Vreneli's Garden

What does ‘home’ mean in a world that is becoming ever more digital, fast-paced and anonymous? Where can we find a sense of security when real-life encounters are becoming rarer? Can the theatre be a home?

Based on Tim Krohn’s mythical Alpine novel *Vrenelis Gärtli*, this theatrical evening aims to allow us to experience human and inhuman longings first-hand.

At the centre are two unusual characters: Vreneli and Bersiäneli. They make their way through the Gnuusch of a lifetime – feeling their way, stumbling, searching. For Vreneli, the journey through the mountain world also becomes an inward journey: Who am I? Where do I belong? Where is my place in this world? The search for identity becomes a search for home – not just as a place, but as a sense of belonging.

They tell stories, doubt, laugh, reach their limits – and in doing so, create a world that feels both strange and familiar.

Perhaps this is precisely where the theatre becomes a home: in listening together, in marvelling, in passing on stories.

!!! Trigger warning: One extended scene will take place in complete darkness !!!

THE AUTHOR
Tim Krohn (born 1965) grew up as the third child of a Hamburg family in the Glarus region, and, after a wild youth as a free-jazz saxophonist and perpetual student, became a freelance writer; he now lives with the writer Micha Friemel and their four children in the village of Santa Maria Val Müstair, population three hundred, right on the border with South Tyrol. His literary works include, alongside novels such as *Quatemberkinder*, *Vrenelis Gärtli*, *Irina’s Book of Frivolous Love*, *Ans Meer*, the trilogy *Menschliche Regungen* and *Die heilige Henni der Hinterhöfe*, as well as numerous plays and several opera libretti. Under the pseudonym Gian Maria Calonder, he has also written eight crime novels set in the neighbouring Engadin. For young adults, he wrote the novel *Wir entern ein Engadinerhaus* and, together with the illustrator Chrigel Farner, the graphic novel *Pippin der Nichtsnutz*.

Revival of an in-house production based on the novel of the same name by Tim Krohn.

WITH Catriona Guggenbühl, Annina Walt
DIRECTION & SET DESIGN Patrick Slanzi, Jonathan Bruckmeier
MUSIC Nicolas Balmer
DRAMATURGY Zoé Kilchenmann
LIGHTING DESIGN Lukas Matthys
SET DESIGN Dominik Joho

A co-production with Groupe Nous

Supported by the Walter Haefner Foundation, the Charitable Society of the Canton of Zurich, Migros Culture Percentage, and the Jürg George Bürki Foundation