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15 Feb

15:00

Internationaal Theater Amsterdam

Leidsekade 97, Amsterdam

Director Eline Arbo adapts James Baldwin's timeless classic into a musical performance about love, identity, and the fear of being yourself. A poignant story about passion, loss, and the struggle between intense desire and societal expectations.

Giovanni's Room

More info & tickets

With English surtitles: Feb 19, 21, 26, 28

Director Eline Arbo adapts James Baldwin's timeless classic into a musical performance about love, identity, and the fear of being yourself. Giovanni’s Room explores themes such as sexuality, internalized homophobia, and societal pressure, asking the question: can you feel at home anywhere if you can't be yourself?

A poignant story about passion, loss, and the struggle between intense desire and societal expectations, based on Baldwin's masterpiece.

The Story

‘I stand at the window of a great house in the south of France as night falls, the night that will lead me to the most terrible morning of my life.’

Thus opens the story of David, an American in France reminiscing about his time in Paris. It is a city of expats, liaisons, and violence. David is waiting for the return of his fiancée, Hella. But when he meets Giovanni, a charismatic Italian bartender, the two men become embroiled in an intense affair. After three months, David's fiancée returns, and he is forced to make a choice.

Baldwin tells the story of a doomed relationship that explores the conflict between desire, conventional morality, and sexual identity. With a sharp, penetrating imagination, Baldwin delves into the mystery of love and depicts the social alienation that results from a society unable to cope with a different perspective on sexuality. Giovanni’s Room is therefore a deeply moving story about death and passion that reveals the complexity of the human heart.

Eline Arbo on Giovanni's Room

“With Giovanni’s Room, I am adapting one of my favorite books for the stage. It is overflowing with poetic, striking images about what it means to be searching for who you truly want to be. It is a book against pigeonholing. Baldwin shows the main character's internalized homophobia, who experiences societal pressure to be just one thing. At the same time, it is about the polarization of artistry. Baldwin was told by his publisher and agent that they did not want to publish the book because a novel with a white main character would alienate him from the black community. Baldwin published the book with a smaller publisher because he was convinced that the fight for equality was one single battle. I find it very inspiring how Baldwin dared to fight radically for empathy and equality. That is a very important and radical counterforce.”

James Baldwin

James Arthur Baldwin (1924-1987) emerged as a leading voice in 20th-century social-critical literature. His social conscience was deeply shaped by the segregation and poverty of his youth, which would later be powerfully expressed in classic books like Go Tell It on the Mountain and If Beale Street Could Talk.

In search of solace and creative inspiration, Baldwin found refuge in the bohemian atmosphere of artistic Paris. In the cafés of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he immersed himself in the literary scene and developed long-lasting friendships with greats like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. There, he explored themes of identity and community against the backdrop of a city pulsating with artistic fervor.

Paris became not only his muse but also the setting for his groundbreaking novel Giovanni’s Room. Baldwin caused outrage as a black writer writing about white homosexuals, but for him, the issues of racism and homophobia, sexuality, and personal freedom were strongly intertwined.