Wunsiedel: Birgit Simmler on Luisenburg Festival – Bavaria

The Luisenburg Festival in Wunsiedel in Upper Franconia is considered to be the most traditional professional open-air theater in Germany. After the failure in 2020, the Luisenburg – which is mainly financed from viewer income – has to get by with significantly less audience this season due to the pandemic. A conversation with the artistic director Birgit Simmler about sleepless nights, worst-case scenarios and big narrative theater.

SZ: Ms. Simmler, how was your mood in the past few months?

Birgit Simmler: Admittedly, I had many sleepless nights. On the one hand, we are the repertoire business of the festival with the longest tradition and the largest number of visitors in all of Germany. An extremely large festival player that attracts around 150,000 visitors to Wunsiedel every year. On the other hand, of course, we knew that this number of viewers would not be possible in the times of the pandemic.

Which should be a problem. They finance themselves significantly more than other theaters from the tickets they sell.

In order to have a balanced budget in the end, we need an occupancy rate of around 85 percent. The festival is also financed by its own resources to a certain extent, through ticket sales. But if, due to the pandemic, I can’t allow 85 percent occupancy at all, I already know before the festival begins: We will slide massively into deficit.

Which shouldn’t sound tempting for the municipality. The sole sponsor of this giant festival, the city of Wunsiedel, does not have 10,000 inhabitants.

Not only that. Due to structural reasons, the city does not have a balanced budget – and the festival makes up more than 20 percent of this city budget. Just for comparison: across Germany, municipalities spend around two percent of their budget on culture. You know what this city is doing. And what kind of headache that causes.

The normal case is that city theaters are subsidized to around 80 percent. So just the other way around than in Wunsiedel. Appears in need of explanation.

Our festival comes from a folk theater tradition. Citizens once played for citizens, there was simply no money in abundance. Only later was this taken over by professionals. Our publicly funded theater system, such as the city and state theaters, have their roots in the court theater. That is the historical difference.

Which still exists today?

In the meantime, of course, we have the same cultural mission here as a large city theater. And also the same repertoire, by the way.

You have a budget of six million.

And unfortunately there are also additional challenges. As is well known, our natural stage is outside the city of Wunsiedel. The municipality must also maintain this very special festival stage with its very special infrastructure.

So: special situation regarding the financingifft. A very clammy commune. Significantly high dependency on audience figures – and that in the pandemic. What does that do with the Wunsiedlers?

What can certainly be observed again in the season: In Wunsiedel we manage to get the whole of society into the theater – which is anything but a matter of course. We reach everyone, from cleaning staff to academics. And what is also different here: When things get tight financially, the snap reflex of the cut is often to be observed at the respective cultural institution. We can no longer afford that! Here? Even with Corona, according to my observation, the Luisenburg institution was not only questioned once.

Open detailed view

But?

This is viewed as a special situation. Everyone agrees: These festivals are indispensable for the cultural infrastructure of the city, the region and in Upper Franconia.

What would have brought more deficits in the season? To play or not to play? Because of Corona, you are only allowed to offer 1150 of the 1900 spectator seats.

We have high fixed costs, we have calculated everything beforehand. We get along better when we play than when you just let the institution hang around you. Even so, the deficit will be there in the end.

In 2020 the Free State stepped in.

We have positive signals now too. Of course, the Free State doesn’t throw any money after us. But that this is a special situation is absolutely perceived.

What was the worst-case scenario before the festival began?

In the best case, a loss of half a million euros, in the worst case five million, not least of all depending on the pandemic. Exactly how many visitors are allowed in, that is why there was still a struggle here 24 hours before the first premiere. A hard ride.

In contrast to your predecessor, you moved to Wunsiedel with your husband and child, so not part-time Fichtelgebirglerin. And you have a contract until 2027. Closed before the pandemic.

I started here with an artistic program, it is clear that I want to implement that – Corona or not. If I couldn’t do that, the attractiveness of this engagement would of course be damaged. I stand for female authors’ theater, for the connection of different performative formats, also for large narrative theater. In the festival business it is seldom that someone makes their energy available all year round, I do that. If there were now the demand: Please only the very safe spectator numbers – then I wouldn’t be needed here. Others could do the same. You see, I’m the type: all or nothing.

Sees but at the moment like “completely”?

That’s the way it is. My passion is lust and fun. If that were to be omitted, I would be the wrong person in the wrong place.

In conclusion, you worked on Broadway. Which was more difficult to understand: the language there or Wunsiedlerisch?

I’m from Münster, but I spent part of my youth in Regensburg. So I basically get along well with the idiom here. But in my first season we did “My fair Lady” in Franconian. With an actress who uttered a brutal local idiom. Admittedly: I sat there in the first run and didn’t understand anything. She might as well have spoken Chinese.