Alumnus and director Alek Niemiro has been honored with several awards for emerging talent, including the 2025 Austrian Art Alumni Award. He wrote his first plays before he began his studies, and his work has taken him from Hamburg to Warsaw, Berlin, Konstanz, and Salzburg, where he staged “Echtzeitalter”—based on the novel by Tonio Schachinger—at the Schauspielhaus Salzburg this spring. A conversation about positive thinking, the blind spots on German-language stages, antiheroes, as well as the ability to compromise and take responsibility.