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An Austrian actress has been charged with assault after allegedly biting her co-star's bottom too hard during a rape scene on stage.
Anna Werner Friedmann is accused of sinking her teeth into fellow actor Benjamin S.'s buttocks during a performance of Alma – A Show Biz to the End in August 2023.
According to the complaint, the bite was so forceful it caused him 'pain and shame.'
Friedmann denies wrongdoing, insisting the bites were part of a pre-arranged scene.
'It has to be realistic - the audience was sitting close,' she told the trial, adding that the intensity was 'proportionate to the passion' of her character and that the audience 'loved it.'
But Benjamin S. gave a starkly different account, claiming: 'She pulled down my play underwear and bit me so hard it hurt.
'I tried to push her away, and then she bit me even harder.'
He told the court he remains afraid of Friedmann and asked that she be kept out of the corridor after his testimony.
He also alleged she had acted inappropriately in previous productions, trying to undress him completely and touching him without consent.
The play itself - 'Alma – A Show Biz ans End' - is an unconventional theatre piece first staged in 1996, based on the life of Austrian cultural icon Alma Mahler‑Werfel and written by Israeli dramatist Jehoshua Sobol.
Unlike a standard production, the 'polydrama' format allows audience members to move through different rooms in a building, following parallel scenes of Alma's life in a fragmented, immersive way.
The piece has become a cult production, with hundreds of performances across Europe including Vienna, Berlin and Los Angeles.
Her lawyer, Manfred Ainedter, told Bild: 'In court and at sea, one is in God's hands. But I expect an acquittal.'
Friedmann recently starred in the TV crime drama The Dead of Lake Constance: The Wishing Tree, which drew 6.6 million viewers in Austria and Germany.
The case continues at Neunkirchen District Court on December 2.