On 18 September 2026, the young ensemble at the jtw Spandau will celebrate the premiere of the play *Der Ausflug der toten Mädchen* (*The Dead Girls’ Outing*), based on the short story by the author Anna Seghers, in which Seghers describes how a political system infiltrates the friendships within a class of girls and drives them apart. In doing so, the ensemble links the oppressive reality of the interwar period with the lived experiences of today’s young performers and weaves a continuation of Seghers’ autobiographical story by drawing on her later, often contradictory actions in the GDR.
Image above: jtw Spandau, Ausflug der toten Mädchen. Alexander Anufriev.
Director Josephine Witt explores the text, which was first published 80 years ago, with 15 young performers aged between 16 and 28, bringing to the stage the existential abysses between friends in a time of social terror. What does betrayal mean in times of targeted extermination in personal relationships?
In this harrowing narrative, written as early as 1944 whilst in exile in Mexico, Anna Seghers confronts the horror that the Nazi regime inflicted upon the girls – even before it came to an end. Her childhood friends are dead. Some were killed in concentration camps; others turned on the gas tap themselves.
The production weaves this personal nightmare together with letters written by Anna Seghers during later stages of her life. The young people draw on the story’s autofictional approach to act as first-person narrators themselves, using their own experiences to paint a picture of the social climate that extends the journey through time – from the dark chapters of German history described in Anna Seghers’ text right up to the present day.
The author Anna Seghers (1900–1983) was the recipient of the Kleist and Büchner Prizes and served as president of the Writers’ Association of the GDR from 1952 to 1978. ‘Ausflug der toten Mädchen’ (The Dead Girls’ Outing), in which she describes the horrors of war from a female perspective, was written after she learnt of the death of her Jewish mother in the ghetto, to whom she dedicated the text. As a Jew and a communist, she went into exile immediately after Hitler seized power.
The jtw Spandau enables young people to collaborate with professional artists and non-professional performers. Josephine Witt is a director and playwright. A graduate of the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts, she frequently works within the methodology of play development. She regularly works with forms of reinterpreting and reimagining existing archetypes and subjects from the theatrical canon. She works with professional and non-professional actresses, young people and people with disabilities. Witt incorporates the perspectives, wishes and particular abilities of her ensemble into the artistic process. She consistently pushes the boundaries of classical spoken theatre.
WHEN?
Premiere: Friday, 18. September 2026, at 7 pm.
Performances:
Saturday, 19., Tuesday, 22., Wednesday, 23., Thursday, 24., Friday, 25. September 2026
Monday, 9. November 2026
WHERE?
jtw Spandau
Gelsenkircher Str. 20
13583 Berlin
COST?
Admission: free
