Event

Own cab company, happy marriage, two small children: things couldn't be better for Helmut from the tranquil village of Westerstetten. If it weren't for his debts, which he doesn't tell his wife about. And the man in his late twenties is also hiding how he intends to pay them off. When he is booked for a trip to the East, Stasi employees there offer to spy on barracks and missile positions around Ulm for the GDR secret service in return for payment. Helmut thinks this is too delicate a business and reports this recruitment campaign to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Stuttgart. There, however, he is encouraged to accept the offer so that he can also obtain information about espionage in the East. Within 48 hours, the gullible Swabian becomes a double agent who regularly travels to the East in a cab for five years. Again for a good fee and with the assurance: "We'll look after you". But you can't rely on that.
Philipp Löhle, one of the most renowned German playwrights of his generation, takes on this German-German story for Theater Ulm, which is a parable for the individual fate of a naive 'little light' in the great ideological kamof of the systems.

Historical costumes from the Ulm Theater were destroyed in a fire in June 2025. We would therefore like to thank the Landestheater Schwaben in Memmingen for the loan of the uniforms.

Age recommendation: 12+

Duration approx. 1 hour and 45 minutes

"Maurizio Micksch plays this character to perfection. An apolitical man who naively slips into the life of an agent as a good family man. [...] The real highlight of this performance is Ulrich Leitner's stage design, which makes full use of the fantastic possibilities of the podium, the small stage of the Ulm Theatre: the audience sits on swivel chairs, the play takes place all around them. The ensemble rushes across the platforms and the images set up on them."
Manfred Jahnke // The German Stage

"The podium in the basement of the Ulm Theater proves to be the ideal playground. While the audience sits on swivel chairs in the middle, [...] the raised stage extends around the walls of the hexagonal space. There are doors to the outside and exits downwards on almost all six sides, so that someone is constantly popping up and down somewhere and it is hard to believe that there are only four players. [...] The ensemble always maintains a level of silliness that is amusing but not yet annoying. [...] The balance succeeds because the four never think they are funny. Maurizio Micksch as Helmut in particular makes it believable that he doesn't quite know what's happening to him when he's taken in from all directions (well, two directions) and showered with Deutschmarks."
Martin Thomas Pesl // Night Critic

"A two-hour thriller, staged like a movie: with changing locations that move as if in slow motion, with film clips on the wall. The audience sits in the middle, the actors act around them."
Martin Miecznik // SWR