Sechzehn Wörter

In the organizer's words:

Play based on the novel by Nava Ebrahimi
in a stage adaptation by Dariusch Yazdkhasti

Sixteen Words takes us on the journey of Mona, a young journalist who, triggered by the loss of her grandmother, finds herself in an identity crisis and therefore travels to Iran. This journey, which stretches from the familiar streets of Germany to the heart of Iran, is not just a farewell, but also a celebration of life and shimmering self-reflection. It is an odyssey of self-discovery, artfully presented in sixteen chapters, each titled with a single Persian word that captures the essence of the story and is untranslatable.

A key moment is Mona's unplanned trip with her lover to Bam, a city destroyed by an earthquake. Here, amidst the rubble, she is confronted with the fragments of her own past. Her story of fleeing to Germany, her relationship with her mother and grandmother and all the unresolved questions and unspoken truths of this family history come to light.

Nava Ebrahimi was born in Tehran in 1978. In 2021, she received the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for her text The Cousin, and her debut Sixteen Words also won several awards. Dariusch Yazdkhasti, has already staged Kristof Magnusson's A Man of Art in Kassel in 2022. In Sixteen Words, he is particularly interested in Mona's multi-perspective dimension, as she herself realizes on the journey:

"You'd better stay at home and eat what your ancestors ate. You pay a high price for wandering. More than what forged passports and escape helpers cost."

Sixteen Words is thematically flanked by the series of plays Woman - Life - Freedom, which has been running since 2022 and regularly focuses on the struggles for freedom in Iran.