Stadt der Arbeit

“Could it be that your labor market is crap?” Gelsenkirchen, the city of grim statistics. The city of the unemployed, early retirees, and those who have fallen through the cracks. Fifteen citizens struggle through the trials of a fictional workhouse—harassed by case managers, bombarded with myths about work ethic, and crushed by the phantom of full employment. But what use are all these measures when there are no jobs to be found? They sustain the belief that failure in the labor market is personal, not political.
Fifteen people with fifteen life stories from Gelsenkirchen take the stage under the direction of Volker Lösch and author Ulf Schmidt at the Musiktheater im Revier (MiR). Together with costume and set designer Carola Reuther and composer Michael Wilhelmi, they created a spectacular music theater evening. After eight weeks of full-time rehearsals with professionals from the music theater, the result is an honest reckoning with the broken promises of the “City of Work” and a revelation of how deeply our society clings to an idealized concept of work that no longer exists.