A sowjet dissident on the run from the KGB ends up in New York. Disappointed by the coldheartedness of everyday life in the Big Apple, he writes a fictional autobiography, a fierce canto of loneliness, bad sex and ecstasy under pressure In the eighties Edward Limonov was an internationally acclaimed, up and coming star of the literary world. Raw pornography, crude outbursts of hate and tender shivers were his trademarks. In postsowjet Russia, he continued his aesthetic program of self-stylization as a politician, founded the “Party of National Bolshevism”, promised his followers a “life in danger, every day”, and went to jail.
Edward Limonov celebrates the anti-social gesture as a sacred act, political eroticism as gesamtkunstwerk. Gladly he takes the risk to be taken for a political monster in the act. At first his party had boasted to scheme setting up a new empire of free men, full of energetic warriors, accompanied by “healthy, attractive women” - Nietzsche would have approved. In Limonov’s politico-poetical radical rebelliousness freedom, sexual fulfilment and eternal youth were one. Rebellion must never end, for: “A helthy wild beast will fight, when you put it in a cage.” Today Limonov is an important figure in the Russian resistance against Putin.
Limonov’s autobiographical character Eddie is a classic character in the line of ancestors of art-world-rebels hungry for life, who have found refuge at Volksbühne for many years. With him Frank Castorf connects the dots between Rimbaud and Verlaine (“Das trunkene Schiff”, 1985), Céline (“Nord”, 2007) and beyond, to lead us into a better and more beautiful theatrical future. But after all wild flushes cometh a hangover and post-erotic melancholia – another topic of “Fuck off, Amerika”.
Opening on February 29th, 2008.
With: Rosalind Baffoe, Max Hopp, Irina Kastrinidis, Sebastian König, Christoph Letkowski, Sophie Rois, Volker Spengler, Axel Wandtke and Timo Kreuser
Director: Frank Castorf
Stage and Costumes Supplier: Jonathan Meese, Caroline Rössle Harper
Music: Timo Kreuser
