Het achtste leven
Artistic director Daria Bukvić is making a theatre adaptation of Het Achtste Leven (for Brilka), the hefty novel with which the young Georgian writer Nino Haratischwili has won many international readers' hearts. Het Achtste Leven will be a grand and epic music theatre performance for the large hall. A heartbreaking actor's drama told from the perspective of the female characters, in which the makers take the audience on an emotional, visual and musical journey through the twentieth century.
Run time 270 minutes, incl. intermission
Genre theatre
Language Dutch
Nitsa is the great-granddaughter of Stasia, one of the chocolatier's daughters. She lives in Berlin and tells compellingly, as well as with great irony and humour, the dramatic history of her family and that of the “red” twentieth century – a crucial period in European history – with the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Iron Curtain and perestroika.
With live music sung and played: from Caucasian and Slavic folkloric songs to pop songs from the later decades of the story. Bukvić creates this performance as an ode to the strong women in her family, who, thanks to their resilience, have endured the atrocities of history with their heads held high.
-|-About the book
Het Achtste Leven (voor Brilka) is a monumental, Tolstoian family epic spanning six generations between 1900 and the present. This tale of eight lives of one Georgian family begins in a small town between Georgia and Azerbaijan, where a talented chocolatier raises his daughters while inventing a recipe for a delicious chocolate drink with dangerous powers. It brings him wealth and prestige, but that also soon means danger at that time.
'The book concludes with a devastatingly brilliant announcement of hope, a new chapter, titled with her niece’s name, yet unwritten.' - Wendell Steavenson, New York Times
Credits
director Daria Bukvić
assistant director Seppe Salome
lighting Yuri Schreuders
music Wilko Sterke
costumes Dymph Bos
decor Marloes & Wikke