Nanjing

In her autobiographical solo performance “Nanjing”, Jude Christian addresses the sources of her own origins and identity. This equally captivating and gentle show reveals forgotten moments in history and asks what would the individual be ready to die for. “Nanjing” is a personal plea for resistance and a call to write history together.

A Message from the Team
Thank you for watching “Nanjing”.
We filmed this version of the show two weeks ago in London, without an audience. It was the only way to make sure we could show it to you, whatever variants and lockdowns the pandemic might throw our way.
But “Nanjing” is live theatre. It exists to make space for conversations to happen. The first part of the show is about one person talking to a roomful of listeners, but in the second part we always invite people to stay and talk – to us, to each other; to friends, to acquaintances, to strangers. And although in the current world it was not possible to make the first part live, we still very much want to talk to you – about pacifism, about history, about whatever the play makes you want to talk about.
So we’ll be in the virtual festival garden between 17:00 and 19:00 on 23 May and between 12:00 and 14:00 on 24 May. We would love to see you there.

Stückemarkt-juror Maria Nübling about the performance
In her solo performance “Nanjing”, Jude Christian creates an ephemeral memorial that challenges us to fathom life’s grey areas. She takes the Nanjing Massacre as a point of departure, inviting the audience to join her on a journey into her own biography and into forgotten parts of history. She moves delicately between the personally familiar and historical depictions of atrocities. “What would you be ready to kill for, to fight for or to die for?” she asks in her sparse, yet poetic plea for a militant pacifism. Jude Christian has created a captivating and focused performance that ponders the gaps in European historiography and collective memory and is emotionally moving without ever drifting into sentimentality.