Our Association created this plaque in memory of the Theater of Spontaneity at Maysedergasse 2. In collaboration with the Österreichischen Arbeitskreis für Gruppentherapie und Gruppendynamik (ÖAGG), our goal was to spread awareness of this fundamental stage in the path started by J.L. Moreno in Austria. This plaque was created to improve access to culture for everyone, for people with sensory disabilities, blind and visually impaired people, deaf and hard of hearing. Inclusion is an implicit value in the teachings inherited from J.L. Moreno.
We thank UNIQA (the owner of the property) and the VBKÖ Association (www.vbkoe.org/en/about/) for their availability towards this project. Thanks also to Maria Cristina Sidoni for the drawing offered.
You can find some information on the theater of spontaneity of J.L. Moreno below. At the end, there is the written text of the informations from the plaque.
§ Die Stunde, 18. 5. 1924
On May 18, 1924 (Moreno's 35th birthday), an article by the writer and music critic Paul Stefan (1879 - 1943) appeared in the newspaper "Die Stunde". Paul Stefan was very interested in the new artistic trends of the time, especially in music, dance and theatre, and must have appreciated Moreno's prose theatre. His account also shows how elements of later psychodrama (e.g. role reversal) already found a place in the improvised evenings on Maysedergasse.
§ A Spontaneous Theater – article by Paul Stefan
Are the roles difficult to learn, and how often are they worth learning? In Vienna there is a small ensemble that, instead of swimming (in known waters, ed.), prefers to improvise. They are young actors under the direction of their "Father" (as Dr. Jakob Moreno Levy defines himself in his writings) and they perform two or three times a week in a hall at Maysedergasse 2. The audience is large, a real theater , as good as guaranteed for them. The material is brought or indicated by the public - and then... we begin. Two blind men perform, one of whom then becomes sighted: catastrophes, lessons. "The chair of truth" : whoever sits on this piece of furniture must show himself for what he is. The girl who just rejected one of them calls him back with the help of a cute prop; the publisher Kiepenheuer-present at that moment-must love those he hated among his authors and reject only those he wanted to print; two critics are forced to exchange masks. Next show : "The Newspaper Reader's Nightmare" : "Neue Freie Presse" and "Stunde" appear in the flesh and deal with a case in their own specific way. Then - two address writers begin to dream: one is a general, the other a poet. Then the boss comes, promotes them, and even higher, and now they are satisfied with their destiny as writers.
I assure you that these things can be more fun and exciting than well-credited classical music and Strindberg. Baroque fools who write about the revival of commedia dell'arte should be warned. There the masks, fixed types, drew every dramatic possibility into the circle of their character. In the father's improvised theater, everything moves completely freely, without any bridge.
§ PLATE TEXT
On the top floor of this building Jakob Levy MORENO rented a room from the VBKÖ, an Austrian association of women artists founded in 1910, for his theatrical experiments. Here he directed his Stegreiftheater (Theater of Spontaneity).
J.L. Moreno was born in Bucharest in 1889 and lived in Vienna and Bad Vöslau until 1925. He was a medical doctor, writer, theatre revolutionary, founder of psychodrama, co-founder of group psychotherapy and sociometry.
At that time, his group consisted of Anna Höllering, Hans Rodenberg, Robert Blum, and the future Hollywood stars Elizabeth Bergner and Ladislaus Löwenstein, who changed his name to Peter Lorre precisely because of Moreno. Franz Werfel and Georg Kaiser were frequent visitors, and once even Bertolt Brecht came to see them in action.
The performances were free and open to all. Their goal was maximum audience participation. « Dramatic material was suggested by the audience or arose from the actor's own ideas ».
The “Living Newspaper” technique meant that the performances were based on the day’s current events to delve into the conflicts that had caused them, probe the motivations of the people involved, and try to project the final solutions of the dramatized stories.
Their central task was «to bring about a revolution in theater» and «eliminate the playwright and the written play».
J.L. Moreno wrote in his autobiography: « The Key to the Stegreiftheater was the participation of the audience so that the actors and the spectators were made one. And the actors/spectators were to be the only creators involved. Everything was to be improvised: the play, the motive, the act, the conflict, and the resolution of the conflict. The Stegreiftheater was much more than dramatic adventure. I think we were among the first to experiment with multi-media ‘Happenings’. We had an impromptu orchestra which played at all of the performances […] We also had an artist who made sketches as the dramatization took place […] There was further a good deal of experimentation with lighting effects. The lighting technician was to function as spontaneously as the musicians and actors with the purpose of responding to an enhancing whatever was going on in the theatre ».
« The Stegreiftheater rapidly became a well-known gathering place for artists and intellectuals » […] « The theater was always crowded. Up to forty people could fit into the room ».
The experiments of the Theater of Spontaneity gave J.L. Moreno the chance to observe the therapeutic effects of specific roles on the actors' private lives, thus, bringing to life the Theater of Catharsis, a prodromal step to Psychodrama that was developed by J.L. Moreno after he had moved to the U.S. in 1925.
You can contact the VBKÖ Association to arrange a visit to the premises. Their website is : www.vbkoe.org
If you would like to explore this topic further, you can find documents and bibliography at : www.morenomuseum.org