Gmunden Municipal Theater

Anna Stiepani: Toxic love affair of the villains

Anna Stiepani directs for the first time in Upper Austria(Bild: Horst Einöder/Flashpictures)

She is young and loves Schnitzler: Anna Stiepani, director from Passau, is staging the play "Liebelei", which premieres in Gmunden on July 11. It is about men and women, great feelings, power and powerlessness. However, Stiepani does not want to settle accounts with men. The production can also be seen at the Linz Landestheater from October 25.

Once a year, the top league of the German-speaking theater scene looks to Gmunden: Karin Bergmann, former director of the Burgtheater, curates a top-class literature and drama series for the Salzkammergut Festwochen. Following Franz-Xaver Mayr ("Reigen", 2022) and Moritz Franz Beichl ("Sturm", 2023), Anna Stiepani (35), a young director who has worked at the Staatstheater Nürnberg, among others, is now staging Schnitzler's "Liebelei". 

The co-production with the Linz Landestheater features regional audience favorites such as Lorena Emmi Mayer on stage, as well as prominent names such as Samuel Finzi. In the "Krone" talk, Stiepani gives an insight into her production, which will premiere on Thursday, July 11 at the Stadttheater in the Traunsee metropolis.

"Krone": Schnitzler wrote "Liebelei", a monarchy drama in which a woman fights against her downfall in a male society. What do you make of it?
Anna Stiepani: I look at it from today's perspective: it's about highlighting patriarchal and social structures and trying to break through them. But it makes no sense to portray the men as villains, either in general or in Schnitzler's play. An empathetic, if you will, "female gaze" also applies to them. Their feelings, desires and needs are also important. This challenges women and men alike.

What is the core of the play from your point of view?
Love. Love concerns all the characters in the play, even if it is expressed with different feelings, actions and words.

How do you experience this in reality? Do men still have more problems with their feelings than women?
I believe that there are still inhibitions in society, barriers to men being able or willing to show their feelings openly - but that also applies to women.

Schnitzler hints at the death of the woman at the end. How do you do it?
It's important to me that Christine, the main female character, is not the victim of patriarchal structures at the end and that she has no choice but to throw herself out of the window. I want to think further. How can she transform her anger, build on it? I want to find new perspectives in a patriarchal society.

The production, which premiered at the Salzkammergut Festwochen, can be seen at the Kammerspiele in Linz from October 25.