Orfeo – stage image
Orfeo drawing

Orpheus and Eurydice have spent a long life together and have grown old side-by-side. Now Eurydice has died. Orpheus finds himself alone in his apartment, isolating himself from his environment. Only his grown-up son Apollo tries to maintain contact with the increasingly inaccessible man.

An old melody begins to haunt Orpheus's mind, taking him back to his youth. Long-deceased friends appear and celebrate the wedding of Eurydice and Orpheus. But the veil of aging covers all; the celebration turns into a funeral procession. Orpheus's apartment transforms into the underworld, becoming a hell for him. The narrow spaces expand into an endless landscape in which the frail man finds himself helpless. The river Styx begins to flood the apartment. On its shore a lost diver sits, whom the ship's crew may well have presumed dead. Searching for an exit, Orpheus sings out into the void, but only the echo responds. Will a ship come to ferry him across the waters?

Orpheus as the eternal myth of aging—within the 60 square meters of the apartment next door and in the inner infinity of loneliness.

Awarded the Dramaturgy Prize and the Prize of the State of Styria

Ring Award | June 28, 2025
Schauspielhaus Graz
Photo: Susanne Hassler Smith Photo: Susanne Hassler Smith Photo: Susanne Hassler Smith Photo: Susanne Hassler Smith Photo: Susanne Hassler Smith Photo: Susanne Hassler Smith Photo: Susanne Hassler Smith Photo: Susanne Hassler Smith Photo: Susanne Hassler Smith