Die Urlesung: Burgtheater

Universitätsring 2

1010 Wien

 

"Although hardly anyone knew my play "Burgtheater" in 1985 (it only premiered in Bonn), I lost my good name in Austria." – Elfriede Jelinek is now world-famous as a Nobel Prize winner. However, "Burgtheater," her "farce with song" about national self-dramatization and nimbly transformative audience favorites like Paula Wessely, Attila, and Paul Hörbiger, is still hardly known. Jelinek had blocked the performance rights for 40 years.

A few days before the long-overdue BURG premiere, the ensemble of Milo Rau's BURGTHEATER production is now presenting the entire text in an "original reading," a discovery.

Rarely has Elfriede Jelinek pulled out all the comedic stops so mercilessly; Never before or since has it been so close to the linguistic wit and power of Ernst Jandl and the Wiener Gruppe, when their artificial language distorts Heurigen songs, Vienna film dialogues, or Burgtheater classics like "König Ottokars Glück und Ende" to the point of being recognizable: "Drum ist der Österreicher sang und klank, / trägt seinen Fehl, trägt offen seine Greubeln. / Bekleidet nicht, läßt lieber sich besteigen. / Und was er tut, ist froher Wuts getan."

(Source: burgtheater.at)