Series: Welt retten

The eighties; that was the end of the world: “The Day After”, forest dieback, AIDS – the end of the story, one way or another. Apocalyptic mood as a feeling of youth. The nineties were not exactly safer either: War edged close to the West, states split, international terrorism came into fashion, temperatures rose. But the individual mood was more resigned and everything had become very complicated: There were so many attempts to explain every problem. And at the same time, individual, very immediate problems came to the fore: patchwork families, precarious employment conditions, dissolved public spheres, and private lives made public.

So now what? The future of the world and the future of every individual is more uncertain than ever before. Things are obviously and terribly complicated. Still a kind of pragmatic optimism is giving rise to a surprisingly large potential. Self-confidently, people are demanding the right to the working hypothesis that it might be possible to save the world. “Saving the world” is an extreme metaphor for the consciously naive belief in the possibilities of action.

Seven international writers have accepted the task posed by steirischer herbst to focus on the question of saving the world in a short play. Three will be put on stage at this year’s festival by equally young, international theatre-makers with very different individual styles.