Achim Benning

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Achim Benning (born January 20, 1935 in Magdeburg ) is a German actor , theater director and theater director . From 1976 to 1986 he was director of the Vienna Burgtheater .

Live and act

Benning studied philosophy in Munich and Vienna from 1955 to 1960 . He successfully completed his acting training at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in 1959. In the same year he began working as an actor eleve at the Burgtheater . His major actor roles have been Orestes in Sophocles ' Elektra , Lwow in Chekhov's Ivanov , Erwin in Grass ' Die Plebeijer Rehearse (1966) and Warwick in Shaw's Saint Joan .

Since 1971 he has also worked as a director. In 1976, Minister of Education Fred Sinowatz (Benning 2012: a remarkable, modern-thinking man ) gave him the management of the Burgtheater, which he held until 1986. Benning increasingly opened the Burgtheater to guest directors such as Erwin Axer , Dieter Dorn , Adolf Dresen , Hans Neuenfels , Peter Palitzsch , Johannes Schaaf , Manfred Wekwerth and Leopold Lindtberg . He tried his hand at ... as a cautious modernizer who quickly fell into the crosshairs of self-proclaimed preservers of tradition , was how Ronald Pohl summed up a conversation with Benning in the Viennese daily Der Standard in 2012 . He recalled that the Kronen-Zeitung had run a campaign against his management: The castle was being infiltrated by left ideology because we were playing Elias Canetti's comedy of vanity .

In 1989 he became the director of the Schauspielhaus Zürich and remained so until 1992. Since then he has been working as a freelance actor and director.

His productions in Vienna include Strindberg's Der Vater (1973) and Totentanz (1977), Gorkis Sommergäste (1979), Feydeau's One Must Be The Stupid (1980/81) and his Ein Klotz am Bein (1985) and Hotel Ultimus (1991) , Büchner's Dantons Tod (1982), Chekhov's Der Kirschgarten (1985), the world premiere of Klaus Pohl's Das Alte Land (1984), Turgenev's A Month in the Country (1986) and Nestroy's Der Zerrissene (1993) as well as his one joke make (1996).

At the Zurich Schauspielhaus he staged the world premieres of Hürlimann's The Last Guest (1990) and his The Messenger (1991).

From 1993 to 2003 Achim Benning was a full professor of directing at the Max Reinhardt Seminar (University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna), after his retirement he taught role design until 2005.

Filmography (as an actor, selection)

Awards

literature

  • Julia Danielczyk: Achim Benning . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz . Volume 1, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , p. 159.
  • Peter Roessler (Ed.): Achim Benning: Reaching into the mirror. Texts on the theater. With an essay by Peter Roessler. 12 illustrations. Vienna: Edition Steinbauer 2012
  • C. Bernd Sucher (Ed.): Theater Lexikon. Authors, directors, actors, dramaturges, stage designers, critics. By Christine Dössel and Marietta Piekenbrock with the assistance of Jean-Claude Kuner and C. Bernd Sucher. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2nd edition 1999, ISBN 3-423-03322-3 .
  • Reinhard Urbach, Achim Benning (eds.): Burgtheater Vienna 1776–1986. Image and contradiction. Two hundred and ten years. Vienna: Anton Schroll & Co 1986.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ronald Pohl: »My Burgtheater work is hushed up«. A conversation about the culture of remembrance with Achim Benning, in: Der Standard newspaper , Vienna, February 23, 2012, p. 27; on the website of the sheet February 22, 2012
  2. ↑ http://www.wien.gv.at/rk/msg/2006/0315/014.html
  3. ↑ Honorary members of the Burgtheater (as of 2010) (accessed on June 26, 2014)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Benning, Achim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor and director
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg