“Thanks to everyone who ever and ever worked with me in the Phoenix to get this theater on track,” says Harald Gebhartl. Emotion can hardly be wrested from the 65-year-old theater animal. On this evening, when all those who feel a part of this theatrical community of love and life gathered around the director, who is retiring at the end of the season, he too let his emotions run free. It rained fine serenades (Sven Sorring), Dadaist approaches (Nadine Breitfuss, Martin Brunnemann, Anna Maria Eder), a joyful, appreciative ceremonial speech from the club’s board of directors/writer Thomas Baum and a priceless farewell gift: OÖN cartoonist Gerhard Haderer drew in honor of Gebhartl for the first time in his Career an exclusive, not for sale Moff-Schundheftl – accurate title: “Desperado of the heart”. As reported by the OÖN, the previous dramaturg Silke Dörner will take over the artistic direction of the Phoenix in September. Gebhartl remains with the Phoenix as a member of the board of directors.
“Just like we did back then”
“Honestly, I’ve already finished with the management situation – this new co-production ‘Eurydike*Orpheus’ (until July 2, note) of our ensemble with the young collective ‘Das Schauwerk’, which reminds me very much of our earlier times remembered is something like an encore,” says Gebhartl in an interview with OÖN. He himself is currently working on a new novel about “a guy who, against the background of a mother with a skin disease who died early, mixes ingenious ointments with which he can heal or destroy aliens.” Everything in it is grotesque, or as so often with Gebhartl: intellectually limitless.
33 years ago he founded the Theater Phönix together with Ferry Öllinger, Georg Schmiedleitner, Dieter Salzner, Peter Stangl and Stefan Kurowski, which doesn’t seem like 33 years. Because theatre, as it is turned in the Phoenix and sometimes flung over the ramp, stays young. The phoenix would rather drive itself into a wall than bend its stance. It enlightens without glorifying. It turns into something wise by asking tiresome questions like a child.
Around 25,000 visitors per season are seduced by the Phoenix, which has established itself as one of the most important middle stages in the republic without appearing established.
Harald Gebhartl shares responsibility for all of this. The director, writer and former teacher has been in theater since he was able to think, read and write. At the age of nine he wrote a Zorro play. And no, the play is not waiting for its overdue premiere, but under the knocking pole in the garden of his parents’ house on Harterfeld in Leonding, Gebhartl staged it himself together with friends. Gebhartl met Ferry Öllinger at the Stifter Gymnasium. He took him to the Leonding playgroup, but the wild youngsters soon revolted – instead of cultural crispbread, they wanted dramatic Guglhupf, the dough of which they soon stirred themselves in the Leondinger “Spielstatt Junge Bühne”.
The wild theater performers from the suburbs strove on to the center of Linz, where nobody but the audience had been waiting for them. Politically, they wanted to outsource their ambition to the Volkshaus Ebelsberg. But no, the Phoenix cinema in Linz closed as sadly as it happened fortunately at this time. And before the building could be turned into a Hofer branch, the lunatics charmed a bank manager. They were liable for a loan of around seven million schillings and signed the purchase contract. Mayor Franz Dobusch (SPÖ) felt blackmailed – and it looked like the curtain in the Phoenix would never lift. The project was buried during a funeral march across the country road.
A cultural revolution
Instead of cremation, there was a loud cultural revolution that Linz had seldom experienced. With the support of the OÖN and Governor Josef Ratzenböck (ÖVP), things turned out to be straight. The Phoenix Theater was founded in 1989.
In all these years, Gebhartl never thought he was smarter than his audience, he stood on their side. So on ours. His art is the art of love, just as a good father builds up a buffet of possibilities that children can access to their heart’s content. This courage to risk failure with love and research is the most important thing one can learn from Harald Gebhartl.
Source: Nachrichten
