"Play Children" is the name the four independent artists give themselves when they come together as siblings. Lina and Maja Beckmann are queens of the city theater, both crowned "Actress of the Year" respectively, one engaged at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg, the other at Schauspielhaus Zurich. The brothers Nils and Till Beckmann are loyal to their homeland and create theater, radio plays, and projects across all channels in North Rhine-Westphalia. They have repeatedly dealt with texts by Rothmann, bringing them to the stage and screen. And the family has expanded to include partners, friends, and girlfriends.
Charly Hübner – former Commissioner Buckow from Rostock's "Polizeiruf," a star actor not only in Hamburg and privately connected to Lina Beckmann – embodies in "Young Light" the father of the main character Julian – a taciturn miner, like many of Rothmann's figures. Rothmann's early books, before they transitioned to Berlin like their author, take place in the region, especially in Oberhausen.
"Overhausen – The Ralf Rothmann Audio Walk" is the name the Beckmanns, along with Charly Hübner and Jennifer Ewert, give to their walk, which spans six stations at Tackenberg, tracing Rothmann and his literary characters. A walk between mining settlement, spoil heap, football field, pub, and kiosk – reminiscent, but not nostalgically indulgent. The Beckmann family has a sensibility for the Rothmann sound, for sentences like "If you have chosen freedom, nothing can happen to you. Never." and for the hovering nature of rebellion, melancholy, longing, and insight into the weight of life and its peculiar gravity.
Anyone who wants to test the audio walk just needs a smartphone and an app to scan QR codes. More information can be found here:
