Es waren ihrer sechs (Six of them)

When the novel «Six of Them» by the émigré author Alfred Neumann, then living in Los Angeles, was published in 1945, it generated considerable controversy in Germany. Based on an article from «Time Magazine» about the leafleting campaign and execution of the members of the White Rose, Neumann created a «freely imagined work» from the lives and actions of the resistance fighters. As he put it: «It’s not about the Scholls. It’s not even about the Möllers, who I invented and whose name, language and nationality are interchangeable. It is purely about presenting an eternal idea.»

The Polish director Michał Borczuch and the dramaturg and writer Tomasz Śpiewak take this «eternal idea» of young people’s resistance against totalitarian systems of rule as the starting point for their adaptation of the novel. It is an attempt to reconstruct both the intellectual world of Neumann’s protagonists as well as the real actions of the White Rose. Borczuch’s evening is an experiment in which theatre meets film, getting closer to Neumann’s characters through the phases of youth, writing the first leaflets, arrest, imprisonment and execution. Beyond this, in each situation Borczuch looks for a connection with the present and current forms of youth protest.

Following the film that explored the production as part of the digital series «Resi sendet» in the spring of 2021, Michał Borczuch now develops his work further for its analogue premiere in the Marstall. Borczuch’s directorial signature is one of the most distinctive in the contemporary Polish theatre scene. His works operate in territory where authenticity and fiction bleed into each other and play on the reciprocal influences between life and theatre. «Six of Them» is his first work in Munich.