Alma is a play (Polydrama) by Israeli writer Joshua Sobol based on the life of Alma Mahler-Werfel. It opened 1996 in Vienna.
"Alma" is the story of Alma Mahler-Werfel, the famous femme fatale and muse to many geniuses. She was the wife of composer Gustav Mahler, also married to architect Walter Gropius and poet Franz Werfel (“The Song of Bernadette”). She had also fervent love affairs with the painters Oskar Kokoschka, Gustav Klimt, and several others, bringing together some of the most creative spirits of the 20th century.
The speciality of the play is that it does not take place on a theatre stage, but in an entire building, fully equipped with furniture and props, which resemble to the location of a film set. Various scenes of Alma's life are performed simultaneously on all floors and in all rooms of the building. One has to choose the events, the path, and the person to follow after each event, thus constructing one’s personal version of a "theatrical journey". The scenes of Alma’s life were performed simultaneously on all floors and in all rooms of a former Jugendstil sanatorium by architect Josef Hoffmann located in Purkersdorf near Vienna. The guests were invited to abandon the immobilized position of a spectator in a conventional drama, replace it with the mobile activity of a traveller, and watch a "theatrical journey". They had to choose the events, the path, and the person to follow after each event, thus constructing her or his personal version of the "Polydrama". When Gustav Mahler dies at half-time, his funeral can be followed interactively to his music, and the spectators are subsequently invited to a sumptuous buffet-dinner during the interval with Austrian specialities, sweets and a special “Alma”-wine, which is all included in the ticket prize.
The play has been directed by Austrian director Paulus Manker, and toured to Venice, Lisbon, Los Angeles, Petronell, Berlin, Semmering, Jerusalem, Prague and Vienna itself. The production was also made into a three parts film.