Who is the victim here? Wolfram Koch as Willy Zielke and Jacqueline Macaulay as Leni Riefenstahl
Image: Bohumil Kostohryz
Because of his homosexuality, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he was forcibly sterilized: Albert Ostermaier's chamber play “Stahltier” in the Renaissance Theater Berlin about the man in the shadow of Leni Riefenstahl.
WWhy does everyone in the world know the film director and actress Leni Riefenstahl and no one knows Willy Zielke, director, photographer and, at times, her cameraman? In his piece “Steel Animal. “An Exorcism in Memoriam Willy Zielke”, the writer Albert Ostermaier opens a complex and artistic discourse on this question and expands it to include the topics of art and politics, power and seduction.
The work, commissioned by the Théâtre National du Luxembourg, where the premiere took place in March, can now be seen at the co-producing Berlin Renaissance Theater. In Frank Hoffmann's sensitive and clever production, Jacqueline Macaulay and Wolfram Koch initially walk across a red carpet. She will primarily play Riefenstahl, he Zielke or Hitler's Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Sometimes the two speak in sync, sometimes they quickly switch roles.
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