Schauspielhaus Graz

The night club known as “Tram 83” located in a nameless African mining town is a haunt for half the world: arms dealers and organ traffickers, development aid workers, prostitutes, jazz musicians, politicians, miners, child soldiers, businesspeople, and tourists. It is here that two old friends meet again: Requiem, who scrapes along with corrupt dealings, and Lucien, the idealistic writer who has been writing a play called The Africa of Possibility for the past ten years. But what possibilities do you have in a city in which the symbol that towers above all else is the skeleton of an unfinished train station from 1885 from where nothing ever went anywhere?

“[This novel] will sweep you off your feet,” wrote Rolling Stone about the multiaward-winning novel Tram 83, which portrays the nocturnal activities of a milieu that can be found everywhere: a living world despite all brutality and mercilessness. Graz-based writer Fiston Mwanza Mujila, who comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, writes: “I compose my texts like a jazz musician, like a saxophonist.” Dominic Friedel, a specialist for contemporary drama, adapts the novel for the stage.