AUS DEM SCHATTEN: THIAROYE

In the organizer's words:

by Alexandra Badea

Translated from the French by Frank Weigand

A pair of lovers in 1970s France: Nina, who fled communist Romania, and Amar, who was sent to France from Senegal by his mother as a child. Both carry the war traumas of their parents within them. When their son Biram is born, they decide not to burden him with their pasts. But silence cannot protect Biram. When he, now an adult, meets Nora, a journalist who is researching the Thiaroye massacre committed by the French colonial army against so-called "Senegalese riflemen", Biram learns that his grandfather was killed in Thiaroye. Nora introduces him to Régis, whose grandfather was involved in the massacre. And so the grandson of a perpetrator and the grandson of a victim begin a fateful conversation ...
What responsibility do we bear for the lives and actions of our ancestors? With OUT OF THE SHADOW: THIAROYE, director Poutiaire Lionel Somé, himself the grandson of a "Senegalese shooter", focuses on transgenerational trauma and the utopia of a shared, constructive way of coming to terms with the past. His visually stunning theater and opera productions have been shown in Dortmund, Munich and Halle in recent years. He introduced himself to Cologne audiences in 2022 with the independent production COLONIA ON EIS, a play about Germany's colonial heritage - which was awarded the Kurt Hackenberg Prize for political theater. AUS DEM SCHATTEN: THIAROYE is his first work at Schauspiel Köln.

Further information here.

Note

The production tells of the consequences of a massacre committed by the French colonial army in 1944 in what is now Senegal. Even if the explicit descriptions are limited to two short passages, this confrontation could have a retraumatizing effect under certain circumstances.

Price information:

20€ / 10€ reduced