About the work
Nach dem Leben is based on Wandafuru Raifu (internationally After Life), a feature film by the Japanese director and screenwriter Hirokazu Kore-eda that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 1998. The stage version was written by British dramatist Jack Thorne from a concept he developed with designer Bunny Christie and director Jeremy Herrin. It premiered in June 2021 in the Dorfman Theatre at the National Theatre in London, a co-production with Headlong directed by Herrin. The German translation is by John Birke.
Plot
An unassuming office serves as a way station between life and death: every Monday the newly deceased arrive and have until the end of the week, helped by the staff, to choose one single memory – their happiest moment. That moment is recreated with the simplest of means, a shower of cherry blossoms for instance; they will spend eternity inside it and forget everything else. As the new arrivals go back over their lives, it emerges that the counsellors, too, once lived and have remained in this place.
Cultural significance
The film brought Kore-eda international attention, was shown in more than 30 countries and won the FIPRESCI Prize at the San Sebastián International Film Festival in 1998. The London stage version was due to open in 2020 and was postponed to 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic; since 2025 the play has also been performed on German-language stages.