Nihilism, destruction, and the search for a spilling revolt. Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Thomas Bernhard. Party, concert, live film and spoken theater. It was wild, loud and commanding. The Volksbühne’s season opening with Julien Gosselin’s epic production “Extinction” crossed genre boundaries. Revolving around the artistic and intellectual awakening in 20th century Vienna, Gosselin’s play draws us spectators into the rushing spell of the fin de siècle. Marked by social debates, underlying conflicts and the ambivalence between beauty and brutal reality, the French director paints an opulent picture of Viennese life before the First World War, and society fraught with ignorance, individualism and the impending downfall of the Empire. From 07.10.23 the revival can be seen four times at the Volksbühne. In over five hours, with two intermissions and in three languages, the arc spans multimedia through literatures and genres, casting its gaze on the elite’s struggle for ideal and beauty in the face of drive and death. In a kind of three-part “cheerful apocalypse” (Hermann Broch), it is about beauty and drive, nervousness and neurosis, subliminal violence, repressed sexuality and power – and about developing a counter-design of modernity. Narrative and neurosis revolve around ignorance, individualism, liberalization and democratization, sophistication, violence, misogyny and anti-Semitism, industrialization and the bourgeoisie. All the buzzwords of the last century apply, all of them are invoked, conjured up in Gosselin’s visually powerful battle of words in German literature, so engaging that the length of the play flies by.
Text: Hilka Dirks / Photos: Luna Zscharnt
Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Linienstr.227, 10178 Berlin–Mitte; map
Extinction – Performances: Sat 07.10., Sun 08.10., Fri 20.10., Sat 21.10., at 18h. Performances in French and German with German, French and English subtitles.
Tickets are available here.
@volksbuehne_berlin
