EXBERLINER Issue 164, October 2017

WHAT’S ON — Stage
DONT MISS
OUR land people stories
Bangarra Dance
Theater, an Australian
Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander
dance company,
are bringing their
highly acclaimed
trio of works by four
choreographers to
Berlin. Assembled to
commemorate the
death of their composer
and musical
director, the pieces
fuse traditional
folk costumes and
dances with modern
touches. Oct 26-28,
19:30
Mondparsifal Beta 9-23
As the last act
of the Berliner
Festspiele’s Immersion
programme,
performance artist
Jonathan Meese and
Austrian composer
Bernhard Lang adapt
Wagner’s Parsifal by
placing it in the future...
on the moon!
Meese will comment
on the stage events
with his own surtitle
feed. In German,
English, French, and
ancient Greek, with
German surtitles.
Oct 15, 18:00; Oct
16, 18, 19:00
Interview
“The directors I hire are
the stars, not me”
New Berliner Ensemble intendant Oliver Reese
explains his vision for a “contemporary writer’s
theatre”. By Daniel Mufson
Oliver Reese has thick skin
and an open mind. After his
predecessor, Claus Peymann,
dismissed him as a “representative
of a generation of sensible, wellinformed,
but tame administrators”,
Reese declined to strike back, telling
the Tagesspiegel he thought Peymann
was “actually pretty nice”. Or maybe
he just doesn’t mind the characterisation
– his colleague Michael
Thalheimer, whom he brought from
Frankfurt to direct at the B.E., spoke
similarly to Der Freitag when Reese’s
appointment was mentioned: “The
artist intendant, radical and unwilling
to compromise, inspires fear.
What’s wanted is the dramaturg
intendant and culture manager.” In
September, the B.E.’s new, sensible
manager gave us a warm welcome
in his modest office, where we discussed
Berlin theatre’s past, present,
and future.
How do you negotiate the impulse
to leave your own mark
on the Berliner Ensemble with
the responsibility of preserving
its traditional identity? I think
that the Berliner Ensemble in recent
years has not been connected to its
history. Claus Peymann was here for
18 years, and he staged many plays
that were just pure classical drama,
like Faust and Three Sisters. But I
Daniel Mufson
think the Berliner Ensemble in its
history has always been a house for
contemporary, new writing. This is
one of the few theatres that had two
writers as artistic directors: not only
Bertolt Brecht but also Heiner Müller.
It has been a writer’s theatre and
it has been a contemporary theatre.
Your colleague Michael Thalheimer,
like many others on
the German culture scene, has
expressed contempt for Yasmina
Reza – he dismissed her writing
as Boulevardtheater. But in
Frankfurt you directed Reza’s Art
– Oh, it’s beautiful! It’s a masterpiece.
So what’s Boulevardtheater for
you? Is there a place for it at the
Berliner Ensemble? Sometimes. I
don’t think it’s problematic if you do
it every now and then. I think we really
have a problem in Germany that
we think badly of well-made plays.
Art, for example, is a masterpiece
because, when I directed it, I saw I
couldn’t even change a word. Every
word is necessary. And to have three
men talking about nothing – a white
picture – and make a worldwide hit
out of it, you can see how brilliantly
her dialogue is written. And therefore,
no, I’m not of the same opinion
as Michael. I think he pointed out
that we shouldn’t have too many
“entertaining” plays, but I think once
a season, it’s nice to have something
funny as well. There is so little good,
funny work in modern theatre, and
our actors need these kinds of roles.
This season, for example, we’re doing
Ballroom Schmitz, a musical radio
play for the stage. I think a bigger
problem is that we perform many
plays in the Kammerspiele or smaller
spaces, but where are the dramas
for the big stage? I think those types
of plays are primarily American and
English dramas, and therefore the
Berliner Ensemble will be a very
international theatre drawing on
international authors.
It’s a strange mix you’re brewing:
you wouldn’t normally see
Frank Castorf and the American
playwright Tracy Letts under
one roof. Right, but we don’t have
to be monochrome. Why should
we? But there is a certain style, I
think: It’s not amateurs, it’s not
performance, it’s not dance, it’s not
crossover; it’s acting a written text.
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EXBERLINER 164