Peer Gynt - Academy Theater Vienna

Peer Gynt is a theatrical figure that has long become a myth – a self-centered dreamer, fantasist, liar, an anti-hero, and a figure of identification in a world gone mad, which has lost all measure. As a young man, Peer Gynt leaves his Norwegian homeland and embarks on a journey across continents and through his own self, floating between dream and reality, always in search of his identity and his role in life. He traverses mountains and deserts, crosses seas and rivers, and encounters mythical beings from other worlds. He gains wealth in America, experiences himself as a spiritual person in Africa, and ultimately allows himself to be crowned emperor in a psychiatric hospital in Egypt. At the end of his life, having returned to his homeland, Peer Gynt must realize that he has lived past the essence of life, has become an average person like everyone else, and that only a long-forgotten love can save him from insignificance.

As an epic of a "self-actualizer," Henrik Ibsen wrote with the "dramatic poem" PEER GYNT in 1867 a key text about the modern human being. The restlessness and urgency with which Peer Gynt takes on and experiments with life plans, adopts and discards identities, taps into creative potential, and incurs guilt through greed and megalomania confronts us with our fragile existence and allows us to engage with our own dreams and longings, fears and hopes.

With a small ensemble and Mavie Hörbiger in the title role, Icelandic director Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson explores the central question of the text: Who am I? Am I a beggar or an emperor? Am I the beginning or the end?

Direction: Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson
Set Design: Daniel Angermayr
Costumes: Daniel Angermayr
Music: Gabriel Cazes
Lighting: Paul Eisemann
Dramaturgy: Anika Steinhoff

Cast:
Mavie Hörbiger - Peer Gynt
Barbara Petritsch - Aase, Peer's mother
Lilith Häßle - Solveig/Anitra/The Green/Ingrid
Johannes Zirner - The Stranger/The Button Maker/Crooked/Mr. von Eberkopf/Quill
Nils Strunk - Matz Moen/Begriffenfeld/Dovrealte/Mr. Cotton
Gabriel Cazes - Live Music