ITSEEN KIRJOITETTU
Premiere in February 20th 2026 at Tampere Työväen Teatteri, (Tampere, Worker Theatre)
On stage:
Sinikka Sokka, Miiko Toiviainen, Timo Torikka and Maija Ruuskanen
https://ttt-teatteri.fi/program/itseen-kirjoitettu/
Do you know where you come from – and what has been written into you without your knowing?
What kind of understanding of yourself and your possibilities did you grow up with? Do your parents understand your profession? Have you experienced a sense of being outsider in “better circles”? Itseen Kirjoitettu tells the story of what follows when a working-class child crosses class boundaries.
After his father’s death, Professor Didier Eribon returns home. After 30 years away, he must face his mother and the shame that once drove him from a small town to Paris. His childhood was a narrow struggle for survival; now, as an adult, he has succeeded as an academic researcher. Yet in neither world does he feel truly at home.
Didier believed he had broken away because of homophobia. However in his journey back to visit his mother, he understands what lays at the deepest level: it was not the homophobia but the shame of his social class: poverty, exclusion, and a lack of cultural capital.
How does class division shape an individual’s life and choices? What is structural inequality? The performance challenges the audience to reflect on their own position as part of society.
In this show, music plays a strong role, with songs from different eras tracing a portrait of the individual as part of a community across time.
Itseen Kirjoitettu is based on Didier Eribon’s book Returning to Reims, of which the writer Édouard Louis wrote: “It is one of those works that can change a life. It changed mine. It may happen to you as well.”
Adapted by Timo Torikka, the Finnish version of this text superposes the introspective journey of the protagonist, Didier Eribbon, with the personal considerations of the three Finnish performers reflecting on their lives as artists.
This performance based on autobiographical fiction, sociological examination, and collective memory proposes a new form of theatre: it fuses legendary Finnish political songs with re-enactments of iconic images from the Finnish national archive, creating a delicate, funny and lively inner journey into what we are not really able to admit to ourselves.
LANGUAGE
Finnish
CREDITS
Director: Davide Giovanzana
Based on the text “Retour à Reims” by Didier Eribon
translation : Timo Torikka
dramaturgy: Timo Torikka and Davide Giovanzana
Music : Maija Ruuskanen
video : Ilari Kallinen
lighting: Ville Virtanen
set and costumes : Tinde Lappalainen
producer: Luc Gérardin
Production: teatteri metamorfoosi
