Tanzende Idioten

Goldie is doing what she loves most: remodeling her house. Her joy in the process is as infectious as it is unsettling, because Goldie is terminally ill. She knows she’s dying, but doesn’t want to admit it and insists on planning for a future she no longer has. Her cat Apollo relishes her increasing weakness. Finally, he can sit on her lap for hours on end and snore to his heart’s content. Goldie takes the opportunity to tell him everything you’re not supposed to say to people. Terrible stuff!
Suddenly the doorbell rings and Goldie’s father, newly in love, arrives with his girlfriend. The two of them are on their way to the seaside in their camper van and have decided to pay Goldie a surprise visit. The deliriously happy father finds himself at his daughter’s deathbed. He believes that he is at a new beginning, she knows she is at the end.
Over the course of the performance, the audience joins Goldie in reliving everything that she has a hard time saying goodbye to: kayak trips, dozing cats, visits to the sauna, dancing bodies, the smell of freshly cut wood, skilled construction workers, a baby’s early memories and dreams of landing on the moon.

Denis Johnson is one of the most important American authors of his time and is revered by fellow writers like Jonathan Franzen, Philip Roth and David Foster Wallace for his “goosebump-inducing”, “unflinchingly direct” and “brutally funny” prose. Of his own work, Johnson once said: “I’d describe my characters the same way I’d describe myself: We are dancing idiots.”

Director Thorsten Lensing has been staging independent productions since the mid-1990s, often in co-production with theaters and festivals that include the Schauspielhaus Zürich, Sophiensæle Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster, Grand Théâtre de la Ville de Luxembourg, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, Schauspiel Stuttgart, Münchner Kammerspiele, and deSingel Antwerp. He always works with the same core team of outstanding actors. Following his adaptations of Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” (Friedrich Luft Prize 2014) and David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” (invited to Theatertreffen 2019), the 2024 presentation of Thorsten Lensing’s first self-written play “Verrückt nach Trost” premiered at Salzburger Festspiele in 2022 as part of the 2024/25 Performing Arts Season and launched a long-term co-operation with Berliner Festspiele. This partnership with the Berlin-based director and author, whose work has been successful across Europe, continues with the world premiere of “Tanzende Idioten”.