Stadttheater New York



	The Ballad of the Christmas Tree Killer by Rebekka Kricheldorf US-English translation by Neil Blackadder Publisher: Gustav Kiepenheuer, Bühnenvertrieb GmbH Rebekka Kricheldorf was born in Freiburg (Breisgau) in 1974. After several semesters studying Romance Studies, she transferred to the Berlin University of Arts to study Playwriting. Her play Prinzessin Nicoletta (Princess Nicoletta) was awarded the Publisher's Award as well as the Audience Award at the Heidelberger Stückemarkt (New Play Festival) in 2002. In 2003 she was awarded the Kleist Förderpreis for her play Kriegerfleisch (Warrior Flesh), which premiered in January 2004 at the State Theater Münster. In the 2004/2005 season Kricheldorf was Resident Playwright at the Nationaltheater Mannheim and wrote commissioned plays for Theater am Neumarkt Zurich (Floreana) and Staatstheater Stuttgart, where Die Ballade vom Nadelbaumkiller (The Ballad of the Christmas Tree Killer) premiered in 2005. The production was invited to the Mülheimer Theatertagen and to the Heidelberger Stückemarkt 2005. In 2004 Rebekka Kricheldorf received the Schiller-Förderpreis of Baden-Württemberg. In 2005 her play Schneckenportrait (Portrait of a Snail) premiered at Staatstheater Osnabrück and in 2006 Rosa und Blanca premiered at the Staatstheater Kassel. Plays (Selected): Princess Nicoletta, Warrior Flesh, Florena, Portrait of a Snail, Rosa und Blanca. The Play A clash of generations: Representatives of 1968's Babyboomers are sent into the ring with "thirty-somethings" (aka the "golf generation") and today's "network children". Jan Mao is the victim of anti-authoritarian upbringing and in search of limits. He presents himself as a modern Don Juan and squanders his father's money. His father, Franz, a former hippie, has become the head of a flourishing advertising agency and wants his son to succeed him. But Jan doesn't want that; and is also incapable of that. He only makes it through the day thanks to the services of Leporello Rudolf, the unemployed son of a fishmonger, despite being enormously overqualified for this menial role. Elvira, formerly Franz's companion and now his best customer, is a sexually liberated businesswoman. She is suppposed to put Jan on the right path, but is stressed out by daughter Anna who plans her life purely in terms of success measured by cost-benefit considerations. And then there is Tine who sells herself and mobile phone contracts for cash... "The Ballad of the Christmas Tree Killer is definitely her best play so far. Unintrusively elegant and pointed, she interweaves the myth of Don Giovanni with a kind of Screwball-Comedy about conflicts of generations and classes in the milieu of social climbers and drop-outs." (Martin Halter, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)