Thorsten Lensing, Jan Hein (Theater T1)

From the production “Lauf zum Meer. Ein Idyll” © David Baltzer

Theater T1 was established in 1994 by Thorsten Lensing (born in 1969), whose very first production of Rainald Goetz’s “Krieg” (i.e. War) brought him nationwide attention. Since the mid 1990s he has collaborated continuously with Jan Hein (born in 1967), who began his career as an assistant director with Peter Palitzsch and Dimiter Gotscheff after completing a degree in German literature. Hein has worked as a dramatic adviser at the Schauspiel theatre in Cologne since 2007; from 2002 to 2005 he held the same position at the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg and from 1999 to 2002 at Bielefeld Theatre, where he arranged to be temporarily relieved from his duties in order to work together with Lensing.

Their productions are based on a framework of texts containing precisely analytical and highly detailed descriptions of the everyday world and life, which they find in works by the American authors T.S. Eliot (“Sweeney Agonistes”, 2000) and William Carlos Williams (“The Run to the Sea”, 2009), as well as in plays by Bernard-Marie Koltès (“Quay West”, 1998), William Shakespeare (“King Lear”, 2002) and Anton Chekhov. Following a 2008 production of “Uncle  Vanya”, “The Cherry Orchard” will be premiered in December 2011.

Time and time again, Lensing and Hein succeed in persuading well-known actors and all kinds of different cooperation partners to take part in their productions, which have already been invited to the Impulse festival three times: “Der König stirbt / Die letzten Tage der Menschheit” (i.e. Exit the King / The Last Days of Mankind) in 1996, “Sweeney Agonistes” in 2000 and “Catharina von Siena” (i.e. Catherine of Siena) in 2001.

Very few directors whose productions have enjoyed success in the independent theatre scene from the outset work so consistently outwith the realm of municipal theatre as Thorsten Lensing. He has never had any shortage of offers. In 1994, Lensing managed to persuade Rainald Goetz to assign him the rights to his “Krieg” (i.e. War) trilogy. Overnight, the first production brought him into conversation with theatre directors. All negotiations regarding any sort of cooperation have so far come to nothing, however, because Lensing, self-taught in the original sense of the word and someone who never completed any formal training as a director, is only able and only wishes to work according to a principle that clashes with the logic of the establishment.

Lensing and Jan Hein, a dramatic adviser, produce at a rate that is alien to our time. Every one and a half to two years they bring out a premiere that is not yet “finished” but is intended to continue to grow and evolve. During the first rehearsal phase the duo scour the text in an attempt to acquire a precise and thorough knowledge that goes beyond conventional interpretations. The next stage involves communicating this exactitude to the actors so that they can work independently with the text onstage. The result is a mixture of sticking to the text and improvisation, with Lensing giving actors the freedom to choose their methods, providing the contents of the text are not distorted. A good example of this is T.S. Eliot’s “Sweeney Agonistes” from 2000. With incidental cheerfulness, the production progressed towards the oppressive presence of death. Two whores sat at a table drinking milk and playing cards; two punters came by, they talked, and that’s all. At first glance, nothing very much happens in Lensing’s productions, yet moods always go sour. In the production of Robert Walser’s “Snow White” in 2000, seeds of doubt were increasingly sown among the four protagonists – the king, the prince, the hunter and Snow White – until their relationships between one another shifted and a happy ending was no longer certain at all. This was a wonderfully concentrated way of tackling this fairy tale.

Lensing uses empty stages furnished only with a variety of small props. Elaborate stage sets would not only make it more difficult to transport his productions to the growing number of coproducing venues (the sophiensaele in Berlin and the Theater im Pumpenhaus in Münster are the standard venues), but would also be superfluous, as it is the actors who are the central focus. Lensing and Hein do not commence their projects until they have found exactly the right actors to play the parts. The almost eerie power of persuasion both display when explaining their ideas to others has allowed them to win over a number of highly prominent actors, such as Miriam Goldschmidt, Nicole Léon, Matthias Habich, Clemens Schick and Charly Hübner. Ursina Lardi was cast several times. In their 2008 production of “Uncle Vanya”, Josef Ostendorf played Vanya and Devid Striesow played Astrov, the doctor. Red wine was sloshed around, tights were torn, chairs, glasses and packets of medicine flew through the air, and Sonya (Ursula Renneke) used a garden hose to sober up Astrov, who was completely inebriated. This was a hard, anti-psychological version of “Uncle Vanya” in which the actors gave a physically demanding performance right from the start. This stark contrast to the canonical Chekhov melancholy met with great approval, though the production also suffered from the fact that it is not possible to step up the level of despair to ever new heights over a three and a half hour period, however rousing and passionate the actors’ performance may be.

The strong focus on the energy of the actors and on specific details does not only meet with applause. What is more, the quality of the performances differs from one day to the next, even more than is normally the case in the theatre. In weaker moments the actors run the risk of acting at cross purposes, while on strong evenings, as the audience was fortunate enough to experience in 2009 in “The Run to the Sea”, the dynamism of the play is fully unleashed. Katharina Schüttler and Viviane de Muynck played the roles of a young woman whose future still lies ahead of her and an older woman who is looking back over her life. Lensing brought them together with three jazz musicians specialized in improvisation. The result was 75 intensive minutes in which the music underlined the highlights and commented on what remained unsaid, while the actors – with the aid of a textual framework – gave concrete form to the moods created by the music. For Lensing and Hein, this represented the absolute pinnacle of their work on a musical structure that they had previously tried out in various initial attempts – with the result that they no longer plan to pursue this model any further in “The Cherry Orchard”, whose premiere is set to take place in December 2011. Until then, Lensing and Hein will continue, as they always have done, to read the text with maximum precision and to communicate its contents to the actors so that they can transform it into an extreme performance onstage.

Anton Tschechow "The Cherry Orchard"
2011, sophiensaele, Berlin

Brigitte Kronauer„Women and Clothes"
2011, Kampnagel Hamburg, Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster, sophiensaele Berlin, FFT Düsseldorf, TAK Theater Liechtenstein

William Carlos Williams “Der Lauf zum Meer” (i.e. “The Run to the Sea“)
2009, spielzeit’europa Berlin, Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster, FFT Düsseldorf, Theater Chur

Anton Checkov “Uncle Wanja”
2008, Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster, sophiensaele Berlin, Theater am Neumarkt Zürich/Zürcher Festspiele, Kampnagel Hamburg, Schauspiel Frankfurt

Robert Walser “Schneewittchen” (i.e. “Snow White”)
2005, sophiensaele Berlin, Theater am Neumarkt Zürich, Theater im Pumpenhaus, Münster

Johann Nestroy “Chief Captain Evening Wind”
2003, sophiensaele Berlin, Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster

William Shakespeare “King Lear”
2002, sophiensaele Berlin, Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster

Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz “Catharina of Siena”
2001, Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster, sophiensaele Berlin

T.S. Eliot “Sweeney Agonistes”
2000, Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster, sophiensaele Berlin

Bernard-Marie Koltès “Quai West”
1998, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, sophiensaele, Berlin

Eugene Ionesco / Karl Kraus “Exit the King / The last days of Mankind”
1996, Fabrikhalle Eupener Straße Köln, Theater im Pumpenhaus Münster

Volker Braun “Transit Europa” (i.e. “Transit Europe”)
1995, Staatstheater Mainz

Rainald Goetz “War”
1994, Fabrikhalle Eupener Straße Köln