Der Zauberer von Öz (The Wizard of Öz)
2025 \ theatre play \ Theater Bremen, Kleines Haus \ world premiere
by Akın Emanuel Şipal Director Aram Tafreshian Set and costume designer Susanne Brendel Video designer Rafael Ossami Saidy Light designer Joachim Grindel Composer and live musician Ella Olivia Bender Semerci Dramaturgs Lea Goebel, Franziska Benack Outside Eye Marianne Seidler
with Martin Baum, Manolo Bertling, Judith Goldberg, Lisa Guth, Sofia Iordanskaya, Ruben Sabel, Ella Olivia Bender Semerci, Seyrane Ay, Kardelen Basnak, Arian Bünnagel, Yelda Dinc, Navin Felgendreher, Rainer Steinhaus, Asya Utku, Sumeyra Uygun, Bernd Wellbrock
“My job is a football player and not a politician.” (Mesut Özil) — Mesut Özil is many things at once: a ball artist, world champion, role model, poster boy for integration, scapegoat, scandal figure. His story reflects the tensions of a country that struggles with its idea of belonging.
In Der Zauberer von Öz(The Wizard of Öz) verwandelt Akın Emanuel Şipal diese Biografie in eine märchenhafte multiperspektivische Reise, in der Zauberkräfte auf Popkultur, Sport und PAkın Emanuel Şipal transforms this biography into a fairy-tale-like journey with multiple perspectives, in which magical powers meet pop culture, sports, and politics. Özil sets out on a (nightmare-like) retrospective of his career—haunted by the ghosts of the past. Directed by Aram Tafreshian, power relations, discourses on integration, and the centrifugal forces of our society are brought to the stage in all their absurdity. The evening switches rapidly and fragmentarily between genres and perspectives, revealing more about the observers than about the observed.
Photos © Theater Bremen, Susanne Brendel