Blaze

Tea parties. Aristocrats talking about wealth, about the problems faced by an accelerating world. Their admiration for the first automobiles, their astonishment at assembly-line production. Men and women spending time together, prejudices falling away.

This is a story about changing European society at the turn of the twentieth century. While picnicking together, five aristocrats in period costume passionately discuss art, nature and the major problems of an accelerating world. By means of physical theatre and choral song, they express admiration for the first cars, muse over the conveyor belt and look forward to the arrival of new people from the East. They enjoy their leisurely time together, and preconceptions gradually fall away; layers of clothing are discarded; their relationships begin to change. Before long, we find five friends, lying on the grass in swimwear and sunglasses, reflecting on their futures. Following the death of Franz Joseph, announced by telegram, the „great, prolonged war" breaks out, and the European elite are swiftly transformed into paranoid cowards, false revolutionaries or unscrupulous profiteers.

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