In this radical and intimate play, the author and director Boris Nikitin from Basel draws a connection between his coming out as a homosexual and his father's courage in his death throes.
In this radical and intimate play, the author and director Boris Nikitin from Basel draws a connection between his coming out as a homosexual and his father's courage in his death throes.
The result is a work of profound emotion and reflection that explores vulnerability and the most oppressive of anxieties: the fear of being oneself.
At the age of twenty and after two summers of passion with a lover, Boris Nikitin announces to his loved ones that he is gay, thus voicing his truth to himself and others, against the conventions of the time. Almost fifteen years later, his father learns that he has ALS – a kind of sclerosis also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. In the face of this incurable disease that keeps him mentally lucid yet progressively paralyses him, the father must contend with his ever-declining body, which he had previously regarded as an efficient, finely tuned laboratory. He soon makes the decision to shorten the wait for death by resorting to assisted suicide. His decision – although it was not actually carried out – changed everything: the act of choosing death, going against his self and against convention, dispelled his fears and opened another path onto the rest of his life.
In their different ways, Nikitin and his father were both able to overcome social conditioning and share the unspoken, hidden desires and intimate truths. By relying on trust, they became vulnerable and thus human.
Boris Nikitin's text, which he began shortly after the death of his father, brings the two experiences together through their differences. Staging himself in a minimalistic set design, he creates a performance about what it means to break social taboos, to dare to step into the public sphere and, in so doing, to make oneself visible, vulnerable and open to attack. Attempt on Dying is a play about the gaze of others, overcoming the boundaries of shame and about the utopia of a vulnerability that would no longer be perceived as a weakness, but as a revolutionary power.
Theater
In English, surtitled in French
Friday, March 18, 2022 - 9:30pm | Fri 18.03 | 21h30 |
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Saturday, March 19, 2022 - 8:30pm | Sat 19.03 | 20h30 |
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RATES
from CHF. 5.- to 25.-
for example: Young rate, student, apprentice, 16/25 y.o.: from CHF. 8.-
Tarif S si couplé avec le deuxième spectacle de Borisi Nikitin, 24 images par seconde Acheter
Director and author
Boris Nikitin est un metteur en scène, auteur et essayiste. Depuis 2008, ses projets artistiques se préoccupent de la construction des réalités et des identités dans la communication sociale et politique, jouant notamment avec des points de vue queer, féministes et dissidents. Ses créations mettent volontiers en doute réalités et identités et, grâce au théâtre, élaborent des formes alternatives aux manières d’être soi. Dans Martin Luther Propagandastück (2016) et Aufführung einer gefälschten Predigt über das Sterben (2018), Boris Nikitin explore les relations entre maladie, vulnérabilité et réalité. À la frontière de la performance et du théâtre documentaire, ses spectacles cherchent à mêler critique, poésie et entertainment. En 2017, il reçoit le J.M.R. Lenz Prize for Drama of the City of Jena et en 2020 le Prix suisse du théâtre. À Vidy, il présente Hamlet à l’occasion du Programme commun de 2017.
Concept, texte, performance
Boris Nikitin
Production
Annett Hardegen
Regard extérieur
Matthias Meppelink
Production
It's The Real Thing Studios
Coproduction
Kaserne Basel - Gessnerallee
Avec le soutien de
Fachausschuss Tanz & Theater der Kantone Basel-Stadt und Basel-Landschaft
Le texte en allemand est édité aux éditions Frida.
Propositions de lectures pour poursuivre le spectacle autrement (livres en vente à la librairie du Théâtre):