Bremen’s Packhaustheater Turns To Artist Paula Modernsohn-Becker

The latest production in Dirk Böhling’s inaugural season as artistic director of the Packhaustheater is a further new play he wrote and directed about a famous local person: Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876 – 1907), entitled Ich bin’s Paula. She was born in Dresden and lived in Bremen since 1888, when she was twelve years old. She has been associated with the artists’ colony of Worpswede, which included Fritz Mackensen, Heinrich Vogler, Hans am Ende, Fritz Overbeck, Clara Westhoff, and Otto Modersohn.

The play charts major episodes of her life, her family, represented by her parents and her older sister, her career as an artist – with many of her famous paintings on an easel each. Central to her artistic life became her future husband, Otto Modersohn.

Christian Aumer played Paula’s father and Otto Modersohn, efficiently differentiating between the two men through voice and body posture as well as costume and by putting on an obviously false beard for Modersohn.

Kristin Lenhardt was equally convincing as Paula’s mother and later artist companion Clara Westhoff. Larissa Raumann played Paula’s sister and sang a number of songs accompanying herself on the double bass; she also played solo to suggest the varying range of Paula’s moods depending on the circumstances.

Meike Lehmann was very good as Paula – retaining a child-like, wide-eyed enthusiasm for art and life that knew no bounds and often exceeded Paula’s physical strength, contributing to her early death at the age of only thirty-one. Lehmann was particularly moving in the fewer passages of her character’s significant insights into (her) life.

Böhling’s text drew much from autobiographical writings of the central characters and sought to recreate the style and idiom of speaking for his characters at other times. Pacing was suitably varied, although the two-hour duration of the performance, including interval, was demanding in some capacity for the audience.

Two triangular pillars on wheels were shifted swiftly to create three different locations – the set was thus efficiently designed by Frank Imsiepen. The period costumes, by Bianca Vespermann, added suitably to the atmosphere.

The first run of some twelve performances in April and May 2026 was mainly sold out, and the production returns to the Packhaustheater for a further 16 performances, across September to November 2026.