The End of Eddy at Theater Basel

Édouard Louis achieved a spectacular debut in 2014 with his autobiographical novel «The End of Eddy» that caused a literary sensation in France. Louis narrates how someone is socialized under extremely difficult conditions, telling the story of his childhood and youth in a village in Northern France where every day was characterized by violence, aggression, neglect, unemployment, alcoholism and humiliation. Eddy also experiences in direct physical terms what it means as a homosexual teenager not to conform to the archaic gender roles. At the end of the work, however, the prospect appears of a gentle utopia, offering a chance to breaking away from his prescribed social status and liberate himself from this precarious milieu devoid of education.

In this cross art-form project between theatre and ballet, Thiemo Strutzenberger, a member of Theater Basel’s acting ensemble, tells the story of a reckoning, a protest and an awakening.