For ten years the format “Club Home Schwabing” is running in the BR, a television stage that shows the diversity of German-speaking cabarets and is committed to promoting young talent. From June 23rd there will be twelve new episodes, always on Thursdays from 10 p.m. A conversation with Constanze Lindner, who has presented the show 88 times in the past seven years.
SZ: Ms. Lindner, the difficult questions first: What kind of cosmos is this “club house” actually?
Constanze Lindner: It’s a very special place. A gem, a haven of comfort that combines eccentricity with ambition and a love of life. A very special mixture that we have created over the years. The great thing is that we also have a very special audience that goes along incredibly well with everything we present there: from highly political to extremely offbeat, from slapstick to poetry, from stand-up to music cabaret, all over the place. It is this mixture that makes it special and characterizes the clubhouse.
You’re already talking about the show. I meant the real place, this mixture of table football pub and cabaret stage.
A wide variety of people meet there, from the chic chick from Schwabing to the intellectual who has just plowed through the SZ from cover to cover. They both sit at the counter and have something to say to each other there. It is a meeting place for different personalities, both on the stage and at the bar. At the same time, it is a football pub, which is associated with high alcohol consumption. But there are also wonderfully melancholic evenings when you sit outside with a glass of white wine and cry. Everything is there.
Do you remember your first night there?
My first appearance on Blickpunkt-Spot-Montag was completely bizarre and weird. With Till Hofmann, Hannes Ringelstetter, Sven Kemmler and Moses Wolff, we held a kind of citizens’ meeting on stage, badly improvised, nobody knew what would develop from it. That was in 2006, in 2012 the TV recordings started. I didn’t have a solo program back then, but everyone said I had to improvise something on stage: “You go there now. Just do it!” Into the cold water! That was the start of everything for me too.
How was the first TV appearance?
That was the second or third show with Hannes Ringelstetter, and I was so nervous! Because I didn’t have anything to present to the audience yet. I then played a number that luckily went down well. Then the ice broke and I thought, “Oh, it’s not that bad.” From then on I was a regular.
What were you playing then?
The Cordula Brödke. We all had to do it, there wasn’t this potpourri of guests yet, it only built up over the years. Originally, this Monday evening was also intended for old hands who wanted to try out freshly written numbers unplugged before premieres. Otti Fischer was often there, Michi Mittermeier still comes regularly. It didn’t have that mixed show character like the show does now.
Of course, the TV presence makes the program even more attractive for young artists.
There were already a few where you could see: This is going to be big! When you see them grow over the years: awesome. Lisa Eckhart has been there three times, the first time ten years ago. But what’s so important to me about this show is that we don’t always have to take people everyone knows, but that we can really present the next generation and can also place absolute newcomers from time to time. And that this is accepted.
Also from the small artists.
Torsten Sträter came to us after his performance at Circus Krone because he really wanted to be on the show – because he thinks it’s so cool. Or fine people like Massimo Rocchi. Werner Schmidbauer was also completely enthusiastic about the atmosphere among the colleagues, about this totally family arrival, regardless of whether they were superstars or no-names.
How has the scene developed in recent years?
It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the offspring is coming, that it’s here, which hasn’t been the case for a while. In the meantime there are also many cool women who come and go with us. I’m not worried about that at all. I’m not even addressing that. For me, both sexes are equally strong.
What about the content level?
One notices that things are getting softer when it comes to the major socio-political issues. I sometimes have the feeling that some people don’t really dare. The political cabaret has to sort itself out. That you really fight for something: That’s just not so pronounced. But it can also be because the government hardly offers a target for attack. Overall, it becomes more subtle, a lot between the lines. In general, however, one does not get tired of this format. It doesn’t say “Oh yes, ten years”, but “Great! And there will be 20 more!”
And which talent is the next big thing now?
Of course everyone who uses the springboard in the Schwabing clubhouse!