A quiet girl with an impeccable reputation - Katarina Blum - works as a housekeeper in the homes of wealthy townspeople. One evening, after receiving an invitation from a friend, Katarina goes to a party where she meets a nice guy and spends the night with him. When she wakes up in the morning, she can't find her boyfriend anymore, and the police who break into her apartment arrest Katarina as an accomplice of the terrorist group with which the boyfriend is associated. Katarina's name is immediately in the center of media attention. The police carefully examine the suspect's life: her notebooks, savings account statements, income, expenses, personal letters, car mileage. Loud headlines appear in the press, and people who knew Katarina rush to save their reputation first. Paradoxically, in this "truth-seeking" process, no one cares about the real truth - exceptions are presented here as rules, doubts - as accusations, meaningless phrases are rewritten by changing the structure of sentences, the place of commas and words. This is how a fly is made into an elephant.
Director Agnius Jankevičius tells the story of Katarina Blum using the format of a popular TV music talk show. The content of the performance is presented to the audience as if it were a dynamic, humorous, "Late Night Show" punctuated by witty interviews and live musical numbers. This play, whose genre is playfully described as a musical-criminal case, is like a light parody of a musical, which does not lack humor, irony and a critical look at today's society. The production, filled with live music and songs, reveals the behind-the-scenes "making" of sensational stories that many of us are not familiar with, where ordinary lives are lightheartedly transformed into intriguing shows.
The story of Katarina Blum seems to have been written these days, but the novel by Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll, on which the play is based, appeared 50 years ago. The story, which is still relevant today, was created on the basis of real events and as soon as it appeared, it received a great political resonance in Germany. At that time, many West German citizens were accused of collaborating with left-wing extremists with the help of irresponsible, sensation-seeking journalists. Although almost all the allegations made public by the press were not confirmed, some of the accused were irreversibly damaged in reputation, mental and physical health. H. Böllis knew well the backstage of "dirty" games and put this experience into a short story about an ordinary girl, Katarina Blum.
The performance "Lost Katarina Blum's honor" talks about the vulnerability of each of our personal security, the rapidly melting border between privacy and public, about the impact of random circumstances and media, about the endless manipulations, variations, interpretations, hypocrisies and lies that we encounter every day.
