Dea Loher is one of the most powerful and individual voices in German theatre today. This volume brings together three of her plays to be performed in English.

Olga ’s Room: Communist. Jew. Revolutionary. Lover. Mother. Olga Benario’s story is a searing tale of survival as alongside her fellow prisoners she struggles to hold onto her disintegrating sense of self. Based on real events of the 1930s-40s, Dea Loher’s gripping first play spans Brazilian revolution and Nazi dictatorship.

Innocence: A city by the sea. 14 people on the edge. Illegal immigrants afraid of being arrested for a good deed. A philosopher who burns her own books. A woman seeking forgiveness for crimes she didn’t commit. A young married man who finds fulfilment laying out corpses. A blind stripper who spends her life being watched by men she cannot see. Innocence is a darkly comic panorama of urban restlessness.

Land Without Words : War meets art in this intimate parable. A painter seeks the perfect image, but in K., a Middle Eastern city, she experiences the effects of war, violence and poverty, impossible to depict. Now she is forced to confront her lifelong beliefs in the value of art, and how to deal with her position in the world today.

David Tushingham