“Making something out of one piece, bringing in your own ideas – that has always appealed to me personally,” says Sinnhuber. The professor at the BRG Khevenhüllerstraße in Linz and his students from the theater group had been sentenced to do nothing for the past three years. To do nothing in the sense of not being able to show what talents are growing up for the stage in the cultural branch of the high school. Corona led to a forced break for a tradition that has been around for a little over 30 years. Sinnhuber has been on board for that long.
Now it’s making a comeback, and for this the enthusiastic theater man has chosen Frank Wedekind’s “Frühlingserwaken”, a classic with “eternally valid content”. Because young people who fail at school or break down because of a strange sexual morality, according to Sinnhuber, nothing has really changed. Only the circumstances have changed. “Needs are the issue, Corona has also triggered a need in the school, once morest which one might not help oneself and which is still a problem,” he says. Premiere is on March 23rd.
“Lots of heart”
For Sinnhuber it will be one of the last productions that he will bring to the stage of the school ballroom with the students. Because 2025 is the time for retirement (“old age is approaching me”) and because Sinnhuber “doesn’t just want to stop like that”, he is still hoping for a piece in the coming year. Then he will “only” do private theater. With the Ensemble Gründberg, to which he has been a member since 1983. “Of course I wish it would continue, because the theater group is like a child. There’s a lot of heart and soul in it.”
His credo: Through acting, the students should get to know sides of themselves that they would never get to know otherwise. And it should be fun. He knows that best from his own experience. “If I don’t enjoy it myself, then neither does the youth,” says Sinnhuber. And the fun factor has nothing to do with the fact that something funny has to be offered on stage. Even tragedy can be fun. “Spring Awakening” is performed by the theater group, which has around 20 students. In a version shortened to two hours, but which doesn’t leave out anything essential.
Info: “Spring Awakening” by Frank Wedekind, March 23, 24, 25 and 28, 7 p.m., festival hall of the Khevenhüllergymnasium in Linz, tickets: Tel. 0732/667279 (school office)
Author
Reinhold Gruber
Local Editor Linz
Reinhold Gruber
