Page - 89 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

89 Lazarus’s necropolitical afterlife am Volks theater” 2015). Lazarus director Miloš Lolić is a typi- cal example. From Serbia, where he studied at the Belgrade University of Performing Arts before making a career on the German-speaking stages of Europe, Lolić won a Nestroy Prize, Austria’s top theater award, in 2012 for best upcoming director for the production he staged at the Volks theater of Magic After- noon by Wolfgang Bauer, one of Austria’s most important mod- ern dramatists. Lolić also won the Volks theater’s Dorothea Neff Prize in 2018 for best production of the season for his Lazarus production. Another director Badora commissioned was Chris- tine Eder, who did the revival of the Proletenpassion for WERK X that was discussed in the previous chapter. At the Volks theater, Eder has directed a number of didactic musicals in the Proleten- passion’s spirit: Alles Walzer, alles brennt. Eine Untergangsrevue [Everything’s Burning, Let’s Waltz: An Apocalyptic Musical Re- vue] in the 2016–17 season, Jura Soyfer’s Der Lechner Edi schaut ins Paradies [Journey to Paradise] in 2017–18, and Verteidigung der Demokratie [Defending Democracy], a musical about Hans Kelsen and the Austrian constitution in 2018–19. That Badora favoured conceptual, experimental productions can also be seen in her own staging of Der Kaufmann von Ve- nedig [The Merchant of Venice] in the 2018–19 season. At the be- ginning of each performance, the audience was asked to vote for the actor who would play Shylock that evening by clapping as loudly as they could for their choice, which was measured by an applause meter. The three choices were a typical twenty-first- century businessman-banker, a woman, and a small-statured Jewish man of orthodox appearance. All three actors had to be prepared to play both Shylock and a number of supporting roles. At the performance I attended the orthodox Jew was the top choice of an audience made up of mostly elderly women. Attendance and profitability fell rather dramatically during Badora’s term, especially in comparison with the Theater in der Josefstadt, with its similar proximity to the Burg theater — both are a mere ten-minute walk away from Vienna’s main stage on the Ring. In addition, as noted in the previous chapter on the Proletenpassion, the number of politically engaged smaller