Innsbruck – Neo-Director of the Tiroler Landestheater promises relevance to the present
The future director of the Tiroler Landestheater, Irene Girkinger, clearly committed to an intensification of the current relevance of the program when sketching her plans and concepts. Issues such as migration, diversity or gender identity are to be dealt with more artistically. “There should also be a cross-disciplinary mixing of the art forms,” emphasized Girkinger on Monday at a press conference in Innsbruck.
According to the wishes and ideas of Girkinger, who is currently still director of the United Theaters in Bolzano, young authors and theater professionals from Tyrol and the European region of Tyrol, South Tyrol and Trentino (Euregio) should be responsible for this. All of this results primarily from her positive relationship to “the present and contemporary,” she emphasized. Girkinger will be the new director from September 2023 and will succeed Johannes Reitmeier, who is withdrawing for private reasons.
They not only stand for a cultural term that “actively deals with people and the regional environment”, but also for “opening up the Tyrolean State Theater”. There will be numerous “international collaborations and cultural partner collaborations” under their forthcoming intention. In addition, there is an internationalization on the stage by international directors. For example, the “classical European opera repertoire” is to be supplemented by Russian and Slavic works, Girkinger specified her plans for music theater.
An opening of the house as a whole is also floating in front of her, and she is holding onto it. With “attractive offers” and performances in public places in the city, she wants to appeal to “new and young audiences”. “I also want to target the game plan with different communities,” she said. The theater offer for young audiences is to be expanded.
It was these approaches that made the decision on the intention in favor of Girkinger. “In the end there were still three excellent candidates, but Girkinger convinced us the most with his concepts of openness to sectors and the approach to cooperation,” said Cultural Councilor Beate Palfrader (ÖVP). Innsbruck’s mayor Georg Willi (Greens) also agreed: “Girkinger stands for socio-politically relevant theater”. Markus Lutz, commercial director of the Tiroler Landestheater, also appreciated another quality of the future director: “She is a very experienced colleague who is regionally and internationally networked.”
Girkinger, born in 1976, faced a jury that came up with a three-way proposal. The committee included Karin Bergmann, Bettina Hering, Nora Schmid, Andreas Beck and Markus A. Müller. The country and city made the final decision. The studied Romance languages and cultural manager has been the artistic director of the Vereinigte Bühnen Bozen since 2012, where she is responsible for the overall artistic and commercial management of the theater. From 2007 to 2011 she worked as a dramaturge at the Volkstheater Vienna, before that she worked at the Theater Phönix Linz, Schauspielhaus Salzburg and at the Salzburg Festival. (Apa)