Theatertreffen 2023 A Fondness for the Large-Scale Format

The action starts again every May: in 2023 the Theatertreffen, Germany’s most important theatre festival was operating without restrictions imposed by the pandemic for the first time. It featured some major productions and a few surprises.

Every year at the end of January or the beginning of February there’s a date none of the top theatres in Germany, Austria and Switzerland can really avoid: the press conference where they announce which productions are involved in the Theatertreffen event that’s held in Berlin every May. Since 2020, other than the viewing period – which is more or less in line with the calendar year – and the ominous-sounding adjective “notable”, the jury has had only one brief: at least half of the productions invited must come from women or female teams.

The result is usually a summit meeting of the major theatres from Vienna, Munich, Berlin and Hamburg. But smaller theatres frequently make the cut. One such surprise is in the 2023 line-up too: the ten productions selected – the jury of seven saw 461 plays in 58 locations – include Hamlet performed by Anhaltisches Theater Dessau. For many years this company suffered the same fate as almost all theatres in the East: a proud tradition, (too) many seats (1.070!), which somehow had to be filled despite painful transformation processes, emigration and a lack of audiences. People hardly ever made the trip from Berlin. Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is part of this year’s Theatertreffen. Philipp Preuss is staging the play at the Anhaltisches Theater Dessau. | Photo (detail): © Claudia Heysel All that changed in recent years under theatre director Alexander Kohlmann, because he brought producers who attracted audience interest to Dessau: Milan Peschel, Mizgin Bilmen, Klaus Gehre. Not to mention Philipp Preuss, who had already stood out with strong works on several occasions – and creates the impression of a society trapped within itself in his dramatisation of Hamlet in the Großes Haus theatre. The invitation is also a signal that extends outside the confines of Dessau. It shows that things are happening in the East beyond the flagship theatre cities of Dresden and Leipzig, in Schwerin, Cottbus, Meiningen. However it remains to be seen whether the production will survive the move to Berlin. The last time a theatre from Saxony-Anhalt was invited – Allein das Meer (The Same Sea) performed by Neues Theater Halle in 2006 – it resulted in an awkward venue situation, giving an appearance of the poor relative who accidentally ended up at the wrong party.

Big-Time Binge Watching

The transfer is one of the risks to which the invited productions are exposed at Theatertreffen. As is the notoriously harsh Berlin audience, who set the bar so high with an even harsher theatre criticism of theatre. Particularly as many people at the festival still expect the best, rather than ten “notable” performances (an adjective that leaves scope for discussion even putting aside the varying tastes and arguments).

And yet there is much to suggest that Theatertreffen 2023 has a real festival vibe, at least in terms of the ten invited productions. It’s the first for years where the selection and event format are no longer determined by the pandemic. The jury had a whole year to travel, and there were barely any restrictions – such as cancellations due to illness. What’s more, plenty of large-scale productions with prominent actors are joining the selection, which puts audiences in the mood for some big-time binge watching.
Another Shakespeare play: this is Antù Romero Nunes’ version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. | Photo (detail): © Ingo Höhn On top of that comes the surprise element: seven of the ten invitations have gone to newcomers to Theatertreffen. They include names known to the theatre community for some time, like the great director Lucia Bihler, who is on board with Maria Lazar’s Die Eingeborenen von Maria Blut (The Native People of Maria Blut) by the Vienna Burgtheater. But there are also some that have barely been noticed so far outside their own locality – like Rieke Süßkow, whose dramatisation of Peter Handke’s Zwiegespräch (Zwietalk) with the Burgtheater has also been invited to a parallel event, the “Radikal jung” festival in Munich for newcomer directors. And of course this year features a wealth of reinterpreted classics as well, such as Nora under the direction of Felicitas Brucker (Munich Kammerspiele).

What stands out across the board is a great fondness firstly for storytelling, and secondly for large-scale productions. And for a sort of magical realism – in very diverse manifestations – as found in Antù Romero Nunes’ Sommernachtstraum (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) from Basel, Mateja Koležnik’s Kinder der Sonne (Children of the Sun) from Bochum, and also Philipp Stölzl’s Das Vermächtnis (The Inheritance) by the Munich Residenztheater. The festival launches on 12th May with Das Vermächtnis, Matthew Lopez’ play about a group of gay friends in New York that balances convincingly on the fine line between soap opera and human drama. The seven-and-a-half hours (including intervals) pass by in a flash, honest!

The same applies to Florentina Holzinger’s almost three-hour-long spectacle Ophelia’s Got Talent performed by the Berlin Volksbühne – a wild, self-empowering tempest of images for which a lot of water is brought onto the stage. Even Sebastian Hartman crafted a (by his standards) relatively lively evening with Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Ego and its Own), a kind of discursive musical theatre work, at the Deutscher Theater in Berlin.
Things get soggy on stage in the Berlin Volksbühne performance of “Ophelia’s got Talent”. | Photo (detail): © Nicole Marianna Wytyczak And what about the independent theatre scene, which was particularly strongly represented during the pandemic years? It’s in the programme, with the group De Warme Winkel and their production Der Bus nach Dachau (The Bus to Dachau). Of course the fact that the production was staged at the Schauspielhaus in Bochum says a great deal about production conditions in the independent scene, where for more complex projects they either need to find a good supply of coproduction partners – or alternatively cooperate with a city theatre. A theme that lends itself to in-depth exploration within the scope of the programme’s supporting events and in discussion with political decision-makers.

Does the discourse programme planned by the new Theatertreffen management committee – Olena Apchel, Carolin Hochleichter and Joanna Nuckowska are organising the festival for the first time – provide the right environment for that? The supplementary programme of events comprises ten “Treffen” or encounters, as they call the theme clusters, covering areas such as war, solidarity and diversity and featuring numerous performances from Eastern Europe – and as such it comes across like a parallel festival with little relevance to the main programme. Whether or not Theatertreffen has a real festival vibe is ultimately decided over a glass of wine in the garden of the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, and in the discussion groups. If the production team manages to instigate useful connections and dialogue here, then there’s really nothing to stop them experiencing all the buzz of Berlin’s theatres throughout May. Theatertreffen 2023 – the jury: (l-r) Sascha Westphal, Katrin Ullmann, Petra Paterno, Janis El-Bira, Sabine Leucht, Eva Behrendt, Valeria Heintges | Photo (detail): © Stefan Wieland