Wiener Festwochen 2011: The Select (The Sun Also Rises)

Wiener Festwochen 2011

The Select (The Sun Also Rises)
Play / New York / Premiere in the german-speaking region

Date: Jun 7 to 10, 20.30;
Discussion with the audience following the performance on Jun 8
Venue: Halle G
in english language with german supertitles

After the First World War, a group of young American expats are travelling aimlessly through Europe, draining the alcohol stocks of various bars in the process - mainly that of Café Select in Paris. They have survived a war started by their parents. They are solitary individualists. Some are physically and emotionally scarred by combat; having lost the capacity for love, they yearn for an easy, carefree life. Since there is no place where they can feel at home, they choose to live in the capital of bohemianism. Ernest Hemingway, the sarcastic chronicler of the adventures of this band of Americans in Europe, dedicated his first novel The Sun Also Rises to the lost generation of the First World War. Hovering in the background, there is the bitter love of a man made impotent by a way injury for a woman he can never have.

The actors of Elevator Repair Service with their director John Collins are celebrated for their transformation of classic American novels into reading performances and dynamic theatre. After Fitzgerald (Gatz) and Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury), it is Hemingway\'s turn to be recharged with high-octane, contemporary, downtown performative energy. Yet none of their previous works has made us feel as close to the characters: vulnerable individuals professing a giddy gaiety while savagely tearing and hurting each other.

Cast
Text: Ernest Hemingway / Concept: Elevator Repair Service / Director: John Collins


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