Whatsapp Stories
© SLT / Christian Krautzberger

Whatsapp Stories

Ronnie Brodetzky

Österreichische Erstaufführung: 26. September 2024 / Kammerspiele

Synopsis

Ronnie Brodetzky’s new play consists entirely of WhatsApp voice messages and chats. Multifaceted, existentialist, moving and incredibly funny – these attributes aptly describe the multidimensional virtual conversations. The soccer team, the parents’ group at the local kindergarten, the family chat group, the tenants’ group: The Israeli theatre artist specializes in elevating everyday situations and finding creative ways to present them on stage.

Brodetzky and her team impressively illustrate how our phone conversations reflect the entire range of human experience, from the most banal comments to tragic blows of fate. At a rapid pace, the audience is immersed in various life realities, in professional and very private conversations, in social debates and political movements – a curiosity cabinet of conversations that is as diverse and peculiar as life itself.

“It is about a certain perspective on the here and now and about trying to understand what this technology means for our lives. The play is funny and, to me, deeply moving. I think everybody will be able to relate to it”, Brodetzky says about the project. And so, everybody is welcome, from those who mostly write one-liners to those who type out entire novels.

Author and director Ronnie Brodetzky studied directing at the arts faculty of the “Kibbutzim College of Education, Technology and the Arts” and completed the interdisciplinary master programme at Tel Aviv University. The satiric staging of unconventional documentary approaches is typical of her work. In Salzburg she has for instance presented “Aquarium” and “1000 Tutorials”.

Brodetzky’s examination of our use of chat programmes was originally created in 2023 for the Tzavta Theatre in Tel Aviv under the title “Typing...WhatsApp chats from real life” and is now being adapted for the Kammerspiele stage of the Salzburg State Theatre. Together with Brodetzky, stage and costume designer Ruth Miller and choreographer Tal Cohn return to Salzburg, who have previously generated strongly aesthetic and energetic settings for “Aquarium” and “1000 Tutorials”.

Duration: 1 h 30 min