Bevor ich es vergesse

In the organizer's words:

The story of a reconciliation

After the death of her father, a woman has to arrange his affairs - funeral service, burial, clearing out and so on. Anyone who has ever done this knows that it can be exasperating. The daughter fights against forgetting and knows at the same time that she has to let go. The process of saying goodbye to her father, with all its absurd, embarrassing and painful moments and ambivalent memories, ultimately becomes a journey of reconciliation, a declaration of love to the deceased and to life itself.

Anne Pauly's novel "Avant que j'oublie" was awarded the French Audience Award for "Best Book of the Year" in France in 2020. In Germany, it was translated by Amelie Thoma and published by Luchterhand Literaturverlag in 2024 under the title "Bevor ich es vergesse".

Wiebke Puls was so inspired and moved by its individuality in dealing with a universal moment that she is now performing the text as a solo at the Schauspielhaus, in which she playfully explores the desperate - and sometimes deadly funny - exceptional situations of saying goodbye.

"They said you have to clear the decks, pick out the nice things, decide what you want to keep and get rid of the rest. And do it chop, chop. That's guaranteed to help you."

- Anne Pauly