Wiener Festwochen 2019: Angélica Liddell / The Scarlet Letter

»My body is my protest against society.« Performance artist Angélica Liddell is one of Europe’s leading theatre makers. Her bold, often controversial works use the concrete body to reflect the violence of the world. In her new piece, Liddell draws on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s famous novel The Scarlet Letter – as always, very freely and associatively. For her, the A no longer stands for Adultery, but for Art: the one that resists the imposition of constraints. In the midst of naked male bodies, armed with such postmodern greats as Foucault and Derrida, Liddell takes on the burdens of a highly rationalised present that keeps itself captive. Although she does not shy away from repulsing and offending, in the end one cannot help but admire her emotional, courageous struggle for the freedom of art and humankind alike. A modern Passion.