122. Action

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The 122nd action was a performance staged in 2005 by the action artist Hermann Nitsch as part of his orgies and mysteries theater . It took place in the Vienna Burgtheater and was Nitsch's first action in a permanent theater.

The occasion was the anniversary celebrations around the 50th anniversary of the reopening of the Burgtheater building after the war (1955). Nitsch's invitation came about at the suggestion of Burgtheater director Klaus Bachler .

The performance took place on November 19, 2005 with over 100 actors from eleven nations . The overall conception of the performance came from Nitsch. The action started at 3 p.m. and lasted until 10:30 p.m. The tickets at the Burgtheater's unusually high price of up to € 250 were sold out within a few hours on the first day of advance booking.

The entire building of the Burgtheater was included in the game: the scenes of the action were not only the main stage, but also the entrance foyer, the two side staircases (Landtmann and Volksgarten side), the 1st break foyer, the luster floor, the outside balcony to the town hall square as well also outside the theater the sidewalk in front of the main portal. The audience not only sat statically in their seats, but could move freely around the house and watch the actors at work everywhere, watching their corridors. The main game, however, was mostly focused on the stage .

As in his summer campaign in 2004, the 2-day game ( 120th campaign ), Nitsch took up his Parsifal spear motif again: there were 5 oversized spears, each carried by 4 spearmen, 4 dead pigs, tons of grapes , Tomatoes and blood and at the end a - but not on site - freshly slaughtered bull, which is hung on the main stage on a wooden bull stretcher, then carried by all actors in a torchlight procession around the Burgtheater and finally carved in public on the stage in front of an audience and was eviscerated.

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