Fred Apke

Fred Apke

Fred Apke (born May 9, 1959 in Bad Oeynhausen ) is a German playwright , director and actor .

Life

Apke grew up in a small village on the Weser in Westphalia , then went to boarding school at the age of thirteen . After graduating from high school, he did his community service in a retirement home and then went to Italy ( Sicily ) for a longer stay , wrote his first attempts at film and was involved in the partito radicale . In 1981 he returned to Germany and after breaking off his studies in literature and history began training as an actor at the Fritz Kirchhoff School ( drama school “Der Kreis” in Berlin ) and then worked as an actor in the theater and for film. In 1985 he joined the Teatr Scena Polska , which was founded by the Polish director Aleksander Berlin and staged plays by Gombrowicz and Sławomir Mrożek in the Hamburg TIK theater. Apke played the role of Wladzio in “The Wedding” by Gombrowicz (1995) and Rudolf in “The Turkey” by Mrożek (1996), both directed by Aleksander Berlin. A film work took him to Norway in 1986 , where he stayed for the next few years and began writing and directing for television and theater. He made his drama debut in 1987 with "Closed due to illness" at the Black Box Teater Oslo . From 1991 he stayed in Germany again and was an actor and director at various theaters (including Kampnagelfabrik Hamburg, TIK Theater Hamburg, Stadttheater Herford , Landestheater Detmold , Komödie Kassel , Stadttheater Fürth , Tafelhalle Nürnberg , Theater am Halleschen Ufer Berlin (Kerkhof-Ensemble), Theater am Ufer Berlin, Deutsches Theater Berlin (Baracke), Theater Bremen ). Since his staging of Faust at the Bałtycki Teatr Dramatyczny in Koszalin in 2003, he has mainly been working in Poland , where his last plays have been shown in many theaters across the country. Fred Apke lives in Warsaw and Berlin.

Awards

• 1997 grant from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for "Glass Eyes".
• 2004 Sylt scholarship for "Hades".
• 2006 Prime grant for the script "Jablonki"
• 2009 winner of the Polish Children's Theater Association for “Adonis gets a visit”.
• 2010 Winner of the Lodz Comedy Theater Competition for “Summer Resort”.
• 2010 invitation to the Komödientheatertreffen in Katowicze with “Cold Showers”.

Artistic creation

His comedies often deal with characters from the big and petty bourgeois hero life (the chicken on the back, cold showers, Warszawa Love Story, leg off, the frozen parrot, summer freshness, the dog and the fleas, thank you dad) and their desperate Struggle for order and coherence in a chaotic world brutalized by inhumanity and callousness. In other pieces he is interested in (artist) outsiders who have to prove their uniqueness in existential situations. Again and again he traces mythological motifs in the past and present in dreamlike scenes (the golem recipe - waiting room siding - Hades - suspended loads, balance). Occasionally he also writes for the children's theater (The emperor on the dung heap, fly, crow, fly! Adonis receives a visit). In his last piece, "Das Bild", he depicts a Lviv family that has been shaped and deformed by war and displacement to this day.

Dramatizations, libretti and translations were commissioned: “Werther's Sorrows” based on Goethe's Werther - “The Nightingale and the Rose” - (libretto based on Oscar Wilde ) - “The Ackermann and Death” (based on Johannes von Saaz ) - “Mysteries” based on Knut Hamsun . “Nora” - “Peer Gynt” by Henrik Ibsen , as well as “Der Pelikan” by August Strindberg .

Among all the different forms and materials of his writing, one always finds a consistent motif: The tragic - comic attempts by people of all classes and levels of consciousness who seek to free themselves from the behavioral patterns and clichés that have been shaped by captivity. Even if they fail, they give themselves back their identity and dignity.

Quotes

It doesn't work without the pain, without the comedy, and certainly not without the singing. The singing and the laughter they come from the pain, and where one wants to separate them from the pain we have the lie. For example in the slapstick of the boulevard theater. (Fred Apke)

He is a sad moralist who often seeks to expose the lost of the individual in capitalist society by means of farce and irony. (Marta Klubowicz)

Fred Apke's comedies are far from serving stereotypes, but while laughing they also create a sense of guilt, because we laugh at and with characters who otherwise don't deserve our pity. They irritate us, they cannot simply be liked uncritically. It seems that the German artist is realizing Gogol's maxim: Who are you laughing at? About you! (Jacek Wakar, Dziennik )

Fred Apke breaks through the mutual perception of the neighbors on both sides of the Oder. I make a commitment: Fred Apke appears at the right moment to contradict the common clichés of the German character. (Janusz R. Kowalczyk, Rzeczpospolita )

Web links

• http://www.skene.pl/osoba/4597/Fred-Apke