Nübling does not follow any trends. His strength lies in putting emotions into motion. What this actually means was seen mainly in the Stuttgart production of “I Furiosi” after Nanni Balestrini’s hooligan novel of the same name. In the stage adaptation, Nübling set the rituals of violence in the hooligan scene in a single space stage. The result was a body-language tableau with eight actors who have the effect of anti-personnel mines. At the same time, however, the fascination exerted by groups of men prepared to perpetrate violence was also tangible.
Sebastian Nübling became nationally known with “I Furiosi”. One year later, his “Romeo and Juliet” bore witness to the convincing results he could achieve with classical material. Although Nübling followed Shakespeare’s text, he always had all of the actors gathered on the stage. Whereas great feelings were discussed in Shakespeare’s dialogues, the actors’ body was used to display emotional states. Hardly a sentence was spoken without us seeing the body’s independent life during speech. And hardly any sentence better characterises what Nübling is concerned with than one that he once uttered himself: Too often, he reads plays with too much text. The reason for this is that writers don’t even begin to imagine what the actor’s body is capable of expressing.
Nübling is also a family person in the theatre and for many years has worked with the set designer Muriel Gerster and the musician Lars Wittershagen. Their goal is theatre that becomes a global work of art, comprising language, movement, space and sound. The most recent example of this is Sebastian Nübling’s premiere of “wilde – the man with the sad eyes” by Klaus Händl in Hanover. In the play, the writer presents an elegiac, funny harmlessness, while he simultaneously builds up a sense of doom and a travelling “médecin sans frontiers” gets into the clutches of a trio of siblings. Nübling translates the rising threat into a choreography of hopelessness and produces a gentle nightmare in the maze of lockers in a provincial station.
In this case, too, Nübling shows that he is not one of those directors who tackle plays with a fixed repertoire of stylistic means. Irrespective of whether he is working with amateurs from the Basel Junges Theater in the German premiere of Simon Stephen’s “Herons” or with actors from the Hanover Staatstheater in Tom Lanoye’s “Mamma Medea” – Nübling’s productions always appear unique and as though he has specially designed a mantle for the text. He is now an in-house director at Basel Theatre and, together with Muriel Gerster and Lars Wittershagen, firmly involved in the management. But, at the same time, he also produces in Hanover, Stuttgart and at the Munich Kammerspiele.
Sebastian Nübling works on a form of theatre that works as an institution for physical rights. “I am interested in what happens to people in times of transition. What motivates them and how they explode physically and linguistically when the system in which they have functioned so far is suddenly becomes ineffective,” is how he himself summarises his work as a director.
The question is really whether Sebastian Nübling is going to take charge of a theatre himself one day. For the time being, he is living rather “more independently” again, since there has been a change of artistic management in Basel and he is no longer an assistant director there. He continues to work at the Munich Kammerspiele, where he directed the first production of Händl Klaus's “Dark Inviting World” during the 2005/2006 season, succeeding with a light, agile realisation of a play that Händl has described as a sarcastically comic dance circling round a severed toe.
2006 was Nübling’s most successful year yet: his Händl premiere got him invited once again to both the Berliner Theatertreffen and the Mülheim Theatertage and, in his last Basel production, he combined Purcell’s "Dido and Aenaes" and Christopher Marlowe’s "Dido, Queen of Carthage" to create an evening of mixed-genre performance. This was his first move into the world of opera directing. At the beginning of the 2006/2007, season Nübling then joined the ranks of those who direct both opera and theatre with his production of Bizet’s "Carmen" at the Staatsoper Stuttgart.
