The German Theatre starts the year 2023, the year Timisoara is European Capital of Culture, with a new premiere - ”TSCHICK. Why We Took the Car” by Robert Koall, directed by Irisz Kovacs - which will take place on 12 January, starting at 7.30pm. The cast includes Robert Bogdanov-Schein, Marc Illich, Alma Diaconu, Ioana Iacob and Alexandru Mihăescu, while the set design is by Clara Ștefana, the dramaturgy by Rudolf Herbert and the music by Adrian Piciorea.

A cool odyssey for young people - the play ”TSCHICK. Why We Took the Car” tells the story of Maik (Robert Bogdanov-Schein) and Tschick (Marc Illich), two teenagers who believe there must be a world other than the one they know at home and at school. Maik comes from a German middle-class background, and for his parents the roads have long since parted, even though they still live under the same roof. Maik considers himself an outsider, as does Tschick, whose family moved from Russia to Germany. At first, the only thing the two have in common is a sense of being strangers in a society that makes it difficult for them. The play is based on Wolfgang Herrndorf's novel of the same name, which won the German Prize for Youth Literature in 2011.

With a stolen car, they decide to flee Berlin and embark on a journey that will become an odyssey. At the end of it lies the exploration of reality and self-exploration. They get to know people who don't devote their lives to consumption, but who show kindness and solidarity. Maik and Tschick discover freedom, the poetry of the world and friendship for each other. At the same time, Maik experiences for the first time the feeling of love with Isa (Alma Diaconu), a girl of the same age who lives in a garbage dump and is apparently also on the run.

Irisz Kovacs (b.1999) is a theatre director and photographer. She was the winner of the D-butan-T 2021 festival-competition and director of the Fresh Start residency at the Reactor for Creation and Experiment, where the show "A Child on a Litre of Petrol" was born and performed at the Șerban Ionescu Festival, Fest FDR, Undercloud. For the show "8 fathers" at the Constanta State Theatre, selected for the National Theatre Festival, she was nominated for the Uniter award for debut. She told us about the staging of this production:
"What attracted me to TSCHICK. Why We Took the Car is that, although it is a play aimed at a young audience, it does not take a moralistic stance. I found here both the boyish friendliness I envied all my childhood and the escapist fantasy I've kept all my life: the desire to take the car and drive without destination, without schedule, without repercussions. Though he doesn't scold us, doesn't tell us to stick to school or be polite to adults, Tschick still dares to tell us how we should live: for and in tenderness."

Wolfgang Herrndorf, the author of Tschick, was born in Hamburg in 1965, studied painting, then worked as an illustrator and published articles in magazines and internet forums. He made his debut as a novelist in 2002, but only had success with his youth novel "Tschick". Published in 2010, the book spent more than a year on the German bestseller list and has been translated into more than two dozen languages, including Romanian ("A Cool Summer", Allfa Publishing, 2013), and is now considered a classic of children's literature, like Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" or Jerome D. Salinger's "Watching the Rye". Herrndorf was suffering from a brain tumour and committed suicide in 2013. In the same year, his digital diary "Arbeit und Struktur" (Work and Structure) was published posthumously in book form.

Tickets can be purchased at the German Theatre box office, on the German Theatre website (https://www.teatrulgerman.ro/ro/), or from the Entertix network.

We look forward to seeing you!