August 2007 saw the first cooperation between the Salzburg Global Seminar and the Salzburg Festival founded by Schloss Leopoldskron's great restorer and former owner, Max Reinhardt. This year the Writers in Residence, staying in the Schloss, were Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and Bulgarian writer Dimitré Dinev. They held public readings and conversations in the Salzburger Landestheater, the University Auditorium, the Mozarteum, Das Kino, and the Felsenreitschule. In the Great Hall of the Schloss itself, on August 5 and 6, there were two world premiere readings of a new play by Austria's best known playwright, Peter Handke, Bis dass der Tag euch scheidet / oder / Eine Frage des Lichts ("Till Day Do You Part / or / A Question of Light"). The play was read in French by Handke's wife, the French actress Sophie Semin, and preceded by a reading of Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape (to which Handke's play is a response) by the German actor Thomas Holtzmann. Handke himself arrived shortly after the first reading, and was present for the second.

Also in the Great Hall, on August 5, 8 and 10, there were three sessions of a "Salzburger Nachtstudio", recorded by the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation) for broadcasting in its "CityScienceTalk" program on August 20 and 27 and September 3. For these late-night discussions Thomas Oberender, Director of Drama at the Salzburg Festival, invited guests from outside the artistic world to speak about art. These guests - scholars and practitioners from different fields - were asked, in discussion with artists and writers taking part in the Festival, to treat themes from the Festival productions as empirical material, without judging them from an aesthetic perspective. The idea was - as in last year's "Salon" - to recreate the atmosphere of Schloss Leopoldskron in Reinhardt's time, when he used to invite actors and other artists home for drinks and conversation after a performance.

An additional event, held in the University Auditorium on August 10, featured a discussion on art and politics between the world-famous actress Vanessa Redgrave and the leading British playwright David Hare (Stuff Happens, Via Dolorosa, etc.), who were attending this year's Salzburg Festival, respectively as performer and director, for three performances of Joan Didion's widely acclaimed single-actor play "The Year of Magical Thinking". In their discussion they explored themes developed by Hare in his book of lectures "Obedience, Struggle and Revolt". The discussion, held in English, was introduced by Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, and moderated by Edward Mortimer, Senior Vice President and Chief Program Officer of the Salzburg Global Seminar. It was sponsored jointly by the Salzburg Festival (www.salzburgerfestspiele.at), the New York Review of Books, which hopes to publish excerpts from the exchange, and the Salzburg Global Seminar.

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