People. Animals. Chaos. Wild circus. Light and pleasure. Rebellion. Change. Valère Novarina's texts are a veritable infernal mix of conflicts and the never-ending adventure of making language tangible as an independent force, rich in meaning and full of irrepressible wit. In France, Novarina is the great theatre personality of the present day, with theatres across the country sold out for weeks on end, but he is still a discovery for German theatre. Reason enough to stage a major play by this extraordinary author and theatre maker for the first time in this country! In an almost acrobatic work of translation, Leopold von Verschuer makes this text accessible to a German-speaking audience.

Humans possess a very special instrument that makes them masters of utopia above all other living creatures: from their mouths, they incessantly utter words with which they can express the most impossible and absurd things. Their speech conjures up everything that does not (yet) exist. With language, this ‘conceited animal’ that he is fights death with all his might: he counters the incessant threat of nothingness with EVERYTHING and invites us to watch him on stage as his imagination gives rise to sounds, tones and words never heard before.

The great French theatre figure Molière wrote and performed ‘The Imaginary Invalid’ until his actual death on the boards that, as is often said, ‘mean the world’. In a ludicrous and absurd round dance, a very lively troupe of nine performers now gathers at the Theater an der Ruhr – and shows us the full power of the ‘conceited animal’: dancing and singing, desperate and comical, they surrender themselves to language and thus create a world we have never seen or heard before – a utopia.

Doubleshow ‘Anarchy and Longing’ Das eingebildete Tier (DEA) will also be performed as a doubleshow together with the play Ein anderes Blau (UA) on the following dates: 7 November, 15 November, 22 November, 29 November

Follow-up discussion On 21 November, we invite you to a follow-up discussion to meet Novarina's German translator Leopold von Verschuer. Unfortunately, Valère Novarina has fallen ill at short notice and is unable to travel to Mülheim to take part in the discussion. We very much regret this and wish him a speedy recovery! read less