Return to Reims) from DIDIER ERIBON
in a theatre version by THOMAS JONIGK
Premiere: 18.01.2019, Schauspiel Köln, Depot 2
Director: Thomas Jonigk
Stage: Lisa Däßler
Costumes: Esther Geremus
Music/Sound: Mathis Nitschke
Choreography: Teresa Rotemberg
With: Jörg Ratjen / Sabine Orléans / Nicki von Tempelhoff / Justus Maier / Nicolas Lehni / Laura Friedmann / Antonia Bockelmann / Campbell Caspary
Playing dates: https://www.schauspiel.koeln/spielplan/monatsuebersicht/rueckkehr-nach-reims/
Fotos: Thomas Aurin
“What you’ve been torn away from, or what you’ve tried to be torn away from, remains a component of who you are.” Didier Eribon’s “Return to Reims” begins with an end: the death of the father leads the son / author / academic back to his old homeland, where he hadn’t been for thirty years. He visits his mother, looks at old pictures with her and works up the family history; a history of occupation, war, destruction, labour movement and alienation – a history of France under the sign of the Front National.
Eribon’s “Return to Reims” blurs the genre boundaries, sometimes it is a sociological study, sometimes an emotional-biographical narrative of a boy growing up in a homophobic environment, sometimes a rapprochement, sometimes a strict distancing and sometimes it is pure poetry.
