exploded – Proposal for a theatre evening
6 – 8 actors (multiple casts are necessary)
The family is a family of musicians. The mother receives an offer to go to Mongolia for one or two months – little, as one might think, and the father supports her. But as soon as she is gone, his world collapses and he feels that nothing of his own holds him back. He conspires with his daughters and makes it clear to the mother in a phone call that she doesn’t need to come back. The mother is now being cast out.
Afterwards he sets off on a journey to Sicily – in search of something original that he believes to have lost. Since his daughter Anna does not accept his departure alone and goes with him, they travel in pairs.
The piece works with strong cuts and frequent changes of location, which are reached and signalled via language. It shows people of a family that is so strongly connected that a small change can make everything shake and poses the question of how much we really belong to our “neighbors” and how much we can be individuals at all, in the constant and strong connection with others. All the people in the play struggle with the pressure of having to be someone, but without knowing exactly how they can even experience this. This is how they find their way: in the connection with a love partner, in tearing themselves away from fixed structures, in searching for essences in the music. At the end of the piece the characters are scattered in the world or dead. They have dissolved their old home, but what has taken their place?
exploded was presented under the title the dead of heilbronn 2007 at the workshop days of the Burgtheater Vienna.
World premiere 25.01.2009 | Burgtheater Vienna, Vestibule
Directed by Cornelia Rainer