THEATERMANIA2: SUNBURN – The Wrap-Up
Press Information
Thursday, 3 September 2009
The THEATERMANIA2: SUNBURN festival that ran from July 28 to September 2 was one of the absolute highlights of the theater & dance lineup that is one of the core elements of the Capital of Culture year program. A recap yields a highly positive assessment: theater staged at publicly accessible venues proved to be a smash hit!
THEATERMANIA2: SUNBURN really stirred things up in Linz’s theatrical scene, offering new and unconventional venues and making works of theater and dance accessible to the public at large. The excellent attendance confirms that people want to enjoy theater in the summertime too and want to see high-quality performances regardless of which genre the work represents. In this context, THEATERMANIA2: SUNBURN’s bottom line is overwhelmingly positive. The mix of works by regional and international artists was very well received, audiences were delighted, and attendance was outstanding.
Over 12,500 theatergoers attended the five-week festival that comprised 73 performances of 18 productions on 35 dates (including four added performances of “TWENTYSEVEN–A Ghost Story” and eight world premieres). An especially positive response was garnered by the festival’s supplementary offerings—there was excellent attendance at four audience talks and at the workshops held by THEATERMANIA2: SUNBURN artists in conjunction with the ACADEMY OF THE IMPOSSIBLE.
The festival lineup spanned a broad spectrum, including traditional theatrical forms from India and Indonesia, works dealing with Linz and its history, and modern dance productions.
Airan Berg, Linz09’s director of the performing arts, was delighted by Linz audiences and his summation was a thoroughly upbeat: “At the conclusion of THEATERMANIA2: SUNBURN, I especially want to express my sincere appreciation to our audiences, who displayed their open-mindedness and enthusiastically accepted performance venues in the public sphere, which, in turn, meant that we succeeded in attracting lots of spectators who didn’t normally attend the theater. Here, we cannot fail to mention the many highly committed artists, who, for their part, responded with great openness to our audiences and thereby made it possible for a lively process of exchange to occur. The selection and development of the individual works took audience members on a theatrical journey and simultaneously created a sense of identification with the content and a new, enriched view of their hometown. The themes treated by these productions were wide-ranging indeed, and unsparing in focusing critical attention on social trends and historical issues. This theater festival was very well-suited to Linz in both form and content, and would constitute a very nice addition to the Austrian festival scene in the future as well.”
