In den Alpen

In den Alpen

Deutsch
Cast

variable casting, min. 6 actors

The idyllic title is deceptive. Based on the mountain railway accident in Kaprun, in which 155 people died in November 2000, Jelinek reflects on the complex relationship between culture, technology and nature. In a ghostly cable car station in a valley, figures from different eras meet up; living and dead, locals and foreigners, victims and helpers. The world of modern mass tourism where the mountains are used an arbitrary pleasure park unites with the early history of alpinism, which still celebrated the mountains as a natural feature – accessible only for the elite few. However, a new, confusing voice soon resonates in the parlando among these contrary positions. It quotes Paul Celan’s Gespräch im Gebirg and thus adds the voice of one destined to be extinguished himself to the conversation of those extinguished by the accident; the voice of a Jew and therefore excluded from the Alps forever, never allowed to belong yet inextricably connected to their history, a history which did not only take place in the Alps.

World premiere
5.10.2002 Münchner Kammerspiele / dem Schauspielhaus Zürich (Director: Christoph Marthaler)

Translations
Dutch
Swedish
Swedish premiere 02.02.2006 Riksteatern Stockholm (Translator: Magnus Lindman, Director: Melanie Mederlind)

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