Wiener Festwochen 2011: I Am the Wind

Wiener Festwochen 2011

I Am the Wind
Play / London / Austrian Première

Date: May 26 to 29, 21.30;
Discussion with the audience following the performance on May 27
Venue: Halle G
in english language, overtitled in German

All of Jon Fosse\'s plays are about regret. Almost all of them circle around an event that has already happened. In many of his plays, this is death; sometimes, it is love. Living or dead, people always wait for something to come or look back to a past event.

A man has invited a friend for a sailing trip. Everything begins splendidly with nice weather and a picnic in a cove. The man speaks about his feelings of sadness and his fear of committing suicide. Then he does kill himself, or perhaps he already had killed himself before. In a rampaging storm, he boats out into the open sea and finally jumps overboard, leaving his friend, who knows nothing about sailboats, alone on the near-capsizing vessel beset by towering waves. The men speak to each other as ghosts that share no reality - one may still be alive, or perhaps they are both dead - and whose short encounter has served their passing into another form of existence.

We will show I Am the Wind in Hall G following Chéreau\'s French-language production of Fosses Rêve d\'automne in Hall E. The English translation of I Am the Wind is by British playwright Simon Stephens.

Cast
Text: Jon Fosse / English Translation: Simon Stephens / Director: Patrice Chéreau and Thierry Thieû Niang

Production: Young Vic, London/Théâtre de la Ville, Paris
A co-production of: Wiener Festwochen, Les Nuits de Fourvière/Département du Rhône, Festival Grec 2011, Barcelona, Festival d\'Avignon

www.festwochen.at