2024 DIE ROLLSTÜHLE

set design for DIE ROLLSTÜHLE, at Theater am Werk (Vienna/A), directed by Yosi Wanunu

Performance: Vladimir Cabak, Romina Kolb, Elisabeth Löffler, Cornelia Scheuer, Florian-Raphael Schwarz
Set Design: Paul Horn
Sound: Michael Strohmann
Make-up: Marietta Dang
Assistant Director: Charlotte Zorell
Written and directed by Yosi Wanunu
Produced by Kornelia Kilga

photos: Sandra Fockenberger, Paul Horn

„We had other options, but we chose to spend our lives in a chair. When God saw us, he said: I don’t want these women to work hard and get tired from walking. I want these women to be carried around like Fabergé eggs.“

Two women pass the time on a deserted stage playing private games and telling stories they only half-remember. Drifting around in their own world, they decide to share their wisdom with a lifelong circle of friends as they frantically push their wheelchairs around the empty stage.

The audience soon realises that the women are performing a loose version of Eugène Ionesco’s play ‘The Chairs’. Their version is an homage to Ionesco’s stated sources for his aesthetic – Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, old animated films. In Ionesco’s play, all the invited guests are imaginary, but in her version, all the guests are real.

As in an old vaudeville theatre, the sole purpose of these guests is to entertain the two women or to serve as an audience for them.

In The Wheelchairs, the absurdity of language is extended to include the absurdity of body language, which manifests itself in disabled bodies, which manifests itself in all bodies sitting in wheelchairs. How do we communicate the otherness of our bodies, our movements, our physical expressions?

Text: Theater am Werk