Manhattan Project - Salzburg State Theatre

A group of brilliant Hungarian scientists flees from the Europe of racial laws in the 1940s. They gather in New York and are the first to address the possibility of the military use of uranium. It is feared that work is already underway in the "Reich." The powerful financier Alexander Sachs, a Lithuanian Jew, establishes an impressive fundraising network from Wall Street. The focal point of Massini's latest play is Robert Oppenheimer, a scientist with a restless and constantly contested profile, who chose "the search for a logic to the bitter end" as a child, which was meant to protect him from his inner monsters. It is he, a tortured, fragile man, who is entrusted by Vannevar Bush in 1942 with the scientific leadership of the Manhattan Project, in a crescendo of tension that goes hand in hand with the overwhelming rise of the Berlin war machine and the Japanese Empire.

The play portrays a frightened and confused humanity called to celebrate the connection between science and the first true weapon of mass destruction. Meanwhile, the cries of the deported and those from the burning ghettos of Europe resonate.

Stefano Massini, born in 1975 in Florence, is one of the most important new authors of Italian theater. Since 2000, he has worked as a director, and in 2005 he was awarded the coveted Premio Pier Vittorio Tondelli as a writer. His list of nominations and awards is long. His play "Lehman Brothers," directed by Claus Tröger, was extremely successful in Salzburg.

Director Claus Tröger has long been closely associated with the Salzburg State Theatre. In addition to directing in South Tyrol, Bavaria, and Bautzen, he returns artistically to Salzburg once a year. He is a master of dramatic form and has impressively staged works such as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", "Lehman Brothers," and Horváth's "Hin und Her" in the set design by Erich Uiberlacker.