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On 18 September 2026, the young ensemble at the jtw Spandau will celebrate the premiere of the play *Der Ausflug der toten Mädchen* (*The Dead Girls’ Outing*), based on the short story by the author Anna Seghers, in which Seghers describes how a political system infiltrates the friendships within a class of girls and drives them apart. In doing so, the ensemble links the oppressive reality of the interwar period with the lived experiences of today’s young performers and weaves a continuation of Seghers’ autobiographical story by drawing on her later, often contradictory actions in the GDR.
Director Josephine Witt explores the text, which was first published 80 years ago, with 15 young performers aged between 16 and 28, bringing to the stage the existential abysses between friends in a time of social terror. What does betrayal mean in times of targeted extermination in personal relationships?
In this harrowing narrative, written as early as 1944 whilst in exile in Mexico, Anna Seghers confronts the horror that the Nazi regime inflicted upon the girls – even before it came to an end. Her childhood friends are dead. Some were …
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Image above: jtw Spandau, Ausflug der toten Mädchen. Alexander Anufriev.
