“Violence is a completely natural impulse”, according to Guillermo Arriaga’s last novel The Savage. Those who are familiar with Arriaga’s screenplays Amores Perros, 21 Gramm or Babel, know what this refers to. Now, Arriaga has published a Mexican epic, which tells the story of 17-year-old Juan Guillermo. Juan and his brother Carlos lead a life on the rooftops of Mexico City. Together, at the end of the 1960s, they build up a large drug business until his brother is murdered by radical Catholic youths. Priests and the Mexican police are in cahoots. The death of his brother drives his desperate parents to suicide. When his grandmother dies also, Juan is left all alone and swears to take revenge.

Arriaga’s dark, pugnacious and powerfully eloquent adventure novel is full of contrasts and paints a forceful and unsparing image of society. David Gaitan, the Mexican director and author, is staging this book for the very first time together with actors from Mexico and the Schauspiel Köln ensemble.

In 1928, the British author Virginia Wolf published her novel ORLANDO – A BIOGRAPHY, shattering all the norms established around the theme of masculinities and femininities in society at the time.

The story begins in an English royal court in the 16th century, in which the eponymous protagonist leads a privileged life as a favourite of Elizabeth I. When her love for him ceases, a brilliant journey through time is set in motion, during which Orlando kisses the frozen Thames in the Little Ice Age, flees from a persistent admirer to the politically turbulent Constantinople, and falls into a sleep which lasts several days – at the end of which he suddenly wakes up as a young woman. “Lady” Orlando is hardly surprised by this transformation, secretly leaves Constantinople and continues the eventful journey through the ages.

Virginial Woolf’s narrative extends from the 16th Century to the author’s present day and even a few days beyond. The change in the role of “woman” and “man” over the course of time lies at the centre of the text. The director, Lucia Bihler, together with the dance company ‘Ballet of Difference’ transports the novel to the Depot 1 stage. Together, they dive into the binary gender system and, like Virginia Wolf, aim to dismantle it and create a new perspective.