About the work
TRAUER//FALL is a devised production by the POLYLUX youth company at Schauspiel Köln. Schauspiel Köln explicitly credits the work as being by and with the youth club POLYLUX, with Dana Khamis and Judith Niggehoff directing. It was selected for the 2026 Theatertreffen der Jugend and is a collectively devised piece without a single conventional author.
Plot
The starting point is grief understood as both a bodily and psychological process. The young performers ask how loss becomes embedded in bodies, memories and a person's image of themselves. Tears are treated as only the visible part of a much larger process. Through speech, dance and performance, the ensemble investigates relationships between sadness, consolation, anger, memory and acceptance, including the question of whether something has truly disappeared while memories of it remain.
Cultural significance
TRAUER//FALL exemplifies a collective youth-theatre practice that develops a universal subject from the perspectives of young performers themselves. Its selection for the 2026 Theatertreffen der Jugend demonstrates national recognition. The combination of verbal, choreographic and performative forms is especially appropriate to a theme such as grief, which frequently resists straightforward verbal explanation.