RITTER DENE VOSS

Thomas Bernhard wrote RITTER DENE VOSS in 1984 for the actors Ritter Dene and Voss and named the piece after them.
Dood Paard will perform the play twenty-five years later with Heijens, Claessens and Topper

The piece is situated in an exorbitantly rich, incestuous, introvert family made up of two sisters and a brother. The sisters still live in the family home and their uncle has used his influence and wealth to secure jobs as actresses for them at the Josephstadttheater. The brother is loosely based on Wittgenstein and lives in the Steinhof mental institution where he writes his philosophical works. The play opens with one of the sisters fetching her brother to come and live at home again.

This is the second Austrian piece enacted by Dood Paard and likewise it focuses on how people find it impossible to shape their lives and conform to society. The relations they maintain are degenerate  and masochistic which makes for leaden subject matter interspersed with witty dialogues.

‘Humour is not an emotion but a way of looking at the world.’
Wittgenstein