Nominated for the Nestroy Prize 2021 in the Corona Special Prize category!

The theaters stood empty for months. Performances in front of filled halls were prohibited until further notice. Visits to exhibitions by individuals, however, were allowed. The black box theater consequently became a white cube museum and exhibits itself: the phenomenon of people coming together here to see art. What connected the people here echoed in the empty rooms - storms of emotion, laughter, tears and applause. But what is left of a fleeting theatrical performance anyway? Recordings, reviews and even directing books represent only part of the performance. Hormones, smells, texture have left other traces. In their emptiness, the auditorium, stage, cloakrooms and light bridges develop the charm of ruins: post-spectacle. The stage and its surroundings as a temporary ruin of a ritual meeting place. An archeology of the representation of society. Removed layer by layer, the building reveals what theater was, is, and can be.
How much of it can be technically simulated, reproducible, synchronized? What if the world simulation machine theater sets itself in motion and the audience slips into the center of the action?
COVID-19 has made possible what no other theater could afford: an entire house plays for one person. As in Andrei Tarkowski's film STALKER, every five minutes a visitor carefully walks through the corridors, wearing headphones and gloves, they step through the empty rows in the auditorium onto the lower stage and enter the labyrinth of the fiction machine. The black box opens to the reconstructing researchers and asks the question: where are the others? In times of social distance and isolation, it is important to discover what community means.
Memory works like a palimpsest made up of many layers. Stefan Kaegi from Rimini Protokoll accepts experts in political community, simulation and memory; People whose lives are connected to these spaces and the idea of ​​theater: make-up artists and prompts, ensemble members and philosophers ...
Between their binaurally staged voices and site-specific sounds, a trail emerges through the body of the theater, which en passant could become a walk into the subconscious of society.
For the Volkstheater, which was closed for a whole year not only because of the pandemic, but also for a complete renovation, Stefan Kaegi is developing the approach of his play BLACK BOX. The original idea arose in the Théâtre Vidy in Lausanne, the premises of which were demolished shortly afterwards to make way for a new building, and was then continued in the Staatsschauspiel Stuttgart, a house that had to completely shut down theater for months.
Nobody knows what situation the adaptation of BLACK BOX will encounter in Vienna. Will the play reflect the awakening of the Volkstheater from its slumber, guide the audience - as an audio walk - for the first time through the newly shining rooms and ask the question which traces of its changeful history have been erased and which are still noticeable? Or do the currently unpredictable conditions force the play into a more forensic-archaeological perspective: theater, what it once was - and what it could be again in the future once we have put this dark time behind us?

Take about 1,000 steps on the tour into the different corners of the theater - from the light bridge at the top to the prompter box at the bottom - your own memory trail.
Visiting the production is not barrier-free. The audio walk and the directions are in German.