Producer
Leopold Hoesch
Director
Matthias Schmidt
Producer
Nicholas von Brauchitsch
Genre
Culture
Broadcaster
ZDFtheaterkanal / 3sat / ZDFdokukanal / arte
Length
1 x 30'
Editor
Martin Schröder
Year
2004
Theatrescapes
Landesbühne Anklam

The Anklam Theatre is located in the north-eastern corner of Germany, barely 40 km from the Baltic Sea beach. Founded at the beginning of the GDR as a three-part theatre, only the drama department remains in 1963. In the 1980s it was used as a "deportation theatre" for directors and actors disliked by the regime. That's how Frank Castorf ended up as head director in Anklam.

After the fall of communism, the small theatre is deemed barely viable, but artistic director Wolfgang Bordel founds an association, pushes ahead with privatisation and forgoes his summer play break. The Vorpommersche Landesbühne GmbH Anklam, as it is called today, earns almost two-thirds of its income in the summer with large open-air theatre spectacles. Motto: If the audience doesn't come to the theatre, then the theatre will come to the audience.

Esther Schweins introduces the theatre in Anklam, visits the open-air stage in Zinnowitz on Usedom, where the Vineta saga is staged every year, and also takes a look at the theatre academy founded in 2000, which trains about ten actors a year.

Artistic director Wolfgang Bordel introduces his rolling workroom and explains how and why theatre has a strong identity-forming function in the structurally weak region. Archive footage shows Frank Castorf's productions, which used to come as a shock to many people in Anklam, and Gregor Gysi reports on the pilgrimages of theatre-loving intellectuals from Prenzlauer Berg to the far north-east.

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