Wolfgang Bordel (theater director)

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Wolfgang Bordel (born January 21, 1951 in Halle (Saale) ) is a German theater director.

Bordel grew up in Halle. After an apprenticeship as a locomotive fitter, he completed vocational training there as a traction vehicle electrician. In 1970 he began studying physics at the Wilhelm Pieck University in Rostock , which he completed with a diploma in 1974. He then studied philosophy at Berlin's Humboldt University . In 1979 Wolfgang Bordel received his doctorate there on the subject of "Philosophical questions in the natural sciences". He then worked at the Berlin Academy of Sciences with the "mathematical modeling of scientific processes".

While looking for a farmhouse, Bordel came to Anklam in 1978 and found something nearby. In a few months, his farm developed into a kind of GDR “rural commune”. "Dr. Wolfgang Bordel und Freunde ”is still the phone book entry today and the address“ Frei im Felde ”is aptly self-invented.

But his real passion was and is the theater. During his apprenticeship, he played at the workers' theater in his hometown Halle (from 1967), at the University of Rostock he headed the student theater from 1972, at the Humboldt University he founded the AST workers and student theater together with others in 1975 , which he continued into in the early 1980s. At times, however, the only “worker” was Wolfgang Bordel himself, as he later remarked self-ironically. Among other things, the physics student Bernd Lukasch , who lived with Bordel in his Schmatziner “commune” and is now director of the Anklamer Otto Lilienthal Museum , was on stage there.

With the workers' and student theater, Wolfgang Bordel developed his conceptual ideas about "theater". From the beginning he preferred crude and comedies, and above all insisted on the audience having to laugh; mostly without really knowing why it laughs. As the “maker” of the student stage, he already stood in front of his comrades-in-arms in the student theater when there were problems with the administration - for example with the cultural department of the Humboldt University. One of the greatest successes of the AST Theater in 1979 was participation in a GDR-wide competition for all student theaters in Leipzig.

In 1983 Bordel became director of the " Anklam Theater ". There he formed the counterbalance desired by the state to the rebellious director and senior director Frank Castorf , whose work was not accepted by the Anklam audience. In 1985 Castorf left the house and Bordel brought the population back to the theater with comedies and crude plays. “I don't care if we are reviewed in Berlin”, was and is his motto, “The people who are clamoring should find it good.” ( Berliner Zeitung, July 12, 2001)

When the house was predicted to end quickly after the fall of the Wall, Bordel disagreed. He operated the privatization of the theater and its conversion to the Vorpommerschen Landesbühne , of which he has been director and manager since 1993. In the following years, the house expanded as Bordel made a model out of its roots in the region: After further venues in Anklam, Heringsdorf , Zinnowitz and Barth , he founded the Vorpommern Theater Academy on Usedom in 2000 . Today he is considered the most successful “cultural entrepreneur” in the region.

From the 2012/2013 season, Wolfgang Bordel also took on the position of drama director at Theater und Orchester GmbH Neubrandenburg / Neustrelitz . This strengthens the cooperation between the theater locations in Anklam and Neubrandenburg / Neustrelitz.

Bordel was also politically active: at the time of the fall of the Wall he held protests in the theater and was at the head of the march that occupied the local Stasi office . In 1990 he stood as a PDS candidate for the district council. In 2002, as a representative of the Independent Citizens' List (UBL 94), he tried in vain to become mayor of the city of Anklam, but achieved a respectable result with 12.78 percent.

Wolfgang Bordel has two children and still lives with his partner, the journalist Martina Krüger, on his farm near Anklam.

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personal data
SURNAME Bordel, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theater director
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Halle (Saale)