About the work
Madonnen is a play by Amanda Lasker-Berlin, written as a commission for Theater Ulm and centred on women's self-determination, the wish for children, abortion and Germany's Paragraph 218. Marlene Anna Schäfer directed the world premiere, with which Theater Ulm opened its 2024/25 season in the Großes Haus on 14 September 2024. Between the scenes a chorus invokes three female icons: the Virgin Mary, the ancient poet Sappho and the suffragette Emily Davison. The text was published in 2024 by Verlag der Autoren, which leaves the size of the cast to each theatre.
Plot
The play interweaves the lives of women from the post-war generation, the generation of 1968 and Gen Z, testing what has become of the lives they once planned. Devout Anna, who once wanted to be a missionary, carries the memory of her sister Anita, who did not survive an attempted abortion in 1972. After the death of her mother Ruth, Isolde learns that Ruth fell in love with a woman named Naomi at the age of 36 and lived with her, while Isolde's daughter Clara longs for a child of her own. In the marriage of the teacher Mechthild and Hans-Günter, both once rooted in the political left, control appears in the guise of care.
Cultural significance
Critics received the Ulm premiere positively: Theater der Zeit stressed how the text sets great female role models against narrow, bleak everyday realities, and Die Deutsche Bühne also reviewed the production favourably. In 2026 Theater Bielefeld adds the play to its repertoire in a production of its own.