Das flüssige Land (THE FLUID LAND)

Physicist Ruth subsists on a diet of sleeping pills and stimulants. A call from a police officer tears her out of her stupor, when she is told that her parents have died in a car accident. In an almost crazed state, she travels from Vienna to Groß-Einland, her parents’ hometown, to personally take care of the funeral arrangements. In this tiny, remote village, she soon falls under the spell of the locals and their bizarre coping mechanisms for both small and big incidents. She discovers that there is an enormous hollow space in the ground beneath the village that threatens to swallow up houses, churches and town squares. The locals are very tight-lipped about it and Ruth notices that there are dark secrets lurking in this underground cavity that turn her view of the world, of herself and her sense of time upside down.

Author Raphaela Edelbauer’s 2019 novel combines classic motifs derived from Austrian (Anti-)Heimat literature with those of a young, urban generation searching for meaning. DAS FLÜSSIGE LAND has enjoyed great success since its publication has been shortlisted for both the Austrian and the German Book Prize. In her directorial debut at the Burgtheater, Sara Ostertag (Nestroy Theatre Award 2018), together with musician and composer Paul Plut (RAMSAU AM DACHSTEIN NACH DER APOKALYPSE), dives into a both magical and realistic world of villages and demons, of the Kafkaesque search for connection in a reality that seems to be fading away.