Wolfgang Engel

© Rolf Arnold

Wolfgang Engel was born on 13 August 1943 in Schwerin, where he obtained his Abitur (higher education entrance qualification) in 1962. He began his career as a stagehand at the Staatstheater Schwerin and passed the Bühnenreifeprüfung (certificate in stage performance) in 1965. He was an actor and assistant director in Schwerin from 1968 to 1971, and worked as a director at the Landesbühnen Sachsen-Radebeul from 1974 to 1976 and the Theater der Freundschaft, a children's and youth theatre in Berlin, until 1978. From 1978 to 1980, he was employed as a lecturer at the Ernst Busch University for Dramatic Arts in Berlin. From 1980 to 1991, he held a permanent post at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, where he became one of the most important directors in the GDR. His Nibelungen (Nibelungs, 1984) toured to Munich, Vienna and Zurich. Between 1983 and 1985, Engel directed three productions at the Saarländisches Staatstheater in Saarbrücken. In the late 1980s, he also worked as a guest director at other venues in the Federal Republic of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Following the collapse of the communist regime in the GDR, he moved to Schauspiel Frankfurt/Main in 1991 for three seasons as a permanent member of its directing team, and made his debut as an opera director at Stuttgart in 1994. From 1995 to 2008, Engel was artistic director at Schauspiel Leipzig. He chose not to extend his contract and today works as a freelance director.
In 2011 Wolfgang Engel received the German Theatre Prize DER FAUST for his lifework.

At the heart of Wolfgang Engel’s productions stands the human being. Whether it is as an actor, a character in a play or a member of the audience. In this respect, it is not ideologies and theses that shape his contemporary, actor-centred theatre, but observations about attitudes. His stagings do not rely on their overwhelming aesthetic impact or political indoctrination, but take the audience on a restless quest in which human experience becomes objectified. Engel is an actor-director who strips theatrical narratives back to their realistic core.

He has directed many of the classics, above all texts that are performed rather rarely. His deep pleasure in language does not seduce him into creating purely literary theatre. For him, theatre is a vital ‘locus of passion’. Engel is a political director who relates dramatic texts very directly to our time. In 2006, a jury of prominent theatrical figures awarded him the Berlin Academy of Arts Konrad Wolf Prize on the following grounds: ‘For more than 30 years, Wolfgang Engel has been shaping the German-German theatrical landscape. […] In his works, Wolfgang Engel succeeds again and again in depicting his characters as both individual and political beings with all their inner turmoil and emotionality. His productions are highly political, never private.’

Wolfgang Engel does not smash plays to pieces, but reads them intently with his actors and gives the spectator a stake in them. Carlo Goldoni’s The War (Dresden, 1983) began as a reading rehearsal on an open stage, in which the actors were fired up by ideas and found their way into their roles by experimenting with different performance methods. This was the epitome of the epically inspired theatre created by Engel, with his understanding of drama as collective thought, and the production captivated audiences with the tension it generated between tenderness and aggressive power. There was no lecturing, about violence and war or individual attitudes and societal rules. Instead, the spectator saw people searching for identity and self-realisation. Despite the sparing use of a number of startling effects (such as clips from recent television news programmes), this topical, politically charged, yet playful production never lost its rooting in historical fundamentals.

Rather than radical directorial concepts, Engel’s productions are dominated by images and metaphors that are not imposed on a play or its characters from outside, but are developed from within and emerge out of the text. For instance, his GDR premiere of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot( (Dresden, 1987) displayed the tenderness of a coarse clown show as Engel depicted two young men in a circus ring who ‘literally kick each other to death’ (Engel), having failed to make their way through life with any kind of dignity. By contrast, Heiner Müller’s Anatomie Titus. Fall of Rome. Ein Shakespearekommentar (Anatomy Titus: Fall of Rome: A Shakespeare Commentary(), performed in a classroom setting, was estranged and interpreted as a story that offered opportunities for learning and teaching (Dresden, 1987). Often, Engel situates his characters in closed spaces, from which he compels them to seek their way (out). Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (Leipzig, 2005), for example, was set among the tubular steel beds of a homeless hostel.

Engel’s strongest period was between 1980 and 1991, when he was a director at, and artistic director of, the Staatsschauspiel Dresden. His productions, such as Hebbel’s Nibelungen (Nibelungs(, 1984) and Kleist’s Penthesilea ( (1986), were so explosive because his audience identified with them and they reflected the destructive force of false utopias.
His Dresden Faust, in which Engel himself appeared on stage as one of two Fausts, coincided with the tumultuous events of German unification. It told the story as both a poetic nightmare and reportage on everyday life, with Walpurgis Night becoming a wild party thrown in a stairwell by the residents of a prefabricated block of flats.

Wolfgang Engel is committed to a form of municipal theatre that draws on diverse materials and forms. In Leipzig (1995-2008), he encouraged many actors and directors who have since become famous. Following unification, his own productions did not always unleash the explosive aesthetic and political power that characterised his work in the GDR.
Given the quality of the performances he coaxes out of his actors and the skill with which he handles the German language, however, Engel has continued to enjoy success with magnificent productions, such as Thomas Mann’s Joseph und seine Brüder (Joseph and His Brothers(, Düsseldorf, 2009). Another fine example was his version of Uwe Tellkamp’s Der Turm (The Tower(, Dresden 2010), devoid as it was of any attempts to reconstruct the external reality of the GDR. Engel did not place political mouthpieces on the stage in this piece, but questing characters who typified very concrete attitudes.

Wolfgang Engel’s recent productions seem to have lost some of the rage and vigour found in the progressive theatrical counterdiscourse with which he once condemned conditions he perceived as unjust. Nevertheless, they have fascinated audiences with their aesthetic energy, their linguistic brilliance and the intensity of their psychological, actor-centred drama.

• Michail Bulgakow "Master and Margarita"
  2012, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
• Giuseppe Verdi "Falstaff"
  2011, Staatstheater Braunschweig
• Carlo Goldoni "The Holiday Trilogy"
  2011, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus
• Jens Groß and Armin Petras after Uwe Tellkamp "The Tower"
  2010, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
• Sergei Prokofjev "The Love for Three Oranges"
  2010, Oper Leipzig
• Friedrich Schiller "William Tell"
  2009, Staatschauspiel Dresden
• Ronald Harwood "Collaboration"
  2009, Euro-Studio Landgraf
• Thomas Mann "Joseph and His Brothers"
  2009, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus
• Michail Bulgakow "Molière or the Cabal of Hypocrites"
  2008, Schauspiel Leipzig)
• Nach Friedrich Schiller "Wallenstein – Ein Feldzug durch Leipzig" (i.e. "Wallenstein – A Crusade through Leipzig")
  2007, Schauspiel Leipzig
• Peter Stein after Eschyle"The Oresteia by Eschyle"
  2006, Schauspiel Leipzig
• Henrik Ibsen "Peer Gynt"
  2005, Schauspiel Leipzig
• Friedrich Schiller "Don Karlos, Infant of Spain"
  2005, Schauspiel Leipzig
• Richard Wagner "The Flying Dutchman"
  2004, Theater Magdeburg
• Carlo Goldoni "Servant of Two Masters"
  2004, Schauspiel Leipzig
• Giuseppe Verdi "Aida"
  2004, Oper Leipzig
• William Shakespeare "Troilus and Cressida"
  2003, Schauspiel Leipzig
• Peter Handke "The Unreasonable Are Dying Out"
  2001, Schauspiel Leipzig
• Federico Fellini/Tonino Guerra "Ship of Dreams"
  2000, Schauspiel Leipzig
• Johann Wolfgang Goethe "Faust. First and Second Part of the Tragedy"
  1999, Schauspiel Leipzig
• Giacomo Puccini "Turandot"
  1997, Theater Basel
• Christa Wolf "Medea. Voices"
  1997, Schauspiel Leipzig
• William Shakespeare "King Richard III.
  1996, Schauspiel Leipzig
• Peter Handke "The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other"
  1995, Schauspiel Leipzig
• Leos Janácek "From the House of the Dead"
  1994, Staatsoper Stuttgart
• William Shakespeare "Titus Andronicus"
  1994, Burgtheater, Wien
• Thomas Bernhard "The World Improver"
  1994, Schauspiel Frankfurt
• William Shakespeare "The Merchant of Venice"
  1992, Schauspiel Frankfurt
• Johann Wolfgang Goethe "Stella"
  1991, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
• Friedrich Hebbel "Judith"
  1991, Schauspielhaus Zürich
• Franz Grillparzer "König Ottokar's Fortunes and Finish"
  1991, Burgtheater, Vienna
• Johann Wolfgang Goethe "Faust. First and Second Part of the Tragedy", Adaption for three evenings
  1990, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
• William Shakespeare "As You Like It"
  1988, Bayerisches Staatsschauspiel München
• Heiner Müller "Anatomie Titus. Fall of Rome. A Shakespeare Commentary"
  1987, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
• Samuel Beckett "Waiting for Godot"
  1987, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
• Heinrich von Kleist "Penthesilea"
  1986, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
• William Shakespeare "Sonnets"
  1985, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
• Friedrich Hebbel "Die Nibelungen", on two evenings
  1984, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
• Carlo Goldoni "The War"
  1983, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
• Georg Büchner "Büchner Project" ,four productions within six months: "Woyzeck / Lenz / Dantons Tod / Der Hessische Landbote "
  1982, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
• Heiner Müller "The Battle: Scenes From Germany" / "The Scab"
  1981, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
• Friedrich Schiller "Mary Stuart"
  1980, Staatsschauspiel Dresden
• Margarete Steffin "Wenn er einen Engel hätte" (i.e. "If He Had An Angel")
  1978, Theater der Freundschaft, Berlin
• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing "Nathan the Wise"
  1974, Landesbühnen Sachsen, Dresden-Radebeul
• Alfonso Sastre "Story of the Abandoned Doll"
  1974, Theater der Freundschaft, Berlin
• Bertolt Brecht "The Threepenny Opera"
  1974, Mecklenburgisches Staatstheater Schwerin
• Anton Tschechow "Tragöde wider Willen" (i.e. "Tragedy Against Will")
  1970, Mecklenburgisches Staatstheater, Schwerin