Serotonin

"I was clearly just a wimp, a sad and insignificant wimp who was also getting old" - that is Florent's blunt self-assessment, a middle-aged man in crisis. Disgusted by his job at the Ministry of Agriculture and a emotionally cold relationship with a younger woman, he stages his own disappearance: he quits his job, gives up his flat, and sets off in his SUV on a winter journey through rural France.

Along the way he searches for the roots of his failure - in memories of the great love of his life, which he destroyed himself through a brief sexual fling, and in a reunion with an old friend, a farmer whose land has been ruined by international trade flows. What Florent comes to understand: the promises of happiness and freedom offered by unbridled individualism are illusions that lead only to loneliness and drift.

Michel Houellebecq, widely regarded as France's most important and most controversial writer, tells this story provocatively, with sharp self-deprecating humour and deep sadness, as a portrait of a crisis in Western civilisation. The production is directed by Sebastian Hartmann, who has received four invitations to the Berliner Theatertreffen.

Direction and set design: Sebastian Hartmann
Lighting: Lothar Baumgarte