Producer
Leopold Hoesch
Director
Niels Negendank
Producer
n/a
Genre
Culture
Broadcaster
ZDFtheaterkanal / 3sat / ZDFdokukanal / arte
Length
1 x 30'
Editor
n/a
Year
2003
Theatrescapes
Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg

The Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg was opened in 1900 on the initiative of wealthy Hamburg citizens and entrepreneurs who wanted to build a representative theatre for spoken theatre. The theatre served the purpose of representation and experiments took place in moderation.

Between 1933 and 1945 it was instrumentalised by fascism. When Gustaf Gründgens moved from Düsseldorf to Hamburg in 1955, his directorship ushered in a new era at the Schauspielhaus. His 1957 production of Faust, with Will Quadflieg as Faust and Gründgens himself as Mephisto, became a milestone in German theatre history.

From 1972, artistic director Ivan Nagel also attracted a young audience to the theatre. He put contemporary authors on the programme and brought directors such as Claus Peymann, Luc Bondy, JérÃ'me Savary and also Peter Zadek to Hamburg. Zadek's production of Shakespeare's "Othello" with Ullrich Wildgruber as Othello and Eva Mattes as Desdemona caused the biggest Hamburg theatre scandal of the post-war period in 1976. In the mid-eighties, Peter Zadek took over the Hamburg Schauspielhaus for four years.

From 1993 onwards, Frank Baumbauer made the theatre an important stage for contemporary drama. Numerous world premieres of works by Rainald Goetz, Elfriede Jelinek and Christoph Marthaler were successful with both audiences and critics. On its 100th birthday in 2000, the theatre under Baumbauer's directorship was voted "Theatre of the Year" for the fourth time. With the 2000/01 season, the former artistic director of the EXPO 2000 culture and events programme, Tom Stromberg, took over as director of the Schauspielhaus. Stromberg, whose innovative avant-garde projects at Frankfurt's Theater am Turm (TAT) gave groundbreaking impulses to the European theatre scene of the nineties, stands for experimental and international theatre.

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