Schwarze Jungfrauen

Black virgins ask why Allah is not a foreigner, and why holy crimes are necessary. How can watered-down Islam be made halal and why is it that you wake up with fleas if you sleep with the godless? And last but not least, they are searching for the perfect combination of sex and Islam. Their pious conclusion: naked does not equal disbelief and fully covered does not mean fully subjected to God. Unexpectedly revealing, disturbingly radical, and full of all-toohuman longings, they narrate their journeys.
Created in 2006 as a commissioned work for the theater festival Beyond Belonging, Black Virgins is based on interviews that Feridun Zaimoğlu and Günter Senkel conducted with young neo-Muslim women in Germany. For this piece, the magazine Theater heute selected them as among the best dramatists of the year. Director Neco Çelik’s production was then invited to the Mülheimer Theatre Days the
following year. 
The Maxim Gorki theater previously addressed the subculture of young women in big cities back in 2001 with Zaimoğlu's text Koppstoff.

With English surtitles, excluding the premiere

Maxim Gorki premier: February 7th, 2014 - Transfer from Ballhaus Naunynstraße – world premiere at the Hebbel am Ufer as part of the festival Beyond Belonging - Migration, curated by Shermin Langhoff, March 2006
Performance rights courtesy Rowohlt Theater Verlag, Reinbek