Raphael Moussa Hillebrand’s piece Wolf, based on the children’s book of the same name by Saša Stanišić, is being performed this season at Theater an der Parkaue – and is receiving well-deserved applause.
Who doesn’t remember that one kid on the playground who always stood on the sidelines, the one always picked last in gym class, the one that never went a day without people laughing at its expense, who was almost happy to be ignored – rather than shoved or even kicked? Wolf is about this kid. Six performers on stage tell the story of Jörg, through words and movements. None of them is Jörg. They are all Jörg. They switch. They hand around a backpack – the heavy burden being carried – the way you would pass a baton in a relay race. Whoever has the backpack becomes that kid on the sidelines that we all remember, perhaps who we ourselves even were, in the next scene.
This is one of many extremely good choices director and choreographer Raphael Moussa Hillebrand and his team make for the piece. Because the constant roll changing makes it difficult to deeply identify with anyone – be it the person being bullied, the bystanders, or those using their muscles or vicious remarks to push someone down. We are different in our uniqueness, but the piece makes it clear that we can also be made to feel “other-ish”. It can happen to any of us and it has nothing to do with something inherently wrong inside of us. This is an important message because, for the around 13 to 14 school classes that I am attending the performance in Theater an der Parkaue with on a rainy morning, this is not a repressed past but a very present reality. When the performer Theresa Henning calls out from the stage for everyone who has ever looked away or not said something against bullying out of fear to snap their fingers, it gets very loud and then very silent in the space.
©Dave Großmann
On the stage, which was swiftly transformed from a gymnasium into a camp with a sense of foreboding mischief, the focus is also primarily on how to show solidarity with or among the “other-ish”, on what can be done to combat exclusion. The piece seems to admit that the situation is sometimes so hopeless that only superheroes can help. In this case a three-meter tall cook who appears furiously out of haze and a streak of lightning to dispel Jörg’s enemies, to offer a shoulder to cry on. And the camp itself transforms again and again into a fantastical place, haunted by rabbits, deer, and a terrifying wolf whose yellow eyes and huge jaws dance across the stage detached from one another. This magical world offers much more than an escape from reality. It is an outlet for emotions that would otherwise be difficult to deal with. And it is also a reminder of the possibility for another story, one in which no one is thrown to the wolves.
English translation by Melissa Maldonado
Wolf by Raphael Moussa Hillebrand premiered on 26 February 2026 at the Theater an der Parkaue and will be performed several times this season.