The world at your back: House to the Sun

Venue: DT Stage - Thomas Melle, one of the most exciting writers of our time, has written two highly literary, crazy and deeply sad novels about himself and the world in which we live. In Die Welt im Rücken und Haus zur Sonne, the Kleist Prize winner mercilessly describes his bipolar illness, which becomes a compelling psychogram of our disturbing presence. The focus is on a disembodied, smooth society that no longer feels itself and has lost all connection to itself and the rest of the world. What sounds dystopian at first unfolds into a big, language-powerful story about people's dreams.

The writer Thomas Melle, born 1975, studied comparative literature and philosophy in Tübingen, Austin (Texas) and Berlin. He is the author of frequently performed plays and has translated William T. Vollmann and Quentin Tarantino into German, among others. His debut novel Sickster (2011) was nominated for the German Book Prize and was awarded the Franz Hesse Prize. The novel 3000 Euro followed in 2014, Die Welt im Rücken in 2016 and 2025 Haus zur Sonne. All three novels were shortlisted for the German Book Prize. In 2026, he will be awarded the renowned Kleist Prize.

Director Claudia Bossard, who most recently staged Schiller's Die Räuber und Rainald Götz's Barrack at DT, has been artistically associated with Thomas Melle for years. In 2018, she staged the Austrian premiere of his play Pictures of Us at Schauspielhaus Graz. Now, for the first time, both parts of the novel are being adapted as a story for the theatre stage.

When Bossard meets Melle, punk and language, world and art are likely to condense into an iridescent contemporary diagnosis.