Berlin, Berlin

They say that comedy is tragedy viewed from the distance of time.

In the play Berlin Berlin, through much laughter, the dark story of the communist totalitarian regime is told. The action takes place in the divided German capital during the final days before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The characters include agents of the state's repressive secret services, a foreign intelligence spy, and a young couple in love who want to escape to the West, where they can live freely.

The twists and turns are truly funny, although we—those of us who lived in the Eastern Bloc, behind the Iron Curtain—still suffer the consequences of a criminal ideology enforced through brutal repression. So, can we laugh at that past—and is it even past?

Our answer is that we can laugh, because laughter heals. But its healing power works only if it’s purifying laughter, not mockery. For true purification, one must look with empathy, seek to understand, and learn to forgive. That is why we have made an effort, while condemning the crimes, to also shed light on the emotional motivations that drove their perpetrators. To reveal to the audience the particular distortion of reality born from chasing an illusion to the point of madness and absurdity.

The past is never just the past—it lives in the present and largely shapes the future. The illusion that we can easily rid ourselves of past vices is the surest path to their return, again and again.

The utopia of totalitarian regimes—and they all resemble one another, each spawning the next—is built precisely on the lie that human nature can be easily trained to serve some “noble idea” unconditionally. Anyone who does not submit to that goal does not deserve to live.

But life is much richer, much deeper. The human being is a difficult riddle to solve. Very often, their actions are disappointing, and salvation from one's own flaws seems unreachable. That is why the so-called saviors—dictators—have solved the problem by destroying the “problematic” people. But the truth is: there are no unproblematic ones…

The salvation we offer in the theater is purifying laughter.

Stoyan Radev