Sigi is in town. A brief email was enough, and a little later 40 people from Weißenburg were sitting with Sigi Zimmerschied, 69, in a tavern. “There was a real sense of optimism,” he enthuses. In the small Franconian town they love the cabaret artist and actor since he played ten performances with them last summer. On the open-air stage of the Weißenburger Bergwaldtheater, Zimmerschied gave an acclaimed “Holy Drinker” in the play “Der Glückskeks”, written by the Austrian writer Clemens Berger.
Since 2017, the Weißenburg residents have had a town clerk every three years (the first was Franzobel) and commissioned him with a play for their mountain forest theater, which felt like half the town performed with some acting professionals. After working as an actor, Sigi Zimmerschied is now coming back as a town clerk.
A small town with no cultural inferiority complex
“I’d be a complete idiot if I didn’t do that,” says Zimmerschied, enthusing about Weißenburg, which has a population of almost 20,000 and has overcome the cultural inferiority complex that is common in small towns compared to the big cities. Performed by local amateur actors and a few acting professionals, directed by Nestroy Prize winner Georg Schmiedleitner.
Although he is on tour all year round with his new cabaret program “Dopplerleben – Eine Fälscher Saga” and is also in demand as an actor (Eberhofer crime thrillers), Zimmerschied will be in Weißenburg again and again in the coming months, strolling through the city, talking to people and attend festivals. “I want to get to know the social topography,” he says. None of this is about provincial navel-gazing. The Weissenburgers did not commission the town clerk to write a piece about their homeland. But one that has a connection to the small town, but from there derives something that is generally valid in relation to social developments and upheavals.
“It will be an opulent piece,” says Zimmerschied. “A parable of what happens when good slips away.” For example, when climate protectors become “activists who destroy more than they achieve”. Or when a language police mutate from gender-neutral language. “It will be about what happens when the positive, the good and the essentially valuable suddenly becomes too powerful and derails.” He wanted to write that down “in my own satirical way,” says Zimmerschied. The play is intended to be surreal and visually opulent, which alone promises to be appealing in view of the extensive Bergwaldtheater stage located in a wooded, former quarry. By the end of the year, Zimmerschied wants to deliver his piece; rehearsals next year, performances are in 2025.
A few days ago, at the meeting in the tavern, “there was great euphoria and enormous energy was released,” says Zimmerschied. In fact, the ambitious project brings many people together in Weißenburg. The three initiators are an entrepreneur, a bookseller and a local journalist. The mayor and the city council are almost all involved and invest 100,000 euros a year in the theater project. There are local sponsors, but there are also many behind-the-scenes volunteers. “Something like this is very, very rare and I’m glad to be part of it,” says Zimmerschied.