There are very few books in the future as imagined by Vladimir Sorokin in his most recent novel Manaraga, staged for steirischer herbst ’19 by director Blanka Rádóczy. The remaining choice editions feature in a new and highly illegal gourmet dining experience, during which the rich and powerful enjoy cuts of Kobe beef and even carrot burgers grilled on the last editions of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Such cooking demands great skill, as books only burn well when fed to the fire page by page. The chefs in charge are all members of a secretive guild, the Book’n’Grillers, who allocate tasks and ensure that all the rules are followed—by force, if need be. Sorokin’s novel follows one of them, the Hungarian chef Geza, who accepts a job at Mount Manaraga in the Urals and finds himself on a mission that turns both his own life and that of all Book’n’Grillers upside down. Rádóczy’s staging for two actors takes the audience to a conspiratorial guild meeting of book-burning chefs and to the heart of Sorokin’s novel. It reads as an incisive comment on the culinary obsessions of today’s elites and their treatment of culture as little more than a backdrop to rare and decadent gastronomic pleasures. 

Text: Vladimir Sorokin 
Director, stage design: Blanka Rádóczy
Stage design, costumes: Marie-Luce Theis
Sound design, composition: Florentin Berger-Monit, Johannes Wernicke 
Translation: Andreas Tretner
With: Mathias Lodd, Lukas Walcher
Dramaturgy (Schauspielhaus Graz): Martin Baasch, Karla Mäder

Link

https://2019.steirischerherbst.at/en/program/artists/436/blanka-rdczy-vladimir-sorokin