Storia di un corpo. Qui a tué mon père di (e con) Édouard Louis per la regia di Thomas Ostermeier

This essay analyses Thomas Ostermeier’s Qui a tué mon père, based on the autobiographical novel by Édouard Louis and staged at the Schaubühne in Berlin on 7 October 2021. Autobiographical novel, sociological-political essay, pamphlet, play, Qui a tué mon père is also a monologue in which the author accuses the policies of oppression of the weaker social classes, carried out by the French government, responsible for having exposed his father’s body to an untimely death. The crucial idea that supports Ostermeier’s staging is that the author of the novel is the leading actor of the performance. Édouard Louis plays Édouard Louis. Considering this directorial choice, the character/actor/person relationship determines a particular regime of interpretation in the connections between narration, performance and reality, which allows us to investigate not only the performative quality of autobiographical writing, but also to identify, in this particular form of “sociological laboratory” that is Ostermeier’s theatre, a new perspective of political theatre, starting from a process of dramatization of the self.