ecology  |  full text  |  pipelines

AUSTRIA / 2022

Magdalena Schrefel – What ignites, what burns

The play is part of the Pipelines project, and was created in collaboration with Schauspielhaus Graz

In the subsoil of Europe, a branched circulatory system of crude oil is relaxing. Pipelines run through the continent like lifelines and fuel our hunger for energy. Despite all efforts, global oil production has increased continuously over the past fifty years. Nothing, it seems, can stop the catastrophic cycle.

"What ignites, what burns" is about two young women who try anyway. The Kleist Prize winner Magdalena Schrefel has taken on the Austrian part and designed a theatrical road movie along the Adria-Vienna pipeline. It shows the journey of its two heroines across Austria and the endless expanses of the Internet and describes their encounters with climate activists, various eccentric figures of the fossil age and their radicalization: How can narrative means blow up a pipeline?

The play premiered in Schauspielhaus Graz in January 2022, staged by German director Marie Bues.

DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLY

ecology  |  full text  |  pipelines

ALBANIA / 2021

Elsa Demo – Grayish Green Into Black

The play is part of the Pipelines project, and was created in collaboration with the National Theatre of Albania

One winter day, an oil well bursts, in the triangle between the houses, the village cemetery and the ghost cinema. The house, the cemetery, the cinema, come as witnesses of a time that is older than the one the contemporary family lives in. Thus times join the wings, the past echoes the present, places echo people to say that the need for survival controls and challenges the spiritual needs within people of same kin, who are also the miniature of a polarized society.

DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLY

ecology  |  corruption  |  full text  |  pipelines

MALTA / 2022

Simone Spiteri – Wolf/Sheep

The play is part of the Pipelines project, and was created in collaboration with Teatru Malta

The fuel industry is fueled by corruption, corruption fuels the fuel company. Corruption fuels us all and we fuel it back. Even if we don't think we do, or refuse to accept that we do. Wolf/Sheep is a play about this vicious cycle: a massive iceberg, not its tip ... we all know who those people up there are, but its base is Us. You. Me. And how we all, by doing nothing or thinking there is nothing to do, have allowed these things to happen. Things of all sorts: the trivial, the inconsequential, but the horrific too.

Malta loves a nationwide blackout. Despite very recent state-of-the-art new fuel storage systems. But lack of actual light every now and then is not the only thing keeping us in the dark. Allegorical, satirical, political ... the play evaluates, observes and pushes the limits of a country (perhaps a world?) that can be as surreal as it is confused, noisy, passive, passionate and chaotic. Ultimately, we are all anesthetized, by the wolf, maybe? But the real question is what kind of fuel is our new opium and who are the real wolves and the real sheep?

The play will premiere at Teatru Malta in the season 2022/2023.

DOCUMENT AVAILABLE TO ETC MEMBERS ONLY

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