Lida Winiewicz’s rediscovered comedy “Das Zimmer” tells the story of a claustrophobic, exceptional situation. An officer finds himself suddenly dependent on his servant. Hierarchies and convictions are thrown into disarray, and life’s big questions become unavoidable. Bitingly funny, eerie, and of oppressive intensity.
You cannot see yourself as I see you. Never.
Following an illegal duel, the aristocratic officer Xavier is sentenced to six weeks of house arrest. Together with his pragmatic servant Giannetti, he finds himself in his hermetically sealed chamber. Xavier recapitulates his life so far and puts his interpersonal relationships to the test. Who is he really, when status, rank, education, and ancestry are stripped away?
What begins as a class conflict quickly develops into a rapturous dramaturgy of confinement, in which the boundaries between reality, fever dreams, and a self-staging born of necessity blur relentlessly. Between naked existential fear, absurdly comic role-playing, shifts in power, and paranoid episodes, the isolation of the arrest reveals a profound, dark bond between two contrasting people who can exist neither with nor without each other.
Lida Winiewicz named her main character after the author Xavier de Maistre, whose novel “A Journey Around My Room” inspired not only the title but also the content of the play. With her adaptation of the novel, Winiewicz succeeds in creating a humorous, high-definition portrayal of the anatomy of power and powerlessness, social roles, and one’s own naked existence. After its World Premiere in 1977, the play was not shown again until 2019 as a staged reading at the Festival Neues Wiener Volkstheater. Now, director Azelia Opak stages Winiewicz’s text, condensed into an intimate, comic two-person drama in which it remains uncertain until the very end who is controlling whom.
Premiere:
Fri February 19, 2027 |7:30 PM*
Performances:
Sun February 28 | 3:30 PM*
Tue March 2 | 7:30 PM
Sat March 6 | 7:30 PM*
Wed March 10 | 7:30 PM*
Sun March 14 | 3:30 PM*
Wed March 17 | 7:30 PM*
Sat March 20 | 7:30 PM
* Pre-performance Introduction: 30 minutes before the start of the event.
Bahngasse 27, 2700 Wiener Neustadt
German
approx. 90 min, no intermission
Regular: €50 (Cat 1) | €42 (Cat 2)
Early Bird (until Dec 31, 2026):
Regular: €45 (Cat 1) | €38 (Cat 2)
U30 Ticket: €12
For further discounts, see here
Cast: Lukas Haas, Petra Staduan and Jakob Leanda Wernisch as well as Martin Schwanda (on film)
Direction: Azelia Opak
Set Design: Andreas Lungenschmid
Costume Design: Antoaneta Stereva Di Brolio
Hair and Makeup: Henriette Zwölfer
Music & Film: Christian Mair
Lighting Design: Lukas Kaltenbäck, Ludwig Drahosch
Dramaturgy: Marie-Therese Handle-Pfeiffer
Text: Lida Winiewicz
Version: Wortwiege
Performance Rights: Thomas Sessler Verlag, Vienna
A Wortwiege production, supported by the Province of Lower Austria and the City of Wiener Neustadt.
Lida Winiewicz
Born on March 17, 1928, in Vienna, Lida Winiewicz completed her vocal studies at the University of Music. She subsequently studied English, French, and Italian. She lost her mother early; her father remarried a Jewish woman, which forced the couple to flee the Nazi regime. Although the escape was initially successful, her father was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942. His daughters were able to stay with their aunt in Vienna as so-called “quarter-Jews.” Lida Winiewicz translated several literary works, including those by Marivaux, Colette, Graham Greene, and others. She herself wrote plays, radio plays, and novels, as well as numerous screenplays for film and television. She also penned the libretti for two successful musicals. In 1960, Winiewicz won first prize in the playwriting competition of the “Theater der Courage,” led by Stella Kadmon, with the drama “Das Leben meines Bruders.” This was followed by other frequently performed plays, such as “Die Flucht,” “Die Wohnung,” “Späte Gegend” (the stage version of her successful novella), “Miami Murder Show,” and “Time out.” She is particularly well known for her novels “Die Kinder gehen in die Oper” and her final work, “Späte Gegend. Protokoll eines Lebens.” She passed away in Vienna in 2020 at the age of 92.
Azelia Opak
Azelia Opak is a Vienna-born theatre and opera director. After graduating in Theatre, Film, and Media Studies from the University of Vienna and completing numerous assistantships in Europe, Turkey, and the USA, she finished her directing studies at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in 2022 and has since worked as a freelance director. Her productions include the children’s opera “Die Odyssee des Telemachos” at Dschungel Wien, for which she also wrote the libretto. She also wrote and directed “Greta – eine theatrale Recherche” at Schauspielhaus Salzburg. Furthermore, she staged “Ritter, Dene, Voss (Winderlich, Rose, Tuppy)” at Schlosstheater Schönbrunn. For the Wortwiege Festival, she directed Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus” in 2022 as well as “Quais de Seine” by Alexandra Badea in 2025. www.azeliaopak.com
In conversation. Dramaturg and author Peter Roessler on the Viennese Kasperl, the fascination of horror, and how history takes effect in the present (and beyond).
© Victoria Nazarova
