About the work
"Bookpink: New Arrivals" is a production by the Deutsches Theater Berlin (directed by Jorinde Dröse) that continues the feathered stage cosmos of the author Caren Jeß. "Bookpink" – Low German for "chaffinch" – is a "dramatic compendium" in which birds make up the entire cast: in poetic, comic miniatures they appear as speaking characters and become a mirror of human abysses, social imbalances and heated public debates. "New Arrivals" gathers new scenes from the life of these birds.
Plot
Instead of a continuous plot, the piece strings together a series of bird appearances – each figure its own character, its own small tragicomedy. The birds are anything but free: they appear as prisoners of their roles and circumstances. From the original "Bookpink" come, for instance, the flamingos a raven-mother gives her son to play with, the vain turkey who lives in her own esoteric world, or the white dove who dwells on a campsite and longs for a baroque life full of music – Handel, Vivaldi, Bach. "New Arrivals" extends this procession with new feathered figures, using the animal fable to illuminate human behaviour, exaggerated and tender at once.
Cultural significance
Caren Jeß is among the most striking young voices in contemporary German-language drama; the original "Bookpink" (premiered 2019 at Schauspielhaus Graz) was invited to the Mülheim Theatre Days in 2020 and established her idiosyncratic, language-loving tone. The form of the animal fable allows social questions – power, conformity, longing, exclusion – to be negotiated with humour and ambiguity, without being didactic. That the Deutsches Theater continues the material with "New Arrivals" attests to the enduring stage power of Jeß's avian cosmos.