"Opera Ball": New Theatre Show by Stefanie Sargnagel Celebrates Premiere

The APA was allowed to send Sargnagel some questions in writing beforehand. The premiere is on February 25.

APA: Ms. Sargnagel, your new piece "Opernball - Waltz, Wine and Wealthy Belly" also deals with the "Right-Waltz". I assume the political pun is intentional. Were you relieved that the blue-black coalition negotiations fell through?

Stefanie Sargnagel: The pun is not mine; it is the theater's press text. Of course, I was relieved that Kickl did not become chancellor; it would have been a disaster.

Sargnagel: "The Corruption is Subtle and Creeping"

APA: In 2024, you were a guest at the Vienna Opera Ball on behalf of the Johann Strauss Festival Year. You describe this very beautifully in your rehearsal version... these complicated feelings: "Maybe I don't have to be ashamed of it. Maybe one can simply enjoy having reached the top. Power and fame are an achievement, meaningful, influencing the course of the world." In the meantime, you have arrived in the establishment, haven't you? In what way is the Stefanie Sargnagel of then different from the one today? Does this perhaps sometimes take the wind out of a satirist's sails?

Sargnagel: I have been to the Opera Ball before as an outsider and was shocked at how little foreign I felt this time. The corruption is subtle and creeping. One doesn't just decide to want to belong; one simply feels more comfortable, knows more and more people in high positions, they integrate you, flatter you, you suddenly feel empathy with them, which naturally inhibits healthy malice and the necessary mockery. As an artist, you are first hated scum, then success sets in, and everyone wants to kiss you. You really have to be careful there.

APA: Christina Tscharyiski brings your piece to the stage as a "grotesque". Is the Opera Ball perhaps also a kind of "gift" for a cabaret artist?

Sargnagel: I think that much in this small, grotesque country requires very little exaggeration to appear completely absurd. Satirists have it very easy here.

APA: You have 60,000 followers on Facebook, almost 100,000 on Instagram. Does it bother you that social media is being politicized, or should it perhaps even be political?

Sargnagel: I don't know how they could be unpolitical. Social media has personally opened up a great freedom for me, for example, in the field of humor, artists suddenly establish themselves who might never have had a chance in the bourgeois, patriarchal cultural scene. Many more women, many more people from diverse professional fields. That is something positive. Unfortunately, they make us all dependent and demented, no one can concentrate anymore, and autocrats drag us into the abyss with the help of fake news, no one knows what the truth is anymore, while megalomaniac tech billionaires are already considering how to escape into space from their own dystopia. But apart from that, they are fun.

APA: In your opinion, should the Opera Ball be abolished? Perhaps invest the money elsewhere?

Sargnagel: They should raffle the tickets, that would be funny.

Of Bread Roll Escalations and Etiquette Rules

APA: You write about many colorful encounters. Which one was personally exciting or perhaps insightful for you?

Sargnagel: I found the escalations the most interesting. When we blocked a lady's view of the opening or accidentally took the wrong bread roll from a stranger's plate, the ball guests freaked out in such a primitive way that I had never experienced before. It was brutal.

APA: Can you roughly say how much of the text actually happens and what is fictional? Did you actually dance in three-quarter time? How was that? Your attempt to get into the staff canteen?

Sargnagel: Everything is based on real experiences, the encounters are so adventurous and diverse, I hardly had to exaggerate anything. And yes, I was denied entry to the legendary workers' canteen.

APA: Particularly important at the ball are Thomas Elmayer's etiquette rules. It is still the case that the lady walks on the right, "because the right is the place of honor." Another rule states: "On a staircase, the gentleman walks behind the lady to catch her in case of a fall." Do you have a favorite Elmayer etiquette rule?

Sargnagel: Always address the house staff formally, even if their native language is not German. I focused most on learning the forms of address: Your Highness, Your Grace, Your Excellency, Your Honor, Highborn, Most Noble, Most Highborn, Your Premature Birth, Magnificence, Mr. Federal President, etc...

APA: In the rehearsal version it is written: "In the past, they wanted to shove the champagne flutes down the guests' throats, today a certain lethargy can be felt." Isn't there enough outrage in this country?

Sargnagel: I believe that when the schnitzel in the inn soon crosses the 20 euro mark, Austrians will realize that xenophobia cannot be deep-fried away.

(Questions by Marietta Steinhart/APA)

(APA/Red)

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