Die Zwillinge

Twins – one read as Black, the other as white. A media frenzy erupts when one kills the other. Seeing the story as an allegory for structural violence, a screenwriter starts writing a film about them. However, the more she delves into the case, the more she becomes enmeshed in her own aspiration to turn the events into a story that reveals »the big thing«.

Lamin Leroy Gibba’s Die Zwillinge (The Twins) unfolds like a panopticon: a matryoshka doll of voices; a carousel that never stops. The characters are trapped in the flicker between truth and fiction, pressing forward under surveillance in search of a self-image that often slips away. 

Having worked on 1000 Serpentinen Angst, Joana Tischkau now returns to the Maxim Gorki Theatre to make her directing debut at Studio Я, with the author Lamin Leroy Gibba himself in one of the leading roles.

*The performance on 20/February is specifically aimed at people who position themselves as BIPoC. BIPoC stands for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color – a political self-designation for Black, Indigenous, and racialized people who share experiences of racism. This includes Black, Indigenous, (post-)migrant people, as well as Sinti*zze, Rom*nja, Jewish people, and others who are affected by racism or antisemitism. We ask White Allies to express their solidarity by attending other performance dates.

World Premiere 7/February 2026

Photo: Esra Rotthoff
Stage photos: Etritane Emini