ANNIE ERNAUX: Der junge Mann / Die leeren Schränke

In its new production, the independent theater company Fensterzurstadt brings two works by Annie Ernaux to the stage: *The Empty Cupboards* (1974), her literary debut, and *The Young Man* (2022), a later work from her autobiographical body of work. Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, is one of the most influential voices in contemporary European and international literature. In her work, she combines personal memory with analytical acuity and reveals individual experience as part of social reality. For her, writing becomes a form of self-articulation—between origin, language, body, and history. The evening presents both texts in two consecutive productions—performed by the same ensemble and in the same stage space. In this way, a work is brought to life that has evolved over decades while remaining consistent in its precise engagement with reality. At the center of each production is a narrator, embodied by three women of different ages: Annie as a young student, Annie in middle age, and Annie in old age. These temporal planes are present simultaneously and allow the audience to experience how experience is carried forward, shifted, and reinterpreted. *The Empty Closets* tells the story of growing up in a socially restricted environment, of shame, difference, and the attempt to break free from it through education and language. The young man turns his gaze toward a later phase of his life and looks back on an intense relationship with a younger man—and on the traces the past leaves behind in the present experience.Within this dual perspective, a theatrical evening unfolds that explores memory, origins, and self-determination—and about how a life is continually reshaped through writing. With the production *The Young Man / The Empty Cabinets*, Fensterzurstadt returns once more to the old gas station in Hanover —to a fascinating place that, through this production, will be reopened, rediscovered, and transformed through theater for one summer.

CAST: Emma Djam-pour, Alexandra Faruga, Floriana Sommerauer / Carsten Hentrich, Heino Sellhorn // DIRECTION & PROJECT MANAGEMENT: Ruth Rutkowski, Carsten Hentrich // SET DESIGN: Melanie Huke // COSTUMES: Ruth Rutkowski // MUSIC: Heino Sellhorn // LIGHTING: Alexander Tripitsis, Melanie Huke

Based on *Le jeune homme* and *Les armoires vides* by Annie Ernaux, ©Gallimard. Translated from the French by Sonja Finck. Performance rights for the translation: Suhrkamp Verlag GmbH Berlin.

THE YOUNG MAN / THE EMPTY CLOSETS is a project by fen­sterzurstadt.48 and is supported by the Kulturbüro Hannover, the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture, and the Lower Saxony Foundation.