Bambi

When the 1942 Disney film reached the cinemas, the story of Bambi had already become famous around the world: initially published in serialised form in Vienna’s »Neue Freie Presse«, the novel became a bestseller at the end of the 1920s and was translated into ten languages. By 1933 Felix Salten had already sold the film rights for the sum of one thousand dollars. The Jewish author, by now living in exile in Zurich, barely profited from the pioneering success of the animated feature film. He had direct personal experience of what had been a significant impulse in writing his novel: to convey the horrors of war to his readers. Nature’s idyllic beauty is deceptive – here only the fittest survive and there is the constant threat of a mysterious enemy: an odd creature that walks on two legs, possesses »three arms« – and shoots deadly fire out of one of them! 

Salten had worked tirelessly both as a journalist and as in a personal capacity on behalf of orphan children – like his fawn. He supported numerous Viennese institutions for child refugees and looked after an orphan boy in his family home. 

For Schorsch Kamerun »Bambi« is the starting point not only to highlight the current threats that the animal world faces from those on two legs, but also to trace a recent online trend: the challenge. As in his earlier musical spectacular »Reineke Fuchs«, Bambi and the other animals of the forest will become fantastical creatures that not only rock out cheerfully and provocatively but also grapple with the problems of the here and now. Together with the Berlin songwriter Masha Qrella Schorsch Kamerun will devise a musical journey through Bambi’s life in which a new challenge lurks behind every bush that could suddenly become deadly serious at any time.