“We took responsibility and took risks. I am all the more pleased that we are now starting the second part of this Wiener Festwochen, which this time are festival months, ”said Slagmuylder, relieved on Friday. On Tuesday it continues with Phia Menard’s triptych “La Trilogie des Contes Immoraux (pour Europe)”.
Three parts on three evenings
The French performer and director is visibly delighted to finally be able to stage the five-year project in Vienna. It is a “mythological tale, philosophical allegory and political fable that exposes the questionable foundations of a united Europe,” as she explained.
On three evenings (August 24th to 26th), all three parts – starting with “Mother House” via “Father’s Temple” to “The Forbidden Encounter” – of their “Immoral Tales” can be experienced in Hall E in the Museum Quarter, whereby ” Maison Mère ”was already a guest at the festival weeks in 2019.
Love in the Russo-Japanese War and its aftermath
As a further highlight, Slagmuylder presented Michikazu Matsune’s “Mitsouko & Mitsuko” (August 25th to 28th in the casino on Schwarzenbergplatz), one of two upcoming premieres: The Japanese, who lives in Vienna, is dedicated to the fictional character Mitsouko Yorisaka, who is in front of the Background of the Russo-Japanese War 1904/05 fell in love with a British naval officer and Mitsuko Coudenhove-Kalergi, whose son founded the Paneuropean Union – the oldest European unification movement – in 1922.
He wanted to create a “bridge between history and fiction, between individual biographies and the construction of cultural identities,” as he said. “And Mitsouko hovers over everything – a perfume launched in 1919,” laughed the artist.
Amazon destruction in Hall G
Slagmuylder particularly recommended the two new discoveries to the audience: Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha, whose “Altamira 2042” is dedicated to environmental destruction in the Amazon (August 25th to 31st in Hall G) and Koleka Putuma. With “Hullo, Bu-bye, Koko, Come In”, the South African author reflects on her position as a black artist in white institutions (September 3rd to 5th in brut northwest).
The Nature Theater of Oklahoma is showing “Burt Turrido”, a “country and western opera” at Theater Akzent (August 26th to 30th), while the aspiring British director Alexander Zeldin is devoting himself to another work from his “trilogy” with “Love” of inequalities ”: In the Art Nouveau theater at the Steinhof he examines a“ fragile community that defies various adverse circumstances and is more stable than expected ”(September 2 to 8).
Tim Etchells from Forced Entertainment and the violinist Aisha Orazbayeva will bring the very last world premiere during this year’s festival weeks with “Heartbreaking Final” at the Art Nouveau Theater am Steinhof from September 23rd to 25th.
“MITTEN” at the Northwest Station
In the 70th year of its existence, the festival weeks are finally also dedicated to direct encounters between artists and the public in order to negotiate nothing less than the “future of the festival” in a laboratory. Under the title “MITTEN” in brut nordwest, numerous lectures and discussions will take place under the title “Predictably Unpredictable” during the day from September 9th to 12th, and in the evening from September 8th, keynotes, performances and music will be on the program.
Even if the second part of the festival weeks now falls in the late summer holidays and runs parallel to the beginning of the theater season, Slagmuylder was optimistic about the APA that it would appeal to a sufficient audience. “It was important to me to finally be able to show everything that we had partly already planned for the previous year. I owe that to the artists too. I hope for a good week! “
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