Poetisk Podcast #1: Oskar and Alma

The short and yet lifelong love affair between Alma Mahler (widow of the composer Gustav Mahler) and the painter Oskar Kokoschka provides the point of departure for Lene Henningsen’s lengthy and dense poetic text. A poem covering an hour and a quarter, in sound…

Lene, in her ‘Author’s Notes’ for the play:

Why Oskar and Alma?

The fascination of these two people, and the fierce tension and deep love that characterized their relatively short relationship in the years leading up to the First World War – demanded to be brought to life in words, in poetry, in drama.

Individually, they seemed so alive, so full of contradictions, gifted, energetic, and at the same time mysterious enough to elude analysis and explanation. This made work on the text, and the research that lay ahead, difficult, exciting, often nerve-wracking. Would it succeed in capturing an essence of who they were and what they meant to each other? Could a poetic-dramatic use of language do justice to it?

Read more in the PDF that can be downloaded from the Poetisk Podcast website:
poetiskpodcast.dk/produktioner/oskar-og-alma/i-stormen-skal-vi-giftes

And more on the process behind creating it here: rudigermeyer.com/words/oskar-alma