Joseph Maria Krasanowski wins Theater Alliance Award

In fact, Gerhard Lehner said at the press conference that he asked Josef Maria Krasanowski at the last minute because he was still missing a composer. It turned out to be a stroke of luck: his text “Always drink moon milk now / I don’t care about your solar plexus” will be premiered as the winning text in the Theater Alliance’s Authors’ Competition at the beginning of August as part of the Bregenz Festival and will subsequently be a guest performer. For all coalition members. This national platform is an exemplary union of six independent theaters that have made it their mission to promote young Austrian playwrights – among other things by offering a prize to which each theater can nominate two authors.

The theme of this year’s competition was decided by the Bregenz Festival as cooperation partner: since “Freischütz” will be performed at the Lake Theater there next year, there was a great demand for texts on the theme “Deal or No Deal”. Krasanovsky, who is working with the Klagenfurt orchestra for the 10th time, was less interested “in the big deals and more interested in the small deals that we negotiate with ourselves every day,” says the Salzburg native, who is, among other things, a guest lecturer from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and Passau Drama Academy “It’s about societal overload, we always have to weigh what we find morally reprehensible and what we don’t consider reprehensible,” he says. Frankly: “It’s a step above the valley of the inner wolf in all of us.”

Six actors will rehearse on June 10 in Klagenfurt Theater Hall No. 11 the many roles – from ball to bride to wolf – before the piece moves to Bregenz and then to partner houses. It will be shown in Klagenfurt either fall 2024 or spring 2025.