''Alma'' is an example of site-specific promenade theatre (or more precisely a "polydrama") created by Israeli writer
Joshua Sobol based on the life of
Alma Mahler-Werfel. It opened in 1996, under the direction of Austrian
Paulus Manker, at a former Jugendstil sanatorium building designed by architect
Josef Hoffmann located in
Purkersdorf near
Vienna
Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...
; and subsequently toured to locations in
Venice
Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...
,
Lisbon
Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...
,
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...
,
Petronell,
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
,
Semmering,
Jerusalem
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, and
Prague
Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
.
Protagonist Alma Mahler-Werfel was intimately connected to an astonishing list of the famous creative spirits of the 20th century. Not only was she married sequentially to composer
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic music, Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and ...
, architect
Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (; 18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-born American architect and founder of the Bauhaus, Bauhaus School, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. He was a founder of ...
, and poet
Franz Werfel (“
The Song of Bernadette”), but she had also fervent and sometimes notorious love affairs with the painters
Oskar Kokoschka,
Gustav Klimt, and several others.
The performance is not presented as a conventional theatre piece, but instead takes place throughout an entire building in simultaneous scenes highlighting the events and defining relationships of Alma's tumultuous life, with each playing area fully equipped with appropriate furniture and props.
Members of the audience can therefore choose to follow certain events, outcomes, and even individual characters from scene to scene, thus experiencing a uniquely personal version of Alma's life story. When Gustav Mahler dies halfway through the piece, his funeral can be followed interactively with his music; and at the interval, the entire audience comes together at a buffet dinner featuring Austrian cuisine during which they can compare notes about what they have each experienced, and develop a fuller perspective of the biographical events.
The production was also adapted as a three-part film.
Sources
official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alma (Play)
1996 plays
Israeli plays
Gustav Mahler