Privat

Modern cabaret has to have stand-up quality. So Josef Hader simply sits down and gives it his all. Without any big fuss. What begins quite privately—a birth with horn-rimmed glasses—evolves into a fantastic journey: from the Vienna sewers into his own mind, halfway around the world, and almost to the moon. In Paris, Hader meets the tree branch that once killed Ödön von Horváth on the Champs-Élysées. In Nairobi, he encounters the “King of Africa,” who gives the cynical European a piece of his mind: “Keep it up. But don’t call it democracy!” There are encounters with God, the Devil, the lemmings in Australia, Reinhold Messner, and “Stoascheißer Koarl.”

“Something—probably that merciless mixture of genius and vanity—always drives him high up, to the peaks of his art, which began as cabaret.” HELMUT SCHÖDEL, DIE ZEIT

Recorded at the Burgruine Finkenstein.

Photos © Lukas Beck