About the work
“heaven will come” is a new play by the Austrian dramatist Thomas Köck, who received the Mülheim Dramatists’ Prize in 2018 and 2019. Köck is writing the text in artistic exchange with the actress and author Athena Lange, who works as a bilingual artist in German Sign Language as well; the play combines spoken language and sign language and is subtitled “A piece of family horror with data residue”. The premiere is scheduled for 27 February 2027 at the Münchner Kammerspiele, directed by Jan Bosse.
Plot
As a rot spreads, people gradually leave a continent and move north. A deaf brother and sister tell of this, simultaneously in sign language, in a story that keeps slipping away from them: of moving into an old house and of their mother, who researches doggedly against the decay in a nearby laboratory while the family falls apart. Strange guests appear, the talking smart home turns into a haunted house, walls vanish and return, and only the siblings sense the uncanny – if any of it has happened at all.
Cultural significance
Köck’s plays are performed throughout the German-speaking world and have been translated into more than 15 languages; he became known above all for his “klimatrilogie”, written between 2014 and 2016. “heaven will come” is being created for a Kammerspiele focus on artificial intelligence and asks what power of resistance may lie in simultaneous storytelling when stories are increasingly produced serially by machines. As the premiere is still to come, no reviews are available yet.