In 1907, a wealthy merchant returns to Germany after eighteen years away, only to find that the country he left behind has become unrecognizable. Everything seems hollowed out, its symbols extinguished. But in an art gallery, he is dazzled by the paintings of Van Gogh, still unknown at the time, and, deeply moved, rediscovers the possibility of believing in the world.
For this new production, Marie-José Malis draws on the text’s striking resonance with our present moment. “Our era is marked by a widespread crisis of meaning: the collapse of collective narratives, distrust of authority figures, an overload of images, and a sense of unreality heightened by digital technologies.”
For the director, an associate artist at the Théâtre de l’Odéon, adapting this text today means rejecting easy answers and artificial returns to an all-encompassing sense of meaning. It means affirming that theatre can be a space for clear-eyed reflection, where emptiness is acknowledged without being transformed into nihilism.