Multimedia theatre performance with the Post Theatre, Berlin
On the 100th birthday of Dr Hermann Eiselen

The ‘Journey Through Time: 6000 Years of Breaking Bread’ is about bread, but not just bread. Hardly any other food is so symbolically charged – none has such great cultural and religious significance. Post Theater promises its audience a 6,000-year history, a cultural history of bread that deals with transformation. In other words, change – from nature to culture. From the field to the crumb. From ancient Egyptian civilisation to the present day. From ancient deities to god-like powers. From clay to humans. From the powerful to the subjugated.
The two performers repeatedly slip into new roles, repeatedly playing different participants in the cultivation, trade and processing of grain and bread, sometimes in positions of power, sometimes in positions of helplessness.
The central stage installation, a three-by-three-metre communion table around which the audience sits, is also subject to constant change through video projections and sound installations.
The main literary source for Breaking Bread is Heinrich Eduard Jacob's Six Thousand Years of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History. Jacob is considered the founding father of cultural-historical literature. He wrote Six Thousand Years of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History (1944) in English after his release from imprisonment in the Buchenwald concentration camp while in exile in the USA. It was not until ten years later that he translated the book into German. It is considered a classic of cultural history literature and a prime example of alternative ways of writing history.

Post Theater is a media performance theatre company based in Berlin (since 2002), Stuttgart (since 2010), Dresden (since 2020) and Potsdam (since 2024). The company is led by media artist Hiroko Tanahashi and dramaturge Max Schumacher. Post Theater has presented more than 50 plays in over 60 cities in 20 countries worldwide. www.posttheater.com

Artistic direction: Hiroko Tanahashi and Max Schumacher
Actors: Mary Ye Myint, Peter Wagner
Music, sound design: Sibin Vassilev
Video art: Hiroko Tanahashi
Costume design: Marion Reddmann
Installation construction: Roman Koch
Tablecloth design: Ingrid Mitterer
Technical direction: Gunter Votteler, David Ojala
Production management: Mario Stumpfe

Funded by LaFT Baden-Württemberg with funds from the Ministry of Culture of the State of Baden-Württemberg, the Dresden Cultural Office and FTTS – Freie Tanz und Theaterszene Stuttgart.

The co-founder of the museum, Dr Hermann Eiselen, would have turned 100 this year. The cultural history of bread was one of his lifelong themes, and Heinrich Eduard Jacob's book was an important inspiration. In this sense, the theatre performance at the museum is also a tribute to the founder.