Bu sözler bizim — Die Worte gehören uns (UA)

“We live somewhere in Germany” – this is how Yade Yasemin Önder’s play begins, but this seemingly normal sentence in “Die Worte gehören uns” describes the opposite of any normality. Here, in the country that was a sanctuary for Lale and Lilo’s family, nothing in the family’s microcosm seems to be going right: Mama has just been lying on the couch since Papa has forbidden her to write. Lilo has to deal with the fact that he has a “girl’s name”. And Lale is the only one in the family who doesn’t speak Turkish. When things around her begin to disappear and finally not even Mama can be found, the two children’s last support seems to have been lost.

Why does the language of Lale’s parents mean nothing to her; why could Mama’s writing, which was very important to her; endanger them all; why are the words and sentences disintegrating into individual letters – and what does this disintegration have to do with politics in Turkey, the country from which Lale and Lilo’s parents had to flee? The siblings find answers to all of these questions with the help of a totally unexpected, new and yet age-old friend: a talking and flying sofa that carries them off on a magical journey across Europe.

“Bu sözler bizim – Die Worte gehören uns” is bilingual in more than its title: The journey of the siblings takes them closer to the place of their origins, but it also leads through time and, above all, along the borders of language. Turkish and German are poetically intertwined; the game of languages turns into an exploration of the question of identities.

This production is a continuation of Schauspiel Leipzig’s cooperation with WIENER WORTSTAETTEN, which was launched in 2017: The winning play of each biannual Exile Drama Award receives a world premiere production in Schauspiel Leipzig’s venue Diskothek. Yade Yasemin Önder, the 2024 winner, studied Literary Writing at Deutsches Literaturinstitut Leipzig. Her play “Kartonage” was one of three award winners at the 2017 Berlin Autor:innentheatertrage and was premiered at Vienna’s Burgtheater. Her debut novel “Wir wissen, wir könnten, und fallen synchron” was published in 2022.

Ebru Tartıcı Borchers was born in Hatay (Turkey). She studied acting at Bilkent University in Ankara as well as theatre directing at the Thomas Bernhard Institute at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. She graduated from her directing course in 2022 with a world premiere production of “Knechte” by Caren Jeß at Kosmos Theater Vienna. She has since worked as a freelance director at theatres including Theater Osnabrück, Schauspielhaus Zürich and Vienna’s Burgtheater. In 2023, she was nominated for the theatre award DER FAUST. For her work as a translator of contemporary German drama, she received the prize of Autorenstiftung Frankfurt am Main in 2023. In 2024, she joined the team of artistic directors at Oldenburger Staatstheater as a director. “Bu sözler bizim” is her first work at Schauspiel Leipzig.