‘There were a good twenty metres between us, but I already felt him on my skin.’

Seven days follow an encounter in the park. Days of love, of mutual friction, but also of closeness and blind trust. Essentially, a road trip of feelings.
Having resolved ‘to be braver’, Chris is now driving with Koller in a Polo II from Leipzig to the North Sea, specifically Klütz. That’s the location of the house where Koller’s dead grandmother lived. She had a koi carp farm, but that’s not important at first. Chris only met Koller shortly before their departure and chewed gum with him, but this stranger exerts an unnatural fascination on him. They’re on the road for seven days before they finally enter the quiet home in Klütz. Instead of a few hours’ drive, things get complicated between Chris and Koller for a whole week. Koller has had a life before Chris and Chris before Koller. Gradually, their pasts are revealed. Chris is on the verge of aborting their trip multiple times, and multiple times Koller prevents this by simply being Koller: complicated, like life is. Abandoned medical studies, a daughter, an ambivalently close relationship with his ex-girlfriend and a sister who lives in a hostel near Ludwigsburg: all of this comes to light when they wade through mud to reach a village in the flooded Ahr valley.

Following on from her successful début with Nordstadt, Anika Büsing gives us a moving and warm-hearted tale of love that takes her protagonists right across Germany. On their road trip, their fascination with each other gradually gives way to the actual circumstances of their past lives. By casting aside the rose-tinted glasses and exchanging them for reality, Büsing lets Chris and Koller negotiate and renegotiate the question of a shared future. After State of the Union, his successful début, director Jonas Weber will bring us his second production at Theater Oberhausen and adapt Büsing’s sensitive road novel for the stage.

Production Staff

Director: Jonas Weber
Stage: Marlena Gundlach
Costumes: Antonia Karnetzky
Music and Sounddesign: Fiete Wachholtz
Dramaturg: Jascha Fendel
Theater education: Anke Weingarte

Bilder

Trailer