'How We Made Revolutionary Theater in Berlin'
Working as part of Troupe 1931, actress Ingeborg Franke (1912-1993) told the story of the successful theater co-op, producing stage plays that challenged the emerging Nazi regime of that time.
Introduction to
“How We Made Revolutionary Theater in Berlin” —
a fiction/nonfiction hybrid by Topper Sherwood
BERLIN (November 3, 2025) — From their very first meeting in January 1931, the members of Theater Troupe 1931 (Truppe 1931), dove head-first into the labor of producing politically pointed stage plays. They continued to do this work in Berlin, right up until March 1933, when Adolf Hitler’s German-nationalist dictatorship shut them down.
How We Made Revolutionary Theater in Berlin is a weekly series of 35 essays — chapters of my own novella, or fiction-nonfiction hybrid. I’m re-editing and re-releasing these, one chapter per week, beginning now (November 2025) and stretching through most of 2026.
How We Made Revolutionary Theater is based upon a rare German hard-copy/paper essay that I found in a second-hand Berlin bookshop a couple of years ago. This monograph had been typed and copied secretly in 1934 and presumably handed out to a relatively few trusted friends. The document’s hurried author was 22-year-old Truppe31 actress Ingeborg Franke (1912-1993).1 In relatively discrete and hurried phrases, Franke described the process of forming Troupe31 and developing works of “activist” antifascist theater — three successful plays that the performers actually staged in several Berlin theaters/venus — and, in one case, toured other cities. The whole story ends, of course, with the nationalists’ Gleichshaltung that quickly brought all societal institutions under the control of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.
How We Made Revolutionary Theater in Berlin is a remarkable document, describing the hard-won, above-ground successes of Berlin creative workers, quickly becoming aware that they were laboring “in the belly of the beast” at growing risk to themselves. Their story becomes important today, first because of the courage exhibited by these protagonists — guided and supported by German actor and stage director Gustav von Wangenheim (1895-1975); and, secondly, for the difficult, mission-driven historic work that Troupe31 undertook, collaborating in the common work — both the physical and “knowledge labor” (geistige Arbeit) — of a stage-performers’ cooperative.
Key to our understanding of Troupe31’s theater work is the initial desire of the actors to write; Gustav Wangenheim guides them through the process of creating their own roles for Troupe31 plays. Director Wangenheim gives one initial command that resonates well beyond the work at hand: "Always write the Truth!” Patient readers of this work will see how Wangenheim’s advice and the ensuing collective work paid off — helping Troupe31 engage its audiences over and over again with new, exciting material that they had developed across countless hours of mind- and soul-challenging sessions together.
The director gave his writers and actors one bit of instruction in 1931; a mantra that resonates through time:
‘Always write the Truth!’
This is the real story behind How We Made Revolutionary Theater in Berlin: Wangenheim’s insistence upon actors and performances that tell the truth about contemporary life. It cannot have been easy, especially when faced by audiences who’d been battered by German nationalists’ sometimes-successful attempts (since 1914) to politicize European history and re-shape people’s understanding of it.
Specifically, How We Made Revolutionary Theater describes three distinct effects of the cast’s Truth-Telling stage work: First, the close reader sees a new confidence the actors built within themselves by researching their roles for the first play, called The Mousetrap. To compose their drama, the cast first interviewed actual workers, managers, and even underwriters of a Berlin shoe-making factory, where they had decided to set the play. These real-life, face-to-face encounters gave the creative members of Troupe31 the power to author genuine fact-based fiction, lending real-world drama to the script and to their own roles in it.
Second, the actors (and writers) were able to build topical labor and societal issues into their plays — notably, the growing, labor-altering role of industrial technology in just about everyone’s workplace. Before the end of the play’s year-long run, Troupe31 found themselves leading after-performance audience discussions about these issues, public “town hall” conversations that sometimes stretched hours past the performance’s closing curtain. (The actors were especially energized by discussions with young German men, otherwise being seduced by the empty emotional rhetoric or propaganda of the nationalists, Franke reports.)
Ultimately, Troupe31 was able to bring down the ‘fourth wall’ and directly engage their audiences, drawing them into the story as decision-making, real-world participants.
Finally, with its adaptation of Karl Wittvogel’s “Who’s the Dumbest?” (Wer ist der Dummste), Troupe31 was able to take another step into truly revolutionary media-making. In this play, the actors play an acting troupe doing a theater exercise in a tavern. Stepping in-and-out-of their roles, the actors end up playing themselves, their audiences taking on the role of pub-guests. At one point, the tavern-/theater-owner even invites the two sides — actors and audience — to change roles. In a word, Troupe31 was able to bring down the “fourth wall,” directly engaging their audiences and drawing them into the Troupe31 story, as decision-making real-world participants. When done right, the theatrical effect of Berlin’s Troupe31 must have been powerful; very much in the spirit of the European absurdist playwrights such as Pirandello and Ionesco.
So, I am re-sending the 35 chapters of How We Made Revolutionary Theater in Berlin, my newest fact-based/fiction-nonfiction-hybrid narrative of historical activist “creatives” here. The real subject is the brief life and work of Troupe31, as an artists’ collective, giving haven to a handful of Berlin actors who were struggling to find and perform meaningful work during the late-Weimar, early-Nazi era.
How We Made Revolutionary Theater is packed with rich and fascinating (& actual) historical material which theater- and writing students can read and enjoy. For true “texters,” I am putting up paywalls. For them, it’s only 30 euros / dollars per year. Otherwise, I will try to record each episode myself — but cannot promise it, at this point — and link these audio recordings for free streaming.
Thanks, in any case, for sharing this work on different platforms/venues, as you are able, and thereby helping me to get this remarkable, true Berlin story “out there.”
Topper Sherwood
Franke likely was working together with Troupe31 director Gustav von Wangenheim. The two had been quietly married, reportedly, since 1931. I transcribed and translated these thirty-three “found” pages, then re-edited and reworked the English text to incorporate more of my own longtime research. Specifically, I’ve added material from my exploration into the lives of these Troupe31 associates: Curt Trepte, director Erwin Piscator, composer Stefan Wolpe, playwright Karl Wittvogel, and others. ts