Schauspiel Frankfurt is planning for the 2022/23 season.

The Frankfurt drama director Anselm Weber wanted to start with a nice number, but of course it would be nicer if you didn’t need them: A good 51,500 euros have been donated in the past few weeks after the performances to support the attacked Ukraine, including two used ambulances that could be bought for it are going to die now are on their way into the country. According to Weber, he had never experienced such encouragement for a fundraising campaign during his years as artistic director here or anywhere else. That is empathy, and empathy is what holds a pluralistic society like Frankfurt together. The theater has worked with 103 institutions – foundations, schools, cultural institutions, clubs – in recent years and is firmly networked in the city.

Other numbers are sobering, but that’s how it is at the moment: A total of 60 percent current utilization, about half of 7000 subscriptions are still being held. In addition, in-house waves of illness since January under the quarantine conditions that are particularly quick for working in complex collectives: 79 performances canceled, the premieres of seven productions postponed a total of ten times (it is interesting to note that the case of “elective affinities” has long been record-breaking, on June 23 the next attempt will take place). “It will take us three years to get back to where we were before the pandemic,” said Anselm Weber when presenting the program for 2022/23. Three years, that’s a long time.

A lot of material, 19 premieres at Willy-Brandt-Platz and in the Bockenheimer Depot, including nine premieres and one German premiere, but the latter, for example, a crazy legacy: “Burt Turrido. An Opera” by and with the Nature Theater of Oklahoma was announced for the Frankfurter Positions 2021 festival in 2020 and prepared in the Bockenheimer Depot, even in the shadow of the lockdown. Only now, i.e. in October 2022, can the co-production with the Mousonturm be shown at its original destination.

At the opening of the season (after a theater festival this time with all the trimmings planned on September 11th), the play looks at loss, even more at feelings of loss: In the playhouse with Jan Bosse’s look at Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” on September 22nd and the day later in the Kammerspiele with Thomas Köck’s evening “Solastalgia”, a co-production with the Kunstfest Weimar, which he also followed. Solastalgia, a big word for the pain of a dramatic process – the loss of habitats, for example through the overexploitation of nature. Incidentally, the theater is also a living space, you have to be careful.

From Poland and Russia

Striking next year: Sebastian Hartmann, who traditionally drives people insane or takes them in or both (“Demons”), takes on Schnitzler’s “Traumnovelle” (March 4). The Russian Timofej Kulyabin, who has just been angered at home with statements critical of the war, stages “Macbeth” (April 14). The Polish Evelina Marciniak – who was a guest at the Berlin Theatertreffen with her Mannheimer “Jungfrau von Orleans” – is planning a “Tove Project” on novels by the youngest Dane Tove Ditlevsen (through books in the Aufbau Verlag) rediscovered (June 2nd).

There is no season booklet, it should have been in several volumes, it was said, but it should also be a bit resource-friendly to switch to the Internet. Savings, demanded of the municipal theaters to an unrealistic extent in the medium term – opera director Bernd Loebe spoke of a sword of Damocles a few weeks ago – is not the question now. A glossy leaflet is also presented. Don’t leave it because there’s an original poster on the back that you’ll want to hang up. No shame in doing a little publicity for the cast of the play, which is on a roll, may it stop.

A QR code then takes you to a digital presence under the clever motto “counterrealities”. A fiddling fun, you will get used to it.