About the work
"Aufzeichnungen aus einem weißen Zimmer" ("Notes from a White Room") is a play by Anna Behringer, premiered on 30 January 2025 at Schauspiel Leipzig (directed by Thirza Bruncken). In clear, unadorned language, the evening portrays the perceptual and emotional world of neurodivergent people; it was invited to the 51st Mülheim Theatre Days.
Plot
At its centre are two siblings who can hear, see, feel and understand language but find it hard to make sense of their surroundings. Doctors classify them not as "real people" but as "automata". Eventually they are placed in a white room, surrounded by medical staff and other people with diagnoses whose ways of feeling and experiencing are deemed "different". Anna Behringer gives these inner worlds a voice and makes the experience of exclusion and pathologisation immediately tangible. (The evening deals with themes such as psychiatry, exclusion, self-harm and suicide.)
Cultural significance
The play joins a growing interest in contemporary theatre in neurodivergence and in the critique of psychiatric norm-setting. By consistently adopting the perspective of those classified as "different", it questions who gets to decide what counts as "normal" or "truly human". The invitation to the Mülheim Theatre Days underlines the standing of Anna Behringer's text within new German-language drama.