My Soul is Burning (2004)

Based on motives from: "Victor ou les enfants au pouvoir" by Roger Vitrac.

It's Victor's birthday! On September 12, 1909 he will be nine years old. He is terribly intelligent and already 1.80 meters tall. Since he does want to become a "real" man, he has decided to start becoming one today. This, however, is rather difficult. But who can refuse a child's birthday wish? Until the General and Antoine make the calamitous decision to marry Victor and Esther - of course only as a jamboree ... Victor's father, Monsieur Chamelle and Esther's mother, Madame Terese Magneau, are not at all amused by this. In the end, two decent families are caught in a bitter feud which only Lilli, the house maid, escapes. All in all a rather strange »children's birthday«, instead of playing "hit the pot", the pots go flying and the good manners go to hell in the middle-class parlor. Sycorax presents itself in this performance as eruptive with wild grandness and as hysterically funny.


"The Sycorax ensemble has created a bizarre, dismal, and macabre farce. "My Soul is Burning" sharply cuts through society's outer-covering and allows the foul smelling guts to flow out. Sycorax hurtles the audience through an emotional rollercoaster."

"Sycorax, under the direction of Paula Artkamp and Manfred Kerklau, demolishes this ideal world with thievish delight to entertain. Logic ceases to exist where hoax turns into nightmare and a smile turns into appall. What remains is a huge pile of ruins and a blood bath. As well as the house made who realizes that, "this is a Drama!" "How right she is!"

(Westfälische Nachrichten)

(Photos: Ralf Emmerich)