DIE WELLEN

A day at the beach. The sun travels across the sky, throwing ever-changing light upon the world. And the sea in its endless cycle of ebb and flow, of still waters, of swelling and breaking waves. And there is the lifelong friendship of Bernard, Jinny, Louis, Neville, Rhoda and Susan – a decades-long process of becoming and changing that spans from childhood to death.

In 1931, the celebrated British author Virginia Woolf wrote her remarkable and arguably most experimental novel “The Waves”. In a fragmentary arrangement of dense, highly poetic snapshots, memories and reflections, Woolf seeks to capture life itself: not only the fleeting nature of the moment, but also the long passage of time.

She thereby delves into the inner lives of her protagonists, and into the particular ways they perceive the world at different moments of their lives. Impressions merge in a polyphonic stream of consciousness: who are we, and how do we shape one another? What are the defining experiences within friendships? Why, despite all closeness, can we never fully overcome our solitude?

In her debut production, the emerging director Linda Hügel places the utopian potential of friendship at the centre, drawing us into the intimate space of the Pfauen Kammer, where we move with the waves of life.