Bringing Georg Hermann’s last exile novel to the stage.

Since late spring 2025, we’ve been collaborating with Professor Godela Weiss-Sussex on one of the most ambitious projects we’ve taken on – how might we stage Die daheim blieben (Those Who Stayed at Home), Georg Hermann’s last, unfinished exile novel?

The novel has its own remarkable journey – written in exile, travelling across Europe to the UK, and eventually into Godela’s hands, and then into ours. Together, we’re working on an adaptation that honours that journey and the lives it touches.

This is quite an endeavour. The scale of the novel, the weight of the history, the stories it carries. So we’re taking it one step at a time.

Facing Exile in 1933 Berlin and Now
Being Human Festival · 13 November 2025 · Rose Lipman Building

In November 2025, we took the first public step at our creative home, the Rose Lipman Building – inviting audiences into our rehearsal room for an afternoon in our creative lab. A chance to step inside the process: the first public reading of a scene set in Berlin in 1933, a practical exploration of adaptation, and an open conversation with the creative team and Godela.

The public event was the culmination of three days in the room asking the question — how might we stage this novel? Through adaptation and devising exercises, Trine Garrett led the creative process in conversation with Godela, supported by dramaturg Flo Dessau and actors David Djemal, Eugenia Low, Rebecca Dyson Smith, and Zackerea Bakir.

This event was part of Being Human Festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities, taking place 6–15 November 2025. Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.