LIMINAL STATES BEFORE EXECUTION
based on a gap in Friedrich Schiller's «The Maid of Orleans»
DIRECTED BY: Marie Schleef
SCHIFFBAU BOX
WORLD PREMIERE: 19.09.2025
1 hour 35 minutes (no interval)
This is a true story from the 15th century. In the period spanning from May 1430 to May 1431, Joan of Arc, a figure of both renown and controversy, was held in prison as she awaited her execution. A year that Friedrich Schiller deliberately omitted his play «The Maid of Orleans», which premiered in 1801.
This gap in the theatrical canon has inspired director Marie Schleef to trace the fate of women condemned to death, thereby linking Joan of Arc to the present day. What if Joan were alive today? How many years, or even decades, would she have to spend on death row? How would the endless wait on the threshold between life and death affect her? And how would she react once she found out that her last day was approaching?
The death penalty is still legal in 55 countries worldwide. According to Amnesty International, 1,518 people were officially executed in 2024 alone. The number of women who are sentenced to death is steadily increasing. However, most of these cases take place out of the public eye. ARE YOU READY TO DIE? addresses this global blank space by translating the strictly regimented and isolated daily routine on death row and the ritualised path to execution into a visually powerful theatrical composition in slow motion and without spoken words.
Marie Schleef’s directorial work brings to the stage in a formally innovative way what often remains in the dark. Her work, characterised by a feminist lens, examines the world through a magnifying glass, thereby creating new theatrical narrative forms. She and her team are inviting the audience to step into a closed cosmos, where they can viscerally experience and share the sensation of liminal existence – the constant state of limbo in a death cell.
In collaboration with Amnesty International Switzerland
SENSORY WARNING: This production includes loud noises, some intense sound patterns, fog and some bright lights.
Oskar Wohlgemuth
© Luisa Ricar
‘The question of whether one is ready for death arises on a radical evening that burns like poison under the skin.’
'Yvon Jansen's face and her calm, physical presence are a huge, exciting drama in the next 90 minutes. Fear, hope, a whole lot of longing.'
‘The brutal thing, as the production suggests, is the passing of time.’
