Otto Schenk (born June 12, 1930 in Vienna) is an Austrian actor, and theater and opera director.

Schenk was born to Catholic parents. His father, a lawyer, had Jewish roots and therefore lost his job after the Anschluss in 1938. Schenk studied acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar, and started his acting career at the Theater in der Josefstadt and the Wiener Volkstheater, and as a comedian at Vienna's Simpl cabaret theater. His directing career began in 1953 at small Viennese venues, later leading him to renowned stages like the Burgtheater, the Munich Kammerspiele or the Salzburg Festival, staging plays by William Shakespeare, Arthur Schnitzler, Ödön von Horváth, Anton Chekhov. In 1957, Schenk directed his first opera, Mozart's The Magic Flute for the Salzburg Landestheater. His breakthrough as an opera director came in 1962 with Alban Berg's Lulu at the Theater an der Wien. This production was later moved to the Vienna State Opera, where Schenk debuted in 1964 with Leoš Janáček's Jenůfa. He was contracted by the State Opera as a permanent producer for several seasons, while continuing his free-lance career as an actor, comedian and director in Austria and Germany, working for theaters, opera houses and television productions. During the 1970s and 1980s, Schenk was hired by La Scala, the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, and German opera houses such as the Berlin State Opera, the Bavarian State Opera and the Hamburg State Opera. Schenk's operatic productions included works by Mozart, Gaetano Donizetti, Giuseppe Verdi, Antonin Dvořák, Giacomo Puccini, Richard Strauss, Richard Wagner, Ernst Krenek, and Friedrich Cerha.

Kurt Tucholsky (January 9, 1890 – December 21, 1935) was a German-Jewish journalist, satirist and writer. He also wrote under the pseudonyms Kaspar Hauser, Peter Panter, Theobald Tiger and Ignaz Wrobel. Born in Berlin-Moabit, he moved to Paris in 1924 and then to Sweden in 1930.

Tucholsky was one of the most important journalists of the Weimar Republic. As a politically engaged journalist and temporary co-editor of the weekly magazine Die Weltbühne he proved himself to be a social critic in the tradition of Heinrich Heine. He was simultaneously a satirist, an author of satirical political revues, a songwriter and a poet. He saw himself as a left-wing democrat and pacifist and warned against anti-democratic tendencies – above all in politics, the military and justice – and the threat of National Socialism. His fears were confirmed when the Nazis came to power in 1933: his books were listed on the Nazi's censorship as "Entartete Kunst" ("Degenerate Art") and burned, and he lost his German citizenship.

Josef Meinrad (April 21, 1913 – February 18, 1996) was an Austrian actor.

Josef Meinrad was born Josef Moučka in Vienna, as the fourth and youngest child of the tramdriver Franz Moučka and his second wife Katharina. For his secondary education, he received a scholarship in a school run by Redemptorists in Katzelsdorf near Wiener Neustadt. At first, he wanted to become a priest, but he left the boarding school in 1929 and became a clerk, while taking acting lessons. He made his public acting debut in 1930, by which time he called himself Josef Meinrad. His first brief engagement at the Burgtheater was in 1939, he then played at the Salzburg Festival in 1947. later that year, Meinrad became a full-time permanent member of the Burgtheater company and was part of that ensemble until his 65th birthday in 1978; he played 195 roles on that stage.

Meinrad was the keeper of the Iffland-Ring, which for 200 years has been given to the most important actor of the German speaking theatre; he passed the ring on to Bruno Ganz.

Alfred Polgar (name at birth: Alfred Polak, pseudonyms: Archibald Douglas, L. A. Terne; born 17 October 1873, Leopoldstadt - 24 April 1955, Zürich) was an Austrian-born journalist, one of the renowned wits of the Vienna coffeehouses. He left Austria in 1938, and later worked in Hollywood.

He was known as a drama critic, in Berlin 1925 to 1933, and an essayist. He died in Zurich.

Peter Turrini (born 26 September 1944 in Wolfsberg, Carinthia) is an Austrian leftist playwright.

Born in Carinthia, Turrini has been writing since 1971, when his play Rozznjogd premiered at the Volkstheater, Vienna. A versatile author, he has written plays, screenplays, poems, and essays. Rather than presenting an authentic picture of reality, in Turrini's understanding it is the function of the theatre to exaggerate and, by doing so, to raise the consciousness of the public.

He lives in Vienna and Retz, Lower Austria.