With “Heil”, a play by Stefanie Sargnagel, staged by Christina Tscharyiski, comes to the Rabenhof Theater in which – accompanied by the band Buntspecht – the esoteric mania is targeted. The young singer-songwriter Anna Mabo will be with her band “Am Sand” from November 29th. Theater director Thomas Gratzer says regarding the evening staged by Fabian Pfleger: “I don’t yet know where the journey is going, but one thing I do know: It will definitely not be a concert.”
It is also not entirely clear what Yasmin Hafedh aka Yasmo will do with Nestroy’s “Chief Evening Wind” – except that the topics of feminism and colonialism will be particularly emphasized. “Here the Next Generation is at work, you have to start slowly to hand over the baton,” says Gratzer. The play will premiere on April 13, 2023.
And everyone else is coming back too, from Maschek to Christian Dolezal to the daily press team. And the protest song contest is entering its 20th year and will be honored on this occasion from October as part of the “Austropop – From Mozart to Falco” exhibition in the Theater Museum. Gratzer: “That makes me very proud.”
Target audience: youth
Thomas Gratzer has been in charge of the stage in Vienna-Landstrasse since 2003, which is also seen in Germany as a successful alternative model to the established big stages. His current contract runs until 2025, says the actor, director and theater manager who was born in 1962. How things will continue following that is “not yet an issue”.
The fact that the Rabenhof has not lost its young audience is not only proven in the two annual children’s and youth theater productions by Roman Freigaßner-Hauser, but also in the “vintage production” of Turrini’s “Rozznjogd”, which by the Boys had been stormed: “We had standing ovations every evening,” enthuses Gratzer. In 2023 the Nordic god of thunder Thor and the Grimm fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel” will be brought to the stage for young viewers
Gratzer: “The new one is 50 percent sold out.”
42,000 spectators in 237 performances gave the Rabenhof an occupancy rate of 60 percent in the completed 2021/22 season. In view of the 90 percent that had been brought in in 2019/20 by the first day of closure due to the pandemic, there was no reason to celebrate – “following all, we only had to cancel a few days this season due to illness,” says Gratzer, who is present in person before almost every performance this year thanked the audience and “received great feedback” for it.
After a very good autumn, however, visits dropped following the lockdown. The war in Ukraine, the inflation and the waves of price increases would do the rest “that the public is very hesitant at the moment. I always say: the new one is 50 percent sold out.”
Financially, thanks to the continuation of the subsidies even when there are no performances and the use of short-time work, one is in a good position, so in the coming season one can once more offer “a classic Rabenhof program” with in-house productions, assures the theater boss. The first new production on September 20 will be a “Bachmann Prize Alternative” called “Austria’s Writing Stars”, in which Christoph Grissemann and Dirk Stermann will read from the autobiographies of local celebrities.
