Me and Mr Jansen

After successful collaborations with Sahand Sahebdivani, theater maker and storyteller Raphael Rodan now takes the stage alone, with a performance that is closer to him and his history than ever. An uncomfortable performance in which he investigates how betrayal works, and in which his Jewish origins and everything that happened to his family during the Second World War are central. A project that is about the question of whether you can escape your own history.

The story 

Raphael was inspired by a black and white photo that he happened to see. "I recognized the street: the photo was taken from the other side of the canal where I now live. It was taken in 1943. There are children walking in line, soldiers around them. In the corner, barely visible, some boys are kicking dressed in white coats into a front door. The front door behind which I now live." A few weeks later, the elderly Jewish couple who lived in the apartment died in the Sobibor concentration camp. Not much later, the apartment was transferred to someone else: Mr. Jansen, the hairdresser from downstairs. As a reward after a secret act of betrayal? Or was Mr. Jansen an innocent victim of the situation? Or was he forced to make this choice to protect his loved ones?