Nesterval
A Gloomy Christmas at Grimm’s House
In the holiday season, as usual, Vienna is ablaze with light, bustling with anticipation of the most beautiful time of the year – and the Nesterval House is no expection. But the cosy candle light throws dark shadows, with the ghosts of the past crawling out of them. In A Gloomy Christmas at Grimm’s House, the Vienna-based performance collective Nesterval lures the audience to Martha Nesterval’s Christmas party, where past conflicts, suppressed and forgotten, have been neatly wrapped and placed under the tree. But all the tinsel and nicely tied ribbons cannot disguise all the dark secrets and memories.
Doors 6.30 pm, start 7 pm. After 7 pm the late entry is possible. Admission age: 18 years. There will be a waiting list on the respective event days, which is available from 6.30 pm and over which the few remaining tickets are assigned, if occasional audience should not appear. Further information www.nesterval.at
It’s Christmas of 1954. Martha Nesterval decides to take her patients on a trip to the big city to visit the head doctors of Pea Sanatorium, the Brothers Grimm, at the former Angel Hospice. The Grimms look forward to the visit, they are in their best Christmas mood. Some Nesterval family members also invite themselves to this peaceful joint Christmas celebration.
There’s the tree-decorating, the singing of Christmas carols and wrapping of presents, and even a Christmas pageant is scheduled. The terribly quirky, even crazy patients of Pea Sanatorium face both the visitors and the truth with cheerful eyes. They use the holiday tranquillity to think about the past, and the past is all but Christmassy in this house; the ghosts of the past cannot be driven out with cookies and eggnog. Christmas is a time of love, but how shall one love when one cannot forget and when Herr Rainer keeps screaming and screaming. Or was it not Herr Rainer…? A Christmas carol on fairy-tales, remembrance, forgetting and suppression.
Nesterval’s cast includes performers, drag artists, amateur and professional actors, who outline the history of the Nesterval family in various constellations. In a mix of classic gaming and immersive theatre, Herr Finnland and his team create performance adventures that turn their participants into actors in the play, authorised to determine what happens next. Nesterval’s productions include the brut co-productions The Village (2018/19) and Nesterval’s Dirty Faust (2017/18) as well as Nesterval’s Shock-Headed Peter (karlsplatz.org, 2018), Nesterval. The Final Ball (imagetanz Festival, 2016) and The Return of Eleonore Nesterval (steirischer herbst, 2015).
Credits
Concept & Direction Herr Finnland Script Frau Löfberg Choreography Jerôme Knowls Equipment Andrea Konrad Head of production Nesterval Pamina Puls Production Willy Mutzenpachner Assistant Director Josef Rabitsch Equipment Assistant Christoph Anders Sound Design Alkis Vlassakakis Graphic Design Rita Brandneulinger Cast Sabine Anders, Rita Brandneulinger, Cuqui Espinoza, Julia Fuchs, Nicole Gerfertz, Bernhard Hablé, Laura Hermann, Romy Hrubeš, Daniel Ibel, Niklas-Sven Kerck, Lu Ki, Peter Kraus, Erwin Lummerstorfer, Astôn Matters, Willy Mutzenpachner, Pamina Puls, Andy Reiter, Johannes Scheutz, Claudia Six, Fräulein Stulle, Alexandra Thompson, Lorenz Tröbinger, Herr Walanka, Anne Wieben
Dates & Tickets
November 2019
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December 2019
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brut im Gewerbehaus
Rudolf-Salinger-Platz 1, 1030 Wien
Info
Doors 6.30 pm, start 7 pm. After 7 pm the late entry is possible. Admission age: 18 years. There will be a waiting list on the respective event days, which is available from 6.30 pm and over which the few remaining tickets are assigned, if occasional audience should not appear. Further information www.nesterval.at
Special event: the price with the brut annual pass is the same as the reduced price of 23 €.
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