“
Hope
I tried to think of you. But I couldn’t. It’s funny, isn’t it? You close your eyes and you realise that you’ve instantly forgotten what people look like. All that remains is a bare and naked concept of them in your mind, a name and a connection to some feeling deeply rooted within.
Sue
It is easier to remember those you cared about.
Hope
Why should I care?
Riley
Wrong question. The right one should be: What do you care about?
Hope
What. That is always the question, isn’t it? You really want to know what I care about?
”
Coming Back to Me
1984, a city, a bar. Four friends share a drink or two to celebrate a new beginning in their lives. They get drunk, they sing, they laugh and they enjoy the highs and the lows of their friendship. But none of them dares to ask the questions that loom over them: Where will they go after this evening, will they stay friends, will their companionship endure? Some of these questions will only be answered when they meet again twenty years later in a feeble attempt to turn back time to a moment of innocence that never existed.
Let Me Go (co-written with Fabian Claus)
Today, a city, three different apartments and one moment in time: A young man called Hope comes home with the fixed intent to die. Two stray lovers who have never met before try to see beyond each other’s shallowness. Three friends have a quiet evening in, trying to lock all the bad things out. Beyond that: A wedding that should have united the world and a news team that laughs maddeningly while everything is going to ashes. This is the story of Hope, Kiera, Rob, Jack, Liz, Tammy, Riley, Sue and Richard, a story about how their lives do and do not intertwine and about how a single evening will change everything forever.
Coming Back to Me is a melancholic exploration of the friendships we have and the friendships we lost, of the things we promise, although we know we can't keep them and of the things we don't say. Let Me Go is a dark play about the connections we don't have - it is easy to feel united in this modern world, it is easy to root for the same things, it is easy to meet each other and get close without ever getting to know each other. At the same time, it is incredibly difficult to feel that human connection we all so desperately long for.
The two plays belong together and are meant to be performed on one evening after each other. Coming Back to Me has 7 roles (5 male, 2 female), Let Me Go has 9 roles (5 male, 4 female).
The plays were first performed in 2013 at the Theater Remise in Bern, Switzerland, produced by The Caretakers.