What is wrong with the world? What is wrong with us, its restless inhabitants? Elfriede Jelinek’s new play deals with nothing less than the relationship of humans with the world and vice versa. With anger, sadness, desperation, but also tenderness and humour, she describes a difficult relationship. Jelinek talks of missing each other, of misunderstanding, ignorance and the end of a love story. She looks at the exploitative relationship between humankind and nature, the depletion of the earth, the planet’s resistance and the apathy and insensitivity of its human inhabitants. And she keeps returning to the why of it all. How could it have come to this? Why was this such a one-side relationship? Jelinek provides answers: In her precise and inexorable analysis, she describes a path that has no way out, only an end. She re-shapes god and reduplicates the earth, she develops fantasies about the body, about work and nature. And – “it’s all for you, all of this fire just for you, that’s something to pride yourself on!”
In her production, director Lilja Rupprecht will investigate whether it may be worthwhile to explore the darkness instead of despairing in the light. read less