Hanover Theater

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The Hanover Theater forms, together with the Hanover State Opera , the Lower Saxony State Theater Hannover GmbH . It offers the audience theater , entertainment and music in five different locations. In addition to the playhouse, this includes the Cumberland Stage, Cumberland Gallery and Ballhof Eins and Ballhof Zwei in the old town . Sonja Anders has been director of the Schauspielhaus since the beginning of the 2019/20 season .

Schauspielhaus Hannover

Venues

Venues on Prinzenstrasse

Playhouse

Entrance area of ​​the playhouse
Foyer of the theater

The main theater has been located in Prinzenstrasse near the main train station since 1992. The building by the Swiss architect Claude Paillard is made of reinforced concrete and is clad with white painted aluminum panels. It offers space for 630 spectators in the stands and stalls .

The first play of the new season is traditionally presented on the big stage , thematically addressing past eras by authors such as Kleist , Goethe , Schiller or Shakespeare , as well as contemporary plays by Ella Hickson, Dea Loher , Wolfram Lotz or Thomas Köck . Young worlds also find their place here thematically.

In the adjacent historical part of the building, which can be reached via the Theaterhof, there is also the Cumberland Gallery (up to 85 seats) and the Cumberland Stage (up to 198 seats), which also serve as venues. The theater museum can also be reached via the foyer , which in addition to current exhibitions also continuously documents and archives the theater in the house.

Cumberlandsche Bühne In 2009, with the directorship of Lars-Ole Walburg, the Cumberlandsche Bühne opened in the rooms on Prinzenstrasse. So far it has only been used as a further rehearsal stage. When Sonja Anders took over as artistic director in the 2019/20 season, Cumberlandsche Bühne and Cumberlandsche Galerie, under the direction of Julia Wissert, transformed into the home of the universes - a platform with and for the people in and around Hanover. With artistic residencies, workshops and happenings, it sees itself as a place of encounter and participation. With the 2020/21 season, Mirko Borscht will take over the artistic direction. The Cumberland stage is also used for the ABC of Democracy series of talks initiated jointly with the Lower Saxony Foundation , in which Ijoma Mangold and his guests put various terms in society to the test. It also serves as a stage for the Playstation youth clubs , which premiere their play here every year.

Cumberlandsche Galerie The listed gallery stairwell is used for performances and readings as well as for gastronomic purposes. The Cumberland Gallery was built between 1883 and 1886 as an extension of the Museum of Science and Art. Since it was mainly intended to exhibit art treasures from the Guelphs , it bears the name of the last Hanoverian Crown Prince, who has called himself Duke of Cumberland since 1878 . The gallery's charm lies particularly in its large staircase, which is characterized by its three-flight staircase with cast iron supports and railings. Different levels in the stairwell can be used as required. The gallery thus offers an opportunity for smaller projects and display formats.

Venues in the old town

Ballhof Both Ballhof Eins (257 seats) and Ballhof Zwei (126 seats) are used and played jointly by the State Opera and the Hanover Theater. Located in Hanover's old town, theater for all generations is offered here, with a focus on theater work with and for young people and schools. After Wilfried Schulz and Lars-Ole Walburg , Sonja Anders has also continued to rely more and more on corresponding projects and collaborations in this area since the 2019/20 season. The Junge Schauspiel Hannover , which was previously located in the Ballhof, has since found its home on all stages.

Ballhof one

Ballhof one

The Ballhof was originally a sports hall in which one could play the ball game, a kind of badminton, which was customary at the time, undisturbed by wind and weather. It was built between 1649 and 1664 under Duke Georg Wilhelm on the site of the former St. Gallen Court. It was later sold several times and until the Second World War served, among other things, as an assembly hall, cinema , auction house , furniture store and venue for municipal theaters.

After 1945 the Ballhof was used again as a theater, in 1975 architect Thilo Mucke had the hall and the stage modernized and the foyer rebuilt as a steel and glass building with a copper roof. The program features fabrics for different age groups and interests.

Ballhof two

Ballhof two

The Ballhof Zwei initially served as a rehearsal stage for the Ballhof and was built in 1990 by Thilo Mucke as a polygonal , protruding structure on the corner of Kniehauerstrasse and Ballhofstrasse. Later it was also used as a smaller venue, now it is an integral part of the program. As the smaller of the two stages, it is particularly suitable for productions with correspondingly smaller and more flexible sets. The Ballhof Café is also located in the building. Here, young people from all walks of life run the House of Many independently . In addition to running a café during the performance, they curate and organize a program of productions, concerts, readings, etc. and offer young bands and young artists the opportunity to perform. In addition, the various ball youth clubs meet and rehearse there under the guidance of professionals from the fields of drama , direction , stage , costume and technology .

history

Court theater and Schauburg

The spoken theater in Hanover did not have it easy under Georg V (1819–1878) at the court theater, because the music determined the artistic events and the drama did not attract any attention beyond the city limits. A few decades did not change anything about that.

Around 1900 there was a major rethink in the German theater landscape. The naturalism found its way into the stage and directed by ideas, equipment and dramaturgy increased in value. Hannovers Schauspiel missed this step, and so the critic Johann Frerking demanded drastic personnel measures in 1911, which were even implemented. Rolf Roenneke became director of theater, Willy Grunwald was the artistic director and Frerking himself became a dramaturge . The program was completely overhauled and the audience was delighted with Schiller , Kleist and Ibsen . Another requirement was the spatial separation of opera and drama .

Schauburg, postcard number 1101 from Karl F. Wunder

So the city of Hanover in 1911 by leased Prussian state the Schauburg in the Hildesheim road and used it as a separate stage for the spectacle. In 1925 the city even bought the building and renamed it the Schauspielhaus. Together with the opera in the Lavesbau, the theater now formed the “municipal theaters” of Hanover, before both buildings could not withstand the war in 1943 and fell apart. There was space for 800 spectators in the Schauburg , the theater was extremely popular with the audience. The Hanover Theater managed to catch up with the German theater scene after all, which, however, had happened too quickly for the City Theater Committee. Dramaturg Frerking and Drama Director Roenneke were therefore dismissed in 1926. Georg Altman was now in charge of the play, but left immediately when Hitler came to power. Successor was Alfons Pape.

At the beginning of the Second World War , the theater business continued as before, but in 1943 the opera house was destroyed by bombing. The substitute venue was initially the theater, then the Herrenhausen gallery building . Even before the theater was destroyed, the management of opera and drama changed. Heinrich Koch became theater director. However, on the night of the bombing from October 8th to 9th, 1943, the theater was destroyed and the ensemble moved to the Ballhof. For fear of the air raid alarms, which usually come at night, performances often started in the afternoon. On September 1, 1944, this idea also became obsolete, as all theaters in Germany were closed.

Development after the Second World War

Interim venue, gallery building in the Great Garden

Kurt Ehrhardt took over the management of the theater after the end of the war. Large parts of the ensemble found their way back, and in September 1945 theater was played again with great success, first in the Herrenhausen gallery building and then again in the Ballhof. In 1965 Franz Reichert became Ehrhardt's successor. The Staatsschauspiel used the Theater am Aegi for particularly large performances, performances were held in the Künstlerhaus and the Humboldt and Leibniz Schools were also venues. Director Reichert was brought to Hanover with the promise that a theater would be built near the train station. Although this promise was not kept, Reichert stayed and delighted the audience.

In 1958, the city council decided that a new building should be built. Despite successful architectural competitions, two attempts to build a theater failed because the city of Hanover ran out of money. The “Society of Friends of the Hanoverian Playhouse”, founded in 1966, continually criticized the lack of a playhouse and advocated a new building. But even these efforts initially showed no effects in the next few years.

The new theater director Herbert Kreppel (1975) brought a breath of fresh air to Hanover's cultural life. It was followed by Alexander May , who was often on stage himself. In 1988 the City Council (1978–1988) commissioned an architectural office with the specific planning for a stage with 900 seats. Due to the continued lack of financial resources, however, only successor manager Eberhard Witt was able to open the new theater in Prinzenstrasse, the construction of which had cost a total of 64 million marks.

Hanover Theater in the new Prinzenstrasse building

Showcases at the Hanover Theater

Through a cultural contract between the city of Hanover and the state of Lower Saxony , the theater was built in its current form according to the plans of the Swiss architect Claude Paillard and opened at the end of November 1992. With Eberhard Witt, an almost completely new ensemble entered Hanoverian theater life. Also under the following artistic director Ulrich Khuon (1993), who concentrated more on contemporary theater, performances were performed on different stages. In the Schauspielhaus, in the Ballhof, on the rehearsal stage in the Ballhof and in the Cumberland Gallery.

Since 1998, the Schauspielhaus Hannover also involved in the organization of the original in Braunschweig based "forms of theater" festival , which is alternately performed annually in one of the two cities since of 2007.

Since then, the number of venues has increased further. When artistic director Wilfried Schulz took office and the Junge Schauspiel was founded in 2000, the rehearsal stage in the Ballhof became the regular Ballhof Zwei, and when Lars-Ole Walburg took office in 2009, the rehearsal stage in the Cumberland building became the official location of the Cumberland stage.

When Sonja Anders took office in 2019, in addition to the redesign of the front building, a passage to the canteen was created in the Schauspielhaus, which has since been accessible to visitors via the inner courtyard. The light installation in the foyer as well as the illuminated lettering “Live and save” from the Greek tragedy Iphigenie in the inner courtyard were designed by the set designer Katja Haß .

architecture

That of the Swiss architect Claude Paillard -designed building in the Prince Street in Hanover is clad in aluminum panels reinforced concrete in futuristic style . The auditorium on the upper floor offers space for 630 spectators.

The functional, modern new building integrates some of the preserved parts of the Cumberland Gallery , built by the architect Otto Goetze as an art museum for the Duke of Cumberland Ernst August in 1883–1886 . Today there are also performances in the listed historic staircase.

The Hanover Theater Museum, founded in 1928 and originally housed in a side wing of the opera house, was also integrated into the new building.

Directorships

Current Ensemble (2020)

Awards

In recent years, the Hanover Theater has received various awards that went to its own productions or, in a broader sense, to cooperating directors or authors of the house.

For example, the playwright Nis-Momme Stockmann received the 2014 Dramatist Prize of the German Economy for his work “Death and Resurrection of the World of My Parents in Me” . The play deals with the private and professional decline of a doubting banker, was premiered in Hanover and opened the 2012/2013 season as well as the Mülheim Theatertage 2013.

The Hoffmann von Fallersleben Prize 2014, the company received the same Juli Zeh . This award honors authors "whose literary, historical and journalistic work in its sense proves independent thinking and encourages others to do so". Her play “Corpus delicti” premiered in March 2014 in Hanover.

In 2013, director Mina Salehpour was awarded the prestigious “ Der Faust ” theater prize in the category for children's and youth theater directing . In 2012 she staged “Fatima” in Hanover and in 2013 the family play “Peter Pan”.

Katja Brunner was also widely praised and awarded in 2013 . The play by the playwright "Von den Beinen zu Kurz" deals with incest and abuse, was staged by Heike M. Goetze and won the Mülheim Dramatist Prize , and the German premiere took place in January 2013 in Hanover. In its annual review “Theater Hits 2013”, “spiegel online” also selected text and staging as one of the best five plays of the year.

The botanical long-term theater “The World Without Us”, which will be staged in 15 acts at the Hanover Theater for five years, was selected as a location in the Germany - Land of Ideas 2012 competition. The prize is awarded to exemplary projects from science, culture, business and society that turn unusual ideas into reality. As part of an award ceremony on April 22, 2012, a plexiglass statue was awarded to the two artistic directors of the project, Aljoscha Grech and Tobias Rausch.

In 2018 director Þorleifur Örn Arnarsson was awarded the Faust Prize for the production Die Edda in the category Directing Drama .

literature

Web links

Commons : Schauspielhaus Hannover  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.buehnenverein.de/de/presse/pressemmeldung.html?det=519

Coordinates: 52 ° 22 ′ 24.5 "  N , 9 ° 44 ′ 38.7"  E