Helge's Life

In the foreseeable future, the earth is uninhabited. The remaining animals are in command. For their amusement, they desire from pro entertainers, Ms. God and Death, a small, simple human fate. Enter Helge, and his life.

Just born, Helge makes the acquaintance of Fear, who offers him a wide spectrum of skills. He’s never enough – not for his parents, not for the other kids, not even for himself. Where love seems unattainable, there’s the obvious: becoming evil. Half amused, half disgusted, the animals stand and watch Helge’s average central European life in awe. These creatures once ruled the world? Were superior to all other living beings? What gave them the right?

At 20 years old, Sibylle Berg’s HELGE’S LIFE has aged. And it belongs to the same generation as many of the members of the Import Export Kollektiv. Twenty years – in which climate change and the extinction of species have progressed, and the general doomsday mood has escalated. The young director Saliha Shagasi brings Sibylle Berg’s strange if vicious swansong about human domination to the Depot 1 stage, using it as a gateway for joint research on fear (of the future), courage, and the question of the good life.