based on “Croire aux fauves” [Believing in the Wild]
by Nastassja Martin, translated from the French by Claudia Kalscheuer
© Gallimard

With Bettina Marugg, Laila Nielsen, Eduardo Serú
Directed by David Fischer
Stage Eduardo Serú
Assistant Director Lutz Ackermann
Public Relations, Dramaturgy Claudia Grönemeyer
Production Management Svenja Pauka

24. Mai 2024 – Premiere
25. Mai 2024
26. Mai 2024
21. Juni 2024
22. Juni 2024
27. September 2024
28. September 2024
Theater im Ballsaal, Bonn

26. April 2025
27. April 2025
Theater im Ballsaal, Bonn

30. Mai 2025
31. Mai 2025
theaterdiscounter, Berlin

“In 80 highly concentrated, emotionally moving minutes, the performance […] poses irritating questions about the possibility of people and the environment living together. Long applause.” (General-Anzeiger Bonn)

Anthropologist Nastassja Martin experienced something incredible on a research trip to the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka: she encounters a bear and a fight ensues. Both survive. She suffered serious injuries, especially to her face. She falls into a state of distorted identity.

She has already lived between worlds with the indigenous Evens, whose way of life she is researching, and now this rift runs through her. “A bear and a woman meet and the boundaries between the worlds implode,” is how she succinctly describes the event and its consequences at one point.

Her reflection, which is also impressive in terms of writing, becomes an attempt to get to the bottom of this implosion. The personal examination of the relationship between man and nature goes far beyond the author’s individual experience, is linguistically and intellectually electrifying and emotionally moving and becomes an “invitation to believe in the wild and thus in those intrinsic and global transformation processes that this time so urgently needs.”

Supported by: Federal City of Bonn, Ministry of Culture and Sciences of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.

Photos © Tanja Evers