Where You Come From (Herkunft)

Imagine that your past fit into a suitcase. Or on a piece of paper. Or in a theatre performance. Imagine you had to tell the story of where you come from – and you knew: there were many versions of the truth. In his prize-winning novel "Herkunft" ("Where You Come From"), Saša Stanišić writes against forgetting: with wit, anger, warmth and a sharp eye for the absurdities of memory. Between Višegrad, Heidelberg and the labyrinth of his own biography, a polyphonic play emerges about identity, flight, family – and the power of storytelling and the urge to keep reinventing yourself. Together with his team and the ensemble, Stas Zhyrkov, who has been living and working in German exile since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, brings this search for what makes us who we are onto the stage. What remains of a person when they lose their roots? And how much of where we come form is contained in what we call the future?

Saša Stanišić was born in 1978 in Višegrad, Yugoslavia und came to Germany in 1992. He studied in Heidelberg and at the Deutsches Literaturinstitut Leipzig. The main themes of his multi-award winning novels – including "Vor dem Fest" and "Herkunft" – are identity, memory and language.