I read in your book that you are a very perfectionistic person – a quality that you consider to be a basic requirement for your profession. How do you still achieve satisfaction?
People often have a romanticised image of our profession. They think we’re just crazy and that we drift off in a different artistic direction every day without having a plan. But in reality, it’s usually a tough business that has to keep running, where there are deadlines and you have to deliver. It can’t be done without perfectionism. At the same time, I don’t dwell on my ‘success’ for too long, but rather go straight from one project to the next without worrying too much about whether everything went smoothly. Upon reflection, you always find aspects that could have been done differently or better. I therefore focus less on praise, reviews or my own rumblings, but rather on the feeling of the moment when I’m on stage. As a performer or director, you can tell whether the audience can be carried away and immerse themselves completely in the world you’re creating.
If that happens, I think you’ve done a lot of things right and it’s precisely these moments and the feeling of having enchanted the audience that give me a deep sense of satisfaction.
In your opinion, what is the key to the success of a great production?
Honestly? I have no idea. In my opinion, you can focus on something and persistently pursue a goal, but you can’t force anything. It’s an entirely different question whether it will actually materialise in the end. The success of a stage play or film essentially starts with the cast and therefore also poses a challenge for the director. I’m not a casting person. I’ve always hated this hierarchical Caesar principle and find it highly alienating. I also feel that it doesn’t correspond at all to the moral values that society wants to portray in today’s world. This is particularly strange in our industry. At a time when we are increasingly turning to flat hierarchies and are much more concerned with partnership and respectful collaboration, casting is actually the opposite – a relic from earlier times. That’s why as a director I don’t cast my actors. I meet people for a coffee, primarily to see if the interpersonal relationship works, I engage with the person and then hire them. Some of the people I’ve hired for the Freilichtspiele Lana have been on stage there for the first time in their lives and it’s always worked out well so far. One just has to be brave.
Then there’s the problem of having an exact image in my head, which sometimes causes difficulties for me as an actor and as a director. The more precise the image I have of a role or a location, the more impossible it becomes to deviate from it, yet at the same time to get it exactly right. I’m not an incredibly flexible person, but as a director I often allow myself to be inspired by the circumstances of the moment.
It’s the same as a performer and with my gut feeling. If I have an idea of how to bring a role to the stage, my counterpart in the director’s chair has to argue very well to dissuade me.
Why do you not see yourself as an artist?
First and foremost, I don’t see what I do as art, but as a craft. As actors, we put in a lot of sweat and labour to convince our audience. We rehearse for hours on end and it also happens that we have to ourselves to the bone. I also don’t like the snobby air people put on when they explain how special the art he or she is making is. Why don’t you just create something special without explaining it too much? That would be much more convincing. From my point of view, what I do is just as arduous a job as that of a baker who gets up in the middle of the night and tries to make the best bread for his customers. And speaking of getting up early: People think that artists only get out of bed at around 11 o’clock in the morning and stagger into a contemplative phase of creativity before they even become part of the performance society. I was usually awake at 5 a.m. when I was working on my film. But I’m always up early for other projects, too, and plan what still needs to be done so that everything can run smoothly. So for me, neither the term art nor the term artist is the right way to describe what I do every day.
Talking about lifeYour greatest strength?
I have found a job for which I definitely have a certain talent. I’m quite good at meeting people’s tastes and if you can memorise text very well without consciously studying it, then that’s certainly a great strength.
And your weakness?
My sense of direction is an utter disaster. I wouldn’t be able to find my way home without a navigation system. I was never really interested in geography at school either. Perhaps that’s why I have stayed in a place where I know my way around. I need it to be manageable so that I can concentrate on what I need and want to do.
Have you ever just got up and left a theatre performance?
Yes, in Berlin. I watched a brilliant performance by three actors the night before and was very enthusiastic. The next day, I sat in a performance that made absolutely no sense to me. During the interval, I bumped into one of the actors from the previous evening’s performance. I complimented him on his performance and when I asked him about the current show he said he was leaving, so I simply left the theatre, too.
