Sauna masters balance performance, heat management and guest care

A sauna master can tell a story, sing opera and move a towel with the precision of a stage performer. The same person must manage how heat reaches the guests and notice when someone needs to leave. Chris Shenkle and Anders Hage described those overlapping responsibilities in Lisa Starr’s StarrCast interviews at the International Sauna Congress in Oslo.

Shenkle, an American actor and filmmaker working in Norway, won the Norwegian Show Aufguss and Modern Classic competitions in 2025. Hage chairs the Danish Sauna Masters Association and works on facilitated sauna, education and a framework he calls thermal architecture. Their accounts show why performance experience alone is an incomplete preparation for the job.

From an acting role to a sauna career

Shenkle moved from New York to Oslo with his Norwegian wife. A Visit Norway commercial cast him as a sauna master at KOK’s floating saunas. When a real job appeared with the operator, he submitted the commercial as part of his application. His early duties included cleaning, maintenance and welcoming guests, with simple towel-led sessions added during training.

A visit to The Well exposed him to much more developed Aufguss work. He later worked at SALT, trained his towel technique and created a show about wanting to become an opera singer. Third place in Norway in 2024 ultimately led to a World Championship place after another competitor withdrew. He returned as a Norwegian champion in 2025 and described reaching the World Championship final in 2026 after winning his qualifying day. He did not claim the 2026 world title.

KOK’s Langkaia and Aker Brygge sites offer public shared sessions, private sauna bookings and sauna cruises. They are distinct places and products. SALT’s current official sauna page says it is temporarily closed until further notice.

The room is part of the performance

Shenkle described Show Aufguss as a performance of up to 15 minutes using story, costumes, props, music, lighting and scents, presented solo or by a team of two or three. Opera gave him a distinctive creative route into competition. Modern Classic allowed him to develop the more directly thermal and wellness-oriented side of the work.

During a session, he watches how heat and aroma travel, reads the group’s mood and changes his plan. Weather and the particular sauna affect the result. He compared a roughly 220-person competition audience at Satama with a larger one in Verona, emphasizing the difficulty of giving individual attention even within a show.

For a visitor, the useful distinction is between a guided ritual, a competition-style show and ordinary shared bathing. The Well includes a selection of rituals in admission, with certain premium experiences charged separately. An ordinary shared ticket at an Oslo floating sauna should not be assumed to include a show.

Training beyond towel technique

Hage described Denmark’s growth through mobile saunas and smaller urban facilities. Many of his weekday sessions emphasize presence and reflection rather than spectacle. He sees facilitation as a way to help newcomers feel comfortable in heat and to guide an experience across several rounds.

His proposed thermal-architecture vocabulary separates the inputs applied to a room, the amount and timing of exposure, the guest’s response and the person’s capacity. At the interview, the framework was still being developed within his team. He also described disagreements over the definition of a sauna master and the uneven quality of short training courses. These remarks describe a professional-development effort, not an established global standard.

Plugin Heat Club’s published training model offers a concrete comparison: heat and steam management, fanning, cold immersion, breath, scent and music, followed by an assessment with real guests. Certification belongs to that operator’s method.

The staff member’s exposure also counts

Hage warned that sustained work in high heat can exhaust staff physically and mentally. A roster needs to account for time in the sauna, recovery between sessions and the other work around each ritual. The business case for Aufguss therefore includes staffing and workload as well as ticket sales.

Guests retain control over whether to stay, cool down or skip immersion. Plugin explicitly permits leaving every round. A successful session does not require every person to tolerate the same exposure. The layout matters too: changing areas and accessible routes determine who can comfortably reach and use the experience.