There is a moment in the play Get Deutsch or Die Tryin’, currently showing at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, when the harsh realities faced by many modern migrants hit home. The story of its protagonist, Arda, a young German-Turkish man, sets the scene. At a doner kebab shop, patrons order food in a foreign language. On the wall hangs a useless degree from a foreign university. In a back room, a young woman hangs herself; her wrists have also been slashed open. She wanted to make sure that she would die. “You are 18 and you know: you’ve lost,” Arda says later.
Powerlessness quickly turns into bad luck throughout the play, which explores the history of Turkish migration in Germany but also deliberately alludes to the struggles of refugees who have arrived in the country more recently.
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