A group of people dressed in black cavort on the stage of the Helmut List-Halle Detroit in Graz around a kind of floating house that hangs from the ceiling as a steel frame and only almost reaches the stage floor.
They are friends and relatives, people
different generations who talk about their personal fates after a funeral service – everything revolves around the topic of heirs.
“Who gets the house?” is the name of the joint production by the independent theater collective Planet Party Principle and Theater im Bahnhof, in which the directing duo Nora Köhler and Helmut Köpping raise questions that move many people.
“Because it affects us all”
“We have been dealing with this topic for over a year now. Two groups, around 15 actors and the directing team, have researched and delved deeper into this topic – because it affects us all and because it has important questions
Society,” says Köpping about the motivation, and Köhler adds: “We have this theme of justice, which is somehow always juxtaposed with these personal stories and with death and this grief. Juxtaposing these two themes in this way interested us from the beginning.”
Around 15 different voices have their say in the play, from the excessively ashamed sole heir to the young man for whom his father’s collection of hunting antlers will remain his only inheritance – and concerns about the threat of poverty in old age soon arise.
To be thought-provoking
With their piece, the two Graz theater collectives want to encourage the audience to think, says Nora Köhler: “In principle, we don’t try to convey a message to the audience in our works, but rather that we want to raise questions, that people get into conversation, maybe see topics from a different perspective and maybe after the play are more open to talk about it, what do I inherit, what do I want to pass on to the next generation. And what is fair and how can I stand up for it, for justice?”
Party atmosphere, lots of emotions and the big question of justice – “Who gets the house?” deals with all of this. in the Helmut-List-Halle Detroit in Graz.
