Francisco Carolinum in Linz: play about a master of self-marketing 100 years ago

“Bertha von Suttner, Alma Mahler, Emilie Flöge and now Maria Fassnauer (1879-1917) – Maxi Blaha takes on historical female personalities who “all had a tragic fate, but made something of it,” says the Viennese actress. On May 20th she will be showing “Mariedl. Selfies with a Giantess” by Penny Black at the Francisco Carolinum in Linz. The sixth daughter of a South Tyrolean mountain farmer family is born with acromegaly (tall stature). “The parents couldn’t afford to eat her because she was so big. That’s why she was sent away and made her way through all the showmen’s booths, from the Oktoberfest in Munich to the Vienna Prater, the world exhibition in Brussels to London. She was so clever that she turned the tables and got really good advertising contracts”, for example as a famous testimonial for Oxo, the English equivalent of Maggi. “That a woman was a testimonial back then, around 1910, is a total rarity. She not only fed her family with it, but made the whole village rich,” says Blaha, who also sees a parallel in “Mariedl” to today, “to the self-marketing people of the present time”, which was incorporated into the production: “You can Take selfies with me, Mariedl has an Instagram account and is on TikTok.”

Penny Black, Elfriede Jelinek’s favorite translator

Penny Black wrote the song. “She is Elfriede Jelinek’s favorite translator, through whom I met her. Your sense of humor is so British – I think that an outside perspective on Austrian issues is very good. I don’t want it to become sentimental,” says Blaha, who is accompanied by Ursula Fatton, harpist in the Vienna ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra, directed by Angelika Zacek. (cash)

Info: 7 p.m., tickets by mail: [email protected], Tel.: 0732 7720 522 00 and at the box office