Kai Voges calls for 'confrontation' in super election year

The look of the cowgirl looking out from the facade of the Vienna Folk Theater leaves no questions unanswered: there will be a “showdown.” This is how director Kai Voges calls his final season 2024/25 before he takes over the Cologne Theater. “It's still too early to be sad or even on the balance sheet,” he told the Klein Zeitung newspaper after presenting the game plan. “I'm going into the final season with high expectations. It's a challenging show – radically present and radically emotional. It sees confrontation as a climax, an ending, but also a time of reckoning. “The beautiful thing is: it has a word presentation in it. “We will present our final shirt. Starting on April 14, 2025, there will be a 'showdown' with 34 other performances from the past five years in five weeks.

Ahead of that, there are eleven premieres and debuts on the program from the fall: Kay Voges brings Alexander Kirlin's “Bullet Time” to open in September, which harks back to the beginnings of cinema in California 150 years ago and is also a courtroom drama about the world-famous photographer Eadweard Muybridge, who had previously shot his wife's lover. In October, the director will bring the work of recent Nobel Prize winner John Fosse to the big stage with The Name. “He is a master of the silent, the subtle, the unspoken,” Voges says. Now he will have the courage to bring “the great author to the big stage.”

Austrian drama

After her theatrical successes “Humanistää” and “Ernst Jandl” as well as “Malina” by Ingeborg Bachmann, director Claudia Bauer now takes over “Illness or Modern Women” by Elfriede Jelinek. With “Mayröcker (Point),” Louise Voigt presents a production with texts by Friedrich Mayröcker. In her Vienna debut, Leonie Böhm performs Schnitzler's “Fräulein Else.” We'll see you again with Rimini Protocol. Hilgard Høge is represented by the premiere of “Ever Give,” a film about turning points in life. The American band Calexico wrote songs for Tennessee Williams' piece “Camino Real” and is also coming to Vienna for 13 shows. “Dear Asshole” by Virginie Despentes will also premiere in this country.

“Confrontations” are looming in this excellent election year, not only on the stage, but also in the political arena. The Volkstheater invites you to the “ultimate celebration of democracy (before it's too late!)” as part of “Three Days for Austria”. Voges talks about an “interesting discursive program” that includes election analysis and a party on the day of the National Council elections. There is also good news to report regarding occupancy: occupancy in the 2023/2024 season was 77 percent as of April 30, compared to 68 percent the previous year.