,ROSA.
On 15 January 1919 the lifeless body of Rosa Luxemburg was dumped into the Landwehr canal in Berlin. A few hours earlier, and with the tacit approval of Luxemburg’s socialist rivals, a group of right-wing paramilitaries had settled accounts with her. Rosa Luxemburg had worked her way up from being a lame Jewish immigrant woman to becoming a doctor, political thinker and talented orator who spared standard-bearers no criticism, whether they were on the left or the right. She paid for those ideals with years of imprisonment and ultimately with her life.
In a thrilling montage, ,ROSA. delves into the life and work that lie behind the modern image of Rosa Luxemburg as a public figure, salvaged after her death by political movements on both the left and right. The script by Koen Boesman allows her unbending idealism and turbulent love life to speak for themselves, without being a hagiography or illuminating only the darker sides of her political engagement. Based on her own work and on extracts from a theatrical writing performance with six other playwrights, this is a portrait of a formidable woman who left an indelible mark on history.
,ROSA. shows that a poetic ode to a historical character can exist without any distortion of historical fact. It demonstrates that a play about history need not be dry documentary theatre, and that a great diversity of source material is compatible with uncompromising captivation.Theaterkrant