UNINVITED GUESTS
UNGEBETENE GÄSTE
A search for traces by DARUM
in cooperation with WERK X-Petersplatz
Nominierung:
SPEZIALPREIS 2019
Approximately 500 people are buried each year in Vienna at "lonely burials" without the presence of relatives. Who were these people? What did they do - and what did they like? What did they believe in? Were they even lonely? And how can we get closer to a person we never knew?
Based on their principle that every person deserves to be remembered in the form of fiction, DARUM sets out to search for traces. Starting in the theatre space of WERK X-Petersplatz, a bus ride that takes the audience from the center of Vienna to the outskirts, where the phenomenon of "lonely burials" is topographically reflected in the central cemetery. In five unique and one-time-only performances, "Uninvited Guests" leads the audience in a movement through the city and puts the deceased themselves at the center of attention by piecing together fragments of their lives, creating a space to remember someone who no one else remembers. It is a project at the intersection of performance, spatial, media and action art about loneliness, death, and the impenetrability of human existence.
In June 2019 and October 2020, the reflection on loneliness, death, reality, and fiction was continued as part of the essay performance "What's left?".
"Uninvited Guests" and "What's left?" were nominated for the NESTROY Special Prize 2019 and invited to the Impulse Theater Festival 2020 (cancelled due to Covid-19). For the Impulse Festival 2021, the production was reinvented as an innovative online installation called "404-TOTLINK".
© DARUM
5 premieres
Sunday, March 24, 2019, 12 pm
with a text by Emre Akal
Tuesday, March 26, 2019, 2 pm
with a text by Mario Schlembach
Thursday, March 28, 2019, 2 pm
with a text by Alexandra Pâzgu
Saturday, March 30, 2019, 12 pm
with a text by Andrea Imler
Sunday, March 31, 2019, 12 pm
with a text by Thomas Perle
Venue: WERK X-Petersplatz, 1010 Vienna
Pressestimmen:
"A theatrical experience with a long lasting effect."
(Petra Paterno, Wiener Zeitung)
"A touching, tender project that lives up to the attribute 'immersive': Whoever gets involved in it, is fully immersed in a perhaps real, certainly past life"
(Martin Pesl, FALTER - Das Beste der Woche, Platz 1 sowie Top 10 des Jahre)
"An experience that playfully provokes thoughts on memory and lonliness."
(Die Presse)
"16,000 people die annually in Vienna, with around 500 of them being destitute and completely alone. This results in a lonely burial, carried out in complete silence by the gravediggers, with graves left without flowers and headstones. Simple name tags on a wooden cross serve as the only reminder of the deceased. The young performance collective DARUM reconstructs individual biographies of those nearly forgotten in the docu-performance 'Uninvited Guests' and explores the tragic phenomenon through the means of immersive theater. For visitors, the four-hour tour through the city with its final destination at the Central Cemetery, including a funeral wake, is an experience that will not be easily forgotten."
(NESTROY Jury Statement - Petra Paterno)
Duration: approx. 4 hours (including meal)
Cast & Creatives:
Artistic direction and text (alphabetical) DARUM (Laura Andreß | Victoria Halper | Kai Krösche) Performance: Laura Andreß, Victoria Halper, Nora Jacobs and Kai Krösche Room & costume design Julia Grevenkamp Text (Audio walks) Emre Akal, Andrea Imler, Alexandra Pâzgu, Thomas Perle and Mario Schlembach Music and sound design (Performance) Kai Krösche Videos Victoria Halper Speakers (Audio walks) Gunther Hölbl, Andrea Imler, Nora Jacobs, Aenne Schwarz and Helmut Wiesinger Music and sound design (Audio walks) Arthur Fussy Vocals Laura Andreß Guitar Sebastian Schley Production Siglind Güttler, Bernhard Werschnak (ProSiBe) Press Patrizia Büchele, Birgit Wagner (WERK X-Petersplatz) Assistant to the artistic direction and production Armin Kirchner Set assistance Christoph Steininger Consultation and outside eye game mechanics Philipp Ehmann (Play: Vienna) Idea Kai Krösche Catering Darija Kasalo / Ungargrill
The project was funded by SHIFT, the Department of Culture of the City of Vienna and the Inner City District.
Press & Reviews (in German):
Der FALTER - Die Wiener Stadtzeitung -- Kritik: "A schene Leich I: Wienerisch und traurig"
Wiener Zeitung - Kritik: "Kein Leben ist vergessen"
APA/Salzburger Nachrichten - Kritik: "Ungebetene Gäste: Performance führt auf Zentralfriedhof"
Die Presse - Kritik: "Ein Supperl auf diesen Toten, den keiner kannte!"
Der Standard - Kritik: "Leichenschmaus am Zentralfriedhof und ein einsames Begräbnis"
Kulturfüchsin - Kritik: "Suche nach Unbekannt", Von: Sandra Schäfer
ORF Wien - Vorbericht: "Theaterprojekt greift 'einsame Begräbnisse' auf"
APA/Vienna.at - Vorbericht: "Ungebetene Gäste: Auf den Spuren von Tod und Einsamkeit am Wiener Zentralfriedhof"
Festivals:
2021
Cologne/Vienna/Online - Impulse Theater Festival, reimagination as "404-TOTLINK"
2020
Cologne - Impulse Theater Festival 2020 (canceled due to Covid-19)
Photos: Alexander Gotter
