Fremde Seelen

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FREMDE SEELEN is an investigation. And just like any investigation, it is driven by the wish to shine light onto certain things that have taken place in an inexplicable way: the suicide of a pastor with Vietnamese origins in a small village in the Swiss alpine foothills at the beginning of the 2000s – only three years after taking on the post. It is Eva-Maria Bertschy’s mother’s village. This story is the point of departure for a monumental documentary work that the director expands onto the stage in various scenes and with innumerable voices. Her partner, the musician Kojack Kossakamvwe, and the well-known Tatort actress Carol Schuler meet Sister Nang, the mother, a pastor, the parish council, a choir and discuss, bear witness to and sing about a story in which those suffer violence who are considered foreigners.

The Swiss dramaturge and director Eva-Maria Bertschy researches between local and global history with a transnational team. In the field of tension between family history, questions of belief, migration, racism and cultural identity, they interweave a multi-level narrative on stage that speculates about the life of the priest and simultaneously explores their own points of contact and experience with being and feeling foreign.

Eva-Maria Bertschy and Kojack Kossakamvwe were already participants at euro-scene Leipzig in our coproduction THE GHOSTS ARE RETURNING (Group50:50) in 2022. This successful piece was nominated in the "genre jumper" category of the DER FAUST theater prize in 2023 and was also invited to the Swiss Theatertreffen.