Working in the kitchen ‒ job of your dreams, way station, or dead end? A job in a restaurant is often the first stop for newcomers to Berlin. If you don’t speak German, you’re washing dishes in a neighbourhood kitchen; if you’re proficient in the language, you’re allowed to do service.

The kitchen is the site of drama, a microcosm in a state of emergency. Janus-faced, with a gleaming entrance and a security door as an emergency exit, it’s Berlin’s front yard. Berlin’s kitchen jobs have sent more than a few packing again ‒ if they were in a position to do so.

“If a fixed menu costs 5 euros, you can assume that people in the kitchen are earning 3.50 euros per hour,” a former cook reveals. People washing dishes in a Berlin kitchen barely earn enough to survive ‒ despite “minimum wages”. But after all, it’s only the beginning, there’s better to come! The kitchen as a stepping stone into a new life! Or will it be the only chance? Who will manage to move up in the hierarchy? Open his/her own restaurant?

In the confined space of a restaurant kitchen, the director Anestis Azas finds the concentrate of current social developments. After the production of Telemachos ‒ Shoud I stay or Should I go?, co-directed with Prodromos Tsinikoris, he now turns his attention to Berlin’s flagship industry ‒ the workplace of those new to Berlin. Top chefs and neighbourhood innkeepers, self-made women and dishwashers, canteen kitchen operators and food runners ‒ their experiences are the ingredients.

Bloody, medium oder durch is a fictional documentary production about an explosive recipe of working conditions, demarcations and the European crisis.

Director: Anestis Azas
Research and text: Anestis Azas, Alina Spachidis and ensemble
Stage and costume design: Michaela Muchina
Music: Michail Fotopoulos

Dramaturgy: Alina Spachidis
Video: Mehmet Can Koçak
Cast: Nizar Basal, David Boylan, Michail Fotopoulos, Kaoru Iriyama, Nicole Sartirani

The project is co-produced by Kultursprünge at Ballhaus Naunynstraße gemeinnützige GmbH and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main, funded by the Individual Project Funding of the Land Berlin.