Open stage in Vienna: the cellar stage at the Tachles

A stage nobody casts you for

There are many people in Vienna who can do something and show it to nobody. Songs in a drawer. Texts on a phone. A programme so far heard only by a flatmate. And in between, always the same hurdle: where exactly are you supposed to play this when you have no fan base, no agency and no tour dates?

Hence this text. Beneath our culture café at Karmeliterplatz 1 in 1020 Vienna lies a cellar, and in this cellar there is a stage. Not a side room in which somebody occasionally happens to sing — the stage was the reason this place exists at all. The wish for a venue with a hall for concerts and events was there from the start, long before the first plate came out of our kitchen in 2010.

A living room upstairs, a cellar stage downstairs — live music in 1020, one flight of stairs below Karmeliterplatz. Or, as we put it ourselves: with culture in the cellar and culture on the plate.

Floorspot: our open stage

Our open stage is called Floorspot. Open stage means exactly what it says: the stage is open. There is no casting, no application file, no jury deciding in advance whether you are interesting enough. You sign up, you come, you play.

Who is it for? For musicians who want to test their material in front of unfamiliar ears for the first time. For songwriters who would like to know whether the third verse is really necessary. For people who write texts and at some point have to read them aloud, because on paper you cannot hear where it snags. For young artists who need a place where the first performance does not immediately have to be the big performance.

And yes: also for people who have been doing this for twenty years and simply want to play an evening without any fuss. Both fit together. That is usually even the best part of such an evening — that the second act has nothing to do with the first and everyone stays anyway.

How exactly an evening runs, how long you play and what you need when, you discuss directly with us. We deliberately do not set that in stone here, because it depends on the evening and the programme — and because we would rather have a short conversation than write down a rule that then turns out not to apply.

What is already down there

The practical part, because in the end a performance always comes down to logistics:

• 80 seats. Big enough for it to feel like an audience. Small enough that you see the faces.
• A piano is already downstairs. You do not have to hire one, organise one and above all not carry one down a Viennese cellar staircase.
• A cellar with walls, not a hall with partitions. You can hear that.

The rest is a matter of arrangement. What equipment you need, whether you bring your own instrument, how much space your setup eats — tell us beforehand and we will settle it beforehand. Nothing is more unpleasant than finding that out one minute before the start.

And because experience says this is the next question: the cellar can be used outside our opening hours too. For rehearsals, for closed gatherings, for formats that do not fit into a normal evening. The terms for hiring the cellar are on the table openly with us — on quieter weekday evenings the cellar costs nothing at all if the project fits, and on the strong evenings it runs via a minimum spend. We have written down the details in a text of its own.

Who sits down there

The audience is not a random one off the street, and for a first performance that is worth rather a lot.

The people who come to us are above all neighbours from the 2nd district. People who live in the Karmeliter quarter, shop here and do not want to travel three underground stops in the evening to experience something. Plus people from the cultural world, people who do something themselves, couples, students. Upstairs, Polish jazz and classical music play, posters of the Polish poster school of the 1960s hang on the walls, and sometimes a black-and-white film runs along the wall. So whoever comes here has already brought a certain willingness to engage with something.

In practice that means: people listen. Not reverently, not as if in a museum — it is a coffee house, people talk and laugh too. But when somebody is on stage, the room turns that way. For a person performing something of their own for the first time, that is exactly the difference between a lovely evening and one you would rather forget.

Our guests say things about the place like „like at home" and „the atmosphere of being among friends". The same holds on the cellar stage.

Concerts, readings, cabaret — and why there is no calendar here

The open stage is only one format among several. The cellar also hosts concerts, readings and cabaret evenings. On top of that come partnerships we are honestly a little proud of: with the Polish Institute Vienna, with the Austrian Chopin Society, of which our boss is himself a member, with Global Family and with Pint of Science.

What you will not find with us is a public events calendar. Most of what happens down here is private, and it stays that way. We are glad to tell you how this stage works — what runs on a particular evening stays between the people who are there.

For you as a performer that has a pleasant side effect, by the way: your first attempt does not automatically end up on the internet.

Let us talk tachles

„Tachles" comes from Yiddish and means: get to the point, speak without detours. That is exactly how we handle stage enquiries too.

If you want to play, read or perform, get in touch with Marcin — all cellar enquiries come together with him. Write briefly what you do, roughly what you need and how many people you are coming with. A link to a recording helps but is not a condition. If it does not fit, we tell you directly; if it does fit, we tell you that too.

• Phone: +43 1 212 03 58
• Email: tachles@gmx.at
• Or right here: cellar enquiry

You always wanted to play in front of 80 people? Now let us talk tachles.