,ROSA.
On 15 January 1919 the lifeless body of Rosa Luxemburg dropped into the Landwehrkanaal in Berlin. A few hours earlier, a group of right-wing paramilitaries, with the silent approval of Luxemburg’s socialist rivals, had settled their accounts with her. As a lame, Jewish, immigrant woman, Rosa Luxemburg had worked her way up to become a doctor, political thinker and talented orator who spared neither left-wing nor right-wing standard bearers her criticism. 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 of both the left and the 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 dark 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 impression on history.
,ROSA.’ shows that a poetic ode to a historical character can exist without any distortion of history. 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
