Subsidy spokesman at the Zurich Schauspielhaus? Denial useless
Aktenzeichen-Theater
Subsidy spokesman at the Zurich Schauspielhaus? How to make cultural politics with rumors
In January, the city of Zurich will decide on the contracts with the directors of the Schauspielhaus, Benjamin von Blomberg and Nicolas Stemann. Because there is no clear commitment on the part of cultural policy, bourgeois politicians and the media play the buck with the theatre.
The most important and significant theater in Switzerland never makes the headlines. First, a national medium constructs an abstruse accusation of bullying; Later, critics and free riders try to blame the directors’ schedule for declining subscription numbers. As the latest, murky sources scrape together slander in order to strike out for the next blow. It goes like this: Nicolas Stemann and Benjamin von Blomberg make the contract extension dependent on a “substantial increase in subsidies”. The (non) extension of the two will be public on January 17th.
To put things in context: over 70 percent of the audience at the theater have renewed their subscription for the coming season. The declining occupancy rate that can be seen in Zurich and the continuing decline in audiences after Corona is not just a Zurich phenomenon. The finding affects cultural institutions in the entire German-speaking area, and above all: The loss of audience in clubs and cinemas is much more noticeable than in the theatre.
“Instructions from the population” lead to idleness in the Council’s operations
What is known about the latest allegations leveled at Nicolas Stemann and Benjamin von Blomberg is that there is neither written evidence nor are informants known by name responsible for it. The theater management immediately denied it. But hearsay alone is apparently enough to cause unrest in the bourgeois municipal council in Zurich.
Shortly before Christmas, two FDP local councilors submitted a so-called urgent written request, they did so on the basis of “unconfirmed information from the Zurich population”, as they write. Your request requests six questions about the contract extension of Stemann and von Blomberg. “Has the management of the theater made demands on the city council?” And: “Is there exclusivity during the negotiations (no other negotiations with other cultural institutions or)?” The urgent request received support from 33 co-signatories, mainly from the camp of the SVP. The assumption that the theater is in secret negotiations with the city council, so that its extension depends on an improvement of some kind, seems to be a fact for the bourgeois municipal council.
In the meantime, distrust of the theater has become so tense that cost-of-living compensation to the company is also up for discussion. The City of Zurich makes contributions to the Schauspielhaus Zürich AG to adjust salaries. The amount is granted according to the amount of cost-of-living allowance granted to the municipal staff. The city council will decide on the amount, the amount for 2022 will be determined at the end of February. At 3.5 percent, cantonal employees, including teachers, receive full wage compensation, making the canton of Zurich the most generous in Switzerland.
Where is the city support?
The management of the theater is now addressing the audience on the theater’s website. «Dear audience, we’ll stay tuned. We are not free from mistakes and misjudgments, also when it comes to our course of diversification. We will learn from it and pursue it resolutely. We want to be a municipal theater for as many people as possible.”
These are differentiated and self-critical words. But what the directors now “want”, even if it is “to learn something new”, is no longer relevant. In the opinion of politicians, the theater management is on course in a financial crisis.
Some things get forgotten in the thicket of headlines. Stemann and von Blomberg fulfill the first of the city’s new cultural guidelines. Inclusion and diversification are not their hobbies, but city requirements. Second, cultural policy in Zurich seems to consist primarily of financial policy, a sign of inadequacy. And thirdly, anyone who wants to quibble about the quality of the theater needs to know more than just the balance sheets. Only those who deal with what is happening on stage really understand the meaning of the numbers.