NippleJesus - Premiere

A play by Nick Hornby
Translation: Clara Drechsler and Harald Hellmann

NippleJesus is a play inspired by a story by English author Nick Hornby: a tender satire on the art world - not just for art lovers.

"Is it art or can we throw it away?" This question, posed so directly for the first time after an overzealous cleaner wiped away Joseph Beuys' "Fat Corner", is as old as art itself. But what is art really? A reason for emotion or a tool of provocation, an expression of skill or a pursuit of sensation, money and fame? David - a former nightclub bouncer, now a museum guard in a municipal gallery - answers these and other eternal questions.

A man with a hard shell and a soft heart has nothing to do with art. His job is simply to watch over things, especially one very special exhibit. Yet it reveals a controversial aesthetic that causes a stir on opening day - because what looks from a distance like a close-up of Jesus Christ dying on the cross turns out, on closer inspection, to be a photomosaic composed of female nipples.

Nick Hornby was born in 1957 in Redhill, studied English literature at Cambridge and initially worked as a teacher. Thanks to his successful novels High Fidelity and About a Boy, he is today considered one of the most renowned authors of popular literature.