|
|
Created and founded in 1994 in the squatted autonomous center Ernst Kirchweger Haus in Vienna, the residents of the EKH and people from the affiliated scene started out as the "PublixTheatre Favoriten" and prepared Brecht's "Three-Penny Opera" in the only theater hall in Vienna's largest district. From the beginning, the working process was defined as a collective process and was accordingly long (lasting several months) and rich in conflicts. "For what gives man life?" was one of the fundamental questions in the political and artistic process of organization. The group's self-understanding as "autonomous, radically leftist" had clear and overpowering opponents, including the state, capitalism, domination, nationalism, sexism. Agit-prop and amateur theater in a committed form drew the lines for further collective projects: plays (Penthesilea/Kleist, We won't pay!/Fo, Auftrag/Müller), chanson evenings (PublixCore), street theater (flight from Transdanubia: swimming across the Danube Canal, deportation actions). Interests, arguments, living conditions continuously changed the composition of the group, but the initially defined principles remained: no director, collective collaboration and decision-making, no personal fees, open to interested persons. In time, experiments were conducted with new media and with electronic music in changing and heterogeneous contexts, there was a stronger focus on the treatment of the content of different themes, looking more for texts than for plays. The Austrian action operetta "Schluss mit lustig. - Ein Land dreht durch!" ["No More Funny Business. - A Country Goes Crazy!"] following the 1999 elections was the last "stage play" so far: viewers were fenced in and treated to practical resistance technologies. The PublixTheatre was consequently thrown out of the Vienna Schauspielhaus. The problem was less a matter of the content, than of the "arrogant, dilettante" [1] aesthetic form.
|
