Theater Reutlingen Die Tonne

In the location's words:

The early days of the Tonne

In the second half of the 1950s, art lover Anton Geiselhart wanted to create a forum for young visual artists. Together with his friend HAP Grieshaber, he created Gallery 5 in the basement of his villa in Gartenstrasse (the artists exhibiting at the time included such well-known names as Antes, Hartung, Kleinschmidt, Quinte and Rainer). According to tradition, it seems to have been Grieshaber who, upon seeing the cellar, once said: "We have to play theater here." The idea was born, but who should "ma" be? One possible candidate seemed to be Klaus Heydenreich, who ran the Naturtheater in Reutlingen. However, no deal was struck with him, as his ideas for conversion work and equipment exceeded the financial possibilities of the landlord. Geiselhart had a friend whose wife, Irm Forster, was an actress. She told her colleague Alf André in Stuttgart about the possibility of doing theater on his own, to which he immediately responded enthusiastically.