Wild & Schön Festival

When young people put on a play, something immediate emerges: a lot of raw energy, genuine expression, and a language all their own for what moves them.

That’s exactly what the Wild & Schön Festival creates space for. From June 22 to 26, June 2026, the stages at NEST and DSCHUNGEL WIEN will belong to young music theater and dance ensembles from all over Austria. For one week, selected school groups, extracurricular theater clubs, and young collectives will come together, presenting their self-produced works and turning Vienna into a stage for young art for a week, new perspectives, and collaborative experimentation.

The festival aims to give young people a stage—both literally and figuratively. The focus is on the topics, questions, and ideas that young people are currently grappling with. It is intended less as a competition and much more as a place for people to come together —between different federal states, artistic approaches, and young people who want to make theater together, experiment, and explore new ideas.

The response shows just how great this need is. Between September 2025 and January 2026, a total of 24 productions were submitted. Eight of these were ultimately selected by a jury—composed of representatives from NEST and DSCHUNGEL WIEN, independent colleagues from the fields of community theater and dramaturgy, as well as a young person’s perspective. The selected pieces have one thing in common above all else: they were developed and written by the participants themselves, composed, and choreographed—and are thus a direct expression of young perspectives.

The topics could hardly be more timely. Many of the festival productions revolve around the climate crisis, digitalization, social pressure, identity, and community—in other words, issues that affect young people today.

The Wild & Schön Festival opens on June 22 with the production Heimlich! by the Opera Lab of the Vienna State Opera. The young ensemble will bring a musical theater piece to the stage at NEST featuring rousing choruses, moving arias, gripping monologues, and choreography to the stage at NEST. The production addresses themes such as abuse of power, manipulation, and social inequality—inspired by Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Luisa Miller.

From Lower Austria comes the dance piece BURNING. coming closer, which centers on the motif of burning. What happens when a world falls apart—and at the same time unleashes new forces? The sixteen dancers create, through choreographed and improvised scenes, a physical mosaic of anger, overwhelm, longing, and hope. The burning symbolizes both a world in crisis and the inner fire of a generation fighting for a better future. Powerful and vulnerable at the same time, a picture of community emerges: bodies that support one another, draw closer, and build resistance together.

The production Romeo & Juliet is coming from Styria. The theater group approaches Shakespeare’s most famous lovers with contemporary language, pop culture imagery, and plenty of self-deprecating humor. “The cute boy and his crush” encounter intense emotions, dramatic conflicts, and the question of why this story still captivates us today. It’s less about a classic retelling and more about an exploration of the images we all have in our minds when we think of Romeo and Juliet —and about whether this story has anything to do with our present day at all.

Another large-scale production is Wenn der Wald geht by BORG Kindberg, also from Styria: a musical theater project featuring an orchestra, actors, and dancers. The story takes place in a completely digitized world, where nature has almost disappeared and social relationships have been rationalized. Teenage “soldiers” are working to make reality look more beautiful for the so-called “Digis”—until one of them stumbles upon a place where there is still real greenery. Between analog and digital worlds, a touching story unfolds about loss, hope, and the search for a shared future. At the same time, the play asks how people can retain their humanity in an increasingly artificial world.

It is precisely this diversity that makes the Wild & Schön Festival so special. The festival combines artistically compelling productions with open, dynamic creative processes. Here, ideas are tested, questioned, discarded, and reimagined. The young artists bring their own themes to the stage —directly, poetically, provocatively, and often with great honesty.

In addition to the performances, a diverse supporting program invites participants to get involved and reflect further: workshops and discussion forums on the topics covered, parties, sing-alongs, and opera karaoke create space for exchange and connection—both on and off stage.

In this way, Wild & Schön shows what theater can be today: A place for new perspectives, artistic exploration, and young voices that want to be heard. Because the future of musical theater and dance doesn’t begin tomorrow—it’s already on stage.