The world at your back

“If you are bipolar, your life no longer has any continuity. The illness has shattered your past, and it threatens your future even more severely. With every manic episode, your life as you knew it becomes increasingly unrecognisable. The person you thought you were and knew no longer has a firm foundation. You can no longer be sure of yourself.” The German writer Thomas Melle has suffered from bipolar disorder for many years. He is not alone among the world’s creative minds. Vincent van Gogh and Ernest Hemingway are also considered to have been bipolar, even though this diagnosis did not exist during their lifetimes. Melle recounts his experience of living with the illness, his personal dramas and slow recovery with unflinching honesty and brilliant prose – offering an extraordinary insight into what goes on inside someone with the condition.

This gripping and at times highly comical and absurd chronicle of a torn life is a radically autobiographical work of the highest literary calibre. For this Kurtheater in-house production, director Johanna Böckli (KURGAST) took on Melle’s radical text with actor Johann Jürgens. Due to its great success, the play is being included in the programme once again following its Swiss premiere last year.

○ “Johann Jürgens shifts impressively through
the states of matter. Phew…” P. S.-Zeitung

CONTENT NOTE: The production deals with sensitive topics such as mental health crises, including depressive, manic and suicidal episodes.