Kliniken

By

Lars Norén

Direction

Julie Duclos

Performed by

Mithkal Alzghair, Alexandra Gentil, David Gouhier, Émilie Incerti Formentini, Manon Kneusé, Yohan Lopez, Stéphanie Marc, Cyril Metzger, Leïla Muse, Alix Riemer, Émilien Tessier, Maxime Thébault, Étienne Toqué

A fresco of modern times, Kliniken shines a light on the daily lives of men and women living in a psychiatric hospital. A piece from the late great writer Lars Norén which transcends reality to show us how serious – and also how funny – the unspeakable can be.

An anorexic. A schizophrenic. A depressive. An asylum seeker… Not all of the characters in Kliniken have a serious clinical illness. Most of them have simply been overcome by life’s challenges. Shut away behind the closed doors of a psychiatric hospital, these individuals from all walks of life rub along together as best they can. They cross paths, watch each other, and talk to each other, revealing their wounded intimacy along the way – and the ills of a society which has relegated them to the side-lines.
“These people turn out to be much closer to us than we could have imagined” remarks director Julie Duclos. “They have great strength within them that makes them real and human.” A living text, a far cry from clichéd depictions of misery; Lars Norén’s piece plays with the line between fiction and documentary, holding a mirror up to reality. A clairvoyant mirror, at once funny, poetic, and deeply moving, that brings us face to face with ourselves. Face to face with our own madness and that of the world around us.