Yet Bosse’s start in Hamburg was anything but happy. Following his studies at the famous Ernst Busch School in Berlin he initially caused a stir with some premiere productions under Dieter Dorn at the Münchner Kammerspiele; Stromberg immediately entrusted him with the opening production of his reign with a specially commissioned work. Three years after his graduation production this seemed to be one burden too many for Bosse. In any case, his production of Helmut Krausser’s “Bus Stop. Ghosts” in the year 2000 flopped. The subsequent crisis at the Hamburger Schauspielhaus, the biggest German theatre for the spoken word, was thus associated with his name – which is why it was only fair that he has been able to rehabilitate himself as the protagonist of the ensuing turnaround.
Because after the chaotic start with many failed experiments, Stromberg saved the situation with conventional municipal theatre schedules, where the classics dominated once again – but interpreted by young directors. And with Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex” at the end of the first season, Bosse provided the conciliatory proof that theatre strong in images and narrative can also be modern. He vividly turned the tragedy of god-given fate into the desperation of an individualised society.
Bosse’s updates of classics always appear youthful, but remain true to the text. He gives Goethe’s odyssey of marriage promises, “Clavigo”, the dynamics of a video clip. He sets Molière’s “Misanthrope” in the atmosphere of a high-class brothel with flowery walls. And he turns the salon of the “Three Sisters” into warehouse landscape of “in” parties. But in all of the productions Bosse’s attention is on the fatal superficiality of a society dedicated to pleasure, and this is the perspective from which he views the classics. His characters are always shrill rather than melancholic, loud rather than clever, which is why they are often described as the critical reconstruction of television actors.
This became especially clear in his most recent production, Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”. Here, Vladimir and Estragon are two joking comedy caricatures in front of a glittering show curtain who keep covering up their inner emptiness with weak jokes. However, in this production in particular it also becomes clear how narrow the gap is between criticism and affirmation because it would have been very easy to believe one was being present at a slapstick version of the play.
Bosse’s talent for comedy, which has often given the impression that he is not taking the material seriously enough, actually disguises a rather pessimistic view of the world. “Our images of ourselves and of the world have been shaken”, Bosse once said of his view of the world on the occasion of a “Roberto-Zucco" production. “Humour then lies over the latent violence like a varnish that is flaking below the surface of society and can crack at any time”. Bosse tries to make this latency tangible with his updates of classics. And to do this he follows the prescription of intensifying surface irritations - “because people in abundance need an overdose to fill and feel their lives”.
Bosse still has time to find reflective and meaningful alternatives to these figures of the present who cover up their emptiness with exaggeration. After all, in spite of the honour of being in-house director at the Hamburger Schauspielhaus he is still in the early days of his development. And currently his strength is in the prickliness of youth and not in the laissez-faire of experience. There’s already enough of that.
