The Author

Sunflowerhouse was the British premiere, and, as far as we know, the first full production in English of any contemporary East German author. At home the play raised a lot of controversy due to its criticism of the post-unification situation in the north of Germany, and it won Anne the widely respected Kleist-Scholarship Award in 2006.

Anne Rabe was born in 1986 in Wismar, in the north of the former GDR.

She is enrolled at the UDK Berlin for Dramatic Writing while her plays are being performed throughout Germany, amongst others at the Schaubühne, Berlin. A regular and successful participant at symposia and competitions for playwrights her most critical voice scrutinizing the society that evolved after the Fall of the Wall is heard widely. In her plays Anne employs an almost hyper-real clarity that is grounded by an insightful wit and deft imaginative structure. The microcosms of her characters illustrate larger social processes to great effect. 

The Play

A family in close-up: all takes place in their flat, their living room even, in a typical East German concrete highrise in Rostock-Lichtenhagen. The time is some years after the Fall of the Wall and the family has seemingly never discussed their history. Teenage son Micha is making a film „about his family“ in order to get into film school, and rather unwittingly uncovers a lot. His father was a Stasi informant, his pregnant sister has been kicked out of university and his best friend has become a Neo-nazi. In fact it may be that Micha was himself part of that famous arson attack on the asylum seekers home in 1992 - the Sunflowerhouse. Mother Jutta’s life is being turned upside down and this film forces her to make decisions as to how to remember her past. As she does she realizes the potential of the old new freedom – taking control of one’s own life.

As a play about growing up and facing the effects of one's actions it becomes a study of individual and collective memory. Looking at the reality of the different generations of a regular family in the wake of the fall of the wall, the play does not embrace any of the customary nostalgia but is very clear about the negative effects of the "reunification".