False Sun

Theatre / Lyrics show

False Sun

Scenes from Anna Kavan's Literature

So many dreams are crowding upon me now that I can scarcely tell true from false. Dreams like light imprisoned in bright mineral caves; hot, heavy dreams; ice-age dreams; dreams like machines in the head. Anna Kavan, Ice

Distorted, crazy, forgotten? Anna Kavan's life and work continue to exert a powerful fascination more than fifty years after her death. For her contemporaries such as Doris Lessing and J. G. Ballard, she was one of the most outstanding writers of her time. Today, it is imperative to rediscover her literature, that unique tone in which isolation, delusion, and violence collide.

Samuel Hamen, the current resident playwright has selected passages from Kavan's novels and stories and expanded them with his own scenic images, which director Anne Simon will bring to life as a staged reading

Who was Anna Kavan, one of the most mysterious writers of the 20th century? The crazy woman, the sick, broken artist? Emblematic of destructive Western modernity? How close can one get to this literary phenomenon? On the basis of text excerpts from her novels, stories, essays and letters this staged reading in English and German ventures an archaeology of a literary myth.

Dates