Waiting Room Germany

Waiting Room Germany
successfully explores the everyday drama of citizens in the formerly divided Germany

by Robert W. McDowell
for Spectator Magazine Online
October 20,1999

On Thursday, Oct. 14, the International Social Studies Project at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Education assembled an all-star cast, under the direction of ISSP program coordinator Paul Frellick, to perform a staged reading of Waiting Room Germany. Compiled from a series of man-on-the-street-style interviews commissioned by Der Spiegel and conducted by German playwright Klaus Pohl and translated by David Tushingham, this unconventional but compelling docudrama spotlights the personal tragedies and triumphs of a variety of former citizens of East and West Germany.

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Waiting Room Germany focuses on what these outspoken citizens of the formerly divided Germany consider to be the major pluses and minuses resulting from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the subsequent reunification of Germany. The performance, which took place in the auditorium of the Tate-Turner-Kuralt School of Social Work Building, was followed by an informative discussion led by Tami Kaiser-Polge.

Each member of the five-member cast performed multiple roles with minimal props and costume changes, helping Pohl demonstrate the tremendous human price paid by the victims of the Cold War trapped behind the Iron Curtain — and the prices they continue to pay even after reunification.

J. Chachula opened the evening with a peppery portrait on an Insurance Man, who delivers a fiery diatribe against the arrogant and malicious East German border guards who subjected him to all kinds of indignities during their searches of his automobile and his person. Later, another Insurance Man candidly talks about the challenge of selling insurance to former socialists. Chachula is also excellent as an Unemployed Roofer who now has no roof over his head; a Press Officer who makes cutting comments about the heated competition between former citizens of the two Germanies; and a Christian Democrat from Frankfurt who engages a Dissatisfied Worker (Eric Carl) in heated debate about the merits of the Kohl government.

Jeffery West contributed a vivid portrait of an anguished Chief Executive who must demolish old factories and lay off hundreds of workers, now that their services are no longer needed by the new reunified Germany. His other vivid vignettes include sharply etched portraits of the Mayor of Bebra discussing the pressures of overcoming bureaucratic hurdles in the new Germany; a Priest from Potsdam talking about the problems caused by increasing numbers of immigrants seeking political asylum; and a Master Painter who was imprisoned and tortured in the East for his unpopular views but became quite an escape artist.

Helen Hagan contributes a sharply etched portrait of a Private Secretary, an academic underutilized in the former East Germany, who has serious concerns about the how the overnight transition from Planned Economy to MarketEconomy will affect the former Communist state. She provides equally adept portrayals of a Factor Worker (a former confectioner now making automobile air bags); an Old Woman from Berlin remembering the final days of World War II; a repressed former East German Psychiatrist now free to express her lust for life in the West; an Engineer bemoaning the shift to the right in German politics; and an old Woman from Weimar, who loves her beautiful country and its dead poets.

Stephen Bradley Schilling is nicely cast as an Auto Mechanic who deplores the new freedom that allows conmen posing as door-to-door salesmen to go from neighborhood to neighborhood ripping off homeowners. Schilling’s other crisp characterizations included an outspoken Professor of political psychology; a Security Guard at a Political Meeting, who carefully chooses his comments in response to a question about what he loves about Germany; the former Communist Mayor of Harzgerode, an economist who is now planning to run again for his old job, because his expertise is greatly needed; and an alcoholic Actor who stopped drinking the day the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.

Eric Carl paints tart portraits of his life as a Writer; as a Schoolboy who aspires to be a lawyer; as an art history and ethnology student-turned-Taxi Driver, because he has girlfriend and drug problems; and as another Schoolboy, this time one with English parents, commenting on growing tensions between the Germans and foreigners.

Director Paul Frellick, who staged Burning Coal Theatre Company’s powerful and moving N.C. premiere of A Question of Mercy in February, got great performances from every cast member. If the ISSP’s goal was to explore the humanity behind the headlines, then Waiting Room Germany succeeded admirably.

Presented in conjunction with a World View seminar on Central and Eastern Europe, this staged reading was co-sponsored by the UNC Center for European Studies and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies.


The International Social Studies Project in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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