In den Alpen/Après les Alpes

by Elfriede Jelinek // Fiston Mwanza Mujila

February/March 2023
Volkstheater Wien,Arthur-Schnitzler-Platz 1, 1070 Wien

"The Alps are what remains after the debacle, the fire and the tuberculosis. The Alps are majestic everlasting and royal." Fiston Mwanza Mujila

The Kaprun mountain railway accident remains one of the greatest disasters to have occurred in this country in recent memory. Starting from the tragic events of November 11, 2000, Elfriede Jelinek draws a panorama of the early history of the Alps towards the machinery of mass tourism in her play IN DEN ALPEN, which was written shortly afterwards.

The Swiss director Claudia Bossard continues this work - with a contemporary realization of IN DEN ALPEN in combination with the premiere of a play written exclusively for this production, APRÈS LES ALPES, by Fiston Mwanza Mujila. The Graz-based author and playwright looks at the colonial origin story of the Austrian Alpine cosmos and, in a grotesque fiction, explores the question of what might happen in the post-Alpine age: Glacier melt and never more après-ski? Or what happens if raw materials are suddenly discovered underground in the Alps? Will they then be turned into a big mining company, and the West will mine for the Global South? In Mujila's work, the characters move from Jelinek's trial to a global tribunal.

The two politically explosive and linguistically virtuoso plays IN DEN ALPEN and APRÈS LES ALPES are presented as an unusual double evening.