EIN SPORTPLATZ / SPORTS GROUND

Performance in public space by God’s Entertainment & Karl Wratschko

SYNOPSIS:

Sports Ground takes place at “the sports ground Heldenplatz, a contemporary memory site par excellence” (© House of Austrian History). Large-scale sporting events — sometimes with a political background — have been held here since the 1920s, often virulently reminiscent of the crowd scenes in Einar Schleef’s/Elfriede Jelinek’s production Ein Sportstück. In the play, this location, occupying such a central place in the country, functions as a permanent place of political division and unification.

Interweaving motifs from Elfriede Jelinek’s Ein Sportstück and Thomas Bernhard’s Heldenplatz, the performance features groups walking towards each other without ever arriving to the “Others.” Over the loudspeakers, cut-up, disjointed, defamiliarized scraps of material are played to create a superordinate space of the in-between, and enable an experience of blending and simultaneity of past and present - Austria’s past is present.

With the support of the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna - MA7 and SHIFT III - Basis Kultur Wien

Photo: Andreas "Muk" Haider