Successor of Frank Castorf: New Volksbühne boss Chris Dercon presents … – tagesspiegel

17:07 clock Rüdiger Schaper

After weeks of controversy, Chris Dercon theater now presented as a successor to Frank Castorf ago as director of the Volksbühne in Berlin. With the team are Alexander Kluge, Romuald Karmakar, Marietta Piepenbrok and Susanne Kennedy.

He comes, speaks and impressed. He weaves in his tour de force through town and art history and aesthetics at the beginning the names Reinhardt, Piscator, Besson, Müller (Heiner, not Michael, who comes later) and a Castorf. So Chris Dercon has already cleared the suspicion at job interview in the Red City Hall, which had been expressed so often in the past few weeks: that the Belgians Volksbühne could not conduct because he was not a man of the theater
But now he comes.. And brings together a team with which secures the future director Dercon and at the same time the house opens to all sides

The young theater director Susanne Kennedy, the filmmaker Romuald Karmakar, the choreographer Mette Ingvartsen belong and -. Surprise! – The 83-year-old writer-director Alexander Kluge. With Marietta Piepenbrok he brings an experienced German and European culture operation program director.
The Volksbühne is to be a meeting place for people and the arts, which she had always been. What’s up Dercon, could be described as a retread of Tradition for the 21st century. This is also the mayor and Culture Senator Michael Müller, who met here his first and very important decision for the development of culture in Berlin. Müller is new in this field, so he wants the new. “From Berlin,” says Müller, “to the stimuli, something must be ventured.” With the status quo could you not be satisfied. And that’s why he had chosen Chris Dercon. The’ll deal with Berlin and impact far beyond the city.

Dercon acknowledges in his 20-minute inaugural address Berliner all controversial topics. The ensemble of the Volksbühne he wishes to preserve. He wants to raise a festival, but is governed by the Roman calendar: Theater every day. And he has before, as have shown us Castorf and Co., “to stage the city as a stage with.” For the Volksbühne will again record the Prater in the chestnut avenue and the cinema Babylon at Rosa-Luxembourg-Platz. Thence in a north-south axis, you have to Hangar 5 in Tempelhof in sight – as another venue for all the artists of various origin, who wants to engage Dercon. And that’s actually rather not so hard, because Berlin is located at the peak of its power of attraction. It is the dream room and Spekulationsort world. And what Berlin is international, that is the Volksbühne Berlin: the creative pump and power plant. With “Terminal Plus” will there be a digital Volksbühne in 2017 then. Theater in the network, as an action and archive

Chris Dercon thanked the press for discussion

Speaking:. As you must now pause briefly recap. Chris Dercon’s appearance marked on Friday afternoon the end of a turbulent time. Also, it is still a Dercon. He thanked the “German press”, the discussion about his person was important. So much charm it is not used here.
On 1 May begins the theater meeting, the exhibition of the German-language theaters in Berlin. That’s always a big party, often a battleground for aesthetic and cultural issues. Frank Castorf is also, with his production of “Baal” by Bertolt Brecht, shown in Berlin for the last time. The heirs of the playwright who enforced the ban. It had been used too much foreign material – and not much left of Brecht
Berlin All thing for weeks raged just as entertaining as insightful theater dispute.. Again, it’s about old and new, to copyright and vanity. Full theater Germany interfered in a dispute that has many fronts and corners. Can a curator, a museum husband run a theater? And then also the holy people stage? That would be just as if a Protestant theologian elected Pope.

Peymann took over the role Clown

Castorf course, since 1992 in the office, everything has always done for his program to widen with music, visual art, performance. Discourses. His own productions with its high proportion of video and a swashbuckling comprehension have long since left the path of literary theater on which a Peymann further below unberirrt at the Berliner Ensemble.
Peymann, 77, played the role of the clown in the dispute. He called the Mayor and Cultural Senator Michael Müller, pelted Culture Secretary Tim Renner with dirt. So make the court jester, but since Peymann was better in his earlier years in Vienna, political. Funny how he suddenly his nemesis Frank Castorf beige skipped and defends the Ensemble Theatre – that no longer even exists right at Peymann as in Castorf. A phantom debate so. And it does indeed often very painful. Because that’s what it is, no longer exists: the theater of the eighties and nineties.