At the beginning of the 1990s the Republic of Moldova declared its independence from the Soviet Union. However, the newly-created state was unable to provide for the welfare of its citizens. Many left their homeland to work abroad. Parents had to leave their children behind, couples became strangers, families fell apart. The government offered no help and unflinchingly maintained its Christian-influenced rhetoric about the superiority of the traditional family. ABOLIREA FAMILIEI dispels such idyllic clichés of care, love and support.

The performers tell very different family stories. They tell of mothers and fathers both absent and present, of women deprived of their rights, of illness and death, of domestic violence and of a life full of sacrifices, but also of families that go beyond those created by a married heterosexual couple and of those who succeed in escaping discrimination and poverty.

And a collective voice is repeatedly heard: the performers come together as a chorus that evokes a different future. They lay curses on monogamy, the patriarchy, the state, private property and capitalism. In their roles as modern witches, as children, parents and siblings, as a solidary community.

A performance by: Nicoleta Esinencu, Antosea Darca and Elena
Anmeghichean, Cătălina Bucos, Doina-Romanța Dochitan, Nora Dorogan,
Ciprian Marinescu, Kira Semionov, Elena Sîrbu, Doriana Talmazan, Artiom
Zavadovsky
Performers: Elena Anmeghichean, Cătălina Bucos,
Doina-Romanța Dochitan, Nicoleta Esinencu, Elena Sîrbu, Doriana
Talmazan, Artiom Zavadovsky
Lighting Design: Ulrich Kellermann
Sound Design: Janis Klinkhammer
Dramaturgical Consultant: Aenne Quiñones
Production Management: Anna Krauß
Technical Direction: Annette Becker
Contact for touring enquiries: Anna Krauß, a.krauss[a]hebbel-am-ufer.de

Production: HAU Hebbel am Ufer. Co-production: FFT Düsseldorf, teatru-spălătorie. Funded through the Association of International Producing Houses by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media and the Goethe Institut. With generous support from the Neue Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) and the HAU Hebbel am Ufer’s Circle of Friends.

Nicoleta Esinencu is a writer and director who lives and works in Chișinău. After a scholarship at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart she became internationally renowned with ‘FUCK YOU, Eu.ro.Pa!’ and won the Romanian dramAcum Theatre Prize. In 2010 Esinencu co-founded the independent initiative teatru-spălătorie for an alternative arts space in Chișinău. Her theatre projects consider social reality in the republic of Moldova and the associated contradictions of the post-Soviet era from a critical perspective on the whole of European history. Since 2012 Nicoleta Esinencu has consistently collaborated with the HAU Berlin, and in 2019/20 she was a guest of the DAAD’s Berlin Artist in Residence programme.