SEPPUKU. El Funeral de Mishima - Angélica Liddell - Vienna Festival 2026

Spanish radical artist Angélica Liddell and Japanese writer Yukio Mishima share their quest for a union of beauty, eroticism and death. Seppuku, also known as Harakiri, is the ritual suicide of the Samurai and the point from which Liddell’s latest work sets out. This reflection on death and suicide is born out of an extreme will to live; it is a ritual for the dead and the living, a farewell poem that unites pain and beauty. Suicide, says Liddell, is always an avant-garde act and contains a brutal aesthetic component. Liddell confronts death with lust and beauty, life with its finite nature: art as an expression of the desire for ecstasy! Together with a dancer and an actor from Japan who Liddell has worked with before, she pushes the boundaries in her most recent work: physically, mentally, artistically.

For ages 18+

The performance deals with suicide and death.
Blood and needles are used.

Language: Spanish, Japanese with German and English surtitles
Duration: 2 hours

program

SEPPUKU

EL FUNERAL DE MISHIMA

o el placer de morir

Seppuku. Die Beerdigung von Mishima oder die Lust am Sterben

Angélica Liddell

Place

The Volkstheater in Vienna (roughly translated as "People's Theatre") was founded in 1889 by request of the citizens of Vienna, amongst them the dramatist Ludwig Anzengruber and the furniture manufacturer Thonet, in order to offer a popular counter weight to the Hofburgtheater. It was erected according to designs by Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer, who attempted to reconcile their plans with historicism. It is located in Neubau, the seventh district of Vienna.

The founders of this stage had a theatrical stage in mind, in order to expose wider circles of the population of Vienna to classical and modern literature whilst staging these next to more traditional plays. The theatre follows this tradition even today. New productions of the classics are always in the pipeline along with regular reinterpretations of works by Ferdinand Raimund and Johann Nestroy and many new plays and reruns. Special attention is given to Austrian playwrights of old and new.

In 2005 Michael Schottenberg became art director of the Volkstheater.

In 2005 the Volkstheater started an alternative theater stage called "Volkstheater Hundsturm" in Margareten, the fifth district of Vienna. It is a place for experimental theater.