Ben Becker - I, Judas

Judas - his name is synonymous with betrayal. His story is one of guilt without forgiveness. He is the only enemy for whom there is no love, the most hated, persecuted, and damned: Judas, the disciple of Jesus, who betrayed the Son of God with a kiss and delivered him to the cross. Ben Becker takes on his role.

The case of Judas must be reopened. A story has been passed down, a verdict rendered, a scapegoat branded for eternity. But the story is not as it has been told, the verdict is wrong. "What was there to betray," Judas asks in his defence, "Jesus' whereabouts? Thousands knew that. His great secret, that he is the Son of God? He said it himself, in front of everyone!" And that is only the beginning of many inconsistencies in a story that was believed rather than questioned.

The image of Judas the traitor is a prejudice with the most fatal consequences: antisemitism, persecution of Jews, religious wars. Ben Becker raises his voice for one who was chosen to play the role of Antichrist to make Jesus the Messiah. "Judas is nothing without Jesus... But Jesus is also nothing without Judas" - such is the radical insight of Walter Jens, who in his Judas monologue shakes the moral certainties of millennia of piety. A gigantic task for an actor: here one stands against all in a desperate struggle for belated justice. "I, Judas" is an existential plea for the damned, a correction of the greatest miscarriage of justice in the history of faith, and a retraction of an error that has divided the world.

Duration: 1.5 hours without intermission