THESE ARE THE OPENING LINES of a resolution that was first read out on 6 October 1989 after a performance at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden and that has since come to epitomize the political role of GDR theater practitioners during the Wende. As Loren Kruger argues, the lines functioned both as “exhortation and performative utterance,” calling on spectators to join the actors in abandoning the roles prescribed for them by the state. The resolution quickly came to serve as the master script for activity in other ensembles, marking the moment at which GDR theater made the transition from sporadic dissent to opposition. While similar resolutions were drawn up in other workplaces and organizations, theater had the opportunity to go public: to open its doors for discussion, host political meetings, and activate its professional networks. In East Berlin, theater practitioners met in the Deutsches Theater to organize the demonstration that took place on Alexanderplatz on 4 November 1989. In provincial Bautzen, meanwhile, the Deutsch-Sorbisches Volkstheater supplied platforms and sound equipment for public political meetings. By December the Union of Theater Practitioners had already commissioned a volume to document the historic role played by theaters that autumn. The published volume contained resolutions from forty-four GDR theaters together with photographs and newspaper articles. It is only on close reading that the subtle but important political differences among the demands made in these resolutions become apparent.

This public image of a united theater contrasts with the view expressed by the director Christoph Schroth in 1990 in response to a questionnaire about GDR theater. Schroth immediately challenged the premise behind the questionnaire, stating: “Ich kann nicht von dem ‘DDR-Theater’ reden” (VA, 62). He explained: “Es gab in der DDR sehr unterschiedliches Theater, viel schlechtes, konventionelles, angepaßtes, braves Theater. … Aber es gab auch bestimmte Häuser, die dem Theater in der sozialistischen Gesellschaft eine wesentliche Funktion geben wollten, die Bestehendes nicht bestätigen, sondern kritisch in Frage stellten” (VA, 62). Schroth’s differentiated portrait of GDR theater now has an artistic corollary in the contrasting filmic and literary representations that have emerged since unification as texts and films about the GDR have proliferated.