Horror, music and marriage crisis: Chavrier's Kalkwerk at the festival weeks!

Horror, music and marriage crisis: Chavrier's Kalkwerk at the festival weeks!

From June 5, 2025, Séverine Chavrier will be seen with her staging by Thomas Bernhard's “Kalkwerk” at the Vienna Festwochen. This staging is of great importance because it represents Chavrier's first production in Austria, although it was successfully shown in 2022 under the title "Ils Nous Ont Oubliés" in Barcelona. In its redesign of the work, Chavrier combines claustrophobic horror and psychological torture with music, videos and bird voices. The performance takes almost four hours and is designed like a musical poem about the decay of a marriage.

In "Kalkwerk", which was published in 1970, it is about an unequal couple relationship in an isolated, sterile place, which is shaped by its white and black color. The piece describes Mr. Konrad's life, a man who dreams of a large essay about hearing, but fails in reality. His wife, a handicapped protagonist, is frail and her life context brings Mr. Konrad in unrest. These interpersonal tensions are intensively illuminated by CHAVRIER, which introduces a third figure, a nurse, in order to better illustrate the violence shown in the relationship.

musical elements and inspiration

The staging of Chavrier goes beyond the traditionally theatrical and is crossed by musical elements. It describes her work as a "organic whole", comparable to the concept of topic and variation in music. Inspired by directors such as Ingmar Bergman and Stanley Kubrick, Chavrier lets the surroundings become music in their play, for example by using voices from the basement and plasterboard, which act as impact instruments. The audience should address this interface between sound and the visual representation directly and sweep emotionally.

Chavrier has also integrated sentences from Elfriede Jelinek into the staging, so that an interesting connection between two important Austrian authors is created. This creative decision contributes to the character synthesis that can be found in the staging of Chavrier by addressing the aspect of monitoring and control.

personal reference to Austrian literature

Despite her deep affinity for Austrian literature, this is the first way for the audience in Austria to experience a work by Chavrier live. In Switzerland, she has already taken steps to be interested in a young audience for the theater, and her production "Aria da Capo" combines opera arias with modern media such as cell phone videos. This innovative approach indicates that she wants to continue to challenge the audience with new forms and content in the future.

It remains exciting how the Viennese audience will react to Chavriers captivating staging. "Kalkwerk" not only offers psychological depth and emotional intensity, but also opens up a discourse on contemporary topics of monitoring and human relationships. The performance promises to become an unforgettable experience that stimulates both thinking and appeals to the senses.

At the same time, the complexity of Bernhard's work remains relevant in its meaningful over the cultural company. Bernhard himself was known to take a critical attitude towards awards and the literary company, which becomes clear in his posthumous work "My prices". While Chavrier deals with Bernhard's topics, she also reminds of his ambivalent relationship with art and culture.

Overall, the staging of "lime works" not only promises a deep insight into the abysses of the human psyche, but also an exciting examination of Austria's cultural identity and the role of art in our society.