This premiere couldn't be more fitting. Just a few days ago, the volume "Böses Glück" with short stories by Tove Ditlevsen (1917–1976) was published on German. And again, as in 2021, when her "Copenhagen Trilogy" was rediscovered internationally and also appeared on German, one is amazed at this literary voice. The Dane has already been described as the forerunner of Annie Ernaux, autobiographical literature, self-liberation, classism, feminism – the 50-year-old prose works are now thematically back in vogue.

Eva-Maria Magel

Senior cultural editor Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Ewelina Marciniak was also astonished when, as soon as Ditlevsen's work was published in Polish in 2021, she devoured the thick anthology of the "Copenhagen Trilogy" and the novel "Faces" on top of that. "I read it right away, and images popped up in my head. How difficult their path was. How honestly she wrote, to the limit. She was so good at writing about the pain," says Marciniak. Now the Polish director, born in 1984, makes her debut at Schauspiel Frankfurt, with an evening that wants to distill something like an essence from Tove Ditlevsen's novels from his late novels.

Stagings of a bookworm

Marciniak has always been a bookworm, and thick multi-parters suit her immensely, even on stage. Since 2008 she has made a name for herself, first on smaller stages across Poland, then in Krakow, where she studied, and in Warsaw. In 2016, she celebrated a great success with Olga Tokarczuk's "The Books of St. James" in Warsaw, and in March her adaptation of "My Brilliant Friend", Elena Ferrante's bestseller, premiered in Krakow. A German version will premiere at the beginning of next season at Hamburg's Thalia Theater, like the "Books of St. James" before it.

She also peels a hard core out of classics such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream", stories of entanglement, attempts at liberation, patriarchal structures, violence. Women are often the focus of their work. "But I'm trying to broaden the perspective. Here, too, it is about the patriarchal system as a cage, in which not only women but also men are trapped." This is what makes Ditlevsen particularly interesting for her.

Beyond the intensive reading, her projects need a lot of preparation. It overwrites text templates, in cooperation with Polish-speaking authors, this time the version is by Joanna Bednarczyk. She works with most of them more often, looking for the work partners according to topic and tonality.

In order to bring them to German-language stages, these versions have to be translated. Rehearsals are held in English – "that's not a disadvantage, it's actually very fruitful, sometimes even an advantage, because it forces you to be particularly clear and focused if you want to express something in the discussion," says Marciniak, another additional loop that is effort – but German-language theatres are happy to get involved.

The ensemble is always in focus

Since she made her debut in 2018 at the Theater Freiburg with "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in German-speaking countries, Marciniak has received many offers and joins the ranks of the successful Eastern European generation of directors who currently have a lot to do in German-speaking countries. She seems extremely disciplined, which is probably what you have to be with this amount of work in different theatre systems. "In the end, a lot is cut away. Because at first we have a lot of ideas, but the stage can be cruel. That's when you see that some ideas aren't as brilliant as you thought during rehearsals," she says.

The most important thing for her is the ensemble, no matter where she works: "If it's good, then the work works." And it's running: Last year, "Iphigenia" for the Salzburg Festival, a co-production with the Thalia Theater Hamburg, where she also directed "The Boxer" by Szczepan Twardoch, was awarded the theatre prize Der Faust in 2020. With her "Maid of Orleans" at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, she was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen in 2022. This brings even more wind under the wings – Wagner's "Ring" is currently being produced at the Theater Bern.

When she began to study European Studies, she still had the desire to become a diplomat. But the theatrical virus that caught her in high school was stronger. Now she travels in terms of theatre and has a dream: a major german-Polish co-production. In a way, theatrical diplomacy.

The Tove Project, Schauspiel Frankfurt, premiere June 2, 19:30 p.m.