Hombre por necesidad

All crises prey upon the most vulnerable, the poor, the workers, and upon each other; today we have all experienced this, and crises take the face of a woman. Ella Gerike is one of them. Widowed after a year of marriage and without work or support, she is forced to adopt her husband's identity, Max Gerike, and replace him at the factory as a mechanical bull operator. Thus, disguised as a man, she will experience Hitler's rise to power and the disasters of war. The end of the armed conflict eases certain difficulties, but does not free her from unemployment or hunger. Ella/Max Gerike recalls some moments of her hard journey, lived with energy and a spirit of overcoming, like an extraordinary survivor, as women often do. This real story of Ella Gerike not only inspired Brecht, who immortalized it in one of his novels, but also served as the source of inspiration for Manfred Karge, who was tasked with rescuing it for the theatre through this fragmented monologue titled "Jacke wie Hose".