DARUM

In March 2019, DARUM and its audience embarked on a performative search for traces: five unique, one-time-only premieres delved into the various fates of people buried without any friends or relatives present (called a "lonely funeral") and placed the deceased themselves at the centre of the performance.

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Based on "Uninvited Guests: A search for traces" and the months of research on "lonely burials", DARUM takes a step back from the performance that was and looks at the topics of loneliness, death and funerals from a larger perspective. For weeks, the collective traveled through various districts of Vienna, knocked on doors, talked to neighbours and former acquaintances, with authorities and social institutions and were confronted with the traces of foreign lives and the bureaucracy of death. What do names, dates of birth and death tell us, what value does the final address hold? What do silent, unvisited graves tell us? What does it mean for a society to remember its dead while forgetting its living? What do we see? And what don't we see? And more importantly: what remains? The lecture performance is an act of seeing, of understanding - based on photos, documents, videos and memories.

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This October, more than a year and a half after attending the first lonely funeral during the research phase of "Uninvited Guests", DARUM is revisiting their lecture performance "What's left?" and updating it with the question of "what now?"

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Nominated for the Nestroy Special Award 2019.

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„The team succeeded in a reverent discussion with due seriousness. A theatrical experience that will have a long lasting effect.“ (Petra Paterno, WIENER ZEITUNG)