Benno Besson

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Benno Besson (right) at the awarding of the GDR National Prize on October 4, 1974 (left Willi Stoph )
Rehearsals "Oedipus Tyrann"

Benno Besson (born November 4, 1922 in Yverdon ; † February 23, 2006 in Berlin ; actually René-Benjamin Besson ) was a Swiss actor , director and theater director.

Life

Switzerland

Besson was the son of a teacher couple in French-speaking Switzerland . He took his first acting lessons in Lyon in 1942 and worked as a director at the Schauspielhaus Zürich from 1943 . From 1942 to 1946 he studied Romance and English in Zurich and Neuchâtel . Until 1949 he worked as a translator and took acting lessons at the Théâtre Jean-Marie-Serreau in Paris. In the French occupation zone of Germany he performed Bertolt Brecht's The Exception and the Rule and Molière pieces.

GDR

In 1947 he met Brecht in Zurich. In 1949 he moved to Berlin at his suggestion and worked as an actor, assistant director and director at the Berliner Ensemble until 1958 . Under Brecht he enjoyed great freedom and staged Molières Don Juan with him in 1954 . After arguments with Helene Weigel , he separated from the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and in 1962 went to the Deutsches Theater as chief director . There he celebrated his greatest success with the Aristophanic Peace in the adaptation of Peter Hacks . On the evening of the premiere on October 14, 1962, the curtain was opened 16 times again during the 45-minute final applause. This was followed by celebrated productions of the operetta for actors Die Schöne Helena by Peter Hacks based on Jacques Offenbach , the dictatorship parable Der Drache by Evgeni Schwarz and the contemporary comedy Moritz Tassow by Peter Hacks and Oedipus Tyrann by Sophocles .

Besson (standing) during a discussion about the didactic play The Exception and the Rule by Bertolt Brecht (1976)

In 1969 he was artistic director and from 1974 director of the Volksbühne Berlin . There he staged theater festivals in which the actors appeared on stage as well as in the foyer and in the courtyard and hired young directors such as Manfred Karge and Matthias Langhoff .

Western Europe

In 1977 there were conflicts with the Ministry of Culture because of the way he organized the schedule, especially the inclusion of works by Heiner Müller . There were also personal reasons. In 1978 Besson went to Paris. Looking back, he emphasized that he did not leave the country for political reasons. In France, he rather wanted to devote himself to his repressed mother tongue, because working in German had lost references to his past and youth.

From then on, Besson worked as a freelance director at theaters a. a. in France, Austria ( Burgtheater ), Switzerland, Italy and at the Schiller Theater in West Berlin . From 1982 to 1989 he was director of the Geneva Comédie and set a. a. continued his work as a director of the same play in different languages ​​(German, French, Italian).

1983

Besson received the Josef Kainz Medal of the City of Vienna in 1982 (for The New Menoza at the Burgtheater) and in 1994 the Molière Theater Prize of the City of Paris. The Théâtre Benno Besson in his birthplace Yverdon is named after him. In 2002 he was accepted into the French Legion of Honor .

Most recently he worked on a performance of Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrann at the Comédie-Française in Paris. He died at the age of 83 after a brief serious illness in a Berlin hospital. Benno Besson was buried at sea.

family

Besson's first marriage to Iva Formigoni. The actress and director Katharina Thalbach comes from his relationship with the actress Sabine Thalbach . The actor Pierre Besson comes from his third marriage to Ursula Karusseit . Besson also has four other children, including director Philippe Besson from his second marriage and singer Madeleine Besson from his 30-year association with Coline Serreau .

Memorial stone.

He has a memorial stone in the cemetery of the Dorotheenstadt and Friedrichswerder communities in Berlin-Mitte. The ashes were scattered in the Lac de Neuchatel .

Productions

Filmography

  • 1955: timpani and trumpets (TV)
  • 1960: The barbed animal: A German gentleman in Paris (short film)
  • 1971: The unwilling doctor (theater recording)
  • 1992: Benno Besson, the strange friend - (orig.) Benno Besson, l'ami étranger (documentary by Philippe Macasdar)
  • 2002: Benno Besson (documentary) http://www.plansfixes.ch/films/benno-besson/

Radio plays

Fonts

  • Years with Brecht. Edited by Christa Neubert-Herwig. Theaterkultur-Verlag, Willisau 1990, ISBN 3-908145-17-1 .
  • Drama in eight countries. Texts - documents - conversations. Published by Christa Neubert-Herwig, Alexander-Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-89581-025-8 .
  • Jouer en apprenant le monde. En guise de lettre ouverte. (Selection of his texts in French), translated by Henri Cornaz. Ed. de la Thièle Yverdon, Yverdon-les-Bains 1998, ISBN 2-8283-0036-6 .

Awards

literature

Obituaries

Web links

Commons : Benno Besson  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dieter Kranz: Berlin Theater. Henschel-Verlag Berlin 1990, p. 75.
personal data
SURNAME Besson, Benno
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Besson, René-Benjamin (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss actor, director and theater director
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Yverdon
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 2006
Place of death Berlin