Tag: Austria

AUSTRIA’S (CULTURAL) WEALTH

AUSTRIA’S (CULTURAL) WEALTH

When juxtaposed with the theatre systems of Eastern European countries at the UTE Conference on Theatre Structures in Belgrade, Austria’s situation seems nothing short of luxurious. In every way. Andrea Ruis of the Arts and Culture Division of the Federal Chancellery of Austria and Anna Badora, artistic director of the Volkstheater in Vienna, gave in-depth talks that powerfully demonstrated the significance and prosperity of theatre in Austria. 

The Volkstheater in Vienna © www.lupispuma.at

6.09 million tickets were sold in more than 15,000 performances in the 2014/2015 season. With just over eight and a half million inhabitants, this is categorical evidence of Austria’s obsession with theatre. The great theatres of Vienna sold more than 3.8 million tickets, with a population of just 1.8 million inhabitants. In 2016, the Republic of Austria gave an impressive 200 million euros in funding to its theatres. With such a high level of the Austrian “theatrical obsession,” it’s no wonder the federal government passed legislation (Kunstförderungsgesetz) in 1988, making it mandatory to perpetually fund the arts.

It’s no surprise that Austria incorporates all forms of theatres in their national repertoire; everything from the internationally renowned National Theatre to countless cabarets, intimate cellar theatres along with an array of independent artist performances occurring on professional or impromptu stages. With regards to the large theatre institutions, there are state, regional, municipal and private theatres; which together employ more than 5,000 actors, directors and administrative staff that work almost year-round to put on acclaimed works. The terms for these different theatrical institutions have developed historically, and allude to the financial structure behind them.

State theatres evolved from the former Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Court Theatres (k.u.k. Hoftheater). Some of the most recognized names in this imperial branch of theatre include the world-renowned Wiener Staatsoper, the Volksoper, and the Burgtheater, which is the second oldest straight theatre in Europe. In 1999, the Austrian parliament passed the Federal Theatres Organisation Act (Bundestheaterorganisationsgesetz), which required state theatres to be removed from the federal administration. Thus resulting in the creation of the Bundestheater-Holding company (Federal Theatres Holding).

The Bundestheater-Holding group is owned by the Republic of Austria. Its purpose is to facilitate the contact between its four subsidiaries and political players in the cultural field, the business community and the public. The holding company is furthermore responsible for strategic management and operations of its subsidiaries. This includes everything from financial and legal support to contract handling and upkeep of the historical theatre buildings. In addition to three independent theatres (Wiener Staatsoper, Volksoper, Burgtheater; all of them are in Vienna), the Bundestheater Holding also incorporates an association called “ART FOR ART,” which provides creative shops and ticketing, building management and IT services. With a budget of 246.2 Million euros and 2,400 employees, the Bundestheater-Holding is the largest theatre corporation in the world. Its three member theatres attract an impressive 1.3 million spectators every year. Lending such comprehensive support in business management to its subsidiaries, the Bundestheater-Holding allows its theatres to focus on the core of their work: creating high-quality theatre productions.

The second category of theatres includes regional and municipal theatres, which are the main stages in the federal states and its cities, respectively. Federal states also have holding companies, such as the Vereinigte Bühnen in Vienna (Vienna is not only the capital but a federal state of its own), which is composed of the Theater an der Wien, the Ronacher and the Raimund Theater. These three theatres primarily offer different forms of musical theatre in its three venues of 1070, 1040, and 1255 seats. With a combined 644 performances each year, the Vereinigte Bühnen reaches a sizeable audience of musical lovers. In the Styrian province, which is home to Austria’s second largest city, Graz, the Theater Holding Steiermark unites the opera house (including the ballet), the municipal theatre and the children’s theatre and is financed at 50% by the state and at 50% by the city.

Eight out of the nine federal states have a regional or municipal theatre, most of which are former court theaters and date back to the 18th and 19th century. (Court theatres used to be funded and managed by the court, as opposed to the people’s theatres, which were privately funded and publicly accessible). More often than not they are so-called “multi-branch” theatres, which usually comprise opera, drama, ballet and children’s theatre. They are primarily financed by the federal state and the municipality. These theatres are part of the Society of Theatres of the Austrian Federal States and Municipalities. Its purpose is to protect the interests of its members, as well as to propose how to divide federal government funding of 18.7 million euros over the course of five years. Its members, which include the Salzburger Landestheater, the Oper Graz, the Tiroler Landestheater and the Stadttheater Klagenfurt, offer more than 3,000 performances a year to over one million spectators. Altogether, these theatres receive collective subsidies of 136 million euros.

In the 19th century, municipal theatres were flourishing and inspired the architects Fellner & Helmer to specialise in representative buildings for municipal theatres, which they erected in various cities across Central and Eastern Europe. In Austria alone, they designed the opera house in Graz, the Landestheater Salzburg, the Stadttheater Baden bei Wien, the Stadttheater Klagenfurt, the Akadmietheater (part of the Burgtheater), the Konzerthaus, the Ronacher, and the Volkstheater in Vienna. With countless enthusiastic audience members flocked in front of these architectural landmarks each night, municipal theatres prove to be the central theatrical institutions in Austria’s state capitals to this day.

In a third category, there are the so-called private theatres, such as the Volkstheater, the Theater in der Josefstadt and the Theater der Jugend.  They collectively show more than 1,500 performances a year for more than 600,000 spectators. Broadly speaking, the Volkstheater offers more innovative approaches to critical spectators, while the Theater in der Josefstadt caters to a more conservative and traditional audience. Meanwhile, the Theater der Jugend shows ambitious literature for young people.

The private theatres were originally founded by benefactors as an antithesis to the court theatre. However, today their money no longer comes from benefactors but from the municipality and the federal government (approximately 60% and 40%, respectively), which effectively renders the term ‘private theatre’ obsolete in Austria. From a legal perspective, private theatres have been transformed from private corporate entities into foundations, associations, or limited liability companies.

Since, the majority of funding for these theatres comes from the federal government and the municipality, the artistic directors are nominated by the culture secretary (as of 18 December 2017 it’s Gernot Blümel) and the city councillor for cultural affairs (currently Andreas Mailath-Pokorny). One of the major benefits of having these private theatres registered as limited liability companies is that legally the artistic and managing directors are entitled to make independent decisions. That means they can manage their budget completely freely; they can autonomously hire and fire their staff; and they have complete control over their programme. As Anna Badora, Artistic Director of the Volkstheater in Vienna stated, “I may be as bold as to argue that this is the best system for theatres in the world.” Indeed, the Volkstheater’s strong financial position coupled with vast managerial and artistic independence is a privilege most theatres in the world would envy her for.

However, the seemingly ideal Austrian theatre system comes with understated flaws. Subsidies for theatre institutions remain the same every year, while fixed costs, such as rent, electricity or fees and salaries increase every year. Each theatre has to cover this gap in costs with money from their own pocket, usually through ticket sales. However, most of them already reach a high percentage of seats sold. Theatres therefore have to come up with new ways of generating money—which can easily become a distraction from fulfilling their original purpose.

Furthermore, the competition amongst theatres is big, especially in the capital, and relations amongst each other as well as with political stake holders need to be carefully handled. Subtle ambiguity and scheming happen of course, like anywhere else, inhibiting the productivity of theatre managers.

From an employee perspective, theatre contracts, although decent by international standards, are still not perfect. Actors, especially young ones, have little protection, much less so than stagehands, for example. It is customary that a change in directorship goes hand in hand with an exchange of the permanent acting company, thus customarily leaving actors, especially newcomers, without a job whenever a new artistic director takes over. Nonetheless, even young actors have a privileged situation in Austria in comparison to a lot of the countries present at the conference in Belgrade, where a permanent contract for an actor is something you can only dream of.

Back to Austria’s theatres, though. Vienna is, of course, the centre of the country’s diverse and compact theatre landscape. The capital’s culture budget amounts to 84 million euros, which far exceeds the rest of the federal states. Its main three theatres alone attract more than 1.3 million people a year. Vienna has more than 90 theatres, and an estimated 500 independent groups. It is home to the most prestigious theatres of the country and has multiple theatres that are considered as highly significant.

Often simply referred to as “Die Burg” (the fortress), the Burgtheater is a unique cultural phenomenon. Under the reign of Josef II, the theatre world in Vienna flourished, and he declared the Burgtheater “the German National Theatre”. Instead of opera and ballet, drama was now put into the limelight, with a particular emphasis on European literature. Austria’s National Theatre is the largest and one of the most prestigious theatres in the German theatre realm: the Burgtheater employs approximately 550 people, 74 of which are permanent actors. Additionally it regularly hires 38 guest actors. For comparative purposes, Germany’s largest theatre—the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg—has 47 permanent actors, and approximately half the Burgtheater’s budget.

Based on the sheer volume of its permanent actors and budget, the Burgtheater has the largest company and is the most well-funded theatre in the world. Specifically, this goliath received more than 46 million euros in public funding during the 2015 season. It attracts the highest number of spectators in continental Europe with an average of 850 performances a year on four different stages (one of these stages is located in a different theatre building altogether). After the Comédie Française, it is the second oldest straight theatre in Europe, and the largest German speaking one. Currently, Karin Bergmann is the artistic director of the Burgtheater, and will be followed by Martin Kušej in 2019.

Stefan Bachmann, Andrea Breth, Roland Schimmelpfennig and Michael Thalheimer are just a few of the renowned directors to work at the Burgtheater in the past. Paula Wessely, Attila Hörbiger, Josef Meinrad and Paul Hörbiger were once some of the most famous names to perform at the Burgtheater. Today, Kirsten Dene, Maria Happel, Klaus Maria Brandauer, or Peter Simonischek must be mentioned when talking about the prominent cast members of the “Burg”. The highest honour for an actor in the Austrian theatre world is to be called a “Burgschauspieler,” which solely connotes that you are a permanent actor at the Burgtheater. In fact, Thomas Bernhard dedicated one of his most famous novels, “Woodcutters”, to the high social status of the “Burgschauspieler.”

Demand to see the creme de la creme of Austrian theatre live on stage is extremely high, and there’s usually a long line meandering from the ticket booth inside all the way to the front of the building. While the Burgtheater was once only frequented by the aristocracy, today it is accessible to anyone, with a standing ticket as cheap as €3,50.

Historically, the Volkstheater was founded with the mission of being the exact opposite of the Burgtheater. Its name says it all: “People’s Theatre.” Its purpose, as Mrs. Badora pointed out during the UTE conference in Belgrade, “is to bring theatre to the people on its main stage as well as on its second stage and its 19 theatres in the districts.” The Volkstheater includes both entertainment in its repertory but also, and most importantly, innovative theatre that is critical of socio-political developments.

Complementing the two biggest straight theatres in Vienna, there are other important institutions that also need to be briefly considered. These theatres offer different content and aesthetics than the Burgtheater or the Volkstheater, and partially cater to a different audience altogether. The Theater in der Josefstadt, which opened in 1788, is the oldest theatre in Vienna to continuously have been in use since its founding. Its focus, as suggested earlier, is on classical Austrian theatre, including contemporary literature and light comedy. Since 2006, Herbert Föttinger has been the theatre’s artistic director.

The Theater der Jugend, with Thomas Birkmeir as its artistic director, has two stages, the Theater im Zentrum and the Renaissancetheater. It mainly produces plays for children and adolescents, although the theatre has also had the responsibility of generating audiences for other theatres.

Next to theatres that have a greater focus on music theatre (Theater an der Wien, Ronacher, Raimundtheater), there are numerous other theatres in Vienna, such as the Schauspielhaus Wien and the Rabenhof Theater, to only name two famous ones. Smaller stages are also very frequented by Austrian theatre goers. One of the most highly respected and popular types is the socio-politically charged cabaret genre. The most renowned stage is the Kabarett Simpl, the only cabaret that dates back to the 19th century that is still open today.

The diversity of Austria’s theatrical institutions delineated here demonstrates the high demand of Austria’s adept theatre audience that enjoys this art form in all its shapes and sizes. Accordingly, Austrians also highly value their independent theatre scene. Since the 1990s, the scene has boomed tremendously, especially due to the high influx of students of theatre who opt to stay in Austria after graduation. Even though Austria’s most prestigious drama school, the Reinhardt Seminar, only accepts 3-12 students a year, there are still more than 50 drama and music schools which attract a high number of students from abroad. The (former) students’ sundry backgrounds, and their offbeat and experimental approaches, make the independent scene particularly attractive to the versed spectator.

Federal and municipal funding for the independent scene occurs in three ways: for a year-long programme, a specific project, or for production exchanges or tours abroad. An external advisory committee is made up of individuals who are active in the arts. The committee members’ primary responsibility is to select viable applicants from the countless proposals that come in every year. This committee studies all incoming applications based on a series of rigid criteria (quality, target audience, innovation, new forms of theatrical creation, realistic budgeting, etc.), reaching an exclusive selection of productions and projects that promise the highest artistic quality and greatest sustainability. In 2016, these projects were funded with approximately 1.5 million euros. Roughly 400,000 euros were used for fourteen one-year long projects and a little over one million euros was awarded to 120 troupes. Additionally, the city of Vienna funded the independent scene with four million euros.

Vienna offers “co-production locations” to the independent scene, which are companies that don’t produce themselves but offer their premises to independent artists. The most famous of these are the Tanzquartier, the brut, and the Dschungel Wien (the latter being for children’s theatre). While rehearsals often last up to six weeks, “productions frequently aren’t performed more than two or three times”, Ms. Ruis lamented at the conference in Belgrade. This is why the federal government encourages independent artists to take their shows abroad, as tours can be granted additional funding.

Many independent artists are members of the IGFT, the League of Independent Artists, which was founded in 1989. It’s a network of more than 1,600 independent theatre and dance artists that lobbies for the independent scene. The IGFT covers cultural politics, consulting, public relations, infrastructure, networking, and controlling of funding and social security allowances, as well as general services to independent theatre makers (taxes, dues, etc.) The league receives funding of 300,000 euros from the federal government.

For theatre institutions, funding is tied to the principle of subsidiarity. That is to say that a theatre must receive subsidies from the municipality and the state in order to receive funding from the federal government. This way of financing is firmly established in the federal constitution, and aims at decentralizing accountability and forwarding it to those closest to the subsidized institution. Therefore, the main responsibility when it comes to theatres lies with the state and/or the city, and only to a lesser extent with the federal government; thus granting more freedom to the local institutions themselves. The subsidies for state theatres, regional and municipal theatres, the Vereinigte Bühnen Wien and the Viennese private theatres amounted to around 353 million euros in the 2014/2015 season.

To receive federal funding, theatres are held accountable for their cultural responsibility. Tending to classics of the German language and of international theatre as well as fostering contemporary and innovative art are amongst their core responsibilities. Furthermore, the Federal Theatres Organisation Act states that theatres should embrace artistically risque productions; should transmit art and theatre to the young generation; should enable a vast variety of people to have access to theatre; should fight for international collaboration; should be active year-round; and should offer a repertoire based on having a permanent company of actors.

This funding system does go a long way, as Austria proves to have a high number of new openings each season: the Burgtheater alone started the season with a programmed 21 premieres on top of its regular repertoire, the Volkstheater will have 18 opening nights, the Schauspielhaus Graz 22, the Stadttheater Klagenfurt 10 and the youth theatre of Graz, Next Liberty, has 15 scheduled. This productive output is definitely only possible thanks to the theatres’ high and effective public funding.

Each year, the theatres’ efforts are rewarded when their artistic contributions and creative minds are nominated for a “Nestroy”—the Austrian theatre prize. Inspired by the Parisian theatre award “Molière”, the “Nestroy” aims at highlighting Austria’s artistic ability by honouring the most creative and innovative actors, directors and playwrights as well as in-house productions by festivals.

Festival season is what makes the culture-loving Austrian survive the summer, when theatres are generally on a break. That’s why the majority of festivals take place in the spring and summer. With Austria being a country known for its rich musical tradition as well, a lot of these festivals combine the disciplines of music and theatre, such as the world-renowned Salzburger Festspiele.

Salzburg almost triples its population during the six weeks of its festival, which takes place every year in July and August. More than 250,000 people flock to the city to see the legendary festival’s 200 events. Max Reinhardt and Hugo von Hofmannsthal are the forefathers of what is today considered one of the world’s most relevant festivals for music and contemporary art. At its foundation in 1920, Reinhardt and Hofmannsthal envisioned a festival that would contrast the renowned Bayreuth festival by not only celebrating one single artist, but a myriad of artists from opera, orchestra music and drama. Ever since the very first edition of the Salzburger Festspiele, the festival has opened with its flagship production: Hofmannsthal’s “Everyman”. Today, the festival’s artistic direction is in the hands of Markus Hinterhäuser.

Since 1946, the Bregenzer Festspiele, artistically directed by Elisabeth Sobotka, has offered a vast variety of productions in five venues, drawing in roughly 200,000 people every year in July and August. It is most famous for its floating stage on Lake Constance, where a larger-than-life set that usually incorporates the lake in one way or another is the backdrop for a massive operatic undertaking. Drama performances and concerts are held in nearby venues.

Another highlight of the festival season is the Wiener Festwochen festival, which attracts 180,000 people with a programme of drama, opera and dance during the course of five weeks in May and June. Tomas Zierhofer-Kin, artistic director of the festival, and his team manage around 175 performances and 70 concerts each year.

Innovation is the first concept that comes to mind when thinking of the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, whose artistic direction is in the hands of Gerfried Stocker. The festival is at the interface between art, technology and society. It is one of the world’s most important media art festivals that attracts around 35,000 visitors each year.

The steirischer herbst is another internationally acclaimed festival for contemporary art. Founded in 1968, the festival brings together all forms of art, from theatre to visual arts, film, literature, dance, music, architecture, performance and new media. The programme of the steirischer herbst exclusively shows original works, world premieres and commissioned works. Since 2006, Veronica Kaup-Hasler has managed this renowned festival, but will pass the baton to Ekaterina Degot next year.

Other relevant but smaller festivals include La Strada (street art festival in Graz), ImPuls Tanz (Vienna’s prestigious dance festival), the Festspiele Reichenau, Sommerszene Salzburg, SCHÄXPIR and spleen*graz (the international theatre festivals for children and youth theatre in Linz and Graz). The list of festivals goes on and on. What would otherwise be a theatrical dry spell in the summer turns into a sea of artistic events to quench Austrians’ thirst for theatre.

Since the Baroque age, and in particular since the era of Joseph II, theatre has been a central cultural institution in Austria. But it’s the combination of tremendous respect for this art form as well as a happy financial position that allows for the continued prosperity of Austria’s creatively (and otherwise) rich theatre landscape—a privileged situation that everybody at the Conference on Theatre Structures seemed to long for. That became blatantly obvious when Alexandru Darie of the Bulandra Theatre in Romania asked, “Can we all move to Austria?”

 

Published on 5 January 2018 (Article originally written in English)

Unsurtitled Theatricality

Unsurtitled Theatricality—Three plays at the Volkstheater

Watching performances in a congtext that is the opposite on an international festival situation is quite an interesting experience. A group of non-German speaking journalists affiliated with the Union des Théâtres de l’Europe had an opportunity to just do that in the autumn of 2017, as guests at the Volkstheater in Vienna. We saw three different plays on three consecutive evenings, all without surtitles. In this sense, the present article can be placed in a dialogue with Sergio lo Gatto’s article “Surtitled Theatricality: What language do artists export?” written in connection with an international festival, exploring how much the theatricality of a performance is based (only) on the text and what this means for a foreign audience.

“Wien ohne Wiener”, directed by Nikolaus Habjan at the Volkstheater Wien © Lupi Spuma

Perhaps there could not have been a better time to test Segio’s theory than this: we had an opportunity to watch productions that were not necessarily intended for festivals, in their local setting, without surtitles and with minimal German knowledge. This is by no means an unusual situation, although writing about it is. To be honest, the opportunity to let go of the text often fills me with relief. As it is difficult to resist surtitles, even when one fights to succumb to the temptation: at least I, myself, am so verbally inclined that a scene rarely glues my gaze to the stage, I keep looking up, meaning I definitely miss a great deal of what is happening.

There is another reason why I feel that the situation at hand is the polar opposite of international festivals: I almost feel like a voyeur, peeping at the Viennese in their home, as they watch theatre made just for them. Even from the three plays, even without understanding the text, one sees what there is a market for, and what the artistic director, Anna Badora and the creative circle are intrigued by. One thing is for sure, the Viennese enjoy explorations (seeped in historical identity) about what it means to be Viennese: two of the three performances, Wien ohne Wiener and Alles waltzer, alles brennt dealt with specifically this question. The third production was constructed from two consecutive performances of Iphigenia in Aulis and Stephano Massini’s Occident Express about the post-migration society. This indicates, what may be evident to us, but not to all segments of the theatrical structure: that the Volkstheater is strongly focused on the present. How profoundly and in what depth the issues presented in the play are dealt with is another question. In the absence of text, I can only guess at how thought-provoking, provocative, playful or even didactic these productions were.

However, I am able to give a much more definite opinion on which of the performances had the strongest impact in terms of theatrical language: Nikolaus Habjan’s Wien ohne Wiener, even though this play is the least bit international. The production is a kind of homage to the deceased Georg Keisler, the Austrian cabaret artist who strongly relied on Viennese (Jewish) culture in his songs. On the surface, the context is completely foreign, but it seems contextual knowledge is not necessary for one to feel that the performance is about them. In other words, one does not have to be Viennese to feel Viennese (as someone from Budapest).

Naturally, among other things, it is the puppets in Wien ohne Wiener that make the play seem new, fresh and full of life. With the absence of a lingua franca, the audience becomes immersed in the visual stimuli. Habjan’s puppets offer a real treat: With their bulging eyes and wrinkled faces these figures embody the ridiculousness and petty bourgeois of people who step on our toes on the tram (And those polyester blouses and knitted waistcoats!). And it is as if death had left its fingerprints on all of the faces… The way the puppets move on stage is also exciting. They are actually life-sized, but their limbs are replaced by the limbs of the puppeteers, who fill the empty shirts, blouses, that are the torsos of the puppets with their own hands and bodies. Interestingly, this makes the puppets seem alive; and they seem to be “acting” even when they lay lifeless on the edge of the stage. Adding further colour to the production is that the puppets do not only have separate puppeteers but also separate voices: as one actor moves the puppet the other “dubs” its words. The production exploits the playfulness of this method, each element i.e. the puppets, the puppeteers and voice-over actors, have their own lives and communicate with one another. Funny gags include the “voice” knocking the puppet over the head, the broad-hipped Alpine girl built out of two actresses, and Claudia Sabitzer dressed as a pigeon looking like a puppet herself. And we have not even mentioned the music of the play! It seems that Wien ohne Wiener has such a great impact because it creates its own, new world out of existing texts (none of which I had been familiar with). The whole thing is very grotesque, incredibly funny and deadly.

On the second night, we saw Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis and Stefano Massini’s Occident Express. Anna Badora placed the two plays side by side. It is an unusual, but not unique method, a bit like a curator organising an exhibition of two independent pieces, maybe even from different eras, in a way that the pieces start to interact with one another. Naturally it is the task of the audience to find the link, the reflections of each piece with the other. We have seen examples of this in Hungarian theatre: Gábor Máté used this method at the József Katona Theatre, when he placed a genre-painting like play about gypsies set in the first half of the last century in contrast with a contemporary play about a series of ethnically motivated murders set in the early 2000s in Hungary. This experiment was followed by Csaba Polgár at the Örkény Theatre. He embedded a series of scenes also about murder into the well-known story of seven samurais from Kurosawa’s film. The audience could actually vote to decide the fate of the samurais in the last third of the performance. I remember how my thoughts jumped from one story to the next, how one interpreted the other without the solution being completely obvious.

The memories of these two plays danced around in my head as I was watching Anna Badora’s production; the lack of surtitles actually created a larger space to make these sorts of associations. Nevertheless, my lack of familiarity with the second play made this process more difficult as I did not understand the language. In essence, this method relies on each actor playing multiple roles. As they reappear in the second part of the production, their roles reflect upon each other. As I only had a vague understanding of Massini’s play, I found following this aspect of the production difficult. Rather, I watched the plays as two separate entities (or at least two separate parts of the performance). As a result, and also due to the lack of surtitles, the quality of the acting stood out even more. The difference in the style of the two plays was acutely apparent: the acting in Occidental Express seemed much more natural, reflective and multi-layered. Of course, the premise was also different: the actors narrated some of the play themselves and kept a distance from the story. This was obvious to me even without familiarity with the text, primarily thanks to the quality of acting. The other signs, the recurring motifs, the spilling of the paint, the proliferation of victims worked nicely, but it is again difficult for me to decipher to what degree Massini’s text takes over the story of the refugees, or speaks for them—an angle mentioned at a conference the day before by an artist of Syrian descent.

The production I saw on my third night was Alles Waltzer, alles brennt, which was quite likable even with the language barrier. However, it was during this production that I missed surtitles the most. To be more precise, this performance peaked my interest in the text (while Massini’s play probably was more predictable), it awoke a thirst for knowledge in me (even in an educational sense), and I kept wondering which aspect of the happenings the play dealt with. Irony and humour were quite clearly present, gags thundered through the stage and the story with dizzying speed. And I would like to take this opportunity to say that the solo of singer Eva Jantschitsch was absolutely magnificent.

Well that’s the way it is: if something interesting happens on stage, we notice it even without surtitles.

 

Published on 20 December 2017 (Article originally written in Hungarian)

The Rich and the Poor: Coming Together and Drifting Apart in the European Theatrical Landscape

The Rich and the Poor: Coming Together and Drifting Apart in the European Theatrical Landscape

Money (or the lack of it) was a recurring issue during the second conference on theatre structures promoted by the Union des Théâtres de l’Europe. Between the State and the market, financial gymnastics tends to be the rule — but there are some exceptions.

Conference on Theatre Structures at the Yugoslav Drama Theatre in Belgrade, Serbia

As the peak of the economic and financial crisis that paralyzed Europe during the last decade — to a greater or lesser extent, according to the strength and the resilience of national budgets — seems finally overcome (or so they say…), money is still the elephant in the room when it comes to analyzing the differing (and often conflicting) paradigms that rule the arts, and theatre in particular, in the European context. Indeed that’s how it felt a year ago in Milan, when the Union des Théâtres de l’Europe (UTE) held the first of its conferences on theatre structures, in an event that finally materialized not only the thousands of kilometers but also the thousands of euros that keep the Teatro Nacional de São João, in Porto, apart from co-members such as the Schauspiel Stuttgart or the Piccolo Teatro de Milano (eventually leaving some room for debate on the uncomfortable transit between theatre and politics in turbulent contexts such as Tunisia or Israel). And again, that’s how it felt a week ago in Belgrade, where the impact of the still ongoing shift from Eastern Europe’s hyper-regulated and hyper-centralized systems to a market economy was in the spotlight, framing the more or less converging experiences of Bulgaria’s Sfumato, Romania’s Teatrul Bulandra, Serbia’s Yugoslav Drama Theatre (JDP), Greece’s National Theatre of Greece in Athens, and Russia’s Stanislavsky Electrotheatre.

The price of adjusting to a new environment which is mostly defined by the state’s retreat and the scarcity of available funds is a common feature to most of the theatres working beyond the former Iron Curtain, despite regional differences. “We all face similar problems, but in the Serbian case they’re aggravated by the fact that the system itself is going through changes. Yes, we do need more funds—but we also need a new model”, said Tamara Vučković Manojlović, JDP’s general manager, right at the opening of the conference. “The laws that have recently been approved do not acknowledge the cultural sector’s specific characteristics, and public funds decrease as the idea that theatre must adapt to the principles of a market economy makes its way”, she added. Today, YDT’s ticket sales revenues make up for 18–22% of its total budget and the emphasis on diversifying the theatre’s sources of income has led to the frequent rental of its rooms, a side-activity which already represents a “substantial” cash flow.

Also in Bulgaria, where the State’s investment in the cultural sector remains at 0.5% of the country’s GDP, the funding mechanisms behind its 35 public theatres also began fluctuating according to the laws of the market. “Starting eight years ago, the budget of each and every theatre depends on the ticket sales—we’re now under the market’s Diktat”, Sfumato’s artistic director Margarita Mladenova argued. This new funding system, she explained, pushes theatres towards a serial production approach, eventually compromising long, experimental artistic processes, such as the ones that historically defined the Sfumato: “We’re strongly advised to rehearse less and sell more. Breeding new actors, new poetics and new aesthetics is currently marginalized.” Meanwhile, whole theatrical seasons gravitating around famous, crowd-pleasing TV stars abound, sacrificing the institutions’ long-established artistic identities: “To make sure they make enough money, directors cast ‘dancing bears’ [A/N popular TV actors] in the leading roles, and the remaining actors are forced to gravitate around them so they can be paid. It’s atrocious.”, Mladenova stated, advocating for a new funding system that may replace the “emphasis on consumerism” by highlighting artistic integrity and further regulating the local administrations’ financial contribution to Bulgaria’s theatrical landscape (the current set of rules favours rather arbitrary funding policies).

In Romania, where municipal budgets are a key-element to the survival of the country’s public theatre network (only national theatres are directly State-financed, and less than 0.8% of the GDP is invested in the cultural sector); the paradigm is changing, too. Bucharest is definitely a world apart—three million people, half of the country’s GDP, a billion-euro municipal budget, 28 cultural institutions, 14 city-funded theatres—, but outside the capital city survival is especially hard, Teatrul Bulandra’s Alexandru Darie pointed out. Both the market and the rules defining how to access the municipal funds (about 70–80% of the total budget, in Bulandra’s case) pave the way for an industrial, mass-production model: new productions tend to multiply (seven to ten per year being the current average) as the shows’ careers are downsized (a maximum of 10 to 15 sessions per show).

Meanwhile, on yet another front, the “extraordinary boom” of private theatres which proliferate in alternative venues is reshaping Romania’s theatrical landscape—“for better and for worse”, according to Alexandru Darie. “Private theaters are more likely to forgo legislation or evade their fiscal responsibilities and have lighter structures that tend to be more flexible and free from administrative constraints. So, it’s an unfair competition for public theatres, which only this year were again granted permission to hire new actors and technicians [in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, this was strictly ruled out]. An actor we recently hired for a new production of Ivanov told us that while we were paying him about 100 euros a night for burning himself out and weighing two kilos less after each performance, a private theatre would pay him twice as much just to sit in a chair and tell jokes”, Bulandra’s artistic director reported. Then again, it’s also true, he admitted, that the freedom of action of the private arena has allowed for the appearance of “emerging talents (actors, directors, etc.) that are now finally permeating the public theatres”, eventually updating their repertoires and their theatrical languages”. 

“At the moment, it is a war, but I hope that in the end the clash between these two worlds will benefit the public theatres”, Alexandru Darie summed up, endorsing a new framework in which these institutions “heavily controlled by the State and local administrations” (“We must demand permission for everything!”) can have higher flexibility and autonomy levels.

Just like in Bulgaria, a structural change also seems inevitable in Romania: “Maybe we must follow the examples set by Italy or Germany and redefine the status of our theatres, a move some of my colleagues are afraid of because they suspect change will mean less funding.” Anyway, the current legal framework has also proven insufficient as far as benefactors’ and sponsors’ incentives are concerned: “The system favours investing in festivals, which is where all the rich and nicely dressed people show up; nobody will care for the theatres’ daily activities unless the law is reformed.”

Transitioning

Meanwhile, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where State control assumes spookier nuances (as it has recently been underlined by the painful Kyril Serebrennikov’s case), the systemic shock caused by the collapse of the USSR seems far from digested. Part of the “enormous structure” set up by the communist regime in every corner of the country is still on—about 700 theatres are supported either by the State or the local administrations—, but in many cases (including the historical ballet and opera theatres of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky) their dotation doesn’t even cover these institutions’ heavy operating costs (needless to say, fixed ensembles tend to be a sacred rule). In fact, and given the lack of resources, theatres are tangled in complex financial gymnastics, juxtaposing highly volatile public and private funds, said Boris Yukhananov, Stanislavsky Electrotheatre’s artistic director. “Government is very much for the establishment of benefactor councils for every theatre, and that’s how many companies survive. As for the municipal funds, they too tend to fluctuate according to the mayor’s preferences… But Voronezh is a fine example—and there are others—of the renaissance of a contemporary culture”, he mentioned. In this “gradual transitioning context from centralization to decentralization”, theatre is still overwhelmingly non-commercial: “Some commercial theatres try to be self-sufficient, but normally they don’t succeed.”

The Stanislavsky Electrotheatre is one of those examples of cross-pollination between public and private dotation. Established more than a century ago, in 1915, it was one of the first grand cinemas in Moscow before eventually becoming Konstantin Stanislavsky’s studio; since 2013 it’s Boris Yukhananov’s new home, a multidisciplinary venture where theatre, opera and music converge. “In early 2013, the theatre was in a very delicate situation and the city of Moscow ran a public competition for the post of artistic director; I applied and got appointed. In theory, the city would provide all the funding, but I would never choose that kind of slavery to the authorities, if only for the fact that our artistic visions don’t match. Presently, the city feeds our budget with one million euros while the remaining five or six million euros come from benefactors”, the director went into detail. Total investment in the reconstruction of the theatre is in the vicinity of one billion rubles, he added. “If we manage to prove we double as an opera theatre, we may double the current dotation”, Boris Yukhananov said, highlighting “the important work” that the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre has developed with contemporary composers.

The eye of the crisis

Although in the Eastern countries the cumulative effect of the ongoing paradigm shift and the economic crisis has aggravated the inevitable growing pains, no European country has been more deeply affected by the financial decay than Greece. Stathis Livanthinos, National Theatre of Greece’s artistic director, came to Belgrade to tell us about survival in the eye of the crisis, with less than half of the good old days’ budget to manage (the institution’s dotation declined from 12 to six million euros), and no chance of easing the burden of its expensive staff structure (250 workers and a permanent ensemble of one hundred actors), whose salaries currently consume all the available funds—ticket sales are the only source of funding for theatre production itself. “It’s a feature of the National Theatre of Greece Basic Law, which has been approved in the 90s. I tried to change that rule, because, as you can imagine, it’s extremely difficult to survive given these conditions, but the idea is that in times of crisis there should be at least a place where Greek actors can work and get paid”, he explained.

The budget’s drastic downsizing threatens the National Theatre of Greece’s main mission, since its ability to reach beyond the city of Athens and to penetrate the whole country is now weakened: “The National Theatre of Greece is in danger of becoming just the National Theatre of Athens; the current financial situation makes it very hard to be present on a national level.” Besides, the crisis has also undermined the State’s ability to support theatrical activity: “The Ministry of Culture used to subsidize theatres across the country. It’s over now. Only the National Theatre of Greece and the National Theatre of Northern Greece [A/N also a member of the UTE] are State-financed. In fact, the percentage of the national budget that is available for culture is so low that I’m ashamed to quantify it.”

Relying on ticket revenues to finance new productions, and at the same time seriously constrained by the audience’s declining purchasing power (which eventually forced the institution to implement a new reduced price policy, so the common Greek could still afford going to the theatre), the National Theatre of Greece can no longer guarantee its quality standards. And that’s also due to the fact that the legal framework does not suit the attraction of new, alternative sources of income: “A few years ago I started looking for sponsors and benefactors, but we need more adequate legislation. Some companies did give us money because they like what we do, but all that we can give them back is some publicity in our programmes… and so the National Theatre of Greece risks seeing its name being swallowed up by private companies and losing its public character”, Stathis Livanthinos argued.

Not everything is tragic in the country where tragedy was invented, though: the crisis years were also, paradoxically, years of theatrical abundance, with an average of a thousand new shows per year just to mention Athens (even if in many cases the artists did not get paid) and finally, “for the first time in too many years”, the Ministry of Culture could hand out about 100 million euros to independent theatre companies.

Over the rainbow

But there is a parallel universe in this story—and it belongs in Europe, too. A parallel universe where talking about theatre doesn’t necessarily mean “talking about money” (“which, besides being unpleasant, is incorrect”, as Stathis Livanthinos pointed out). Luxembourg, for instance, whose young national theatre was established in 1996 after the overwhelming success of the European Capital of Culture of the preceding year. Frank Hoffmann, director (and founder!) of Théâtre National du Luxembourg, did not come to Belgrade to speak about funding but to discuss issues of mission and identity in a small country of 500 thousand inhabitants where almost half of the population is of foreign origin and speaks another language.

Vienna’s Volkstheater is also a world apart—as is the entire theatrical landscape of Austria, a topic that another article of this online magazine will further develop. So apart from that, somewhere over the rainbow, many million euros away, as Theatre and Dance Unit Chief at the Arts and Culture Department of the Federal Chancellery, Andrea Ruis, and Volkstheater’s artistic director, Anna Badora, described “the best system in the world” (Badora’s words) the remaining speakers finally found the good news they were so desperate to bring back home.

 

Published on 29 September 2017 (Article originally written in Portuguese)