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Falling
You can imagine the image however you want. It can be the image of an elderly couple, two pensioners, or the image of two teenagers, almost children, or, if you want, two middle-aged people. It can be a woman and a woman, or a man and a man, or a man and a woman...
Premiere on November 2, 2022 | Theater Drachengasse | Vienna
Two people end up in front of the same painting in a museum by chance. Their bodies, which naturally obey the choreography of the exhibition rooms, suddenly share a small space. For a moment they become the painting themselves. And tell possible stories. About two people, a couple, who met by chance while standing in front of a painting. Did. Could. Maybe.
In Fallen, Anna Gschnitzer frees the brief moment of an unplanned encounter from its space-time continuum and thereby extracts the overwhelming power of the imaginable. She invites you to fall backwards into this moment and humorously explores its potential development possibilities and outcomes. Her couple does not obey any linear causalities. They search for their own image in the most diverse circumstances, morphing through the phases of romantic love, career planning, colonial history and present. Everything that seems promising can quickly seem very hopeless again. And yet it is important to let go of the apparent security in this moment in order to be able to fall together.
Director Sedlak succeeds - apart from a few, merely abstract, atmospheric moments - in finding various concrete and always convincing acting situations for the complex flow of text.
And when the text at the end takes us on a detailed journey of the imagination and the performance consists entirely of miked speech, there is still this solidary ensemble on stage that, as one of the stage directions put it, passes the language on "like a hot potato or a hand grenade, quickly, tenderly and carefully".
An exciting and challenging evening of theater. Fragments of a language of love beyond Hollywood.
Press
The perfectly coordinated interaction of the three actors Sonja Somrei, Ingeborg Schwab and Tamara Semzov, who represent the three phases of life (youth, adulthood and old age), captivates the audience in a completely unexpected way.
Successful self-production of the piece by author Anna Gschnitzer
Because "Fallen" is about the chance encounter between two people in front of a William Turner painting, but there were hardly any opportunities for such chance meetings at the time, Sedlak was immediately drawn to Gschnitzer's text. "Before the pandemic, it was hard to imagine that the possibility of such encounters would no longer exist. And that is exactly what the text deals with - that the perspective shifts and the privileges that were previously taken for granted are suddenly gone."
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Bühne Magazin
Director Isabella Sedlak brings plenty of life into the game: she shows photos of the Turner painting, magically plays music every time a wall is touched, or repeats scenes like in a film shoot.
Wiener Zeitung
Exciting, humorous and yet somehow serious!
Die Stadtspionin
Text Anna Gschnitzer
Directed by Isabella Sedlak
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with
Sonja Romei
Ingeborg Schwab
Tamara Semzov
Stage + Costume Sophie Baumgartner
Sound Peter Plos
Video Jakob Hütter | hand mit auge
Dramaturgical Support Sandra Wolf
Make Up Anna-Helen Giese
Light Technics Michaela Pink
Dir. Assistant Juliane Aixner
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Stage Photography Isabella Simon
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Rights with Felix Bloch Erben Verlag, Berlin
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Eine Produktion des Theater Drachengasse, Wien​
Credits