Die Eingeborenen von Maria Blut

Lisztstr.1

1030 Wien

 

Stage adaptation by Lucia Bihler and Alexander Kerlin

The idyllic village of Maria Blut with its pilgrimage chapel is in the countryside, a few hours by train from Vienna. The 1930s have begun, Dollfuß is Chancellor, and the natives of the “Austrian Lourdes” are in unrest. The canning factory in front of the village had to close. The entrepreneur Schellbach is now trying to persuade the concerned population to invest in his new product, spatial power. Many people give away their last savings for this. However, when Schellbach shoots himself in the middle of the folk festival and his venture fails, a tremendous dynamic immediately develops in Maria Blut: the supposedly guilty people are quickly identified - and things now become extremely dangerous for them.

The Viennese writer Maria Lazar (1895–1948) is one of the most lucid literary voices of her era. In short, gripping and linguistically brilliant scenes, she creates two dozen wonderfully strange characters who are crushed on the eve before National Socialism between the cult of the Virgin Mary, belief in miracles, conspiracy theories and emerging ultranationalism. Because of her Jewish origins, Maria Lazar had to live in exile for years and publish under pseudonyms - her extensive work is only now being rediscovered. DIE EINGEBORENEN VON MARIA BLUT, partially printed in Bertolt Brecht's exile magazine DAS WORT in 1937, is staged by Lucia Bihler, who also staged Thomas Bernhard's DIE JAGDGESELLSCHAFT in the Academy Theater.

 

(Source: burgtheater.at)