Der Kirschgarten

The cherry orchard must be sold. And it will be sold too. When landlady Ranevskaya returns to her childhood estate after years abroad, land tenure laws and power relations have changed, and the relationships being so new are still too fragile to provide a foundation for the future. Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard is the story of a social shift. Rises and falls through the structures of wealth loosen the cement binding society together. By trying to describe what could provide a strong foundation for living together as a community, director Yana Ross shines a light through visible and invisible social differences and arranges locals and immigrants into a family con- stellation. For her first production in Zurich, she covers Switzerland in cherry trees. Who now owns this land that was once worked and occupied by farmers? Who has a share in this ownership through their origins, social class and bank balance? And how far is this soil an inner land: where do we put down roots mentally and emotionally, when our common anchor point is a shared story about what home is? To find out what can bind a society together, it is necessary to find out what divides it. The Cherry Orchard lies under Zurich, as a manifesto and contested terrain.

The play is in german with english subtitles.