For all of them, it began with everything standing still: the present year’s crop of graduating stage directors at the Max Reinhardt Seminar—Manuel Horak, Lukas Schöppl, and Florian Thiel—commenced their studies at the height of the pandemic. That period’s outward stasis had given rise to an inner urge to move forward—and all three, with their starkly differing life histories up to then, took and passed the entrance examination for the Max Reinhardt Seminar’s stage directing programme.

Elizabeth Blonzen has been teaching the subject of Role Development at the Max Reinhardt Seminar since October 2024. In the following, the actor and playwright tells mdw Magazine why Vienna is the ideal city for actors, how one goes about cultivating courageous acting personalities, and why people at the Max Reinhardt Seminar might allow each other a little something more.

“Psst, psst, psst, psst” echoes enticingly throughout the gilded hall of the Schönbrunner Schlosstheater. White shrouds hanging above the stage allude to the moon, which lights what has just been rehearsed. Such were the scenes that one could observe in February’s rehearsals for the mdw opera production Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, which premières this March.