The play by Ágota Kristóf in a version by Martina van Boxen

It is war. The big city is being bombed. Two children are sent to the countryside. The twins are to stay with their grandmother until the end of the war. But life in the village is merciless, the grandmother is hard on them and on herself, and the two children begin to adapt to this environment. Far away from school, they teach themselves what they need to survive: they harden their bodies with beatings and their minds with swear words. What at first seems like children’s games soon serves only to arm themselves for survival in a society decomposed by war.
The children soon become independent actors in village life and observe their environment, exploit weak points, learn to defend themselves and develop their very own moral concepts. Like a magnet, the villagers are drawn to the children who, fascinated by their seemingly childlike innocence in the midst of war, are only able to admit their vulnerability and softness to the boys.

In her debut novel, published in 1987, Ágota Kristófs describes the life story of two brothers in precise sentences, in which reality, fiction and lies lie side by side. In simple, clear language, Agota Kristof poignantly and unembellishedly records a childhood that has nothing idyllic about it. She portrays the fate of two twin brothers growing up during the war, who fight for survival in a bad world in an astonishingly courageous way. Kristóf succeeds in telling an unsparing but never moralistic story about the self-empowerment of two children in a brutalized world that longs for warmth and security despite all its harshness.

The play is part of the Kulturlinie Ruhr event program.