Inselliebe
For Wiener Festwochen 2025, I created Inselliebe, a performance in six tableaux.
The work explored Vienna’s Donauinsel, an artificial strip of land stretching 22 kilometers through the middle of the Donau. The island is a cross between a nature reserve, a leisure area, and a peripheral city. Since its creation as a water buffer area in the 1980s, it has come to symbolize “the free life”: a place of live and let live, of leisure, wilderness and disorder. Global issues seem to have no place here. No one has to do anything on the island, everyone just wants to be there. It is like a blank canvas, open to be painted according to one’s own taste.
Together with eighty Viennese, I created six theatrical tableaux that, like individual chapters of a book, each celebrated the theatrical, utopian power of the island. Each of the six scenes unfolded against a painted backdrop, an infini of the very place where one was standing at that moment. In doubling the surrounding context in this way, life on the island itself was transformed into theater. The participants in each tableau reenacted their daily island life as an intensified, theatrical version of that life.
The audience was taken on a journey past the tableaux by a small train, allowing them to (re)discover this cherished island from new perspectives.
2025, Inselliebe, performance ©Lynn Van Oijstaeijen
Credits
Concept, Scenography, Direction: Thomas Verstraeten
Sound design: Senjan Jansen
Painter backdrops: Bob Van Tricht
Artistic assistance: Katrin Lohmann
Assistance scenography: Eloise Kent
Support community work: Claudio Chinchilla, Iva Marković
With: Matsaya, Po, Fon, La, Prasert, Noy, Ratree, Nok, Jai, Nit, Nati, Tommi, Mohamed Zaza, Shaga Jordan Shaga, Ziad Tichy, Emilio Francisco Teichmann, Adisha Kosgohakumbura, Luis Brettschuh, Marcos Fernandez, Okan Sulun, Michael Fischer, Luca Ortis, Nada Derwisj, Benedikt Adlberger, Conny Fei, members of the fencing club „Die Lange Schneyd“, Bernhard Lensch, Phillip Novotny, Hedwig-Doris Spanner, Harry Grindlhumer, Lorand Lehmann, Leon Lehmann, Dominik Adlberger, Martin Lindner, Christoph Schruf, David Schwarzinger, Andreas Galleider, Baha El Din, Lucas Bertoncello De Oliveira, Lukas Hruby, Giulia Steinwender, Lilia Schmidt, Michael Bettini, Giulialice, Mia Schäfer, Dr. Phil. Sigrid Prihoda, Michael Rotter, Michaela Fellner, Ben Leitner, Constantin Vabitsch, Andreas Kral, Leonie Halbgebauer, Petra Postl, Djibril Diapape, Muhammed Fatty, Ibrahim Wade, Maximilian Bairaktaridis, Allieu Mandaria Kamara, Monika Nguyen, Harald Hatschenberger, Emma Nguyen, Ellie Nguyen, Ben Nguyen, Quang Nguyen, Thi Bay Nguyen, Thi Nha Le, Hung Le, Claudio Chinchilla, Andreas Maier, Daniela Pardatscher, Salome Pardatscher, Daniel Harrasser, Rayan Ali Javed, Abdul Rehman Sherazi, Malik Faisal Hameed, Muhammad Salman Hafeez, Filipe Pardo Folas, Luis Manuel Morales Aristizabal, Hicham Benghuk, Philine Kellermayr, Susanna Kellermayr, Gizem Songur Köbler ‘Giza’, Anna Vakh, Maria Susmakova ‘Eli’, Marcelo Guzman, Nikolaus Eckhard, Dr. Elisabeth Kató.
With musical interludes by: Dr. Elisabeth Kató, Marcelo Guzman, Michael Bettini, GiuliAlice (just another doubting song), Quang Nguyen & Thi Bay Nguyen, Hung Le & Thi Nha Le (Karaoke)
Production: Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna
Executed by: the team of the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Free Republic of Vienna
The performances in Vienna were supported by AK Wien and Flanders – State of the Art.