DIE BLECHTROMMEL

About the show

Oskar Matzerath has barely been born when he recognises the world to be a universal disaster – and rejects it entirely. Because the world he is tossed into, 1924 Danzig, is the dawn of the National Socialist regime. Only when his mother promises to give him a tin drum does an acceptable prospect for survival unfold: the life of a drummer, the grotesque existence of an artist. On his third birthday, Oskar decides to stop growing and become an observer. From his frog's eye view, he describes the emergence of fascist thought, reports on adultery and Pogrom Night, links private stories with the history of the Third Reich. He is a witness and outsider, a prosecutor and participant in a world where the Holocaust is possible, posing the question of personal responsibility in an utterly dark world.