Angel of Ice

The Purifying Power of Good Intentions

A renowned and uncompromising political TV journalist abruptly ends her career at its peak to dedicate herself to charity work in a correctional facility for girls, unaware that she has opened Pandora’s box of her own traumas and stirred up the traumatic sediment of her entire family… A plot worthy of a contemporary novel or a screenplay for an exciting mini TV series or film. Angel of Ice is a project created by Hungarian director Árpád Schilling, who wrote it specifically for the ensemble of the ZKM. It combines literary complexity and depth with the dynamics and tension of a film. What happens when the noble impulse for charity is subconsciously fuelled by unprocessed trauma and what are the consequences of such an undertaking? When seemingly perfect lives and family relationships begin to unravel, when they collapse into their opposite? Can chaos be mastered, even if there is no longer strength for that struggle? The play’s subtitle – “The Purifying Power of Good Intentions” – is in every sense a key thematic guide through this story inhabited by refined Chekhovian characters and paved with the inevitability of encountering one’s own heart of darkness.