DAS KUNSTSEIDENE MÄDCHEN

“The Artificial Silk Girl” brings Irmgard Keun’s 1932 novel to the stage at the Theater Ehrenfeld: At the center of the story is Doris, an 18-year-old stenographer from a modest Rhineland background who dreams of social advancement and wants to become “a star.” After rejecting her supervisor’s advances, she loses her job; through an extra role at the theater, she becomes entangled in a web of self-presentation, desire, and economic insecurity. The stolen fur coat becomes a symbol of a fragile luxury that promises protection yet creates new dependencies. In Berlin, Doris seeks closeness, recognition, and material security; she encounters men who offer her temporary shelter or status but no reliable future. As a theatrical production, the material reads both as a portrait of female self-assertion and as a precise social diagnosis of the late Weimar Republic: caught between the promises of the big city, class issues, the politics of the body, and the longing to be seen. The adaptation as a chanson musical builds on Keun’s incisive language and opens the text to a contemporary interpretation of dignity, precariousness, and media glamour.