Frank Castorf
Frank Castorf ( born July 17, 1951 in Berlin ) is a German director and director of the Volksbühne Berlin.
Life
Castorf graduated from 1969 to 1970 an apprenticeship at Deutsche Reichsbahn and decided this with a skilled worker qualification. After military service in the border troops of the NVA, he studied from 1971 to 1976 Theatre Studies at Ernst Schumacher, Rudolf Münz and Joachim Fiebach at the Humboldt University in Berlin. The topic of his thesis was: " Elements of the 'development' of philosophical and ideological and artistic- aesthetic positions Ionesco to reality " and was " very good" rating with a score.
From 1976 to 1979 he was dramaturg at the miners Theater Senftenberg and director from 1979 to 1981 at the Stadttheater Brandenburg ( Havel ). From 1981 to 1985 Castorf senior director at the theater Anklam. There, in 1984 his production of Bertolt Brecht's Drums in the Night was discontinued under pressure from the SED district leadership. It came to a disciplinary hearing and he was summarily dismissed. In the aftermath Castorf worked for the playhouse Karl- Marx-Stadt, the New Theatre Hall, the Volksbühne Berlin and the German Theatre in Berlin. His production of Enemy of the People ( Henrik Ibsen ) was honored with an invitation to the theater festival of the GDR.
Even before the turn he was allowed in 1989 to West German stages, including at the Bavarian State Theatre in Munich (Miss Sara Sampson by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing ) and at the Cologne Theatre ( Hamlet by William Shakespeare), stage. In 1990 he was resident director at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. Its local production of Ibsen's " John Gabriel Borkman " in 1991 received an invitation to the Berlin Theatre Meeting. Controversy sparked Castorf from his Basel version of William Tell ( Friedrich Schiller) to Swiss 700th anniversary National, in which he reported using the self-image of Switzerland and drew parallels between Switzerland and the GDR. Since 1992 Castorf acts as director of the Volksbühne am Rosa- Luxembourg - Platz in Berlin -Mitte; he extended his contract last 2012 to 2016. The house was in 1993 in the first year of his directorship of the magazine "Theater heute" ausgelobten title as " Theatre of the Year ".
In 1994 he was awarded the Fritz Kortner price. In 1998 he returned to Basel with Otello ( Giuseppe Verdi) his first opera production from. In 2000, he shared with the actor Henry Hübchen the Berlin Theatre Prize of the Foundation for Prussian Seehandlung and a nomination for the Nestroy Theatre Prize in 2002 the Schiller Prize of the city of Mannheim; In 2003 he was awarded the Prize of the International Theatre Institute (ITI ) and the Friedrich Luft Prize of the Berliner Morgenpost. The magazine Theater heute chose Castorf in the years 2002 and 2003 as the " Director of the Year ".
In 2004 Castorf, alongside his work as a director at the Berlin Volksbühne also briefly artistic director of the Ruhr Festival Recklinghausen, as he but already one month after the opening premiere of greed for gold ( Frank Norris ) was released early due to a significant drop in viewership from the Supervisory Board. The dismissal was widely discussed in the feature pages. A legal dispute, the Castorf strained after his dismissal against the Ruhr Festival, was discontinued in early 2005 after a settlement; there were two collaborations between the Volksbühne and the festival agreed and the support of the Ruhr Festival, the German Trade Union Federation and the city of Recklinghausen, stood Castorf continued payment of a portion of salary to.
In 2013 he staged the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner at the Bayreuth Festival 102 the Ring of the Nibelung ( Premiere: July 26 to 31, musical director Kirill Petrenko ).
Theater work
Castorf productions can be attributed to what is called the past few years, both in the drama and in the feuilleton, as post-dramatic theater. So is his productions and his way of working is usually an attitude based on substantially different from the "normal " work process. Castorf used a literary work mostly, to the bustle of his actors generate by biographical details, alienation means such nonsense, slapstick, crudities a peculiar, "private" view of the stage, what Castorf regularly brought the accusation of being a " play wrecker " and conservative theatergoers called on the barricades. A major means of doing so has been playing a few years of intensive, experimental use of video cameras and screens that allow a peculiar perception perspective. Despite all the criticism, ranging from disdainful polemic to the intellectual debate, enjoying the Berliner Volksbühne under Castorf line for years something like cult status, especially among younger people, who perceive the theater regularly as a "Party - replacement ". Moreover, it must Castorf theater work are considered to be serious and pioneering experimental aesthetics that has been crucial since the beginning of his artistic directorship in 1992 nationwide for new trends, such as in the question of the aesthetics of a political theater. In this context, an utterance Castorf caused a scandal after he longed for Storm of Steel, by which nothing else was meant, as that emotionality, immoral aggression and intensity of physical experience to his program and his "desire" were what the West German press generally denounced as " fascist Remember " and Castorf mentioned in the same breath with the director Einar Schleef.
It's Castorf his own words about being able to produce a state of " one-time reality " on stage, so that the problems fates and states of the characters are always perceived as steady states, fates and problems of the actors and so on human tangible way show their effect. This does not mean that the actors are wearing the same concerns, but they must be able to convey "alive". Empathy or alienating game like Stanislavski or Brecht not interested Castorf; he does not believe in the possibility of a mimetic reproduction of world states on the stage and do not want a " as-if - theater " stage. Search instead for his actors to achieve through physical Höchstanstrenungen this state, so that the "meaning " of himself, in the perceptive attitude of the spectator, is established. The actors is already given on this sample the opportunity to get as far as possible to deal in an experimental way with the specifications in order to try as spontaneous game states and moments of " authenticity " can. In this respect, Castorf rehearsals differs significantly from conventional rehearsal processes that are controlled by an executive director. Nevertheless, Castorf expressly reserves the right of approval or rejection of ideas, ideas, recharge or playing styles.
The " complexity of the world " is discussed on the basis of written dramas or for some years novels of world literature. Authors such as Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, Tennessee Williams, Pitigrilli but also Heiner Müller or Bertolt Brecht provide the material for Castorf productions. However, the texts provide only set pieces and are censored according to personal preferences, reduced, largely supplemented by association, Film quotes, foreign dramas, political speeches or manifestos, philosophical texts or songs and alienated. A complex social or anthropological dimension of a novel about the text is reduced by appropriate means staging a " human -related " level, which is narrated and understandable, and so implicitly that great idea about politics, conveyed in "human" way.
Ensemble
Artists with whom Castorf regularly works, or has worked, include:
- Kathrin Angerer
- Hendrik Arnst
- Herbert Fritsch
- Corinna Harfouch
- Carl Hegemann ( story editor )
- Marc Hosemann
- Henry Hübchen
- John Henry Nijenhuis / Sir Henry ( Composer, Musician, Pianist )
- Steve Binetti (musician, guitarist )
- Astrid Meyerfeldt
- Birgit Minichmayr
- Milan Peschel
- Silvia Rieger
- Sophie Rois
- Alexander Scheer
- Bernhard Schütz
- Matthias Schweighofer
- Jeanette Spassova
- Volker Spengler
- Joachim Tomaschewsky
- Axel Wandtke
- Martin Wuttke
- Karin Ugowski
Presentations (selection)
[Sources: The list of productions to 1995 follows, unless stated otherwise, the Director directory with Jürgen Balitzki: Castorf, the ironmonger. Theatre between potato salad and Stahlgewitter. 1995, pp. 234-237; thereafter until and including 2012, based on press reports, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ( " drama premieres " ), supplemented by information from the Munzinger archive as well as reviews of nachtkritik.de (from 2007) ]