WOLFGANG

In 2006, a piece of news toured the world: in an Austrian town, Natascha Kampusch was freed after having been held captive in a cellar for eight years; her abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, had kidnapped her at the age of 10.

And in 2007 we haveWOLFGANG, a play written by Yannis Mavritsakis, awarded with Palmarès 2010 by Commission Nationale de l’Aide à la Création de Textes Dramatiques, Paris.

Meeting director Radu Afrim, Mavritsakis’text becomes the structure on which there grows an electrifying stage universe, completed by the abrasive honesty of extreme states of mind. Beyond the real event that astonished the world, the stake of the performance becomes considering the different ways contemporary people seek escape routes from a standardized conformist environment, in which they no longer have a place. Some rely on extreme violent gestures that stupefy an entire community, while others are forced to move through a radical experience in order to understand the profound mechanisms that ignited this violence. More than physical liberation, this understanding grants the victim complete freedom, including that allowing her to forgive the abuser.

„This performance shows how frail we are, but also speaks about captivity, that is not necessarily a cellar or a car trunk – it can be one’s own family, city, country, with which you develop a love-hate relationship. It also interrogates the limits of our endurance, and whether we prefer a noxious cohabitation to saving ourselves.“ (RADU AFRIM)