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New Burgtheater boss Stefan Bachmann at the press conference on the occasion of his appointment in Vienna, December 21, 2022
Photo: Eva Manhart / dpa
The Swiss director Stefan Bachmann, currently artistic director at the Schauspiel Köln, is to become the new director of the Burgtheater in Vienna from 2024.
This was announced today by the Austrian Secretary of State for Art and Culture, Andrea Mayer (Greens).
The announcement of the personnel was preceded by months of decision-making, which was also publicly accompanied by the Austrian media.
Bachmann, 56, will succeed Martin Kušej, 61, who has only been in charge of the Burgtheater since 2019 and angrily withdrew his renewed application on Tuesday afternoon.
The job in Vienna is considered the most important artistic director position in the German-speaking theater world.
Kušej is a virtuoso director who often looks darkly at theatrical material and the world, and often blusters as a theater director.
Bachmann is regarded as a playful director who is usually cheerful, even with difficult plays, and is known as a theater manager for his engaging and friendly tone.
Both play in the premier league of theater makers - together with colleagues like Barbara Frey or Karin Beier, who were also both in discussion in Vienna and had publicly stated that they were not available for the job.
Kušej's anger at Austria's cultural policy
Bachmann is a good choice.
It is a little unfair that Kušej is sawed off by the politician Mayer in the middle of his first term of office, which has long been restricted by Corona - his artistic record so far is not brilliant, but by no means lousy.
Inside and outside of his home, however, Kušej has gained a reputation for being a somewhat gruff theater director.
He linked his declaration of withdrawal on Tuesday with an angry complaint about Austrian cultural policy: »The late and lengthy decision-making process on the future of the Burgtheater management maneuvered my person and the entire Burgtheater into an unspeakable situation that was damaging to the house.«
Kušej's successor Bachmann will prematurely end his contract in Cologne, which runs until 2026 and has already been extended twice, for the Burgtheater job.
While Kušej has become known as a rather conservative, text-loving theater maker, Bachmann has distinguished himself from the beginning of his career with more open ways of acting and often contemporary plays.
In his spectacular theater work, he has staged contemporary plays by Rainald Goetz and Elfriede Jelinek, among others.
In addition to other productions in 2018, he showed a brilliant update of the »Jedermann« material by the playwright Ferdinand Schmalz in the Burgtheater.
Open to organizational change
Also in 2018, as a theater director in Cologne, Bachmann was confronted with allegations of bullying – also in SPIEGEL – which were primarily directed at his wife, the actress and director Melanie Kretschmann.
Bachmann responded by launching an external investigation to clarify the allegations and was open to changes in the often hierarchical organizational structure of the theater.
"The feudal system that the theater is always accused of has long been crumbling," said the future Burgtheater boss in an interview some time ago.
"And the theater would do well to modernize."
At his presentation in Vienna today, Bachmann described his appointment as a "dream that has become reality."