A woman at
1,000 degrees

Herbjörg María Björnson reached the end of the line. The 80-year-old women lies on a hospital bed in her garage and waits alternately for the death to come or for someone with a life-extending syringe. Eight decades of life are in the bones of the once fashionable lady, she has lived, she has suffered and celebrated and now, at the supposed end of her life in Reykjavik, she has a hand grenade in her hands - a relic from the World War that her father gave her to defend herself.
Hallgrímur Helgason's book WOMAN AT 1,000 DEGREES starts with this awry initial situation and then meanders through the last eighty years of the main character Herbjörg's life and thus also through the last eight decades of world history. A wild and entertaining tour de force begins, leading from Iceland to Hamburg, Berlin, Paris, Argentina, Cape Town and back to Iceland.
Hallgrímur Helgason, who is also a successful painter, radio presenter and stand-up comedian, cynically and entertainingly unravels a life and fantasises with his bizarre main character about love, war, childhood, losses, and successes.

Director Moritz Sostmann has now brought the life and death of Herbjörg María Björnson for the first time to the stage in Germany.