Tamangur

The award-winning novel "Tamangur" by the Lavin writer Leta Semadeni, in a theatre version by Georg Scharegg, will be premiered by the Chur Theatre in April 2025! Scharegg takes the novel as a model for his musical theatre production. "Tamangur", this special forest in the Val S-charl, left to its own devices, is considered a symbol of the preservation of Rhaeto-Romanic culture, and in Leta Semadeni's story it is also a place of transition between a ruthless world and a place of vivid memories and dreams.

The story takes place in a fictitious yet deeply described mountain village, where "the grandmother" lives with "the child". Their relationship is central. In addition, there are many absent characters: the deceased grandfather, who plays an important role in the grandmother's memory, the child's younger brother who died in an accident – the accident often recurs in her dreams – and finally the generation in between – the parents who left the child alone with the grandmother and left.

The village is also populated by lovingly portrayed villagers: e.g. Elsa, who meets her Elvis – the same name is the program – as a musician in the village pub, and many more bizarre characters who turn the houses of the village into collections of strange world views and ways of life that are often stuck in memory. But the heart and soul of this community is the grandmother. A blessing for the child.

One characteristic of the production will be the radically subjective view of the characters, which Georg Scharegg adopts from the novel. They result in a view of the same events from two completely different directions: the view of the grandmother, who is gradually saying goodbye to life, and the view of the child, who does not seem to have really arrived in his own life – also due to the tragedies he has suffered. "With the dark times, it becomes crowded in the village, the memory is then everywhere."

The author's father also gets an appearance in the theatre adaptation by Georg Scharegg: Jon Semadeni was a teacher, author of plays, poet and leader of a theatre troupe. Above all, however, he kept the Rhaeto-Romanic culture alive in his texts and productions.