2023-11-01 18:02:42
Strange. For one of the key players in the German musical business, Jörn-Felix Alt is strangely reserved and difficult to find. His website has been around for a long time under constructionhe appears on social media very sparingly and usually not with news or success reports, but only with very unspecific photos in a grunge aesthetic that is rather untypical for the industry.
But there is little about the 35-year-old that is typical of the industry. Now he’s making a guest appearance as a shark-naughty lawyer in the hip-swaying, hot and sexy Schillertheater staged by Barrie Kosky for the opening of the comic opera alternative venue Schillertheater Jazz-Musical „Chicago“ – once again at his place of residence in Berlin.
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In the meantime, Alt has not only established himself as a highly energetic, thrilling, brilliantly singing, dancing and acting performer, but also as a musical author, choreographer – and soon also as a director. At the end of the season at the Dresden State Operetta he was responsible for movement and production in the double evening “The Seven Deadly Sins” based on Brecht/Weill and “100 Passions” as a “performative response by the Sebastian Weber Dance Company with music by Konrad Koselleck”. That’s what he always wanted.
Although Little-Jörn-Felix actually seemed predestined to be an actor from childhood. Born in Waiblingen in 1988, grew up in the vineyards between Stuttgart and Heilbronn, he attended a children’s course at the Heilbronn Theater, which was very open to musicals. There he was quickly asked for children’s roles on the big stage; the son in “William Tell” was just the beginning.
“The trinity of playing, singing, dancing, I was really excited about that, and it should continue,” he says today about his beginnings. He wanted to go to the University of the Arts in Berlin. That worked, and – like for many graduates in those years – Peter Lund became a key figure as both professor and director of the third-year productions staged at the Neukölln Opera. In 2010, Alt shone in “My Avatar and I” and returned in 2016 for the sensational production “Stella” – as a mysterious Nazi.
To be too good to be true
But in between, Jörn-Felix Alt, who was still in his fourth year of study, had already completed a two-year engagement of a special kind at the Friedrichstadt-Palast (with breaks, thanks to the double cast): as the title character leading through the revue from a crescent moon “YMA – too good to be true”. She was supposed to remain ambivalently ambiguous, but in the end she was more of a woman. Alt didn’t get stuck on just any drag queen track; as a college graduate he finally threw himself into the juggernaut long-run musical.
In Vienna he appeared in “Elisabeth” and “Naturally Blonde,” and later at the Berlin Theater des Westens in “I’ve Never Been in New York.” But then Alt preferred variety in his life, stressful travel, but also challenges. “I like working,” says the Swabian-born man, “it runs in our family.” That’s why, when he’s in Berlin, since 2019 he’s also been running the boutique for his brother’s Stuttgart women’s fashion label in Schöneberg, where he also works lives nearby.
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Friedrichstadtpalast-Revue
As if Jörn-Felix Alt didn’t already have enough to do. He has long been well booked – and he sings the praises of this diverse, now very professionalized system, especially in his field – at the musical-oriented city theaters between Berlin and Nuremberg, Linz, Vienna, St. Gallen and Dortmund. Only Corona, with all the postponements, has brought even more stress to the-at-5-at-the-airport-in-the-morning-and-at-a-strange-hotel-again-in-the-evening routine. But he loves it, even the stress.
He has long played one of his favorite roles, Tony in “West Side Story”. But Alt was also there in “Hair” and “Cabaret” (as Clifford, who severely curbs his urge to move, not the more expected emcee), “Hello, Dolly” and “Aida”; now also very popular in jazzy, swinging Paul Abraham operettas such as “The Flower of Hawaii”, “Roxy and Her Miracle Team” or “Fairy Tales in the Grand Hotel”. “With operetta I have more freedom of image than in a musical. And there are some big people who are revitalizing the genre creatively,” he says.
Back in 2013, he and two colleagues brought out the popular two-person musical “Sarg Niemals Nie” at the Neukölln Opera; Unfortunately, everyone just doesn’t have the time for similar undertakings. But Jörn-Felix Alt has been choreographing for this since 2018, primarily in Linz and Dresden. At the local state operetta he started small with the intimate piece “The Fantasticks”, now the Benatzky/Strauss revue “Casanova” was opulent and the “Polish Wedding” was rather sparse. He plays himself in the Spoliansky revue “Two Ties”. “It’s great to be active again in this way alongside the colleagues I was just guiding.” The change of perspective is his constant.
“Chicago” at the Berlin Schillertheater with Jörn-Felix Alt (r.)
Quelle: picture alliance/dpa
And so he couldn’t be happier with these changing perspectives, between being an actor in a Kosky prestige production and being part of the management team at an experimental house like Dresden: “It’s just the right time for me. I am very spoiled by the diverse musical scene and have been involved in great productions with inspiring colleagues. We now have a very high level of musicals in Germany, that has to be said.”
Alt wants to give and distribute with great ease. And he doesn’t want to be on stage every night anymore. That would be a different focus on the musicals, not on him, on others. This mixture is good for him.
“Get out of all the drawers, get the best out of everything,” is how Jörn-Felix Alt looks for his commitments: “I have always found a vessel for it. And luckily I fit into the formats, game plans and ideas. So I was always able to work at eye level and was always invited back. I do everything myself, I don’t have an agency and I negotiate the contracts with the houses.” But for now there is “Chicago” Razzle-Dazzle in Berlin. And Jörn-Felix Alt can sleep in his own bed a little more often.
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