The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
The Confessions, Photo: © Alípio Padilha, 2024 
 

The Confessions

by Alexander Zeldin London
Director: Alexander Zeldin 

Stage B

Guest Performance FIND 2024
London/Paris

04/18/2024, 20.00–22.00
In English with German surtitles

Followed by Audience Talk

The big question is: How to honour a life? (Alexander Zeldin)

1958. A school prom in provincial Australia. Three teenage girls. One of them, Alice, wants to make the jump and escape from the small backwater of her childhood to study; wants to leave the humble, limiting circumstances of her parental home behind. But her first attempt at university fails and she is forced to return to her old life. Her mother suggests that she might get married instead; the world is full of hard surfaces and only with a husband can she be truly secure ...
In »The Confessions«, British director and playwright Alexander Zeldin works with an Australian-British ensemble to explore the story of an Australian woman against the back-drop of the second half of the 20th century. Based on an extended series of conversations he had with his mother and her peers, he deploys large and tranquil tableaux to create a panorama of her »confessions« which span almost eight decades. Alice is born in 1943 into an Australian working-class family. We experience her in her youth with her aspirations to become educated and independent, her rebellion and how it faltered, her new beginning as a divorced woman in London and the founding of her own family. Her journey takes us through the major social upheavals of the second half of the 20th and the early 21st century. Her story is one of personal as well as collective emancipation and the persistent attempt to live in a self-determined manner—with all the traumas and humiliations experienced along the way, which Alexander Zeldin empathically weaves into an intimate portrait of a life.

WITH: Amelda Brown, Jerry Killick, Lilit Lesser, Brian Lipson, Hannah Morrish, Pamela Rabe, Gabrielle Scawthorn, Jacob Warner, Yasser Zadeh
SET AND COSTUME DESIGNER Marg Horwell
CHOREOGRAPHER AND MOVEMENT DIRECTOR: Imogen Knight
LIGHTING DESIGNER: Paule Constable
COMPOSER: Yannis Philippakis
SOUND DESIGNER: Josh Anio Grigg
CASTING DIRECTOR: Jacob Sparrow
DRAMATURGS: Faye Merralls, Sasha Milavic Davies
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR: Joanna Pidcock
INTIMAX CO-ORDINATOR Kat Hardman - EK Intimacy
VOICE DIRECTOR. Cathleen McCarron
DIALECT COACHES: Louise Jones, Jenny Kent

Production: A Zeldin Company and Compagnie A Zeldin
Co-Commissioned by the National Theatre of Great Britain, RISING Melbourne, Théâtres de la ville de Luxembourg
Co-production: Wiener Festwochen, Comédie de Genève, Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, Centre culturel de Belém – Lisbonne, Théâtre de Liège, Festival d’Avignon, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Athens Epidauros Festival, Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa, Adelaide Festival, Centre dramatique national de Normandie-Rouen

Duration: ca. 120 minutes

The Production is supported by Nancy and Michael Timmers, David Schwimmer, Cas Donald, Elisabeth de Kergorlay, Mazdak Rassi and Zanna Roberts Rassi, Andrew and Raquel Segal, Victoria Reese and Greg Kennedy, Studio Indigo Architects & Interior Designers

A Zeldin Company is supported by The Astra Foundation
Compagnie A Zeldin is supported by the French Ministry of Culture (DRAC Île-de-France)

Supported by Freunde der Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz e. V.

freundeskreis_logo