Drei Mal Leben

It’s almost a normal evening. Henry and Sonia are at home. Then there’s a ring at the bell. The guests they have invited tomorrow are at the door. This is a disaster. Nothing has been prepared: Sonia and Henry aren’t dressed properly and they have no food to offer. Tomorrow’s guests are the Finidoris, Hubert and Ines, who already give a less than harmonious impression and are arguing about a running machine. The famous astrophysicist Hubert Finidori is supposed to help Henry – also a cosmologist, but one whose career is faltering – gain a promotion. The key to this is Henry’s paper about the nature of galactic halos. So the evening is important, possibly even crucial. And then there is the hosts’ son: six-year-old Arnaud, who refuses to go to sleep and manages to run both his parents and their guests off their feet from his bedroom...

Life X 3 – the play repeats three different variations of the same evening: two couples meet, sit in the same room, eat and drink the same things and talk about the same topics. Yet each time round, the evening turns out differently. The four of them struggle their way through the evening, through their lives, through their marriages, through their careers three times. Their fear and loneliness becomes evident in their conversations about the universe and about human existence. And their quest for personal significance makes their need for recognition and self-respect tangible. There are surprising twists, changing alliances, and a constant series of new escalations. A brilliant tragic comedy – observed from life.

The French playwright Yasmina Reza, author of The God of Carnage, is famous for her razor-sharp dialogue, fast-paced situations and stories that are as entertaining as they are tragic. The play will be directed by actor and director Martina Eitner-Acheampong, who has acted on the Schauspielhaus stage for many years and now also makes her directing debut in Bochum with Life X 3.