Alexander Lang

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Alexander Lang (born September 24, 1941 in Erfurt ) is a German director and actor. With his classic productions at the Deutsches Theater Berlin in particular , he became one of the most important German theater directors in the early 1980s.

Life

Lang attended the Erfurt Humboldt School , did an apprenticeship as a poster and font painter and worked as a stage technician. From 1963 to 1966 he studied acting at the State Drama School in Berlin-Schöneweide , where he participated in the 1966 final thesis of his academic year, the staging of Peter Hacks ' Der Schuhu und die flying princess . Then Wolfram Krempel brought him to the Maxim Gorki Theater . In 1967 Lang moved to the Berliner Ensemble and finally in 1969 to the Deutsches Theater, where he stayed until 1986. The first major leading roles at DT were Ferdinand in Schiller's Kabale und Liebe (1972), Paul Bauch in Volker Braun's Die Kipper (1973), Caliban in Shakespeare's Der Sturm (1974) and the title roles in Kleist's Prince Friedrich von Homburg (1975) and Heiner Müller's Philoctetes (1977). In 1983 he played Faust in the monumental, never completed and thus a theatrical scandal, production of Faust II by director Friedo Solter .

He was only seen occasionally in film and television. Important leading roles were Sunny's affair Ralph in Konrad Wolf's solo Sunny (1980) and the title role in Peter Vogel's television film Der Leutnant Yorck von Wartenburg (1981) based on the story by Stephan Hermlin .

Inge Keller , Christian Grashof , Margit Bendokat and Günter Sonnenberg in Lang's production of Danton's death , 1981

At the end of the 1970s, Lang increasingly switched to directing. His independent handwriting was first noticeable in Heiner Müller's '' Philoktet ''. After the exit of the directors Klaus Erforth and Alexander Stillmark , the actors Alexander Lang, Christian Grashof and Roman Kaminski completed the work independently and declared the production to be a joint effort. In the years to come, Lang developed into one of the leading theater directors in the GDR. In particular with his work at the Deutsches Theater in the late 1970s / early 1980s, he set standards for the aesthetic renewal of the theater. He developed forms and modes of representation, “which no longer moved within the framework of realism, especially not socialist realism .” The directors Benno Besson and Adolf Dresen had already advocated an opening of the realism concept at the Deutsches Theater before Lang; Lang drove this process forward with great success. "Against the uniform concept of a 'socialist German national theater' they pleaded (...) for different theater models, open theater forms, the traditions of the commedia dell'arte and for the experiments of the historical avant-garde." Alexander Lang's productions differed fundamentally from the concept of psychological realism in the succession of Stanislawski , for whom the German Theater was traditionally famous. His works were emphatically artificial and already in their external appearance (for example through the abstract stage sets by Volker Pfüller , the actors often made up in white, a game that was body-hugging to the point of grotesque and the emphatically artificial use of language) undermined any notion of art as “reflection of the reality".

Alexander Lang's classic productions were significant for a fundamental revaluation of the classic image in the art of the GDR. In the early years of the GDR, the role model function of the classic was emphasized in terms of cultural policy. In this way, the GDR was to be integrated and legitimized in a historical continuum of progress. At the end of the 1970s, artists of all genres began to question this classic image and to break open critically. Lang's production of Andreas Gryphius ' Horribilicribrifax (1978) was an attempt to stage the play, which was dedicated to the peace treaty of the Thirty Years War, as a post-war play. However, the result did not catch on with the audience. However, with the Lessing drama Miss Sara Sampson , which is generally considered difficult , he achieved a major success. Lang interpreted the piece as a “demonstration of perfidious repression. Morality, upbringing, family and marriage, faith and harmony were shown not as a unifying bond, but as a deadly fetter. ”In Ernst Toller's play Der unleashed Wotan with Christian Grashof in the title role, the director and his protagonist tried out grotesque stylistic devices as an expression of a“ furor teutonicus ”, which should become characteristic of Lang's productions. Lang's directorial work was shaped by the intention to return the actor to the center of theater work. It was accordingly important for him to work with actors who knew his way of working and who knew how to make clever use of the freedom that Lang offered for comedic transgressions and improvisation. Lang gathered a core cast of actors with whom he repeatedly worked. They included Christian Grashof , Katja Paryla , Margit Bendokat , Simone von Zglinicki , Michael Gwisdek , Dieter Montag and Roman Kaminski.

Lang's rise to the top tier of GDR directors was due in particular to his classic productions. His intention to break established performance clichés and to win new conflict material and contemporary associations from the much-played pieces reached a first climax with his staging of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1980, with Margit Bendokat, Katja Paryla, Roman Kaminski, Dieter Mann, Otto Mellies and others). The production contradicted all expectations that were shaped by the romantic tradition - from Schlegel / Tieck to Mendelssohn Bartholdy's drama music to Max Reinhardt's epoch-making staging of the play. The performance divided audiences and critics; the reactions ranged from euphoric approval to absolute rejection. Instead of an airy fairy tale, Lang told a tragic comedy in which a sham harmony is enforced by all means of violence. In the extremely precise conceptual preparatory work, Lang justified this view of the play from the social upheavals of Shakespeare's time. For him, however, it was never about reconstruction and “faithfulness to the work” in the sense of mere text exegesis : “The creative appropriation only becomes a lively discussion if the new generation can combine its experiences with the experience of the poet. The decisive factor here is the accuracy in dealing with the poet and his work and not the ostensibly fashionable overthrow of a traditional history of interpretation. "

In Büchner's Dantons Tod (1981), Lang surprised the audience with an unexpected coup: he had Christian Grashof play both Danton and his opponent Robespierre and showed the fighting representatives of the revolutionary elite as two sides of the same coin. He brought the ingeniously excessive piece into a strict form, which was supported by the set design by Volker Pfüller. Further characteristics of the production were its high theatricality, trained in folk theater traditions, the reduction of the personage to twelve actors and the interpretation of the folk characters (played by Kurt Böwe and Dietrich Körner ) as clowns. In the GDR, Danton's death was considered a "cumbersome, highly suspicious text" and was rarely played. The "sensational staging" by Alexander Lang not only opened up a new perspective on the play, but "through (its) aesthetic stringency also subliminally promoted political discourse in the GDR."

This was followed by Heinrich Mann's Sad Story of Frederick the Great (1982), Brecht's The Round Heads and the Pointed Heads (1983) and Christoph Hein's True Story of Ah Q (1983). Then in 1984, under the directorship of Dieter Mann, the double project from Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris (with Katja Paryla) and Grabbe's Duke Theodor von Gothland (with Christian Grashof) followed, in 1985 the production of Johannes R. Becher's Winter Battle with a prelude by Heiner Müller (with Dieter Mann) and finally in 1986 a trilogy of passion , consisting of Euripides ' Medea , Goethe's Stella and August Strindberg's dance of death . In between he had presented his first guest production in the FRG in 1984/85 , Don Karlos at the Münchner Kammerspiele .

In 1981 Lang received the Goethe Prize of the City of Berlin , in 1985 the National Prize of the GDR 2nd class, in 1986 he became a member of the Academy of Fine Arts and received the Critics' Prize of the Academy of Fine Arts. Since 1984 Dieter Mann has been the director of the Deutsches Theater. He had defended the Gothland / Iphigenie double project against the Berlin party leadership, which was pressing for dismissal. When Alexander Lang asked for more influence on ensemble politics and a dominance of his productions in the repertoire, Dieter Mann did not agree. In May 1986 Lang took a three-year leave of absence from the Deutsches Theater and worked again as a guest director at the Münchner Kammerspiele, where he staged Racine's Phädra and Kleist's Penthesilea in 1987 as a double program . When his next planned project, the production of the Ring des Nibelungen at the State Opera , was postponed indefinitely, Lang went back to Munich in 1987 and directed Bernard-Marie Koltès ' In der Einsamkeit der Cottonfelder .

In February 1988 Jürgen Flimm brought him to the Thalia Theater in Hamburg . Lang was there, as the successor to Jürgen Gosch , acting director of the house. His first production in Hamburg was Goethe's Clavigo (1988, with Michael Maertens ), followed by Return to the Desert by Bernard-Marie Koltès and Der Hofmeister by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz . In 1989 he was also a guest director at the Nederlands Toneel in Gent ( Chekhov's Three Sisters ).

In March 1989, Lang went to West Berlin and was senior director of the Berlin Schiller Theater ; at the same time he was (with Alfred Kirchner , Volkmar Clauss and Vera Sturm) co-director of the Staatliche Schauspielbühnen Berlin . In 1990 Lang staged fairy tales in Germany based on motifs by the Brothers Grimm (with Bernhard Minetti ) and Schiller's Die Räuber at the Schiller Theater . In 1991, Goethe's Iphigenie on Tauris and The Imaginary Sick in Molière were staged again .

In April 1993, Lang left the Schiller Theater, which was about to close, and returned to the German Theater. There he subsequently staged Klaus Pohl's Karate-Billi returns (1992), Sophocles ' King Oedipus (1996), Goethe's Torquato Tasso (1996) and Jean-François Prévand's Voltaire Rousseau (2000, with Christian Grashof as Voltaire and Lang himself as Rousseau).

Since then he has worked as a guest director at the Comédie-Française (Kleist's Prince Friedrich von Homburg , 1994; Lessing's Nathan der Weise , 1997; Goethe's Faust I , 1999), the Münchner Kammerspiele ( Herbert Achternbusch's The Last Guest , 1996) and at the Bregenz Festival . At the Munich Residenztheater he staged Tankred Dorst's Because of Wealth Closed in 1998 , Hebbels Die Nibelungen at the Leipzig theater in 2000 and Hamlet at the German National Theater in Weimar in 2001 . Several directing work at the Maxim-Gorki-Theater followed under the direction of Volker Hesse : Gorkis Nachtasyl (2003), Hanns Heinz Ewers ' Das Wundermärchen von Berlin (2005) and Kleist's Der zerbrochne Krug (2006). As an actor he was there in 2005 in Hesse's production of Before Sunset .

Alexander Lang has three children. One daughter and two sons. The son Alexej Paryla (* 1969), who works as a graphic artist and set designer, comes from his relationship with the actress and director Katja Paryla . Lang has another son with Caroline Neven Du Mont . He was married to the dramaturge Annette Reber until her death .

Award

Alexander Lang receives the 2020 Konrad Wolf Prize from the Berlin Academy of the Arts .

theatre

Director (selection)

actor

Filmography

Radio plays

literature

  • Aune Renk:  Lang, Alexander . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Alexander Lang: Adventure Theater . Edited by Martin Linzer . Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1977
  • Danton's death of Georg Büchner. A documentation of the performance of the Deutsches Theater Berlin in 1981 . Theater work in the GDR 8, ed. by Michael Funke. Association of Theater Professionals of the GDR 1983, ISSN 0138-2322
  • Trilogy of Passion. Medea by Euripides, Stella by Goethe, Strindberg's dance of death in productions of the German theater. Directed by Alexander Lang . Edited by Martin Linzer. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1988
  • Martin Linzer: Alexander Lang or: Classic for today. Productions at the Deutsches Theater 1976–1986 . In: Through the Iron Curtain. Theater in divided Germany from 1945 to 1990 . Edited by Henning Rischbieter . Ullstein Buchverlag GmbH & Co. KG, Propylaen Verlag Berlin 1999

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Alexander Lang becomes a director
  2. ↑ From the fiasco to Fiesko . In: Der Spiegel . No. 11 , 1984 ( online ).
  3. ↑ a b c I didn't want to leave . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 1987 ( online ).
  4. ^ Heinz Otto Burger: Theater in the GDR . In: Manfred Brauneck: The world as a stage. History of European theater. Springer-Verlag, 1971, ISBN 978-3-476-00029-3 , p. 452
  5. ↑ Petra Stuber: Scope and Limits. Studies on the GDR theater . Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-86153-171-2
  6. ↑ Petra Stuber: Scope and Limits. Studies on the GDR theater . Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-86153-171-2 , p. 9
  7. ↑ Petra Stuber: Scope and Limits. Studies on the GDR theater . Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-86153-171-2 , p. 233
  8. ↑ Martin Linzer: Adventure Theater. In: Alexander Lang: Adventure Theater . Edited by Martin Linzer. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1987
  9. ↑ Petra Stuber: Scope and Limits. Studies on the GDR theater . Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-86153-171-2 , p. 232
  10. ↑ Martin Linzer: Adventure Theater. In: Alexander Lang: Adventure Theater . Edited by Martin Linzer. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1987, pp. 79–101
  11. ↑ Alexander Lang in sense and form , quoted from: Martin Linzer: Adventure Theater. In: Alexander Lang: Adventure Theater . Edited by Martin Linzer. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1987, p. 10
  12. ↑ a b Dietmar Goltschnigg (ed.): Georg Buchner and Modernism: texts, analysis, commentary , Volume 3. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-503-06108-8 , p 83
  13. ↑ Martin Linzer: Alexander Lang or: Classic for today. Productions at the Deutsches Theater 1976–1986 . In: Henning Rischbieter (Ed.): Through the Iron Curtain. Theater in divided Germany from 1945 to 1990 . Ullstein Buchverlag, Propylaen Verlag Berlin 1999, p. 220
  14. ↑ berliner-schauspielschule.de
  15. ↑ cold heat of fire . In: Der Spiegel . No. 7 , 1985 ( online ).
  16. ↑ Martin Linzer: Alexander Lang or: Classic for today. Productions at the Deutsches Theater 1976–1986 . In: Henning Rischbieter (Ed.): Through the Iron Curtain. Theater in divided Germany from 1945 to 1990 . Ullstein Buchverlag, Propylaen Verlag Berlin 1999, p. 226
  17. ↑ Goethe Gallop . In: Die Zeit , April 8, 1988. Retrieved June 28, 2017.
  18. ↑ Plato on the phone . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 1996 ( online ).
  19. ↑ Actor Alexander Lang receives Konrad Wolf Prize

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lang, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director and actor
DATE OF BIRTH September 24, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Erfurt