''Das Werk'' (''The Works'', sometimes translated as ''The Plant'') is a play by the

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

winning

Austrian Austrian may refer to: * Austrians, someone from Austria or of Austrian descent ** Someone who is considered an Austrian citizen, see Austrian nationality law * Austrian German dialect * Something associated with the country Austria, for example: ...

playwright and novelist

Elfriede Jelinek Elfriede Jelinek (; born 20 October 1946) is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She is one of the most decorated authors writing in German today and was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature for her "musical flow of voices and counter-voi ...

About

It premiered at the

Akademietheater The Akademietheater in Vienna, Austria, is the smaller of two performance halls of the Burgtheater organization. It was constructed in the years 1911 to 1913 by architects Fellner & Helmer Fellner & Helmer was an architecture studio founded in 1 ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

on 11 April 2003, under the direction of

Nicolas Stemann Nicolas Stemann (born 1968 in Hamburg, West Germany) is a German theatre director. He is best known for directing the 2002 stage production of ''Hamlet'' at Schauspiel Hannover, a theatre in Hanover. Career Stemann studied German literature and ...

. Based on historical events, the play depicts the suffering of workers building a large power plant in the town of

Kaprun Kaprun () is a municipality in the Zell am See District in the state of Salzburg, Austria. The town is a tourist destination known as "Zell am See-Kaprun" with the neighbouring Zell am See and known for the glacier Kitzsteinhorn. Geography It is ...

. The

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

government used slave labor for the project, then after the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, construction was completed using mostly foreign workers.

About

References

Further reading