Hansjörg Utzerath

Hansjörg Utzerath (born March 20, 1926 in Schorndorf ) is a German theater director and theater director .

Live and act

After graduating from high school, he participated in the Second World War. After his imprisonment he was a novice actor in Meppen and Neuss. As a member of a free troupe, he gave his first productions in Düsseldorf in 1950 .

In 1952 he was a co-founder of the Düsseldorfer Kammerspiele, which he headed as director from 1959 to 1966. With consistent commitment to plays of the absurd theater ( Ionesco , Beckett , Genet , Hildesheimer ), he led the Kammerspiele to national attention.

In 1960 he staged the world premiere of the play The Curve by Tankred Dorst at the stages of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck and in 1963 the German premiere of Saunders ' Ein Hermit is discovered at the Staatliche Schauspielbühnen Berlin .

Since 1964 he has given regular guest productions at the Schiller and Schlossparktheater in Berlin. His work here included the German premiere of Havel's Garden Festival (1965), Life of Galilei (1965, with Martin Held ), The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising (1965), Arthur Miller's After the Fall (1966) and in Düsseldorf Victor or the Children in power (1966/67).

From 1966/67 to 1973 Utzerath was director of the Freie Volksbühne Berlin as successor to Erwin Piscator . With a permanent ensemble he staged, among others, Der Schatten von Jewgeni Schwarz (1967), Italian Night (1968), Much Ado About Nothing (1969), Nora (1969, with Elfriede Irrall ), Kikeriki by Sean O'Casey (1969), Play Strindberg by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1970), Tabula rasa by Carl Sternheim (1970), Guerillas by Rolf Hochhuth (1970), Martin Luther & Thomas Münzer or The Introduction of Accounting by Dieter Forte (1971), Tango by Sławomir Mrożek (1971) , The father of August Strindberg (1972), Der Biberpelz (1972, with Anneliese Römer ) and Der Damenschneider by Georges Feydeau (1973).

From 1973 to 1977 he worked as a freelance director, mainly at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus . Here he staged the world premiere of Rühmkorf's What does Volsinii mean here in 1973 ? , Die Weber (1974, also at the Schillertheater Berlin), Behans Richard Korkbein (1975), Tolstoy's Power of Darkness (1975) and The Threepenny Opera (1976). He also worked in Bonn (1973: Nathan der Weise ) and at the Thalia Theater Hamburg (1979: Wilhelm Tell ).

From 1977 to 1992 Utzerath was acting director in Nuremberg . The productions here included Rose Bernd (1977), Viktoria und ihr Husar (1980), Waiting for Godot (1980), Mother Courage and Her Children (1981), As You Like It (1981), King Lear (1982), Oops , we live! (1982), the world premiere of Helmut Ruges Stadtluther (1983), Der Hauptmann von Köpenick (1986), Kornfelds Jud Süß (1987), Oskar Panizzas Liebeskonzil (1988), the world premiere of Hitlerjunge Quex - Mythos einer Jugend , critical stage version with Klaus Missbach based on the novel by Karl Aloys Schenzinger (1989), Richard III. (1990), Der Theatermacher (1990) and the world premiere of Kerstin Specht's Lila (1990).

Since 1993 he has been working freelance again. Among other things, he staged the world premiere of Hugo Loetscher's Die Launen des Glücks at the Schauspielhaus Zürich in 1993 at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus Herr Puntila und seine Knecht Matti and in 1995/96 Nathan der Weise .

literature

• Cooperative of German Stage Members (publisher), German Stage Yearbook 2007 , Verlag Bühnenschriften-Vertriebs-Gesellschaft mbH, Hamburg, 2007, page 872 ISSN  0070-4431

Web links

• Literature by and about Hansjörg Utzerath in the catalog of the German National Library