With these and other statements, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s *The Threepenny Opera* has been provoking audiences ever since its world premiere in Berlin in 1928. With a blend of provocative, often disharmonious music, numerous elements of 1920s popular music, many parodies of classical opera and a story told in a casual style, it was an unprecedented sensation: social cynicism, provocatively portrayed through entertainment theatre. The story of criminals who hold the whole system together, of a society based on such a system: ‘For what does man live on? Man lives on misdeeds alone!’ A struggle of all against all. Betrayal, lies, deceit, ambushes, and a little love. With music.
The success of the 1928 production is reason enough to restage this famous work. But how? How do you restage the play, making it interesting for today’s generation? How do you stage it ‘modernly’ without losing its original character? Or has *The Threepenny Opera* perhaps already been interpreted, analysed, staged and criticised too often? Something new was needed.
Such as through a co-operation between music and art students from the University of Oldenburg and music students from Towson University in Baltimore, USA. What’s new about this is the plan for a bilingual performance: English–German. The Americans are slaving away over the German song lyrics, whilst the Oldenburg students are spending days on end cramming the English dialogue. But not as in the old days with pen and paper and an American or German lecturer – but through modern technology. Via Skype, an internet video-calling programme, the students here in Oldenburg and far away in Towson sit at their laptops, equipped with headsets, cameras and their scripts, and recite the song lyrics and dialogue lines to one another. After all, lines such as ‘And the shark, he’s got teeth, and he wears them on his face. And Macheath, he’s got a knife, but you can’t see the knife’ require a bit of practice – not just for the Germans, but especially for the Americans – and let’s not forget the rolled ‘r’.
The ensemble in Towson One thing is guaranteed: whether it’s the silhouette of a ‘dead man on the beach’, or twenty ‘whores’ – both male and female – strolling across the university stage – they’re clearly enjoying themselves. On cue, a student slips back and forth between the roles of a beggar, a policeman or a prostitute, depending on what’s needed at the time. With full physical commitment and the required seriousness.
Brecht and Weill take centre stage. Weill… – a German or an American composer? A minor point of contention between the German and American students, but that won’t be the only one in a production like this. After all, five lecturers and 51 students have to agree on a shared concept – be it regarding the costumes, the lighting effects, the singing style or the acting.
The performances from 27 to 29 May in Oldenburg and from 30 September to 2 October in Towson will feature mixed groups: Americans and Germans will share the stage. Exactly what it will look like when, for example, a German Macheath performs the love scene with an American Polly remains to be seen. But there is still a great deal of work to be done before then. After all, the scenes must, of course, be rehearsed exactly identically; the actors are, after all, expected to be able to swap roles at will without weeks of joint rehearsals.
Alongside the challenge of this co-operation, the students from Oldenburg and Towson are also drawn to the appeal of Brecht’s material and Weill’s music. One finds oneself asking time and again: is *The Threepenny Opera* outdated? Or do the unique music and the ‘moral of the story’ – the critique of society – still resonate with audiences today? Is this Brechtian pessimism about the world old-fashioned and out of touch with reality, or more relevant than we’d like? Created shortly before the Great Depression of 1929, The Threepenny Opera is perhaps more relevant today than ever before. After all: “The world is poor, man is bad. I’m afraid I’m right about that!”

Maria Ostermann The Oldenburg group with their American colleagues.