Heidi

Heidi, the Swiss myth and crowd-puller, Heidi, the bridge-builder between cultures, Heidi, the symbol of Swissness – an unparalleled popular figure. 
But what makes the story so popular and the myth so mythical? What do we need to be happy? Dark firs, green meadows in the sunshine, the world of the mountains, forever beckoning and calling out “You're at home up here”, while today natural things disappear and social relationships grow cold? Heidi is a longing for an ideal world, for a lost home, for a bed of straw, for fresh milk from an animal with a name, for reconciliation, for damp grass under bare feet. Above all, Heidi is pop: emotional and melancholy, hopeful and political.

In this piece, Erdoğan & Reissner, together with the ensemble, demystify and re-mythify the story of the orphan girl and her countless representations, receptions and translations. Heidi is known all over the world because she tells a story that is universally understood. That is another reason why Heidi is pop, but what unease lies dormant in the romanticization of fir needles, in the aestheticized idealization of rural life, in the kitsch of the sun disappearing behind the mountains?

“Heidi – A cottage-core pop-musical landslide” is a myth about the power of love, of belonging, not least to nature, which is met with a childlike, naive and hopeful gaze, while a choir sings of goat-herds: 
“Come home / Find your luck / Come back again”. We are coming, but not back. Onwards, into the hope.


Languages German, English, French with subtitles
Duration 75 Minutes


Heidi is a co-production with Theater Freiburg im Breisgau and will be performed there from December 2025 with a new cast.