The notebook

Newspaper report, March 2025: Three renowned Yale professors are leaving the United States to conduct research in Canada, due to America's descent into fascism and fears of a looming civil war. Is this a blueprint for what to expect in Europe? But what if you can't or don't want to pack up and leave? How do you survive? That's when resilience, or adaptability, becomes the tool of the hour.

In Ágota Kristóf's novel The Notebook, two twin brothers are taken to their grandmother, out of the city where bombs are falling and food is scarce, to supposed safety. But here too, times are hard and people are harsh, and the children learn how not to be destroyed by pain: they beat each other, insult each other, toughen themselves up. They write down their experiences in their notebook, with one rule: it must be the truth. Their language relentlessly searches for the truth: about human beings in their cruelty – and in their longing for love.

Director Jette Steckel, who has been loved and celebrated for many years for her playful, atmospherically dense productions, returns with this work to the city where she grew up.