Vatermal

»Even when the world went on and on about the fact that we had no prospects, we knew that the opposite was true. We had experienced too many prospects, had seen things that other children don’t see, while slurping their homemade pumpkin soup«.

Arda is young and doesn’t know how much time he has left. His organs are failing as he lies in the intensive care unit of his hometown hospital in the Ruhr area where the weeks seem to unfold like one never-ending day. Arda can’t help but think back on the moments when he had the feeling that he was a little closer to life.

There is Aylin, Arda’s big sister, who was loved as a child and still given away who runs away from the family later, and can’t bear her foster parents either. There is his mother Ümran, who is fighting both the situation and herself, and yet wanted to do so much better for her children in Germany. Arda’s sister and mother, because of all the harm done, have not been able to talk to each other for ten years. Their point of contact seems to be Arda.

And there is the hole in Arda’s life. His father. Who was never really there and, at some point, just disappeared without saying goodbye. And now Arda wants to take away from him, once and for all, the possibility of not knowing who his son was and talks about the time lost in government offices, the longing for belonging, the boys in the park, his surrogate family, the struggle with his own masculinity, Aylin’s and Ümran’s longings, everything for and against the absent father, for his family, for himself.

Necati Öziri's debut novel Vatermal was shortlisted for the German Book Prize in 2023. For years he was a dramaturg for and artistic director of Studio , his plays Get Deutsch or Die Tryin’ and Die Verlobung von St. Domingo were produced at Gorki.

World Premiere 21/December 2024

Foto: Esra Rotthoff