About the play
A seven-second shot in which, for the first time in the history of art cinema, a naked woman appears. This was Heddy Lamarr in Gustavo Machaty's Extase (1933), actually Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, as she was still called then. She only took the surname by which she is still known as the most beautiful woman in classic Hollywood when she came to America. The seven seconds that permeate Turrini's performance may not have been so fatal for her, although the film's radicalism did indeed make history. Hedda Lamarr's (1914-2000) long life, which began in Vienna, the old capital of the Central European world, and ended in the isolation of the American provinces, was marked by early fame and a relatively short acting career (her last big Hollywood success, Samson and Delilah, was in 1949), numerous marriages and great wealth, exceptional beauty and finally again numerous cosmetic operations that almost disfigured her, entrepreneurial ventures, scandals of all kinds, including petty shoplifting, but also exceptional intelligence and important technological inventions ... which, however, were not recognised by a world reluctant to recognise the true value of intelligent women (her invention of frequency-hopping is now described as the forerunner of wi-fi; at the time of its invention, she was ignored and advised that the film diva should rather help the American army in its war against the Nazis by selling bonds).
But Peter Turrini's play is not the story of her life. He has even changed her biography in a few places - especially when it comes to her origins (Hedwig Kiesler was actually born into a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna); it is also questionable how much she was affected by the pogroms against the Jews, even though she really hated Nazism, but did not acknowledge her Jewish origins. But Turrini looks for her behind what is known and acknowledged, adding motifs from the traditions of her world. But not out of arbitrariness, but to create, through the myth of the most beautiful woman in the world and her immortality, an epic of a world that is disappearing: the journeys between trauma-ridden Central Europe and Hollywood America that so many artists, especially Jewish ones, have endured; the conflicts between high culture and fascist collapse on the one hand, and the gap between notoriety and deaf loneliness on the other... It is the paradigmatic story of the 20th century. A paradigmatic story of the paradigm of the 20th century, but this time lived by a woman. A woman who, despite the admiration she inspires, always remains unheard, even silenced, in who she really is; for intelligence and a keen sensitivity to her own limitations and to social injustice do not, by the world's standards, belong to a woman who impresses with her physical beauty. That is why she always remains alone, in petty-bourgeois Vienna, in cosmopolitan Berlin, in the midst of the glamour of the cinema and even among the villains in prison... through and through, all her life as alone as you are on the verge of death. But she speaks, despite the alcohol, despite the awareness of her own transience and failures, despite the possibility of being overheard: she tells of herself and the world she has experienced in all its complexity, contradictoriness, splendour and horror, the ultimate image of which is the pogrom against the Jews that is being repeated at the Mexican border and at many others... this time, including our own. With the image of a fascinating beauty, Turrini reveals a woman who speaks to tell us the story of our world.
Diana Koloini
About the author
Born in 1944 in St. Margarethen in Carinthia, Austria, grew up in Maria Saal and worked in various professions from 1963 to 1971. Freelance writer since 1971, lives in Kleinriedenthal near Retz. Turrini's works have been translated into over thirty languages and his plays are performed around the world. About the director
About the director
French director Jean-Claude Berutti has directed authors such as Bertolt Brecht, Eugène Ionesco, Molière, Anton P. Chekhov, George Tabori, Antonin Dvořák, Roger Martin du Gard, Thomas Mann, Giuseppe Verdi, Edouard Bourdet, Biljana Srbljanović, Carlo Goldoni , Luciano Berio, Harold Pinter, Maxim Gorky, Gustave Akakpo, William Shakespeare, Wolfgang Goethe, Richard Wagner, Arthur Schnitzler, Robert Schumann and many others. He has worked in Brussels, Paris, Frankfurt, Moscow, Ghent, Nicosia, Leipzig, Lyon, Zagreb, Nuremberg, Strasbourg, Tel Aviv, Hamburg, Vilnius, Tunisia and Lomé (Togo). Between 1997 and 2011, he led two of the most important French theaters: Le Théâtre du Peuple in Bussang and La Comédie de Saint-Étienne. After working as an independent director for a long time, he has been directing opera in Trier since 1981, where he directed Mozart, Purcell, Poulenc, Monteverdi and Strauss. He also translates, mostly with Silvia Berutti-Ronelt. Together, they systematically present German drama to the Francophone countries (Anja Hilling, Peter Turrini, Dominik Busch). He published the novel Je savais à peine le nom de ton pays (I barely knew the name of your homeland) and the short story Lettre ouverte à Molière (Open Letter to Molière).
About the set and costume designer
Set and costume designer Rudy Sabounghi has worked in drama and opera theaters with directors such as K. Michael Grüber, Luc Bondy, Deborah Warner, J. Claude Berutti, Jacques Lassalle, J. Louis Grinda, Luca Ronconi, Muriel Mayette, and choreographers, such as Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Lucinda Childs, and more recently with French film director Arnaud Desplechin. This year he designed the set for Rossini’s opera The Turk in Italy (Opéra de Monte-Carlo and Wien Staatsoper) with Cecilia Bartoli, the Darwin Smile performance by Isabelle Rossellini and Racin’s Berenice with Carole Bouquet in the lead role.
About the actress
Polona Vetrih is a well-known, recognized and popular Slovenian actress. She has created a series of successful roles in theater, film and television. After graduating from the Ljubljana Academy of Theater, Radio, Film and Television, she studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA), where she was named the most charming actress and the most talented student at the school. She was a longtime member of the ensemble SNG Drama Ljubljana. She has performed in many successful productions and has performed in theaters in Vienna, Prague, Belgrade, Geneva, Frankfurt, Bologna, London's West End, Tel Aviv and New York. She has received numerous awards for her work. Slovenian theater director Osip Šest said: "Theater can be without everything, except without an actor." Polona adds: "There is no theater without an audience."
