Alexandra Althoff, dramaturge and former artistic director of the Burgtheater, assumed leadership of the mdw’s Max Reinhardt Seminar – Department of Drama on 1 March 2024. She and Steffen Jäger, who serves as her deputy head, speak about these new responsibilities, the challenges inherent in a dual training programme, and planned emphases during their term in office.
On 1 March 2024, the Rectorate—with broad support from the department itself—appointed you as the Max Reinhardt Seminar’s new heads. What does your colleagues’ support mean to you? How important is it in your everyday work?
Alexandra Althoff (AA): I’d say it’s the most important thing of all. Our professors’ unanimous nomination of us vis-à-vis the Rectorate represents a great foundation on which to start working.
We now have the opportunity to come together and continue the development of our teaching with united forces.
Alexandra Althoff, Department head, Max Reinhardt Seminar
Is there a backstory to your being chosen for this new role?
AA: The Rectorate approached me last summer and asked whether I’d be interested in taking on more responsibility at the Max Reinhardt Seminar—and in the 2023 winter semester, I was appointed deputy head on an interim basis alongside department head Tamara Metelka. I think that the support I now enjoy is partly a result of our work last semester.
What have you chosen to focus on as your term begins? Are there areas where we’ll be seeing changes?
AA: Our department already initiated a number of processes last semester that we’ll now be continuing to pursue. A key item is our culture of communication, which is to say: regular exchange between faculty, students, and all employees at the department. We’ve developed new formats for this in a process accompanied by external mediators, and we’ll now be continuing down this path on our own.
Steffen Jäger: A further central point is working on developing the culture of breaks at our department in response to suggestions by our students. Our teaching schedule is extremely packed due to the huge amount of material that we cover. So we’ve worked together with teachers and students to optimise our class schedule in the interest of including recovery phases.
AA: The big challenge that we face, being an institution with a dual programme that covers directing and acting, is that our instructional offerings are joined by rehearsals and performances where the directing students and acting students work together, which is how Max Reinhardt conceived it. This makes it necessary to set things up such that these areas mesh well—which is something we’re working on, and I’m optimistic that we’ll ultimately succeed in making full use of our department’s great potential.
We’ve worked together with teachers and students to optimise our class schedule in the interest of including recovery phases.
Steffen Jäger, Deputy head, Max Reinhardt Seminar
What do you have in mind, here?
AA: Things like new electives, an event that showcases our artistic work, and various additional offerings like a new discussion series on topics of broad societal relevance. In terms of this last point, 7 March witnessed a kick-off event in celebration of International Women’s Day entitled Ganz schön mächtig. Geschlechterverhältnisse am Theater [Pretty Powerful Indeed. Gender Relations in Theatre]. I spoke with Bettina Hering, Petra Paterno, and Julia Wissert about powerful strategies, helpful tools, and pioneering transformational processes for achieving a greater degree of gender justice at theatres. We’d now like to hold more events like that one on a regular basis.
It’s in part thanks to each of our biographies as artists and as teachers that we feel responsible for the areas of acting and directing in equal measure.
Alexandra Althoff, Department head, Max Reinhardt Seminar
How can this be made possible?
AA: Good planning, which now lies in the hands of Steffen Jäger, will enable us to open up more possibilities and actually have more time for complementary offerings.
SJ: We’ve got two different structures of training here that run simultaneously. The one is a semester-based system with continual teaching. The other runs like a professional theatre and is divided into stages of three-to-six weeks. So our job is to harmonise these two structures, combining rich instructional offerings with a functioning schedule. That’s anything but easy, but we’re making good progress.
AA: I should add that our department’s currently in a very special situation: around half of our professors are new. These new colleagues hail from various areas and institutions and bring with them lots of experience as well as individual expertise. Steffen Jäger, for instance, is specialised in diversity issues, fair access to the arts and culture, and equality. And Anja Thiemann investigates forgotten female authors from the German classicist era in order to return their works to the stage and to the repertoire—and that’s just two such cases. We’re really happy with the combination we now have: our faculty includes lots of excellent members with many years of Max Reinhardt Seminar experience, and we also have fascinating new colleagues! This constellation gives us a unique opportunity to come together and continue the development of our teaching with united forces.
I view this new role as a great opportunity to help shape things based on my many years of experience.
Steffen Jäger, Deputy head, Max Reinhardt Seminar
Ms. Althoff, you have an experienced partner in Steffen Jäger. How is your work together as a team shaping up? Are you aiming for any particular division of responsibilities?
AA: It became clear to me really fast that I wanted to take on this new job with Steffen Jäger at my side. I’m very happy that Steffen agreed to join me—and about how his nomination elicited a lot of enthusiasm from our colleagues. It’s in part thanks to each of our biographies as artists and as teachers that we feel responsible for the areas of acting and directing in equal measure. But we’re just now beginning our work together, so a more concrete division of leadership responsibilities is still to come.
Mr. Jäger, you’ve been associated with the Max Reinhardt Seminar ever since your student days. What significance does becoming its deputy head hold for you?
SJ: I studied directing at the Max Reinhardt Seminar from 2005 to 2009, and I’ve remained connected with it ever since. I’d already taught here for an initial ten-year stint and then returned after having held a professorship in ensemble work and role development in Linz. I view this new role as a great opportunity to help shape things based on my many years of experience. I know what it means to be a student here, but I also know the situation as a lecturer and now as a professor.
Ms. Althoff, you originally taught at the Max Reinhardt Seminar from 2013 to 1018 and then returned to assume responsibility for the subjects of Production Analysis and Applied Dramaturgy beginning in 2022/23. How can both of your new roles as department heads be reconciled with your respective teaching responsibilities?
AA: We’re required to continue with our teaching, of course, and it goes without saying that we’ll be doing so. At a department like this one, with its current student body of 37 acting students and eight directing students who are all hard at work outside the classroom and trying out their skills in our tutorials, that’s a big job. I already experienced quite a bit last semester—including the postponement of a première. But I’d already been deputy artistic director at the Burgtheater and thus had the according leadership experience. So I’m now looking forward to this new challenge. And alongside the new role I’ve taken on, I’m also responsible for the artistic output of our theatre productions—with people calling in sick and everything else that comes along with that.
As teachers, you’re in constant contact with students. How are you looking to structure the exchange with your students where departmental topics are concerned?
SJ: We’ve put a lot of time into developing new formats. Each of our annual intakes of students has mentors that accompany them throughout their time here. Moreover, we meet with each of these groups at the beginning of each semester to fill them in on what lies ahead as well as address topics that might come up. And with general meetings, dialogue forums, and departmental conferences, we’ve created a multitude of options intended to help us remain in contact with everyone at the department. These formats have also been very well received and are heavily used.
I hope we’ll manage to uphold the direct exchange we have now even in difficult times.
Alexandra Althoff, Department head, Max Reinhardt Seminar
What projects do you have coming up next?
AA: The successful diploma production by Bianca Thomas, K.I. und Abel, will be performed again at Schlosstheater Schönbrunn in late May before we take it to the festival Körber Studio Junge Regie at Hamburg’s Thalia Theater. We also have the widely esteemed Austrian director Christina Tscharyiski currently rehearsing Elfriede Jelinek’s Sonne, los jetzt! with our third-year students. With its Austrian première having already taken place in Graz, we’ll be the first to have the privilege of performing this new work in Vienna.
SJ: In July, we’ll be going to the Schauspielschultreffen festival for acting schools in Frankfurt, where we plan to submit this work as our competition entry. We’ll be engaging in exchange there with all of the other acting schools in the German-speaking region.
What are your hopes for the next few years as department heads?
AA: I hope we’ll manage to uphold the direct exchange we have now even in difficult times. We received a lot of positive feedback when we took office, but I think it would be presumptuous to say it’ll always be that way. It will therefore be fantastic if we can develop a good culture of dialogue and conflict where there’s willingness to compromise and where the decisions we’ve come to as a group are collectively upheld.
