TO THE MUSEUM WITH FROST

Thomas Bernhard’s debut novel Frost, which was published in 1963, essentially sets out all the central motifs that he would keep returning to throughout his literary career. It lays the foundation for what he would later elaborate on in his plays using a different formal arsenal.
Formally, Bernhard – as an author of prose – breaks new ground with Frost. The narrative time changes erratically, as do the sequences of direct and indirect speech; the text does not depend on a continuously developing story or a temporal structure.
Due to these unique narrative features and the choice of a failing artist called Strauch as the protagonist, Frost can also be read as a reflection on the crisis of art in modernity, on changes in the concept of work (‘I’m no painter’, he said today, ‘At most I was a house painter’, FR 15), on the altered relationship between art and nature, as well as on the already and increasingly difficult question of what place there is for an artist’s work in society. Viewed in this light, it makes perfect sense to develop a theatre adaptation of the novel for the mumok Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien that is inspired by its unique architecture.

The past often finds its way into present streams of thought, and in narratives the past and present often converge. Talking about language and thinking about thoughts are key elements. Individual trains of thought are arranged according to patterns that are often compared with musical phenomena like ‘motif’, ‘leitmotif’, ‘sequence’ or ‘fugue style’ in the secondary literature. Accordingly, the adaptation extracts the individual trains of thought, assenting and dissenting voices in the novel and assembles them as a score for an actor.
In this way, speech fits into the spatial setting of the museum like a temporary installation. The museum is not a stage, the works of fine art are not decorations. In this theatrical adaptation, the novel is presented as a language- and thought-based exhibit among other exhibits in the museum.

It would take a year and a half until a version was produced that the publishing house was ready to accept, until the cooperation experiment could be conducted and until theatregoers could see Frost at the mumok Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien while the museum was open as usual.