A wildly over-the-top social satire reimagining the mad misadventures
of the iconic royal cousins King Ludwig and Empress Sisi, from the
incomparable Jac Jemc.
History knows them as King Ludwig II of Bavaria and Empress Elizabeth of
Austria, icons of the late nineteenth century who died young and left
behind magnificent portraits and palaces. But to each other they were
Ludwig and Sisi, cousins who shared a passion for beauty and a stubborn
refusal to submit to the roles imposed upon them.
Ludwig, simultaneously spoiled and punished for his softness and
"unmanly" interests, falls hard for the operas of Richard Wagner and
neglects his state duties in the pursuit of art. Sisi, married at the
age of sixteen to her beloved Franzl, bristles at the restrictions of
her elevated position, the value placed on her beauty, and the
simultaneous expectation that she ravage her body again and again in
childbirth. Both absurdly vain, both traumatized by the demands of their
roles, Sisi and Ludwig struggle against the ideals they are expected to
embody, and resist through extravagance, petulance, performance, and
frivolity.
A tragicomic tour de force, Empty Theatre immerses readers in Ludwig
and Sisi's rarefied, ridiculous, restrictive world--where the aesthetics
of excess belie the isolation of its inhabitants. With wit, pathos, and
imagination, Jac Jemc takes us on an unforgettable journey through two
extraordinary parallel lives and the complex, tenuous friendship that
linked them.
