandoned themselves to hedonism. “Splendid,” Fabian thinks, and thus reassured he goes back to sleep. Shortly thereafter a small group of people gather around the motionless young man. Two cousins who run one of the city’s popular snack stands, an expert in international cinematography law, an ambitious specialist in German studies who is wearing leather pants, Frau Moll, who runs a male brothel, and a communist drag queen ask Fabian: “Young man, what now?” Fabian wakes up and replies: “Should I go there or not? Why should I move forward? For what and against what? Why am I not sitting at home with my mother, where one can wait just as well for the downfall of Europe? What is that bullet doing in my left buttock? Who will make tea for my mother? When will we arrive and in whose company? When all the wars are over – is that peace?” Together they all then decide to go inside the cousins’ place in order to explore the subject further.

Erich Kästner’s big city novel from 1933 paints an astute portrait of a society in upheaval. With sharp wit, grotesque exaggeration, and deep melancholy, Kästner depicts Berlin during the late stages of the Weimar Republic – a city rife with political radicalization and moral decay, in which no one is willing to stoop to listening to anyone else any longer. At the center of Kästner’s story is the young Fabian, an ironic observer who fails to take any action, is swept away by the whirlwind of the big city, and ultimately perishes in solitude. The novel’s eerie parallels with the present day are often interpreted as a prophecy of the return of that same and absolute catastrophe.

The RambaZamba Theater does not wish to subscribe to the culturally pessimistic notion of an inevitable decline and does not let Fabian wander alone through the big city. Instead, a group of outsiders comes together to discuss the fragility of morality, empathy, and resistance amid today’s crises by presenting their own writings and drag show acts, accompanied by the thumping beats of the RambaZamba Theater band “21 downbeat.” The result is a shimmering cityscape of Berlin that likely can only be experienced in this form at the RambaZamba Theater.

Produced with the support of the Fonds Darstellende Künste cultural fund with funding from the German Federal Government’s Commissioner for Culture and the Media, and funding from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion.