Page - 90 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

90 siting futurity theaters in Vienna was rising in response to the ongoing politi- cal chaos, and the audience for these productions, while keen, is neither as large nor as lucrative as the aging conservative crowd that supports tradition-rich offerings. As Schmidt has argued, a better strategy than competing with other stages would be to attract new audiences: Dabei wäre das Volks theater neben den Mittelbühnen so- wie der freien Szene genau der richtige Ort, um in der Breite neue Publikumsschichten zu generieren: junge Menschen, migrantisches Publikum, Bobos, Ausgehwillige und — nicht zuletzt — vor allem politisch denkende Menschen. [The Volks theater, together with the mid-sized theaters and the independent scene, would be precisely the right place to attract new strata of audiences: young people, a migrant audience, bourgeois bohemians, those who like to go out, and — last but very much not least — the politically minded.] (V. Schmidt 2019) The Lazarus production was very much in this spirit, selling well to a younger and more diverse audience than usual, and not only in Vienna. The Düsseldorf production has been described as “einer der spärlichen Quotenkracher der deutschen Theater- saison wurde” [“one of the few hits of the German theater sea- son”]” (Sichrovsky 2018). Vienna’s Necropolitical Staging of Lazarus It would be a mistake, however, to write the Viennese Lazarus off as mere audience-bait. Irrespective of its being extended another season in Vienna, not atypical for a Germanophone Lazarus, Lolić’s production offers keen insights into the life- and-death thematic of Bowie’s musical unavailable elsewhere. As this reading demonstrates, it not only calls for but stresses the timeliness of a reconsideration of sadomasochism along the lines theorized by Gilles Deleuze.