The boundaries between image and text, acting and film, reality and animation are blurred in the productions of the British theater group “1927”: “More than everything in the world” is their latest “graphic novel” which premieres in the Academy Theater on Saturday. The thematically new territory has been ventured and a very personal story has been processed: an absent father writes from prison to his children, who think he is on an adventure.
“We’ve always been interested in the justice system, but never thought of doing a play about it,” says author and director Suzanne Andrade in an APA interview. A few years ago she came across letters she received from her own father while he was in prison when she was just 12 years old. “As I read those letters, I realized that this could be a way to do a play about the justice system and tell the story from the outside perspective of the family.” written as if he was having a wonderful time there and having a great time” so as not to alarm the children.
While Andrade, who co-directs the play with Esme Appleton, knew where her father was when she was a teenager, this knowledge remains murky for the children Kim and Davey in the play. They think he’s on a mysterious special mission, which he reports on imaginatively. “In our last project, we worked with old folk tales, so we could hide behind other people’s stories,” Andrade reflects on the potential pressure of a personal story. “But the truth is, those letters were just a stepping stone to the story we’re about to tell. We have strayed very far from the origin story and have a healthy distance.”
The reason for the father’s absence is not so much in the foreground as the motive of the absent parent. “Many people know the feeling of having an absent parent, in different ways.” Thus, the play, in which Andrea Wenzl, Stefanie Dvorak, Markus Meyer, Alexandra Henkel and Isabella Knöll are on stage, deals with “universal themes of growing up”. .
Meanwhile, the visual implementation is much more special: the entire stage design is animated and consists of over 500 individual digital elements that are recorded live. What happens when the actors skip a few pages of text? Andrade thinks for a moment: “You won’t skip any pages of text,” she laughs. “If they get out of step, they have to find a way back.” Ultimately, the production is also a “dialogue between technician and actor, since everything is recorded live”. How “1927” works was last seen in this country at the Salzburg Festival in 2014 at the world premiere of “Golem”, her “Magic Flute” made a guest appearance in the Festspielhaus St. Pölten in the same year.
Two years of preparation went into “More than Everything in the World”, and the text was still being adapted during the rehearsals in Vienna. “We also often went back to the animation studio,” explains the director, who wrote most of the text in isolation during various corona lockdowns. In any case, she does not want to compare the isolation in prison with that of the lockdowns. Rather, she read a lot about the life of people in prison during the preparation.
The result should be a production that is aimed at all age groups (from 8 years of age). It is neither a play for young people nor a play for adults. “We’ve always made pieces that anyone can look at and pull out something for themselves.”
“More Than Anything in the World” by Suzanne Andrade in the Akademietheater. Directed by Suzanne Andrade and Esme Appleton, Set, Animation and Video by Paul Barritt, Costumes by Sarah Munro, AV Operator by Leann Skyes-Hooban, Lights by Marcus Loran, Music by Laurence Owen. Premieres October 8, 5 p.m. Further performances: October 12th, 14th and 30th. Info and tickets below burgtheater.at