Their lives should be only just beginning, but the three teenagers Vincent, Marie and Alexander are so ill that, trapped in their bodies and their fates, they live in a home from which there seems, for now, to be no way out. For Marie, eating is torment. The illness has eaten its way into every pore of her body. "It was extreme at the start. I came home after every rehearsal and cried. Immersing myself in the world of anorexics affected me deeply," recounts Barbro Viefhaus, who already knew from those close to her what it means to fall ill with it. Slipping into the role herself, however, meant yet another, entirely different form of engagement for the actress. So she did a great deal of research, reading in internet forums about the suffering and the pathological obsession with being thin. "I was able to bring some of what I read into the play too. It was important to me to fill the role and to portray Marie as truthfully as possible. The director gave us that freedom, which was wonderful." After the success of Florian David Fitz's film, the Neues Theater Halle has now developed a stage version of the story, intended to appeal to young people in particular. "Eating disorders begin at that age, first sexual encounters, dealing with illness and blows of fate. All things that move young people." One challenge, however, lay in transferring the story — largely told as a road movie — onto a small theatre stage. For in "Vincent will Meer", Vincent, who suffers from Tourette's syndrome, wants to grant his mother her last wish: to see the sea one more time. With the home director's stolen car and his mother's ashes, Vincent, Marie and Alexander set off for the sea in Italy. His father and Dr Rose set off in pursuit. So begins an adventurous, fateful journey at the end of which only one thing is certain: no one will ever again be the way they were. "I'm really curious how the young people will react, where they'll laugh and what might palpably touch them." Barbro Viefhaus will find out at the premiere, on 15 March 2017.
The remaining performance dates are already set: March: 15, 16, 19. April: 20, 21, 30. May: 17, 18, 21.