Theater Leipzig

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View of the theater from the Nikischplatz

The Schauspiel Leipzig is a municipal theater company in Leipzig . Its main venue has been the Schauspielhaus (formerly Centraltheater ) on Bosestrasse in Leipzig's "Schauspielviertel" ( inner west suburb ) since 1957 . In 2013 Enrico Lübbe took over the position of artistic director .

history

Foundation of the Leipzig City Theater

The old theater (1906)

The comedy house opened on October 10, 1766 under the direction of Heinrich Gottfried Koch on the Rannische Bastei (at today's Richard-Wagner-Platz ) was Leipzig's first permanent inner-city theater. One of the guests at the opening ceremony and frequent visitor until 1768 was the student Johann Wolfgang von Goethe . On the initiative of the citizens of Leipzig, the theater, which in phases functioned as an offshoot of the Dresden Hofbühne, was rebuilt and reopened on August 26, 1817 as the Leipzig City Theater. Until 1912, the house, which was now owned by the city, was leased to an entrepreneur and operated on a private basis.

The first performance of Friedrich Schiller's Johanna von Orleans in 1801 represented a high point in Leipzig's theater history. Since the opening of the New Theater in 1868, the Comödienhaus has generally been called the Old Theater. The New Theater was mainly used for opera and ballet, the Old Theater for drama.

Merger with the Central Theater

The Central Theater (1902)

In 1901/1902 a private theater building, the Centraltheater, was built on Thomasring (today Dittrichring), in which in 1906 the "Operetta Theater on Thomasring" was established. In 1912, the theater passed into municipal sponsorship under the direction of Max Martersteig . At the same time, the two urban theaters - the old and the new theater - were each assigned to a section: the new theater of the opera, the old theater of the drama. The premiere of Bertolt Brecht's early work Baal in 1923 caused a sensation, which was banned by the city's magistrate after its premiere. After the end of the term of office of Artistic Director Guido Barthol in 1932, the two divisions also gained greater organizational independence. Acting director at that time was Detlef Sierck (later known as Douglas Sirk). He had to give up his position in 1935 because he was married to a Jewish woman. Thereupon the opera director Hans Schüler took over the overall management of the "Theaters of the Reichsmessestadt Leipzig".

On the night of December 3rd to 4th, 1943, the three city theaters of Leipzig - the Old Theater, the New Theater and the theater in Sophienstrasse (which was not incorporated into the Association of Municipal Theaters until 1938) - were subjected to the heaviest bombing that the city was destroyed during World War II. The Central Theater was also affected and suffered severe damage. The Leipzig theaters' search for suitable venues ultimately led the city of Leipzig to rent the poorly restored Central Theater in 1945. The city theater opened its new permanent stage at the corner of Bosestrasse and Gottschedstrasse on December 19, 1945 with Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream . This was followed by productions of Brecht's The Threepenny Opera , Lessing's Nathan the Wise, and Gogol's The Marriage , although permission to play was initially only granted until 1950.

GDR time

The alignment

After the founding of the GDR , in the 1950/51 season, all Leipzig theaters were again brought together under a single general director. For three decades, Karl Kayser led the “Combine” of opera, drama, musical comedy and theater of the Junge Welt with a - according to the dramaturge Walter Bankel - “consistently partisan and popular repertoire and style of presentation”. In addition to performances of the German classical music, there were also some world premieres, such as by Franz Xaver Kroetz , Bertolt Brecht, Heinar Kipphardt or Tennessee Williams , but also the five parts of Wolokolamsker Chaussee by Heiner Müller were performed together for the first time at the house.

The remodeling of the theater

Auditorium of the theater (1959)
Main entrance to the theater in Bosestrasse

The contract to rebuild the theater was carried out from 1954 to 1957 by the architects Karl Souradny , Franz Herbst and Rolf Brummer. Since a replica of the house as it had existed before the destruction in 1944 was not possible (due to the lack of approval for the construction of a stage in the courtyard), the construction took place in three stages: a new part on Dittrichring, in which, among other things, the Costume workshops were housed, the stage on Bosestrasse and the spectator wing between Bosestrasse and Gottschedstrasse. In keeping with the prevailing trend in GDR architecture, a neoclassical-looking building was created that is now a listed building. The enlarged playing area was inaugurated with a production by Schiller's Wallenstein on March 1, 1957.

In the 1970s, in the course of the mechanization, a renewed reconstruction of the auditorium was necessary in order to create more space for light and sound. In the course of the change in the GDR on January 1, 1990, the association of Leipzig theaters was dissolved. The Leipzig theater became a separate institution with its own artistic director.

After the turn

Under the direction of artistic director Wolfgang Hauswald and chief dramaturge Wolfgang Kröplin, the now independent drama planned a “theater of alternatives” that wanted to give space to different views and be open to both experimental and tried and tested ideas.

Reconstruction in 2002

Between April and October 2002, the subsequent fixtures from the 1970s, which extended to the tier and parquet, were dismantled so that the auditorium was restored to its original size. In addition, modernization work was carried out on acoustics, lighting as well as seating and viewing conditions. The restoration of the outer facade and the creation of wheelchair-accessible access to the building were carried out from 2002 to 2006 by the architects Angela Wandelt. At that time, the building was already a listed building.

Venues

Faust , production photo 2018 (Photo: Rolf Arnold / Schauspiel Leipzig)

From 2008 to 2013, while Sebastian Hartmann was in charge, the theater was renamed or renamed Centraltheater in the course of content reorientation. Since 2013 the theater house has been using its ancestral name Schauspielhaus again.

In addition to the main stage of the Schauspiel Leipzig, which has seated 672 spectators (since 2013), there are other venues within the house that offer space for modern drama or performative formats. The backstage (formerly “Theater hinterm Eisernen”) is characterized by its special closeness to the actors. The “discotheque” on Bosestrasse / corner of Dittrichring is a platform for young authors: Lukas Linder, Wolfram Höll and Ferdinand Schmalz present their contemporary works here.

Another venue of the Schauspiel Leipzig is the "Residenz". On the grounds of the Leipzig cotton spinning mill in Hall 18, performative productions will be presented in which artists from various genres as artists in residence deal with a topic for a period of six to eight weeks and implement it intermedially. A former venue is the "Skala", which was also to be found under the name Neue Szene or Kammerspiele in Gottschedstrasse .

The Gohliser Schlösschen is a regular venue for the Leipzig Schauspiel's summer theater.

Inclusion at the Schauspiel Leipzig

As the first German-speaking theater to offer a continuously expanding range of social inclusion options, the Schauspiel Leipzig has been performing audio descriptions of selected performances since 2013: If requested, blind and visually impaired people can be described the visual processes on stage live via headphones. Since autumn 2015, the Schauspielhaus has also had a tactile guidance system that enables visually impaired people to find their way around the house better. In addition, the Schauspiel Leipzig offers at least one theater performance every year, which is simultaneously interpreted in sign language for the hearing-impaired and deaf theatergoers.

Awards

In 2017, the theater magazine Theater der Zeit awarded the Schauspiel Leipzig the first-ever Martin Linz Theater Prize for its "original contemporary drama ".

Directors

  • Johannes Arpe , 1954–1958 General Manager of the Leipzig Theater Combine
  • Karl Kayser , 1958–1989 General Manager of the Leipzig City Theater
  • Wolfgang Hauswald, November 1989 to October 1993
  • Horst Ruprecht and Gerhard Nodurft, interim directors, October 1993 to December 1993
  • Gerhard Nodurft, interim manager, January 1994 to August 1995
  • Wolfgang Engel , 1995-2008
  • Sebastian Hartmann , 2008-2013
  • Enrico Lübbe , since 2013

Honorary members

Well-known actors (selection)

Friedhelm Eberle
Lisa Martinek

exhibition

  • Tanja Milewsky: Schauspielhaus - Stories. 100 years of theater in Bosestrasse. An exhibition by Tanja Milewsky and Kocмoc.net, November 16, 2002 to June 30, 2003 Schauspielhaus, foyer.

literature

  • Roland Dreßler: City theater - instead of theater? or The traveling people come to a standstill. A chapter from the history of the Leipziger Schauspiel between 1727 and 1828. 225 years of the Comödienhaus on the Rannische Bastei 1766–1991. Drama Leipzig, Leipzig 1991.
  • Wolfgang Engel, Erika Stephan (ed.): Theater in the transition society. Leipzig Theater 1957-2007. Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-934344-84-6 .
  • Jens Bisky, Torsten Buß, Enrico Lübbe (eds.): You don't know what the future will bring. The expert talks on "The Protectors / The Protectors". Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-95749-080-3 .

Web links

Commons : Schauspielhaus Leipzig  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Leipzig Latest News , October 5, 1937
  2. ↑ Hartmut Krug: From I to We - and back. The Leipzig theater turns 50. In: freitag.de . February 23, 2007, accessed May 24, 2020.
  3. ^ Martin Linzer Theater Prize for Leipzig. In: deutschlandfunkkultur.de . May 31, 2018, accessed March 11, 2019 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 20 ′ 26 "  N , 12 ° 22 ′ 11"  E