Asked – Markus Strahl: “I'll do it as long as it makes me happy”

Noon: Tomorrow, Tuesday, you open the latest summer season in Weissenkirchen – with “Witch Time in the Wachau”. Is there magic there? Or rather, did it sing (and play)?

Markus Strahl: It would be a beautiful piece! The operetta would be too much, it is a musical comedy. And we have actors who can sing. The witch is not a classical witch, but a modern woman – a skilled tailor from Baden who has inherited a house in the Wachau. And of course love is not neglected either.

Susanne C. Wolf wrote the comedy for the Wachaufestspiele – and it's not the first time the premiere has been staged.

Packages: We have been doing premieres for years, and Susanne F. Wolff's premiere was “Keine Ruh' fürs Donauweibchen” in 2019. But we have also had purely spoken pieces. And I always wanted to do a second piece in the summer, but that's not possible this year. But next year again – last year's “Mariandel” will be done again.

This year you are also celebrating an anniversary, the 20th Wachau Festival, which you took over in 2005. Before that it was called the Comic Games – what else has changed?

Packages: I wanted to stand out with the name. At that time we were the only professional cultural festival in the Wachau – and we still do in the summer. My predecessor played 12 shows in 4 weeks in front of 200 seats. We have 25 to 28 shows in front of over 300 seats. That has almost doubled. We usually play until mid-September, which is a long time, it can’t be any longer, and then it gets cold.

It is still played entirely outdoors, in the Teisenhoferhof.

Packages: Now we were actually close to the surface. But we've only been to the premiere half a dozen times in 20 years. [lacht] – On average three times per season.

You won't be playing at all this year. Was that planned?

Packages: Guidance and direction is more than enough, that's a whole year's work. My first year in the Geiger pit my father was still there. [Erwin Strahl] Directed by – and my mother [Waltraut Haas] I played along.

What's next? What else is coming?

Packages: Until a few years ago my dream was “Cabaret”. I would have really loved that! Now I don't want to do that anymore. There are no old Nestroys or Raimunds either, others do it better. But Austrian folk comedy is good, it's successful. And in 2025 a new genre will come, the crime comedy by Gerhard Loeppelsberger, “The Stolen Flower”. That will be exciting!

www.wachaufestspiele.com