The two sisters Jane and Blanche Hudson live for years completely secluded

in a mansion in Hollywood. Around 1917, Jane Hudson is a celebrated child star under the stage name Baby Jane. Jane, however, fails to make the leap to adult, and while her own career fades, her sister Blanche rises to become a star in the film heavens. But at the height of her career, Blanche suffers a mysterious car accident that confines her to a wheelchair …

The play is based on the novel “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” (“What really happened to Baby Jane?”) by Henry Farrell (1960). It became famous above all through the film adaptation by Robert Aldrich in 1962 with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Nikolaus Habjan transformed the material into a puppet theater thriller, devoting himself here primarily to themes such as loss of reality, love and hate, and guilt and responsibility.

Manuela Linshalm was born in Vienna in 1976 and trained as an actor at the Franz Schubert Conservatory. She took lessons in singing and dancing, she learned puppetry since 2008 with Nikolaus Habjan and 2012 with Neville Tranter. She performs at the Akademietheater Wien, Theater an der Wien and Residenztheater München, among others, and works regularly with Nikolaus Habjan as a puppeteer.

Nikolaus Habjan, born in Graz in 1987, is one of the most interesting and versatile artists of his generation in Austria. He works as a director, actor, puppet maker and performer at the Schauspielhaus Graz and Burgtheater Wien, among others, and as an opera director at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Theater an der Wien and the Dortmund Opera. After his guest performances at euro-scene Leipzig since 2016, he can be seen again this year with several pieces.