Ballhaus

Acting, dancing, exercising: All these things were possible at the Ballhaus. For more than 400 years, theatre performances have been held next to the Mirabell Gardens. The first theatre building was built in 1625 and was called the “Ballhaus”. Designed with an open truss ceiling, three galleries and a length of almost 50 metres, the impressive building served various functions and was used as a theatre, a dance hall and a gymnasium.

To mark the 400-year anniversary of what is now the Salzburg State Theatre, John von Düffel has written a theatre play that lets us experience history as it might have been. An ambitious architect is planning a new building as a centre for the bourgeois community, but of course there are soon heated debates about its potential use. During the day, sports, dance and theatre enthusiasts are competing fiercely, but at night, the Ballhaus becomes a space for dreams and desires. Suddenly, the plot of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” unfolds in an interplay of various disciplines. Lovers seek and find a place of trials and tribulations; they meet elves as well as a theatre ensemble and have a crazy night together with fabulously dancing shadow creatures. The next morning, nobody is quite sure what was real and what was not.

At the time when the Ballhaus was built in Salzburg, William Shakespeare’s plays were at their most popular in London. This play, which adds a new frame story to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, therefore creatively combines early periods of theatrical expansion. Dancers of the ballet division support the drama ensemble, and several Salzburg sports associations have been invited to use the Ballhaus as a showcase.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and John von Düffel (*1966) are the authors of this special performance, which builds a bridge from the past to the present. Their texts merge to form a new play at the Salzburg State Theatre, in the location of the former Ballhaus, which Prince-Archbishop Paris Lodron had built in 1625 “for the purpose of ball games”, for the entertainment of the court and for the performance of theatrical plays.

Carl Philip von Maldeghem and Reginaldo Oliveira are glorifying the concept of playing – in both sports and theatre – in a cross-divisional celebration of drama, ballet and sports with the world premiere of this commissioned play by John von Düffel. For this event, stage designer Thomas Mika will create an optical reminiscence of the historical Ballhaus.