Returning to Reims at St. Ann's Warehouse

A sound studio. An actress is recording a voiceover and at the mixing desk, a director is giving her instructions. Above, a film is running. They’re working on the text for Returning to Reims, a documentary adaptation of Didier Eribon’s memoir about his homecoming as a gay man after years of estrangement. Through the text, they confront Eribon’s painful discovery that the traditionally left-wing parties and liberal middle-class, with which he now identifies, are perpetuating marginalization of the working-class to which he once belonged, and workers are running into the arms of the right-wing National Front. How have things come to this? As populism marches around the globe, does political activism still have a role to play? Featuring Homeland’s Nina Hoss in a “magnetic” performance, director Thomas Ostermeier “turns the stage into a source of living debate, … a poignant political drama about change and the left’s disregard of the working class.” (The Guardian). His production provides a key understanding of what’s gripping contemporary society.