“Condensations” is the festival’s new theatre format: two highly topical texts by Olga Flor and Nataliya Lizorkina are condensed and brought to the stage in a focused double bill in a single evening. Both authors play, with relish, with dystopian fantasies of the present and the future, and with survival strategies that promise happiness in hostile environments. Emerging directing talents Jakob Leanda Wernisch and Ira Süssenbach transform these brand-new texts into sensual stage experiences, supported by two outstanding actresses.
And perhaps, incidentally, humanity does not want to be saved at all. It is inconvenient at the moment.
Olga Flor, “Ein kurzes Buch zum fröhlichen Untergang”
I am a soldier’s mother. I have a right to know how he survived.
Nataliya Lizorkina, “Wanja ist am Leben”
Olga Flor’s novel “Ein kurzes Buch zum fröhlichen Untergang” opens the evening with a post-apocalyptic thought experiment: when the Earth’s axis actually tilts, humanity must reorganise. Armanda, too, gathers the sad remnants of her belongings and sets out in search of her daughter, who has joined a team of researchers. Now she must learn to survive in a world where day and night have fallen out of sync. On her journey she meets an octopus. The new ecological conditions prove to be a perfect habitat for this species, and so the octopus glides through dangerous terrain as Armanda’s only companion.
With great irony and scientific precision, Olga Flor describes humanity’s carelessness. The level of detail in her vision of the future is both fascinating and frightening. A story of unwavering will to live—and its futility—adapted by director and playwright Jakob Leanda Wernisch.
After the interval, the play “Wanja ist am Leben” by Nataliya Lizorkina follows. Mother Alya rummages through old messages and pictures of her son Wanja, who has “gone to peace”. She passes the time in the seemingly blissful, tranquil village, in sunny, carefree everyday life. Here everyone speaks the most beautiful sentences, such as: Wanja is alive! How wonderful that sounds. Yet language turns into its own opposite when the dictionary of war is rewritten. An absurd anti-war theatre piece, adapted by Ira Süssenbach, who—like the author herself—has emigrated from Russia.
Premiere:
Wed February 24, 2027 | 7:30 PM*
Performances:
Thu March 4 | 7:30 PM*
Fri March 12 | 7:30 PM*
Sat March 20 | 3:30 PM*
* Pre-performance Introduction: 30 minutes before the start of the event.
Bahngasse 27, 2700 Wiener Neustadt
German
approx. 1 hr 50 min, incl. 1 interval
Standard: €40 (open seating)
Early Bird (until 31/12/2026):
Standard: €35 (open seating)
U30 ticket: €8
Further discounts here
Acting: Isabella Wolf & Doina Weber
Direction: Jakob Leanda Wernisch & Ira Süssenbach
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: Olga Flor & Nataliya Lizorkina (translation: Maria Agni)
Adaptation: Wortwiege
With the kind permission of Olga Flor & Nataliya Lizorkina
A Wortwiege production, supported by the Province of Lower Austria and the City of Wiener Neustadt.
Olga Flor
Writer Olga Flor, born in Vienna in 1968, lives in Graz. After completing a degree in physics, she worked in multimedia. She writes novels, short prose, essays, theatre and music-theatre works, as well as contributions to daily newspapers and magazines, e.g. Der Standard and Berliner Zeitung. She teaches “creative writing” in the Language Arts programme at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and in German Studies at the University of Graz. Together with Hildegard Kernmayer, she curated the exhibition “Im Krug zum Grünen Kranze. Peter Rosegger in Graz”, grazMuseum 2013.
She writes symposium contributions and keynotes as well as speeches, such as “Kipppunkte” for the 150th anniversary of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, in 2022. Olga Flor has received numerous awards, was a fellow of “Prague City of Literature” in 2024, and was awarded the Austrian FRANZ KAFKA PRIZE in 2026. Her novel “Ein kurzes Buch zum fröhlichen Untergang” was published in 2025.
Nataliya Lizorkina
Russian playwright and screenwriter Nataliya Lizorkina, born in 1990 and living in exile, studied at film school and at the University of Printing Arts in Moscow. “Wanja ist am Leben” was shortlisted for the international playwriting competition Eurodram 2024 and was shown at the Edinburgh Festival and on numerous other European stages, including in London, Berlin, San Francisco, Tel Aviv, Paris, Granada, Belgrade, Stockholm and Yerevan. In 2022, she left Russia because of her political stance against the war and now lives in Georgia.
Lizorkina is currently artistic director of the independent playwriting festival “Ljubimowka”. Founded in 1990, the festival offered contemporary Russian playwrights a platform until 2022. Since then, it has taken place in numerous European countries, continuing to bring the voices of Russian-language playwrights who refuse to be silenced into the public sphere.
Jakob Leanda Wernisch
Director, author and actor Jakob Leanda Wernisch, born in Vienna in 2002, completed his directing studies at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in 2026, where the previous year he presented his play “Keine Hoffnung, Baby!” as his graduation project. The production was invited to the Körber Studio Junge Regie 2026 at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg and to the Woche der jungen Regie at Staatstheater Meiningen, where it received two awards. During his studies he was involved in a wide range of projects, including staging his first original theatre text “Bent Boys Boi Band”, the Vienna premiere of Christiane Karoline Schlegel’s “Düval und Charmille”, and the performance “Call Me (,) Daddy”, which was also shown at the PLUG&PLAY theatre festival for emerging directors at Staatstheater Mainz and at Munich’s UWE:festival for student productions from across Europe, as well as repeatedly as a guest performance at Dschungel Wien for young audiences. He also worked as a lecturer at the Music and Art Schools of Lower Austria, where he realised theatre projects with children and young people.
Ira Süssenbach
Director Ira Süssenbach, born in 1992, grew up in Russia but left the country in 2012 due to the political situation and moved to Austria. She first studied economics in Moscow and Vienna and then worked as a risk manager in the banking sector.
In 2023, she completed her directing studies at the Max Reinhardt Seminar with distinction. In 2024, she staged Sławomir Mrożek’s “Schlachthof – wir essen nur Karfiol” at the Wortwiege Festival and Christine Nöstlinger’s “Konrad oder Das Kind aus der Konservenbüchse” at Schauspielhaus Salzburg. In 2025, as part of her work as assistant director, she played a key role in “Alles Gerettet”, and in 2026 she directed “Das Volksfest” by Helmut Qualtinger and Carl Merz. She is a founding member of the cultural association “Karfiolkollektiv”.
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
