Augsburg – Last chance for Augsburg Theater’s "Letzte Heimat"!
- Written by Portal Editor
Augsburg - Twilight quietly descends as three young men sit on a freshly mown lawn, singing thoughtfully. They are surrounded by gravestones that are already casting long shadows.
As the song ends, Ramo Ali a Syrian who fled the war stands up and begins to share stories from his life and his encounters with death.
This marks the beginning of a theater project by director Susanne Reng, who explores various encounters with the theme of death through this work. In the production titled "Letzte Heimat" (Final Home) Ramo Ali is one of 26 amateur actors participating. These performers hail from countries such as Senegal, Mongolia, Peru, and Germany; they are Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and Catholics, ranging in age from nine to 83.
We previously published a short article when rehearsals for this extraordinary project began. Now, following sold-out premiere and festival performances, the project is slowly drawing to a close. For just a few more days, audiences can see the amateur actors at various stations across the cemetery grounds and witness their deeply personal encounters with the subject of death. Director Susanne Reng has long explored the theme of death and how different cultures approach it. Developing this topic with an intercultural group of amateur actors a process requiring each individual to be willing to share their own story with others is a particularly remarkable achievement.
The cemetery theater project in Augsburg reveals, for instance, how a funeral director wishes to be buried himself, or why a German nurse might sometimes feel a sense of hesitation or unease when caring for a dying patient from a different cultural background. Each actor contributes their own experiences to the project, and every one of them has grown in some way throughout the course of rehearsals and performances. For both actors and audience members, the theatrical experience concludes in the funeral chapel of the Göggingen Cemetery. Thoughts begin to turn almost automatically to one’s own death, however much one might wish to push them aside. At the post-performance reception, audience members and actors can engage in conversation and ask themselves whether we humans might, at least in death, find a shared home.
Performances of *Letzte Heimat* (Last Home) in Augsburg
Location: Göggingen Cemetery at 7:00 PM (Entrance: Apprichstraße): Thu, July 31; Sat, Aug 2; Sun, Aug 3; Thu, Aug 7; and Fri, Aug 8, 2014.
Ticket reservations: 0821 444 2995 (Junges Theater Augsburg)
Box office on performance days (3:00 PM – 6:00 PM): 0176 26537238
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