»There’s been a shipwreck, two twins are separated, the sister puts on her missing brother’s clothes and, as her brother, goes into an unknown kingdom to look for him. She finds him in herself. That’s pretty much what’s going on in Außer sich.«
Sasha Marianna Salzmann
Ali’s twin brother Anton has disappeared. After years, a postcard without a sender arrives at her house with nothing more than the word »Istanbul« on it. Ali rushes into the confusion of that city: the streets turn, colours and contours blur. Ali begins to forget why she came and what she’s looking for. In a club she encounters Katho, who guides her through Istanbul’s night life, and she meets Aglaya, who becomes the symbol of the Gezi Park protests. And somewhere in bar mirrors and turned around the corner, she divines Anton and runs after him.
Ali tries to leave gender, language, countries behind, until she understands: there’s no moving on if she doesn’t know what came before. She decides to go back and undertake the task she has always run away from: questioning her family. Why did we leave so many times? What is this running in us? 100 years of Jewish family history take place via Odessa, Chernivtsi, Grozny, Volgograd, Moscow, Germany, Germany, Germany and then Istanbul at the harbour, where Katho talks about Odessa.
Resident director Sebastian Nübling ventures with the ensemble into this opulent landscape of characters and stories. An odyssey of changes and upheavals. What does it mean today to be able to say »I«? Potential fragments of identity are always looking for new configurations.