Blood Bread
by Miriam Unterthiner / Direction: Tomas Schweigen / Theater am Werk, Vienna
Miriam Unterthiner's play »Blood Bread« (Blutbrot), which won the prestigious Kleist-Förderpreis für neue Dramatik, will be performed for the first time on an Austrian stage at the Theater am Werk. The play brings a largely unexplored chapter of South Tyrol's post-war history into the public consciousness: after the end of the Second World War, South Tyroleans helped Nazi criminals like Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele escape by enabling them to cross the Brenner Pass (a border pass between the Austrian state of Tyrol and the Italian autonomous province of Bolzano-South Tyrol) into Italy.
The author chooses a poetic and metaphorical approach to this historically fraught subject, introducing figures such as »The Village«, »The Bread«, and »The Landscape«. »Blood Bread« (Blutbrot) explores the deeply ingrained mechanisms of collective silence and poses questions about how historical entanglements are inscribed in cultural memory, what responsibility a society bears for its repressed past, and what role remembrance plays in the present.
The world premiere of »Blood Bread« (Blutbrot) took place in 2025 at Theater Aachen.
