Anyone who has ever experienced Jürgen Gosch on a podium knows that he is not a man of many words. Theoretical justifications and loud discussions are not his style. Gosch is a quiet, consistent worker who expresses whatever he has to say in his productions and also tends towards modesty as a director: “I don’t want to convey anything with my theatrical work that goes beyond its objects.”
Gosch’s theatre is the concentrated work of an ascetic who withdraws completely in textual work and avoids anything that is to do with show, effect and glamour. He has been called a “pedant", a “Puritan”, even a “preacher of repentance”. He has often subjected his audience to “drawn-out, lengthy, grimly dreary séances” wrote Der Spiegel in 1987. But we are doing Gosch an injustice if we write off his work as the spiritual exercises of a joyless theatre monk because they are often illuminated from within and are of a scenic and theatrical quality with which they can plainly and self-confidently stand up to the fashions and bad habits of the zeitgeist. Gosch is always true to himself and his style and has thus always remained contemporary. Thus, for example, in January 2004 he lightly freed Gorky’s “Summer Folk” of all its dust and class-war pathos on a large, empty box stage at Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf and conjured an illuminating, modern play out of it in small, fragmentary stories. “Rarely has there been so much to learn about people on the stage,” wrote Andreas Rossmann in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Densely composed and full of breaks, the production gains social accuracy and a virtuous proximity to reality.” The production was invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen, where Gosch has already been a guest with many productions.
Gosch comes from the former GDR, where he caused trouble as early as 1978 with a production of Büchner’s “Leonce and Lena”. His intimations of the Berlin Wall and being enclosed in this state – for example, by exaggeratedly slamming many doors – led to the production being taken off the programme and Gosch ultimately moved to West Germany. His most important sponsor was Jürgen Flimm, who brought him to Cologne and then to the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg. Gosch and his productions – mostly in cooperation with the set designer Axel Mathey and the literary manager Wolfgang Wiens – played a major part in the rise of Flimm’s theatre to the ranks of elite theatre. His unbelievably refreshing and spirited “Misanthrope” production with Hans Christian Rudolph in the lead role was a great success in 1983; he celebrated a triumph with Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex”, played by Ulrich Wildgruber – a production with masks and cothurnuses.
Kleist, Molière, Shakespeare, Büchner and Beckett are Gosch’s preferred writers, he has produced some of their plays several times, for example Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in Cologne in 1984, Hamburg in 1987 and at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1996. Whether Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” or Kleist’s “Prince Frederick of Homburg” – Gosch’s productions always have something of great rituals, black and white are the dominant colours, small symbols acquire great significance. “Here, someone is seeking a new myth, a coherent image, a sort of shared worship that nevertheless does not disengage the brain,” was the diagnosis of Lothar Schmidt-Mühlisch in Die Welt in 1987.
In 1988 Gosch was appointed to the directorium of the Berlin Schaubühne as the successor to Luc Bondy. His anaemic opening production of Schakespeare’s “Macbeth” was such a debacle that he then “released” himself from the artistic direction and left the theatre in 1990 after two more productions. From 1993 until the replacement of Thomas Langhoff in 1999 he found an artistic home at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. Once again, he examined the great classics, always reticent when faced with the text, but in this time he also developed a liking for contemporary drama. In his cautious, puritanical way he won existential interpretations from the plays by Peter Handke, Jon Fosse and, more recently, Roland Schimmelpfennig. Jürgen Gosch has lots to say – in his own way.
Gosch’s theatre is the concentrated work of an ascetic who withdraws completely in textual work and avoids anything that is to do with show, effect and glamour. He has been called a “pedant", a “Puritan”, even a “preacher of repentance”. He has often subjected his audience to “drawn-out, lengthy, grimly dreary séances” wrote Der Spiegel in 1987. But we are doing Gosch an injustice if we write off his work as the spiritual exercises of a joyless theatre monk because they are often illuminated from within and are of a scenic and theatrical quality with which they can plainly and self-confidently stand up to the fashions and bad habits of the zeitgeist. Gosch is always true to himself and his style and has thus always remained contemporary. Thus, for example, in January 2004 he lightly freed Gorky’s “Summer Folk” of all its dust and class-war pathos on a large, empty box stage at Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf and conjured an illuminating, modern play out of it in small, fragmentary stories. “Rarely has there been so much to learn about people on the stage,” wrote Andreas Rossmann in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Densely composed and full of breaks, the production gains social accuracy and a virtuous proximity to reality.” The production was invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen, where Gosch has already been a guest with many productions.
Gosch comes from the former GDR, where he caused trouble as early as 1978 with a production of Büchner’s “Leonce and Lena”. His intimations of the Berlin Wall and being enclosed in this state – for example, by exaggeratedly slamming many doors – led to the production being taken off the programme and Gosch ultimately moved to West Germany. His most important sponsor was Jürgen Flimm, who brought him to Cologne and then to the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg. Gosch and his productions – mostly in cooperation with the set designer Axel Mathey and the literary manager Wolfgang Wiens – played a major part in the rise of Flimm’s theatre to the ranks of elite theatre. His unbelievably refreshing and spirited “Misanthrope” production with Hans Christian Rudolph in the lead role was a great success in 1983; he celebrated a triumph with Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex”, played by Ulrich Wildgruber – a production with masks and cothurnuses.
Kleist, Molière, Shakespeare, Büchner and Beckett are Gosch’s preferred writers, he has produced some of their plays several times, for example Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in Cologne in 1984, Hamburg in 1987 and at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1996. Whether Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” or Kleist’s “Prince Frederick of Homburg” – Gosch’s productions always have something of great rituals, black and white are the dominant colours, small symbols acquire great significance. “Here, someone is seeking a new myth, a coherent image, a sort of shared worship that nevertheless does not disengage the brain,” was the diagnosis of Lothar Schmidt-Mühlisch in Die Welt in 1987.
In 1988 Gosch was appointed to the directorium of the Berlin Schaubühne as the successor to Luc Bondy. His anaemic opening production of Schakespeare’s “Macbeth” was such a debacle that he then “released” himself from the artistic direction and left the theatre in 1990 after two more productions. From 1993 until the replacement of Thomas Langhoff in 1999 he found an artistic home at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. Once again, he examined the great classics, always reticent when faced with the text, but in this time he also developed a liking for contemporary drama. In his cautious, puritanical way he won existential interpretations from the plays by Peter Handke, Jon Fosse and, more recently, Roland Schimmelpfennig. Jürgen Gosch has lots to say – in his own way.
Christine Dössel
