Pizza Oder eine Tür in der Dunkelheit tanzt Nicht
(Pizza Or a Door That Doesn't Dance in the Dark)
Performance Theatre & Performance
An uncompromising performance piece between chamber theatre and step aerobics, between Styria and New York, between a village pizza party and the afterlife.
The story behind the creation of this play by the multi-award-winning Nature Theater of Oklahoma is almost as surprising as its title: Austrian actress and director Jula Zangger aske the New Yorkers for a new production without having an obvious venue. Evictions, lawsuits, budget cuts and political shifts exacerbate the situation – so Zangger decides to premiere the play in an old inn in Styria, which she buys and which her mother converts into a theatre. The result is an uncompromising performance piece at the Gold & Pech Theater in Höf-Präbach that attracts international curators and local audiences alike. On stage, a word- and melody-rich play unfolds that is somewhere between chamber opera and impossible choreography, between pizza party and the afterlife. It all starts innocently enough, but when a guest reveals that they are dying of a strange illness and disappears from the party, a portal opens to the world of the (possibly) dead and undead who still have scores to settle and questions that demand answers in this world. The pizza is delivered, everyone gets a delicious slice – along with a hopeful message from the pizza delivery boy for free. Is he also one of the ghosts using the open portal to cause confusion? Do we perhaps exist right here – forever trapped between two opposing worlds? This state of affairs is only easier to bear when we face it together: audience and performers united in the struggle to understand the purpose of life and accept the inevitability and impossibility of death. Amidst the spectacle, Nature Theater of Oklahoma seeks a serious and straight connection with the audience and, above all: meaning. Of life, death, pizza and everything in between.
cast
Text & Direction: Kelly Copper, Pavol Liska
Translation: Ulrich Blumenbach
Set & Lighting: Luka Curk
Music: Robert M. Johanson feat. Bernhard Fleischmann
Dance Captain: Bence Mezei
With: Gabel Eiben, Robert M. Johanson, Tobias Kerschbaumer, Bence Mezei, Jula Zangger, and a local choir
Nature Theater of Oklahoma is an award-winning New York art and performance enterprise under the direction of Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper.With each new project, we attempt to set an impossible challenge for ourselves, the audience, and our collaborators — working from inside the codes and confines of established genres and exploding them. No two projects are formally the same, but the work is always full of humor, earnestness, rigor, and the audience plays an essential role — whether as spectators or – just as often – as participants in the work. Using readymade material, found space, gifted properties, cosmic accident, extreme formal manipulation and plain hard work — Nature Theater of Oklahoma makes art to affect a shift in the perception of everyday reality that extends beyond the site of performance and into the world in which we live.
Major Projects: DIe Kinder der Toten, a film project based on Elfriede Jelinek’s 666 page novel, created in rural Styria with local amateur actors. Life and Times – Episodes 1-9, a multi-year, multi-disciplinary epic project using verbatim text from a series of telephone calls.
Significant awards: Nestroy Award – Special Prize (2018) for Die Kinder der Toten; International Federation of Film Critics Award for Best Film (Forum Section) for Die Kinder der Toten in the 2019 Berlin Film Festival; Berlin Theatreteffen 2010 Official Selection for Life and Times – Episode 1; OBIE awards for No Dice (2008) and Life and Times 1-4 (2013).
credits
A production of Nature Theater of Oklahoma in co-production with GOLD & PECH Theater Höf Präbach (Eggersdorf). Supported by the Federal Ministry for Arts and Culture of Austria and the State of Styria.
The event is part of the Impulse Festival for Performance, Theater & Dance. The 2026 Impulse Festival is organized and funded by the NRW KULTURsekretariat, in partnership with the cities of Düsseldorf, Bochum, Mülheim an der Ruhr, and Cologne, in cooperation with the FFT Düsseldorf, PRT Bochum, Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, and studiobühneköln. The festival is primarily funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Kunststiftung NRW, and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.