Philipp Hochmair - Werther!

Philipp Hochmair
Werther! What relevance does Goethe's emotionally charged epistolary novel about the lovesick Werther have in the age of Facebook, Twitter, and "iPhone" culture? Philipp Hochmair tells Werther's story using the original text from a personal, contemporary perspective. A performance that straddles the line between reading, monodrama, and performance art. An invitation to perhaps the most famous ego trip in German literature. Since 1997, "Werther!" has been on a successful tour. A youthful stroke of genius by the two theater artists. The low-budget production has made its way from a classroom in Nuremberg to the Vienna Burgtheater, with international performances from Moscow to Bogotá. Philipp Hochmair begins reading from Goethe's epistolary novel and immerses himself in Werther's emotional states in front of a camera. A young man, away from home for the first time, plunges into an impossible love story while observing and enjoying his emotional world. His video projections become a road movie, a trap of his vanity. An introspection into the soul of an unfortunate person, into the mechanisms of self-destruction. An invitation to perhaps the most famous ego trip in German literature. "Goethe's Werther was created in just a few weeks and became the book of the moment overnight. The urgency, the pressing need contained in this text has lost none of its intensity even 250 years later. In keeping with its contemporary relevance, we have also placed it musically in a new context that simultaneously underscores its timelessness." Philipp Hochmair