EMPUSION

In the organizer's words:

by Olga Tokarczuk in a dramatization by Lucien Haug

A co-production between the Lausitz Festival, Theater Basel and Schauspiel Köln, in collaboration with the Staatstheater Cottbus

With Polish surtitles

Görbersdorf is shrouded in a terrible secret. In the Lower Silesian spa town, where healing methods were developed that later brought Davos world fame, a group of male patients meet on the eve of the First World War for intellectual walks in the mountain air. While this little group, a kind of tuberculosis regulars' table on testosterone, discusses the theories of Darwin, Freud and Nietzsche over a glass of liqueur called "Schwärmerei", a young man dies every year in the nearby forest. Who is responsible for the murders in the village and in the forest? And why do the villagers remain silent about what is happening?

Inspired by Thomas Mann's ZAUBERBERG, which was published 100 years ago, Polish Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk meticulously unrolls a panopticon of contempt for women in her novel. Disguised as a village crime story, EMPUSION reveals a mystical battlefield between a misogynistic male world and the Empuses, the "vengeful spirits" of once-murdered witches who now haunt it.

All information here.