Encouraging the audience to sing along isn’t always a great idea from a purely artistic perspective. And when it comes to something as drippy and drippy as Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” from “The Lion King,” it’s a high-level kitsch alert. But not here, not on this Friday evening in the Prinzregententheater.
The two emcees down on the stage, the wonderfully weird glitter birds Tim Richter and Stefan Siebert, have just asked the alumni or alumnae (vulgo: the former ones) to stand up. There is movement in the ranks of the theater, young and not so young people are rising up everywhere. And they unpack their professional voices for the large choir: “Can it really be love, in the gentle evening wind, harmony in the name of August Everding with everything that we are…” Well, it must be love between the “Everdingers” and theirs Academy. A goosebumps moment, even for notorious musical haters.
Goosebumps moment in the Prinzregententheater: around 300 alumni of the Everding Academy stand up and sing a hymn to their school from the stands. “Can it really be love?” – Yes!
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
30 years of the August Everding Theater Academy. There is a class reunion atmosphere at this birthday gala, in which the largest academy for stage careers in the German-speaking region presents itself in all its facets. Drama, opera, musical, make-up. Before the stunning show, people in the crowded foyers of the Prinze fall into each other’s arms and throw air kisses over heads. Some of them probably arrived just in time and handed their suitcases over the counter to the astonished cloakroom attendants. Academy President Barbara Gronau later revealed in her speech that over 300 alumni came to the celebration; the guest list includes names like Michael A. Grimm (“Rosenheim Cops”, “Heavy Boys”), Oliver Wnuk (“Stromberg”) or voice actor and actor Stefan Lehnen, Sebastian Bezzel alias Franz Eberhofer will greet you via video.
Actress Lisa Wagner with colleagues Barbara Romaner (left) and Lilly Forgach (right)
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
300 out of a total of 1,400 in 30 years, not a bad average. Anyone who has ever organized a class reunion knows this. They are there to celebrate themselves and the school. And to create an alumni network that should be more than just a WhatsApp group. They, who work in theater, film and television, want to pass on their experiences to today’s students and also to teachers. For example, there is Lisa Wagner, graduating in 2003, who has also taught here. When she’s not filming (Beate Zschäpe in “Last Exit Gera”, “Weissensee”, ZDF crime series “Kommissarin Heller”, Doris Dörrie’s “Freibad”), picking up Grimme awards or Golden Cameras or impressing audiences in “James Brown wore “curlers” wrapped around his finger. Everyone here has high expectations, but not everyone makes it, right? “You need a lot of luck and then you have to put that luck into practice, you have to deliver,” says Wagner, who has never moved away from Munich. And when she looks at Everding today? “Now everything is different, the school system, we were more anarchic, more hippie-esque.”
State reception in the Prinze’s garden hall: Art Minister Markus Blume in conversation with BR director Katja Wildermuth, who was very impressed by the many strong young artists who were on stage at the gala.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
Academy President Barbara Grona with Duke Franz, a great friend and supporter of the school, who that evening thought of August Everding, with whom he experienced a lot together, “cheerful memories,” as he emphasized.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
The guests crowded into the Prinze’s garden hall: (from left) Anne Richter, deputy director and dramaturge of the Schauburg, Sanne Kurz, Green member of the state parliament and spokesperson for culture and film, with Doris Wagner from the Munich Trade Fair.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
Hippiedom? A word that you don’t really associate with him, with August Everding, but a good portion of anarchism does. This becomes more than clear at this gala evening, where we also diligently collect money for the August Everding Foundation: the great theater man is constantly being paid homage to, in film flashbacks, in the speeches and conversations at the state reception. According to Barbara Gronau, the academy was the “wish in life” of the person who died unexpectedly in 1999. He pushed through it against all resistance and persistently antagonized the politicians. Art Minister Markus Blume (CSU), who presented himself on stage in an anarchic fit wearing a red sock (his fashionable concession to the casual artistic ambience), called the academy a “stroke of genius” by Everding, recalling his ingenuity in raising money for the reopening of the Prinzregententheater. A “primal force”, a puller like him, is missing today, as Bavaria’s cultural buildings are notoriously stuck in a renovation backlog.
Big final applause at the Theater Academy’s gala in their home, the Prinzregententheater.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
“Make a little noise,” the emcees asked at the start of the big show. And the “Everding, Everding, Everding!” sounded like a very lively announcement. With a woman like Barbara Gronau at its helm, this academy will assert its place in cultural life. And don’t let politics off the hook in the future either. Even if Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) was conspicuous by his absence. “He’s had a terrible week and he’s okay with me doing this,” Markus Blume apologized to his boss. Someone like August Everding might not have let Söder get away with it so easily. One would almost bet that the fast-talker from Bottrop would have picked up the phone or picked up the Prime Minister himself at the State Chancellery.