Wolken.Heim. / Am Königsweg

With the consent of Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, two of her works will be performed together at the Salzburg State Theater, which complement each other in the examination of our small world and the larger world that surrounds it.

In “Wolken.Heim.” a “we” is formed that confirms itself in xenophobia and isolation and creates its identity through the exclusion of the other. The longing and search for clear affiliations, cohesion and a national identity accompany every sentence, turning assumptions into certainties and assertions into facts and leading equally to the poet's heaven, the ivory tower and the maximum security wing. “Am Königsweg” describes the despot’s rage. It describes the big world. The big world that constantly comes to us via all channels, televisions, newspapers, computers and telephones. It sounds: “The king, he is finally here!” – the “strong leader” for whom the people have so longed and long, who all operate with right-wing ideas, be it in America, Russia, Italy, Great Britain, Hungary , Germany or Austria.

The Salzburg connection of Elfriede Jelinek's text “Am Königsweg” with her piece “Wolken.Heim” is an investigation of right-wing, authoritarian and xenophobic ideas in world politics and in private life, on the world stage and in the living room.

Elfriede Jelinek (*1946) has received a number of awards for her work, including the Georg Büchner Prize. Her entire work is characterized by a wide variety of topics that touch on the fields of gender emancipation, sexuality, life and death, the parent-child relationship and home. In 2004 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Johannes Ender studied at the University of Oxford and the University of Damascus, he lived and worked in Paris and London as well as on NGO projects in Nepal, Uganda and Syria. Productions have taken him, among other things, to Hamburg, Berlin, London, Tehran, Munich, Kiel and Dresden. With Hanna Landes he realized numerous works in Salzburg, among others. Jelinek's “The Light in the Box”.