The Night Just Before the Forests
by Bernard-Marie Koltès – Burgtheater Wien (Kasino am Schwarzenbergplatz, 2023)
A man speaks to a stranger who never answers.
Through the night, his words become a wandering — an attempt to connect, a cry of love and anger.
With actor Michael Wächter, Robin Ormond stages Koltès’s monologue as a physical passage: an address into the void, suspended between solitude and the longing to belong.
Text: Bernard-Marie Koltès
Direction: Robin Ormond
Costume: Anna Gillis
Dramaturgy: Lena Wontorra
Performer: Michael Wächter
Production: Burgtheater Wien – Kasino am Schwarzenbergplatz
©️ Crédit photo : Tommy Hetzel
Press excerpt
Christina Böck, Kurier, 28 Sept 2025
“You wonder how this play could ever have been staged in any other way.”
Ronald Pohl, Der Standard, 28 Sept 2025
“Under Robin Ormond’s direction, Koltès’s The Night Just Before the Forests becomes a marvellous city-wide performance.
Michael Wächter draws the audience through Vienna’s inner streets as the text turns into a conversation with the city itself – between loneliness, vertigo and defiance.”