A Year without Summer

Radical, energetic, uncompromising: Florentina Holzinger’s work is one of the most impressive in the current cultural landscape. Holzinger will represent her home country of Austria at the 2026 Venice Biennale, and from the 2026/27 season onwards she will join the artistic management team at Berlin’s Volksbühne theatre. In her excessive stage spectacles, the Viennese choreographer liberates the female body from beauty norms and rigid gender roles, showing it in all its vulnerability and strength. The asphalt Festival has showcased Holzinger’s boundary-pushing works since the beginning of her career, and is now presenting her latest work as a co-production. »A Year without Summer« was invited to the 2026 Theatertreffen Berlin as one of the ten most remarkable productions of the season.

Originally, 1816 went down in history as the »year without a summer«. After the eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia, the sky is full of ash, the sun disappears, crops fail – and the world is starving. The 18-year-old Mary spends the cold summer months with other poets on Lake Geneva, where storms and darkness inspire them to tell horror stories. Mary imagines Dr Frankenstein, a scientific genius who forces nature to bend to his will and ends up destroying everything with his monster, assembled from corpses‘ parts.

Florentina Holzinger and her ensemble explore stories about bodies, health and identities, our decay and our environment: the quest for immortality in the 21st century, medical promises of rejuvenation, and the dangers of uncontrolled technological growth in a world shaped by AI, robotics and bioengineering. »A Year without Summer« tells of the improvement of nature to the point of perversion and is an attempt to play off the promise of eternal life against certain death. Holzinger’s latest theatrical coup is a mixture of musical and horror story, a tightrope walk between absolute horror and great beauty with beguilingly quiet, gentle moments.

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What the press says:

»A fantastic, touching series of images« 
Der Spiegel

»Funny, disgusting, graceful, blatant, kitschy, brutal, disturbing, unflinching, fragile, boastful and Austrian – the whole evening is all of these things at once and, at the same time, in love with itself in the most beautiful way, which is so difficult for many to achieve.«  
Berliner Zeitung

»Holzinger’s productions show naked bodies not only in a loving and empowering way, but also in a way that is more vulnerable and raw than anyone else‘s.«  
rbb

»After all her loud productions, it suits Florentina Holzinger extremely well that she is now embracing deceleration. Her company’s unprecedented diversity loses none of the empowerment of naked bodies or the blood-curdling sensuality of individual scenes. Rather, it stands out even more strongly.«  
nachtkritik

»As is so often the case with Florentina Holzinger, beauty and tenderness suddenly emerge from mud and revulsion.«  
Theater heute

»Sex orgy and shit inferno«  
Der Freitag

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