Geschlossene Gesellschaft

Universitätsring 2

1010 Wien

 

German by Traugott König

Inès, Estelle and Garcin only have guesses about why they ended up in this hell together: an interior without windows or mirrors. Walled in as high as a tower, only occasionally visited by a bizarre waiter. An outside? Doesn't exist here. Even the eyelids are dull; the place threatens to be constantly awake, without the redeeming “black flashes” of blinking. Why are these three people, who have never met each other in their lives, crammed together here? What guilt brought her here? Do they already have the torture equipment for the others in their hands without knowing it?

Jean-Paul Sartre's classic of existentialism, premiered in Paris in 1944 under the rule of the National Socialists, is not only a key work for understanding Sartre's philosophy of freedom, which revolves around the question of how the gaze of others defines us against our will. CLOSED SOCIETY is also a piece about uncertainty, about being closed in and isolation, about a changed perception of time that lies leaden over people and things in a present stretched to eternity. In this respect, it has stored valuable knowledge, which we surprisingly find ourselves in when looking back on the past few years.

We would like to thank Erwin Wurm and the Erwin Wurm studio for the loan of the cucumber sculpture, which is an original from the artist's workshop.

 

(Source: brugtheater.at)