Julian Crouch

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Julian Crouch, Salzburg 2014

Julian Crouch (born in England in 1962 ) is a British stage and costume designer , theater and opera director . He is considered one of the major exponents of the fringe flow, but has been working on large established stages and on Broadway since the early 2000s . He lives in Brooklyn , New York City.

In 2013 he was responsible - together with Brian Mertes - for the new production of Jedermann at the Salzburg Festival . This production is on the program of the festival at least until 2016.

life and work

Crouch was born in England and raised in Scotland. He began his career as a mask and puppet maker at large open-air spectacles. In 1996 he founded the Improbable Theater with Phelim McDermott , Lee Simpson and Nick Sweeting , whose pieces have been described as "a bastard of puppetry and improvisation". This group was inspired across cultural history, from Pieter Breughel and Hieronymus Bosch to Tex Avery , the Goons and Joan Littlewood . Crouch took on the set-up and co-direction, often creating props and puppets himself on stage. In 1997 he designed a set for a Midsummer Night's Dream production that consisted of 56 rolls of Tesa film - and nothing else. It was awarded.

A grotesquely macabre stage version of Heinrich Hoffmann's Struwwelpeter with a lot of black humor was performed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch with their “Junkopera” Shockheaded Peter . The music comes from Martyn Jacques from the London cult band The Tiger Lillies . The piece was premiered in 1998 and made a successful guest appearance at the Wiener Festwochen in 2001 . In the version translated back into German by Andreas Marber , it has since been played on numerous stages in Germany and Austria. Other works for the Improbable Theater included Philip Glass ' Satyagraha , a coproduction with the English National Opera (ENO) and the Metropolitan Opera in New York (2008), and Spirit , a coproduction with the Royal Court Theater , Coma , Stocky , The Hanging Man and the award-winning production 70 Hill Lane, shown in the United Kingdom and the United States, and a co-production with the National Theater , Theater of Blood , in 2005. His last production for the company to date was 2011 The Devil and Mister Punch , a tragic comedy about homicide and love.

In 2003 he was a set designer and associate director for the world premiere of Jerry Springer - The Opera , a musical by Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee . The National Theater's production was so successful that the play moved to London's West End in November 2003 and ran there until February 2005. It was the first musical so far to win all four renowned London awards for Best Musical (What's On Stage, Olivier, Evening Standard, Critics Circle). Due to its vulgar language, its hearty jokes and surreal images, such as a troop of tap-dancing Ku Klux Klan members, the musical evoked massive protests by Christian fundamentalists and right-wing political groups such as the Christian Voice , especially after its BBC Two broadcast in early 2005 or the British National Party . The BBC received 55,000 complaints and a theater in Birmingham that wanted to take over the production was threatened with an injunction. Due to the protests, nine stages in Great Britain canceled the guest performance, but the UK tour 2006 was a great success with the public and the press.

In 2009, he and Phelim McDermott directed the musical version of the Addams Family , which was based more on the original cartoon series than on the later film and television versions . The tryout series in Chicago was already a success with the public and the press, and from April 2010 to December 2011 the production ran on Broadway in New York. Julian Crouch's set design won both the Drama Desk Award and the Outer Circle Critics Award .

On New Year's Eve 2011 he created - again together with Phelim McDermott - the baroque pasticcio The Enchanted Island for the Met in New York, conducted by William Christie , and among others David Daniels , Danielle de Niese , Joyce DiDonato , Plácido Domingo and Luca Pisaroni . In the following month, the production was broadcast live via satellite to cinemas around the world, while Virgin Classics released a DVD recording. Two seasons later the production was resumed because of the great success, this time with Susan Graham instead of the prevented Joyce DiDonato, but otherwise with the original line-up.

In 2013 he was invited by Alexander Pereira and Sven-Eric Bechtolf , the artistic director and drama director of the Salzburg Festival , to work with Brian Mertes on a fundamental new version of Hofmannsthal'schen Jedermann on Salzburg Domplatz. The new production split the theater critics, but was enthusiastically received by the audience with standing ovations . The Hamburger Abendblatt stated: "If Brian Mertes and Julian Crouch were interested in simple immediacy, then they have achieved this goal and dusted off 'Jedermann' in a way that is breathtaking by Salzburg standards." In 2015, Crouch conceived and realized together with the musician Martin Lowe (and with Bechtolf as co-director) a new version of Brecht's Threepenny Opera for the Felsenreitschule .

As a set designer, Crouch created, among other things, new productions of John Adams ' Doctor Atomic at Metropolitan Opera in New York and ENO in London (2009), a Magic Flute for the Welsh National Opera in Cardiff (2010), an opera version of Le Petit Prince , which was performed in Lausanne , Lille, at the Grand Théâtre de Genève and the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, as well as a Merry Widow for Met and Lyric Opera of Chicago . Crouch was artist-in-residence at New York's Park Avenue Armory and the first artist to be accepted into the BRIC House Fireworks Residency Program in Brooklyn.

Quote

“I am now at the age where I work to find out what this work means. I don't approach things with pre-formed concepts, but willingly let myself be surprised by what comes out, still learning - probably even more from the productions that don't go so smoothly than from the successes. I'm afraid of being too sure about something. "

- Julian Crouch : Brecht enjoyed reading crime novels , Die Presse , August 8, 2015

World premieres

Awards (selection)

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clive Hicks Jenkins: Interview with Julian Crouch: Part I , August 28, 2013 (English)
  2. ↑ The Devil and Mister Punch ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Improbable Theater, accessed August 9, 2015  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.improbable.co.uk
  3. ^ ORF : Everyone splits theater criticism , July 22, 2013
  4. ↑ Quotation from Kurier : Jedermann: Between "Triumph" and "Leichtprodukt" , July 22, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Crouch, Julian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British stage and costume designer, theater and opera director
DATE OF BIRTH 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH England