*** World premiere: 28 July 2022, Salzburger Festspiele ***
In La Ronde, premiered in Berlin in 1920 to great scandal and forbidden by its own playwright to be performed until 1982, Arthur Schnitzler dissects the masks of a society. Long leading a double life as a physician and artist, he uses his literary psychology to examine the anatomy of the so-called “soul”. Underneath it all, sex always emerges, as Schnitzler’s model deals with pre- and post-coital conversations. In La Ronde, prototypical figures of Viennese society make love in a kaleidoscope of ways that cut across classes, ages and genders, secretly uniting those who otherwise cannot come together in the publicly acceptable societal order.
For Yana Ross’s production, ten internationally renowned authors bring the material into the present day: Lydia Haider, Sofi Oksanen, Leïla Slimani, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Leif Randt, Mikhail Durnenkov, Hengameh Yaghoobifarah, Kata Wéber, Jonas Hassen Khemiri and Lukas Bärfuss have each rewritten one of the ten scenes of Schnitzler’s play. Using their reinterpretations, each of which resonates in its own way, director Yana Ross is hot on the trail of our zeitgeist, asking which masks of today are in need of dissection.
