Returning to ReimsPhoto: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020
Returning to Reims, Photo: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020 
Returning to ReimsPhoto: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020
Returning to Reims, Photo: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020 
Returning to ReimsPhoto: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020
Returning to Reims, Photo: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020 
Returning to ReimsPhoto: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020
Returning to Reims, Photo: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020 
Returning to ReimsPhoto: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020
Returning to Reims, Photo: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020 
Returning to ReimsPhoto: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020
Returning to Reims, Photo: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020 
Returning to ReimsPhoto: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020
Returning to Reims, Photo: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020 
Returning to ReimsPhoto: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020
Returning to Reims, Photo: © David Baltzer, 2020, 2020 
 

Returning to Reims

based on the novel »Retour à Reims« by Didier Eribon
German translation by Tobias Haberkorn
In a version of the Schaubühne
With additional texts by Amewu Nove and Isabelle Redfern

Resumption (new version of »Returning to Reims«)
Director: Thomas Ostermeier


11/22/2020, 18.00
Performance cancelled

Resumption (new version of »Returning to Reims«)

A sound studio. An actress is recording a text. At the mixing desk a director is giving her instructions. Together they are working on the voice recording for a film which is running synchronously in the background. The protagonist of the film is the author himself, Didier Eribon, who goes on a type of journey of reminiscence. With a mixture of personal confession and sociological analysis, Eribon reports on the re-encounter with his hometown and his family which, since his career as an intellectual in Paris, he has hardly seen for decades, and has had no desire to see. In his confrontation with his own past, Eribon also comes up against the blind spots in contemporary society: the brutal exclusion mechanisms at work in the very same middle-classes to which he now belongs and the reality of a previously communist working-class which, forgotten and disenfranchised, is now running into the rightwing populist arms of the Front National. How can things have come to this? How much is the left-wing to blame, how much Eribon himself who, as an intellectual, has renounced his past? And what are the solutions? These are all questions Eribon pursues in his film as he goes on a search for clues in Reims. They are questions which also continue to trouble the director and actress during their process of finishing the film.

Thomas Ostermeier’s production of »Rückkehr nach Reims« (»Returning to Reims«) was invited to the 2018 Theatertreffen festival in Berlin. Now in a revised version and with a new cast, the play can once again be seen at the Schaubühne.

Author: Didier Eribon
Director: Thomas Ostermeier
Assistant Director: David Stöhr
Costume and Stage Design: Nina Wetzel
Assistance Stage Design: Doreen Back
Composer: Nils Ostendorf
Sound Design: Jochen Jezussek
Dramaturg: Florian Borchmeyer, Maja Zade
Lighting Design: Erich Schneider
Film Director: Sébastien Dupouey, Thomas Ostermeier
Camera: Sébastien Dupouey, Marcus Lenz
Movie Editing: Sébastien Dupouey
Original Film Sound: Peter Carstens
Production Management Film: Stefan Nagel
Duration: ca. 130 minutes

Premiered with new cast on 13 June 2021

Tour Dates

Prague (November 2021)

Coproduction with the Manchester International Festival MIF, HOME Manchester and Théâtre de la Ville Paris
Supported by LOTTO-Stiftung Berlin

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