Günther Beelitz

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Günther Beelitz (born September 29, 1938 in Berlin ) is a German theater director and artistic director .

biography

Beelitz grew up in Schloss Elmau and in Stuttgart. He graduated from the Karlsgymnasium there. After training as a bookseller and publishing clerk at the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt Frankfurt and the Academic Bookstore Rasch in Marburg . In 1963 Beelitz began studying German , politics and folklore in Marburg . In 1964 he moved to the University of Vienna and concentrated on the subjects of German and theater studies. During this time Beelitz worked as a freelance editor for Universal Edition in Vienna. In the 1966/67 season Beelitz took over the tour management at Studio Herberthal and went on tour with Maria Schell and Veit Relin with Die Pfarrhauskomödie by Heinrich Lautensack and Die Maiden by Jean Genet after the premiere at the Salzburg State Theater on tour through Austria, Germany and Switzerland. He then learned the theater trade at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna.

From August 1967 to December 1967 Beelitz was chief dramaturge at the Dortmund Theater . Serious tuberculosis disease forced him to take maternity leave for a long time. After his recovery, he became head of the acting department of Universal Edition Vienna from August 1968 to August 1969 .

In 1969 he moved to the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus as artistic director. In this function he also became the personal assistant to the artistic director Karl-Heinz Stroux . The city of Düsseldorf with its theater were formative for Beelitz's work.

From 1971 to 1976 Beelitz was the artistic director at the Staatstheater Darmstadt .

In 1976 he was appointed to the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus . There he was general manager and managing director until 1986. During this time, a children's and youth theater was founded as an independent division with its own ensemble under the direction of Barbara Hertel. In 1982/1983, the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus under Beelitz was voted Theater of the Year by eleven specialist critics from Theater heute . During Beelitz's tenure, he received several invitations to the Berlin Theatertreffen . He cultivated cultural exchange: guest performances outside of Europe and behind the so-called Iron Curtain and to Israel made the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus internationally known.

From 1986 to 1994 Beelitz was State Director at the Bavarian State Theater . He founded the “Authors' Workshop in the Marstall” for (exclusively) young German authors. He also became artistic director of the Theater der Welt in Munich in 1993.

From 1994 he was general manager at the German National Theater Weimar in 2000 . From 1994 to 1996 he engaged Joachim Schlömer as director of the newly founded dance theater; Ismael Ivo followed him . Weimar dance theater and Staatskapelle became internationally recognized figureheads for the city and the region. In 1999 the German National Theater Weimar opened the ceremony for the European Capital of Culture with “Faust-Furioso” and excerpts from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte , which was broadcast in 59 countries via 3sat . With Katja Paryla , Beelitz has hired one of the few acting directors in the German-speaking theater area. The acting ensemble went on a month-long tour through Germany, Austria and Switzerland with Schiller's Kabale und Liebe , directed by Annegret Ritzel (stage: Johannes Leiacker ). Beelitz also established the Weimar speeches in the German National Theater in Weimar in 1994 and he opened the Werkstadtbühne 7, an additional venue in Weimar. During the reconstruction and renovation phase of the Great House, the administration and stage including rehearsal stages moved into the former Officers 'House, a former officers' casino with a large stage, which was reserved for Russian soldiers during the GDR era. The German National Theater Weimar traveled as “Cultural Ambassador” to the Expo 2000 in Hanover and showed Furtwängler's Category 4 by Ronald Harwood in the German Pavilion . The piece about the possible National Socialist entanglements of the controversial conductor Furtwängler in had already been performed in Weimar in the Gauforum Weimar . A performance of Furtwängler's 2nd Symphony with the Staatskapelle Weimar, which was also planned for the Expo , was canceled at short notice.

From 2000 to 2005 Beelitz was the artistic director of the Stadttheater Heidelberg . Under his leadership, the four-division house with the newly founded Castle Festival and the Heidelberg Stückemarkt became a year-round theater. Beelitz established a dance theater in Heidelberg under the direction of Irina Pauls . In addition, he revitalized the long-neglected Castle Festival and developed the great world theater in cooperation with the Schwerin State Theater . The Heidelberger Stückemarkt became a crowd puller and established itself as a springboard for young directors in the years after it was founded. The ensemble cast traveled in 2002 in exchange of the Heidelberg Play Market to Moscow, where the staging Gretchen 89ff of Lutz Hübner with the Golden Mask on Mchat ( Stanislawski -Theater) was excellent. The robbers by Friedrich von Schiller and Gretchen 89 ff were also invited to Irkutsk in Siberia at the Akademie Theater. With HALT-Heidelberg, the first regular theater soap was created, for which Jean Michel Räber mixed topics from the city's history and current affairs with a family history of cabaret. The guests of this soap included leading artists and politicians, including the Mayor of Heidelberg, Beate Weber .

From 2014 to 2016 Beelitz was reappointed as general director at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus. He is the director of the cultural guest plays at the Ronacher in Bad Kleinkirchheim . He works as a freelance director in Dortmund, Cologne and Düsseldorf, among others.

Beelitz always sees himself in his work as a “theater enabler”: The success of the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus points to a program that does not shy away from conflict and contradiction, because they belong to the truth, which make even those who think differently transparent without political or educational pressure wants what was in history, what is in the present. This is the basic requirement for looking into the future. This motto is key to Beelitz's work.

Günther Beelitz also appeared as an actor. In 1976 he played under the direction of Robert Stromberger in the TV adaptation of the Datterich and in 1979 in the direction of Peter Beauvais in Fantastics, he was now much more prominent in the role of Dr. Falk at the side of Michael Degen , Manfred Krug and Sabine Sinjen .

Private

Beelitz is married to Christine Beelitz, b. Wood. You have a daughter.

International guest performances

with the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus:

Memberships

  • Planning committee of the German Theater Prize Der Faust
  • Expert Committee on Culture of the German UNESCO Commission
  • Tariff committee of the German stage association
  • German Academy of Performing Arts, Free Academy of Arts Mannheim
  • International Theater Institute ITI

Director

Günther Beelitz mainly focused on the authors Arthur Schnitzler ( Comedy of Words , DNT Weimar; interlude , Stadttheater Heidelberg; Im Spiel der Sommerlüfte , Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel Munich) and Max Frisch ( biography: Ein Spiel , Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus and triptych , Stadttheater Heidelberg). In an interview with Lot Vekemans about her play Gift 2015 at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, both of them admitted to “storytelling”. Günther Beelitz adopted his concept of comedy from Schnitzler: "People play comedy in front of others and in front of themselves."

  • Bavarian State Theater, Munich, 1993
  • German National Theater Weimar, 1994–1999
  • Heidelberg City Theater: 2000–2005
  • Vorarlberger Landestheater, Bregenz, 2010–2014
  • Theater Dortmund, 2006
  • Manila 31st World Congress ITI / Goetheinstitut, 2006
  • Borchert Theater, Münster, 2008
  • New Theater, Halle, 2009
  • Theater an der Kö Düsseldorf, 2008
  • Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, 2014–2016

Teaching activities

  • 1988–1990 Maximilian University of Munich, dramaturgy
  • From 1995 scientific advice at the Institute for Cultural Infrastructure Saxony
  • 1998–1999 Friedrich Schiller University Jena, dramaturgy and theater structures
  • 2000 Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, dramaturgy and theater structures

Honors

  • 1976 Johann Heinrich Merck Award Johann Heinrich Merck Award from the City of Darmstadt
  • 1986 Certificate of Honor from the Düsseldorf Jewish Community
  • 2016 Medal of Merit of the City of Düsseldorf.

literature

  • Claudia Bloss: Günther Beelitz: The years of his directorship in Düsseldorf (=  writings on research on Europe and Germany . Volume 11 ). Peter Lang - International Science Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin a. a. 2004, ISBN 3-631-51837-4 .
  • Theater Today , 1983 yearbook, ISBN 3-85541-013-5 , p. 23
  • Winfried Schulz (Ed.): Fifty Years of the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus 1970-2020 . Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-95749-235-7 (400 pages).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Verena Niedermüller: Kulturgastspiele in the Ronacher - "It's a meeting of friends". In: mein district.at. October 3, 2019, accessed February 19, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Winfried Schulz (ed.): Fifty Years of the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus 1970–2020. Verlag Theater der Zeit, 2019, 1st edition, ISBN 978-3-95749-235-7 , 400 pages
  3. ↑ Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus: So that stays !? 2014/2015 and 2015/2016, publisher Neue Schauspiel GmbH (page 3, foreword)
  4. ↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0759647/?ref_=nm_knf_t2
  5. ↑ Once theater, always theater. In: rp-online.de , September 28, 2018.
  6. ↑ Gift program , interview with Dirk Diekmann and Lot Vekemans , 2015
personal data
SURNAME Beelitz, Günther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theater director and artistic director
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin