Among Animals

When money concentrates power and credit constantly creates new money, many people shirk their responsibilities. Austrian Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek follows the trail of money all the way to the depths of the global financial system. Pigeons, cows, and pigs powerfully illustrate our transparent venality and utter lack of responsibility. Oscillating between comedy and unease, the play shows how life itself becomes a commodity and how cruelty becomes routine in a thoroughly economized and corrupt society. What happens to our language, to our coexistence, when everything has a price? Jelinek’s text is a ruthless reckoning with the logic of exploitation: We are all animals of this system.

Tyrolean director Peter Lorenz approaches the text as a radical diagnosis of the present. Together with the Oberland hip-hop group “Von Seiten der Gemeinde,” Jelinek’s world is also explored musically with wit and precise intuition. This focused production situates global financial events specifically in Innsbruck. Our systems allow unscrupulous investment cowboys like René Benko to undermine the rule of law and trust in democracy! In collaboration with Innsbruck-based artist Katharina Cibulka, an activist-feminist approach with strong local ties takes shape. The set and costumes allow us to feel the hypocrisy and economic violence up close and in a way that fills the space. 

Who actually checks before granting a loan? If everyone forgives everything, then you don’t hold anything against yourself when you do business with other people’s money…
Elfriede Jelinek