FREMDE SEELEN

FREMDE SEELEN is an investigation. And just like any investigation, it is driven by the wish to shine light onto certain things that have taken place in an inexplicable way: the suicide of a pastor with Vietnamese origins in a small village in the Swiss alpine foothills at the beginning of the 2000s – only three years after taking on the post. It is Eva-Maria Bertschy’s mother’s village. This story is the point of departure for a monumental documentary work that the director expands onto the stage in various scenes and with innumerable voices. Her partner, the musician Kojack Kossakamvwe, and the well-known Tatort actress Carol Schuler meet Sister Nang, the mother, a pastor, the parish council, a choir and discuss, bear witness to and sing about a story in which those suffer violence who are considered foreigners.

The Swiss dramaturge and director Eva-Maria Bertschy researches between local and global history with a transnational team. In the field of tension between family history, questions of belief, migration, racism and cultural identity, they interweave a multi-level narrative on stage that speculates about the life of the priest and simultaneously explores their own points of contact and experience with being and feeling foreign.

Eva-Maria Bertschy and Kojack Kossakamvwe were already participants at euro-scene Leipzig in our coproduction THE GHOSTS ARE RETURNING (Group50:50) in 2022. This successful piece was nominated in the “Genrespringer (genre jumper)” category of the DER FAUST theater prize in 2023 and was also invited to the Swiss Theatertreffen.