Ben Hartmann and Johannes Aue, actor and singer of the rock band "Milliarden", use Brecht's erotic sonnets to condense and unravel the secret desires of bourgeois normativity.
In their songs, the band traces contradictions and longings. Themes such as lust, as the most natural language in the world, death and utopia run through their discography. This is one of the reasons why Hartmann and Aue ended up with Brecht's pornographic sonnets at Jürgen Kuttner's request. Brecht wrote these erotic miniatures during his summer journeys from Berlin to his native Augsburg, out of boredom and lust. In them, he describes his lust and desires in great detail. They circulated among friends long before they were published. Today, porn has spread to all areas of life. It is still "immoral", not a sincere topic. Using Brecht's sonnets as a foil, the musical performance of the two cut-ups embarks on a search for redemptive answers to the existential questions of repeated abortion / drug addiction / the fear of making decisions against our patterns and the departure into the unknown.

With: Johannes Aue, Ben Hartmann
© Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin / Bertolt-Brecht-Erben

A production of the Brechtfestival Augsburg 2021