About the work
Qui a tué mon père, published in English as Who Killed My Father, is an autobiographical and political text by Édouard Louis first published in 2018. Schaubühne presents a stage version directed by Thomas Ostermeier in which Louis performs his own text. It premiered in Paris on 9 September 2020 and in Berlin on 7 October 2021. The underlying text was first published in 2018.
Plot
Louis addresses his father, a relationship shaped by violence, homophobia, distance and economic hardship. Returning as an adult, he encounters a man whose health has been severely damaged. The perspective becomes more complicated: the father remains a perpetrator within the family while simultaneously appearing as a victim of poverty, physical labour and political welfare reforms. Louis links intimate memory and an attempt at reconciliation to an explicit accusation against political decisions that materially shape working-class bodies.
Cultural significance
The work is an important example of Louis's internationally influential combination of autobiography, class analysis and direct political intervention. It rejects any simple separation between private violence and structural violence. One of its most distinctive features is the naming of political decision-makers as responsible for concrete bodily consequences produced by social policy. Ostermeier's staging intensifies the autobiographical dimension by placing Louis himself on stage as performer.