In Austria the first European Theatre Night was a big success! In 7 different cities within 6 Austrian federal states 48 programmes have been shown, including different types of performances for children, teenagers and adults during the whole day of November 19th. We counted about 3000 visitors in the whole country, 2000 just in Vienna.
Besides regular plays we also had guides tours through theatres (like in the Jewish theatre “Nestroyhof Hamakom”), special workshops for the younger audience (e.g. in “Vienna’s English Theatre”), public rehearsals (3raum-Anatomietheater), theatre medleys from plays shown before (for example in the “Theater im Bahnhof Graz”) as well as special programmes like improvisation evenings for a various number of artists (“Westbahntheater Innsbruck”). Even one play from “a.c.m.e. theatre Graz” was represented on the net via Life stream and directly broadcasted in Dubrava Theatre Zagreb.
Some of the theatres (like the “Theater Drachengasse” oder the “blackboxITHEATER”) were so full, that they even had to send people away, who wanted to see the pieces. Also impressing were the different locations, where some groups acted just for the event of European Theatre Night, like a church, which became a theatre stage for the Viennese group “WORT_ensemble”.
In Addition also the public Austrian TV, the ORF, made overall 5 TV broadcasts about the Theatre Night with interviews given from some enthusiastic people from the audience. Also a lot of different newspapers released some texts about the Theatre Night in Austria, including the web pages we counted 42 different articles and postings. Our website had about 500.000 visits and our facebook account meanwhile has about 200 friends and nearly 2000 active users.
The feedback we got from theatres and audience was fantastic, we really enjoyed the Theatre Night and are proud to be part in this special project. We are looking forward to our second ETN and hope that we will be able to encourage more artists all over the country to become participate at this project. Moreover we hope that we will have the chance to make various connections with international artist and so will be able to reach our goal of ensuring the national and international exchange.
some pictures…
