BELFAST arts journalist and writer Jane Coyle is to travel to Vienna next month to begin work on the script for a new bilingual production of her award-winning play The Suitcase, which is scheduled to open in the Austrian capital in March.
The play, inspired by a 2014 visit by the writer to Vienna's Jewish museum, premiered at the Belfast synagogue during the 2015 Belfast International Arts Festival. In February this year, it was revived and toured Northern Ireland as part of Holocaust Memorial Day 2019 commemorations.
It has now has been taken up by Vienna's Open House Theatre, which presents theatre, film and media productions, predominantly in the English language, and will feature in its spring programme.
The play's storyline moves between modern-day Belfast and two European cities which suffered grievously during the Second World War.
In Belfast, a recently deceased elderly man called Leo Edelmann looks back on the horrors inflicted by the Nazis upon his native Berlin. While his daughter and granddaughter are clearing out his house they come across an old suitcase, containing painful evidence of their family history, and discover a bittersweet relationship between Leo and a young Viennese dancer called Galina Stein, the owner of the suitcase.
“I am delighted that Jane will be coming to Vienna next month to work with me on modifying the script of her beautiful play," Open House Theatre’s Robert Neumayr says.
“The characters of Leo and Galina would naturally speak in German, while the mother and daughter in Belfast speak in English. It will be interesting to see how the two languages can blend together seamlessly on stage.
“In our country’s – or perhaps the world’s – current political climate, at a time where Holocaust memorials are being vandalised in the city centre of Vienna, I believe we are in desperate need of stories that remind us that at the end of every political agenda are human beings. We must never forget. To me, The Suitcase is such a story.”
Coyle’s travel to Vienna has been supported by a grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Travel Awards Scheme.
