Lukas Bärfuss adapts the novel “Die Krume Brot” for the stage
Published: Thursday, Dec 12th 2024, 14:40
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The playwright and novelist Lukas Bärfuss has adapted one of his prose works for the stage for the first time. His novel "Die Krume Brot" is being staged at Theater Basel. The premiere is on Friday (December 13).
Lukas Bärfuss is on fire for the project. "It's a very, very, very nice experience," he said in an interview with the Keystone-SDA news agency a few days before the premiere, which is also the first performance. Rewriting his latest novel "Die Krume Brot" (2023) and working with the ensemble was a lot of fun right from the start.
Connected with the theater
One reason for this is that Bärfuss feels very connected to the theater in general and to Theater Basel in particular, as he emphasized. Several of his internationally successful plays were premiered there, such as "Die sexuellen Neurosen unserer Eltern" in 2003. This play, which was translated into twelve languages and also made into a film, marked Bärfuss' international breakthrough as a playwright.
His career as an author began in the theater. In the late 1990s, Bärfuss co-founded the theater and artist troupe 400asa, for which he wrote several stage works. He only became a novelist later. His first novel "Hundert Tage" was published in 2008 and he was awarded the Swiss Book Prize for his second novel "Koala" in 2014. This was followed in 2019 by the prestigious Georg Büchner Prize.
After dramatizing Stendhal's novel "Red and Black" (1830) four years ago, also at Theater Basel, Bärfuss is now writing a stage version of one of his own prose works for the first time.
At first glance, "Die Krume Brot" does not appear to be suitable for the theater stage. The novel takes its readers on a wild journey that also makes geographical leaps. In addition, the main character Adelina is taciturn. There are also few other dialogs in direct speech in the novel, with the exception of a long class-struggle monologue by a revolutionary.
When there is not enough money
Director and acting director Antú Romero Nunes saw no reason to forego the dramatization - on the contrary: "The story of Adelina is a Swiss epic that needs to be told," says Nunes. Precisely because Lukas Bärfuss is a playwright, there was an opportunity to work with him as an expert and give the story a new form.
"The Crumb of Bread" tells the story of the young woman Adelina. She is the daughter of Italian immigrants in Zurich in the 1960s and 1970s and was born into the downward spiral of poverty. She tries to keep herself and her beloved daughter Emma afloat with poorly paid jobs. But the money is not enough. Emma's father, a seasonal worker, has absconded.
Because Adelina also has to pay off her father's debts and takes out a usurious loan, the debt trap snaps shut. She becomes dependent on a supposed patron and finally on a violent do-gooder from the Red Brigades in Italy.
Author Bärfuss feels very close to the main character of his novel. "If you have few financial resources, it doesn't take much for you to crash; I've experienced that myself," he said. He practically cut the book out of his own flesh.
"A feast for the stage"
It was not least because of this connection that Theater Basel knocked down an open door with his request for a stage version. "It was immediately clear to me that it would work in this case," he said. "I make music when I write, whether for a novel or a play." In "Die Krume Brot" there is a lot of drama, there is a lot of pressure to act, it is a "feast for the stage".
He did not make any compromises in the dramatization. It was also not difficult for him to develop flesh-and-blood people for the stage from the creatures he described on paper in the novel. "Of course, I wrote new theater scenes and there's no end to the banging dialog." But everything in the novel will appear on stage - including all the characters, even the little child Emma. He doesn't want to reveal how and in what form before the premiere.
When Bärfuss worked at the theater, he particularly enjoyed getting away from his desk and engaging with the actors, he said. Especially at the beginning of rehearsals, he worked intensively on the dramaturgy and continued to write the stage version. "The stage is a magnifying glass, things happen there that you can't simply anticipate at your desk."
But now it's the actors' turn. He has the utmost confidence in them. "The cast on stage is a great gift," he said. He also described the collaboration with the director as a stroke of luck. "Nunes believes in the joy of acting, that's where we found each other. "*
*This text by Dominique Sprigi, Keystone-SDA, was realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation.
©Keystone/SDA
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