Societaetstheater

The Baroque building on Hauptstraße in the Innere Neustadt was abandoned for many years in the second half of the 20th century, but beginning in 1979, a movement grew to restore it.

On 19 May 1776, a group of fifteen friends founded a society for the purpose of creating a private theatre in their leisure time,[2][3][4] and the Societaetstheater was ceremoniously opened the same day, initially in a temporary home near the current location of the main station with a capacity of approximately 50 spectators.

In 1777, with the assistance of the publisher Conrad Georg Walter, the theatre moved to a larger building in Borngasse (near the current location of the German Hygiene Museum), but after Walter's death the following year, it moved again on 7 December 1779 to its current home, a garden building in the courtyard behind the residence of the government secretary Johann Christoph Hoffmann at Hauptstraße 19.

The design for the curtain in 1779 was by Johann Eleazar Zeissig, known as Schenau, a director of the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts; it depicted, amongst genii and garlands of roses, scenes from Greek mythology, such as Thalia, the muse of comedy, showing a youth the way to the temple of virtue while a bacchante tried to draw him towards the temple of lust.

The poet August Gottlieb Meißner used his influence within the society to secure performances of works by his friend Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

However, performances also took place on Fridays and Sundays, which out of respect for religion were avoided by public theatres in Dresden until the early 19th century.

[13] In the early 19th century this began to change, as upcoming actors increasingly discovered the theatre as a place to hone their talent.

The years around 1800 also saw a generational shift from the founders to their successors, who chose the stage as their profession while retaining close ties to the Societaetstheater, where they had begun their association with the theatre.

[14] The bourgeois drawing-room dramas which dominated the repertoires of theatres of all sizes at the beginning of the 19th century made few demands in casting, time, settings or props.

Dilettantism had a negative connotation; Goethe and Schiller themselves collaborated in the summer of 1799 on a compilation with that as its theme, Über den Dilettantismus [de].

Many of the upper middle class regarded amateur theatre as at best a "harmless pleasure" with no particular moral or aesthetic merit.

The building was restored based on its original state, with the addition of an annexe containing a cellar theatre, a restaurant and five guest rooms.

The Societaetstheater today is a modern chamber theatre,[3] accommodating spoken word, dance, music and puppet performances.