The Big Notebook

Description

A nameless twin pair grows up in Ágota Kristóf's devastating novel in a world in a state of emergency. Their experiences are written by the two nine-year-olds in an essay in a "Big Notebook": Clearly and objectively, they illustrate the brutality of a war that robs them of their childhood and whose consequences of homeland loss, foreign occupation, and flight shape them. Their home, the "Big City," is under constant bombardment. To keep the twins safe, their mother has taken them to the countryside and left them alone with their grandmother. She is called "Witch" in the village; she makes her grandchildren work hard for bread and a bed. Everywhere in the village, the siblings experience a struggle for survival without interpersonal closeness, where each person is their own next. So they begin to adapt. In rigorous exercises, they train their feelings away, vulnerability as well as compassion: "After a while, we actually feel nothing anymore. It is someone else who has pain, someone else who burns, cuts, suffers. We no longer cry." The author Ágota Kristóf, born in Hungary in 1935, fled from Russian troops to Switzerland 70 years ago, in 1956, where she initially worked in a factory, later studied, and lived until her death in 2011. SHE WROTE THE BIG NOTEBOOK in her second language, French, developing a unique sound in which the words feel like needle pricks under the skin. Using simple sentences, she adopts the children's perspective, making the events profoundly uncanny. The novel becomes a worldwide success. Participants and additional information: DIRECTOR: Lucia Bihler
STAGE: Jessica Rockstroh
COSTUMES: Teresa Vergho
MUSIC: Jacob Suske
DRAMATURGY: Rose Reiter

Highlights

• Stage adaptation of Ágota Kristóf's novel
• Director: Lucia Bihler
• Performed at Schauspielhaus Pfauen, Zurich

General Information

The play "The Big Notebook" tells the moving story of a twin pair growing up in a war-affected world. The production addresses loss, adaptation, and the absence of interpersonal closeness.

Location

Rämistrasse 34, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland

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