Schlafen Fische? von Jens Raschke

Jette just turned ten. Her dad says that’s called a “two-digit” age. Some people even reach “three digits”—a hundred years old. And even more! Jette’s brother Emil only turned six. That’s just a “single-digit” age. Emil was her little brother. He was sick his whole life. He died a year ago. Sometimes Jette goes to the cemetery and remembers Emil—his laughter, his dreams, and how they painted his coffin in bright colors at the funeral.
She wonders: “Why do people have to die? What comes after death? Is Emil better off now?” She’s asked her father all these questions, too. But he doesn’t know the answers to many questions either. Jette realized that a long time ago. When they built a dam together on vacation in Denmark, she asked if the fish behind the little dam didn’t have to go home to sleep? Do fish even sleep?
her father not. Nor did he know whether slow worms sneeze. The dark clouds that gathered over Jette after her brother’s death are now, a year later, slowly lightening. Will they one day become completely white? No idea! But maybe they don’t have to.

Death is a frequent theme in children’s theater: “But rarely as sensitively as Jens Raschke manages it,” Paul Maar praises. Raschke has written an undogmatic, at times very cheerful and sometimes also sad one-person play about one of the last taboo subjects of our time. A play about dealing with the small, big, and ultimate questions of life.