Vorarlberg speaks

We live in an exhausted world

Hubert Dragaschnig is the founder and artistic director of Theater Kosmos.

(Bild: Mathis Fotografie)

He is a highly deserving personality of Vorarlberg theater life. The actor Hubert Dragaschnig (born 1959) has risked a lot in his life, celebrated great triumphs, but also suffered shipwreck, as he openly admits.

He was a founding member of the Vorarlberg Authors' Association, production manager at the Bregenz Festival and, together with Augustin Jagg, established the Theater Kosmos in Bregenz, a stage that puts exclusively contemporary plays on the repertoire with admirable continuity. "Art is a bulwark against immaturity." This is how he defines his decades of work. In 2020, he and Jagg received the Dr. Toni and Rosa Russ Prize with a standing ovation.

I met Dragaschnig at the "Blue Hour" over a soda and lemon in the garden of the Hotel Schwärzler, where I got to know a very eloquent storyteller, a person who loves to philosophize, a man who seems to be at peace with himself and his life's work.

In conversation with author Robert Schneider, the theater maker talked about his dramatic beginnings, which had to do with a candle and an egg ...

(Bild: Mathis Fotografie)

Robert Schneider: Let's start from the beginning, Hubert. You were born in Bludenz. What kind of home was it where you grew up?
Hubert Dragaschnig: I grew up in Sturnengasse 18 in Bludenz for the first seven years. In the old days, Sturnengasse was something like the "Narragässle". Very poor people lived there. We didn't have a bathroom. Mom still rubbed the laundry on the washboard. Once a month we went to friends' houses to bathe there. Later we moved to the Kreuzsiedlung, a social housing estate. My father was from Carinthia, my mother came from Fontanella in Walsertal. So I am the child of migrants. My father, who was in the SS and then a Russian prisoner of war, somehow didn't make it through the economic miracle, which is why the pressure on his son was particularly great. I only realized this many years later, namely how cheated the life of my father and his generation must have been. The 20th century is a century without narratives. It simply wasn't talked about. Resisting this pressure was only possible through refusal, which meant that my school career was correspondingly mixed. After changing schools several times and repeating year 7 at grammar school three times, I gave up.

Is that where the urge to pursue an artistic career came from? A kind of alternative to your world at the time?
One reason to be artistically active is definitely the indignation at life as it presents itself to you. So I developed strategies. I remember: My first theatrical performance together with a friend consisted of changing a light bulb in the basement of the Kreuzsiedlung. But the light bulb was actually a raw egg that fell on an audience member's head. We charged ten pennies for that. I've always had a penchant for the dramatic. My beginning is actionism. Deconstruction and refusal. Only much later did I realize that the smarter form of theater is seduction, because it requires a subtle craft.

When did you realize that you wanted to follow the rocky path of a freelance artist?
I had a few midwives. Ingo Springenschmid, Michael Köhlmeier and Leo Haffner, the former head of the radio drama and literature department at ORF-Vorarlberg. Their encouragement encouraged me to follow this path. Then came an internship at the Landestheater. I lived off that. In between, I was at the Angewandte in Vienna with Oswald Oberhuber. But only for two months. That was in the early eighties. I didn't like Vienna. When I arrived at Westbahnhof, I just made a quick phone call, turned around and the suitcase was gone. That's how this city welcomed me. Today I love it. I returned to Vorarlberg, bought a truck from Rolf Aberer, got my driver's license, went to the governor Herbert Kessler. He gave me money and so I founded the "Vorarlberger Volks- und Wanderbühne". It managed to put on two productions. After that I was hopelessly over-indebted.

Robert Schneider met Hubert Dragaschnig at the Theater Kosmos in the Bregenz Vorkloster.

(Bild: Mathis Fotografie)

Then you became production manager in the drama department at the Bregenz Festival ...
Not right away. I did a lot of different things there. That was a wonderful time. I was one of those "Mero heroes" on the lake stage. Mero is the brand name for a tubular steel system that we screwed together at sometimes dizzying heights with wrenches. A real drudgery and a wonderful form of tiredness in the evening. Then I was on the Schnürboden in the Festspielhaus. It was there that I had my opera awakening. Many meters below me, Edita Gruberova was singing Elvira in "I Puritani" by Vincenzo Bellini. I had no idea about opera back then. So I'm standing up there, and suddenly Gruberova makes a sound that makes me burst into tears without knowing why. There was a bomb threat at a guest performance of Pavel Kohout's "Patt" at the Schillertheater in Berlin. I drew the curtain that evening and thought, is this my big moment? Now you have to stand in front of the audience and say: "Ladies and gentlemen ..." Fortunately, things cleared up quickly.

So I'm standing up there, and suddenly Gruberova makes a sound that makes me burst into tears without knowing why.

Hubert Dragaschnig

Augustin Jagg has a very beautiful production of Büchner's "Leonce and Lena" at the TaK in Schaan, where you played Valerio. Is that where you met?
No, we already knew each other from the radio drama department at ORF-Vorarlberg. That led to a friendship, and in 1996 we founded Theater Kosmos together.

At the beginning of the interview, you spoke of a time that had no narrative. Aren't we also avoiding our counterparts today and sinking into our media bubble?
Leisure behavior has changed fundamentally. I observe this not only in the theater, which is a leisure event, but also in the cinema and at concerts. And not just in our generation, but also among young people. The clubs are dying. The aspect that counts is actually the interest in others, in the other person. Interest has dwindled enormously. Of course, it's much more comfortable to sit at home in your own bubble. The Internet is a permanent self-reflection. This is a major drawback for social dynamics, and also for the ability to come of age in a democracy. The desire to exchange ideas with one another in a direct way, to think together and to articulate oneself, naturally costs a lot of energy. Many people no longer want to expend this energy because they are simply too exhausted as far as their everyday lives are concerned. We live in an exhausted world.