Step by step together into 2028

Dear curious visitors

Let's try to imagine the Gessnerallee in 2028. 

‘The theatre, its team and its artists radiate into the city and out beyond cantonal and national borders. The theatre is a meeting point, a place of debate, a place to exchange ideas and a magnet for the public. The Gessnerallee, with its diverse programme, is alive with artists and visitors from Switzerland and abroad. It communicates clearly and comprehensively and is aimed at a broad, diverse audience. The regular low admission prices and pay-as-much-as-you-can offers enable people from different social backgrounds to participate in the programme. 

The works produced by both young and established artists are so convincing and strong that it is no longer possible to imagine an international festival without a Gessnerallee in-house production. The venue sees itself as an open workshop, a collaborative workspace and a laboratory for radical change, with the promotion and presentation of the performing arts at its centre. It works creatively on the aesthetics of access, invites people to lunch and to sing together in the choir and organises low-threshold flea markets for stage materials and costumes. The team, the audience and the artists learn together - mistakes are still made, but we can laugh about them and discuss them together. The glittering purple lift to the first floor keeps winning design awards.’

Turning vision into reality

We drew up this vision in winter 2022 after discussions with local and international artists. Together with our team, the artists and visitors, we want to work over the next four years to turn this vision into a reality, step by step. 

A lot of work has already been done over the last 35 years: Today, the Gessnerallee is a technically well-equipped dance, theatre, music and performance venue with rooms that can be used in a variety of ways, it is home to the attractive ‘Riithalle’ restaurant with a beautiful beer garden and, with the ‘Stall 6 Bar’, it offers a cosy place for stimulating conversations and all-night celebrations.

Facing challenges

Thanks to continuous subsidies from the city and canton of Zurich and the selective support of other funding partners, a permanent team of around thirty people with a wide range of professional experience and perspectives can see themselves as competent and passionate hosts. An international programme is presented at the Gessnerallee and produced together with local artists. The focus on a diversity-orientated and power-critical discourse established in recent years has brought about important steps in a transformation process that can turn the Gessnerallee into a sustainable cultural institution.

In addition to the enthusiasm for these spaces of possibility and the joy of thinking and spinning ideas together, we are also aware of the challenges that the management of the Gessnerallee brings with it at such a time of complex, contradictory and disturbing global political events and their influence on local society. 

A present characterised by wars, autocracies, inflation and environmental catastrophes has taken the ease out of designing utopias. Many global and local developments have led to great uncertainty and exhaustion, a lack of prospects and a precariousness in living conditions - and by no means only for artists. We want to meet these challenges with our convictions and through artistic means.

Constantly breaking down barriers

We want to ensure that artists and art professionals can continue to create spaces for reflection, collective experience, the production of solidarity and the questioning of established structures and share these with the public.

We want to create working and presentation conditions that make it possible to generate enthusiasm and provide comfort with artistic works in Zurich and far beyond.

We want to create a place where ambiguities and differences of opinion are negotiated with appreciation and where a curious, vulnerable and open-minded exchange is more important than cemented attitudes.

And we want to steadily and in small, serious steps break down existing barriers in order to make this beautiful, utopian place accessible to as many people as possible. 

To achieve this, we need everyone: team, artists, audience, funding partners and many more. We need your enthusiasm – and your feedback.

Welcome to the Gessnerallee

Kathrin Veser and Miriam Walther