The work Sonettfabrik [Sonnet Factory], specially conceived for the defunct lignite briquette factory LOUISE in Domsdorf, Brandenburg and produced as part of the Max Reinhardt Seminar’s cooperative relationship with the Lausitz Festival, served as that festival’s opening performance. And shortly thereafter, at the palace Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg, a version tailored specifically to this location entitled Reinhardt probt Shakespeare-Sonette [Reinhardt Rehearses Shakespeare Sonnets] was performed.

The Iceland-born opera and stage director Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson recently teamed up with third-year acting students at the Max Reinhardt Seminar to tackle one of the greatest theatrical tragedies of all time: Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In this interview with mdw Magazine, he speaks about the joys of working with a new generation of actors, aspirations for his role as a visiting instructor at the Max Reinhardt Seminar, and just why Shakespeare’s analyses of power and people manage to outlast every era.

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.

I am Roberto Romeo. I’ve been studying acting at the mdw since October 2021.

Actor Katharina Haudum also works as an intimacy coordinator— in which capacity she has been teaching the course Intimacy Coordination and Consent-Based Practice at the Max Reinhardt Seminar since the summer semester of 2024. She recently provided mdw Magazine with intriguing insights into her work.

In her recently published book Die Zeitreisende [Time Traveler], global star Ute Lemper describes her unusual journey as an artist—including the years she spent at the Max Reinhardt Seminar. The reading tour of this multiple award-winning actor, singer, dancer, and author included a stop in Vienna, where she joined us at the Seminar for this interview.

Alexandra Althoff, dramaturge and former artistic director of the Burgtheater, assumed leadership of the mdw’s Max Reinhardt Seminar on 1 March 2024. She and Steffen Jäger, who serves as her deputy head, speak about these new responsibilities, the challenges and planned emphases during their term in office.

For the current academic year of 2023/24, director Sarantos-Georgios Zervoulakos is teaching as a visiting professor of drama directing at the Max Reinhardt Seminar—which is not the first time he’s returned to the institution where he originally studied. Then as now, what he values most of all about the Seminar is Max Reinhardt’s concept of an ensemble that allows actors and directors to “grow up” in an atmosphere of close interaction and mutual inspiration.