SCHWARZE SPIEGEL | BLACK MIRRORS

After the brilliant stage adaptation of Bernward Vesper's The Journey, the latest collaboration of Théâtre National du Luxembourg with the critically acclaimed Viennese theater collective tangent.COLLABORATIONS once again deals with a great outsider of 20th century German Literature: Arno Schmidt. At the beginning of the 1950s, at a first peak of the Cold War, the author poetically and powerfully drafts the dystopia Black Mirrors, disturbing and fascinating at the same time. He paints the picture of our planet after a nuclear strike: apparently only one person has survived. Thrown back on himself, he works his way through the remnants of humanity and his existence. "Energy is a matter of luck": on his bicycle, the protagonist, who is writing a kind of chronicle, moves through rubble landscapes and nature like a cowboy in a Western, "windbag of the highest order, capable and unapologetic of any absurdity."

Schmidt's story is a striking rediscovery, a sparkling, masterly work of Literature. In Kathrin Herm's stage version of Black Mirrors in a set by award-winning set-designer Mirjam Stängl, Aleksandra Ćorović and Jan Plewka embark on an abysmal, sensual, musical and humorous trip without a return ticket that you should not miss.

photo credit: Mirjam Stängl