Ich ersehne die Alpen; So entstehen die Seen

I'm Longing For the Alps; This is How Lakes are Formed

(Ich ersehne die Alpen; So entstehen die Seen)

Deutsch
Cast

1F / 1M

Down in the valley, a woman is longing for «the alps with their spacious coldness», while she lies burning up in the heat of her little attic room, like in a coffin. In the feverish delirium, these rocky landscapes turn into what's going to save her from loneliness and final extinction. Up in the mountains, a hiker comes across the corpses of four people, who froze to death in the ice of the glacier. As much as he is delighted at first to have found some company, he can't do anything to wake the dead from their frozen rigour.

I'm Longing For the Alps; This is How Lakes are Formed are two monologues that refer to each other, mirror each other, full of ironic bends and double entendres. A filigree masterpiece of language, where mountains are identity-defining metaphors, true places of death and a plane of projection for an insatiable desire, reaching majestic hights while drawing the observer into a vertigo-inducing abyss.

World premiere
06.10.2001 steirischer herbst, Graz (Director: Händl Klaus)

Translations
Czech (Translator: Michal Kotrous)
Spanish: Ansío los alpes; Así nacen los lagos (Translator: Marta Kovacsics)
Spanish language premiere June 2009 Mapa Teatro Bogotá (Director: Rolf Abderhalden)
English: I Yearn for the Alps; They Make the Lakes (Translator: Catherine Schelbert)
French: J'aspire aux Alpes; Ainsi naissent les lacs (Translator: Simon Koch)

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