Clingenburg Festival
The Clingenburg Festival is a theater festival that takes place every year from June to August on the Clingenburg ruins in Klingenberg am Main . With two to four in-house productions from the genres of drama, children's theater and musicals and some additional guest performances, between 28,000 and 40,000 visitors are reached every year. The Clingenburg Festival is the largest professional festival in Lower Franconia. It is largely financed by the proceeds from admission tickets, but for several years there has also been regular financial support from the Free State of Bavaria , the District of Lower Franconia and the City of Klingenberg.
history
The festival tradition in Klingenberg has its origins at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1926, the Andreas Hofer Festival with 200 participants took place on the Clingenburg open-air stage. There is also evidence of the year 1928, when the Wilhelm Tell Festival was on the program.
In 1993 the Clingenburg Festival Association was founded under the chairmanship of the then Mayor of Klingenberg, Siegmar Markert, which has been hosting professional festivals on the castle ruins since 1994. From 1995 to 2014 the hotelier and winemaker Klaus Köhlich was chairman of the association, his successor is the engineer Rainer Markens. The first director was Udo Schürmer from 1994 to 2004 . He was followed by Georg Mittendrein from 2005 to 2008 . Marcel Krohn was director from 2009 to 2018. He had continuously expanded the program in order to offer the audience a wide range. In 2019, the new director Wolfgang Hofmann announced that he would forego the classic drama and popular theater segments in the future. With the pieces The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Shakespeare in Love , he wanted to put particularly popular pieces on the program in order to reach more audiences with fewer productions. Despite the reduction, the total budget for Hofmann's first season was increased from 1.1 million (2018) to 1.5 million (2019).
On August 31, 2019, the festival's sponsoring association filed for bankruptcy . The reason given was a decrease in audience numbers. In addition, investments of almost 500,000 euros for technology and costumes were necessary. The board had previously tried to get higher grants from government agencies, but failed.
game schedule
In the first season, 1994, with The Free of Joseph von Eichendorff presents only a single piece. But already in the next year a children's production was added, which from then on remained an integral part of the program. The evening productions were mostly classics in the first seasons ( Das Käthchen von Heilbronn (1996), The Taming of the Shrew (1997)). Since 1998, musicals have occasionally been shown instead of a drama ( Der Mann von La Mancha (1998), The Scarlet Pimpernel (2003)). Georg Mittendrein brought a much acclaimed Evita to the stage in his last season in 2008 . When Marcel Krohn took over the management , the musical was able to firmly establish itself in Klingenberg. Cyrano de Bergerac (2009), Aida (2011 - the most successful production to date at the Clingenburg), Piaf (2012), Zorro (2013 - world premiere), My Fair Lady (2014), Dracula (2015), Hair (2016 ), Cabaret (2017), West Side Story (2018). In addition, classics such as Romeo and Juliet (2012), Faust I (2013), Jedermann (2014), Othello (2015) and The Robbers (2016) were offered every year .
In the anniversary season 2018, six in-house productions were offered for the first time: West Side Story , The Sold Grandfather , Nathan the Wise , Puss in Boots , Tortuga and Count Future Down - the second youth piece from the director's pen. West Side Story in particular proved to be extremely successful: The Allgemeine Zeitung and the Darmstädter Echo read: “This festival has been going on for 25 years, and artistic director Marcel Krohn is designing the program for the tenth year, and there is now a showpiece of the program in the musical Reached a level that one cannot necessarily expect away from the centers. "
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Nathalie Bachmann: Off for the Clingenburg Festival: the club has to file for bankruptcy. Retrieved September 2, 2019 .
- ↑ Katrin Küx: Klingenberger hope that the festival will be saved. Retrieved September 3, 2019 .
Coordinates: 49 ° 46 ′ 57 ″ N , 9 ° 11 ′ 5 ″ E