Professions and Education

Were theater and family generally incompatible, there would be no stage dynasties. Neither the Thalbachs, Minettis and Langhoffs, nor the Steckels, Khuons and Rudolphs. But how do individuals today combine in practice life with children and life for art? For it still is a question of individuals.

Julia Lochte is head dramaturge and currently one of the interim triumvirate of the Munich Kammerspiele. Together with her husband, Matthias Günther, also a dramaturge there, she has three children, eight, nine and sixteen years of age. “So”, says Lochte confidently, “you live very differently and have even an advantage, because family is a favorite theme of the theater”.

In 1995 when Lochte applied at the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, a wave of scepticism swashed towards her in the form of the question whether she, as a mother, could engage with her work 150 per cent. “We refuted this scepticism”, she says, “with our everyday life”. “Everyday life” à la Lochte means “to draw strength for the theater from the family and for the family from the theater”, but to keep both strictly separate. For this, without relatives in the vicinity, you need qualified helpers, who cost money. And time for yourself? Better if you don’t need it.

The couple, which shares family work, has lived in Munich since autumn 2006. Previously they lived and worked in Basel for eight years. The forty-four year-old knows: “Not having to move for such long intervals in this fast- moving profession is rare and worth many a sacrifice.” Lochte also knows from experience that the realities of life faced by people in the theater have also gradually changed the theater: would it have been conceivable twenty years ago to have made rehearsals between Christmas and New Year’s taboo?

A heart for breaks in the biography

Sebastian Nübling is the father of three teenagers and doesn’t work between the years. The Nübling household near Basel is classically ruled by his wife, since he, as a freelance director, can come home for many months of the year only on weekends. But then without fail. Nübling, born in 1960, sees the image of the stage artist changing: the ostensibly single, mainly male, somber and hard-drinking director of the 1980s is passé. Now, according to Nübling, the focus falls on the individual actor and the breaks in his biography. The understanding that children are an important part of this is constantly growing.

That has also been the experience of Brigitte Hobmeier, who had just become pregnant when Frank Baumbauer brought her to the Munich Kammerspiele. “From a strictly legal point of view, I wasn’t obliged to tell him that”, she says, “but I wanted to be taken along with everything that would make up my future life”. Bambauer took all of her and received in return a unconditional colleague who says of herself: “If I say ‘yes’ to something, then I’m all dedication”. And that she has to be because the professional discipline of an actress is particularly hard: “The idea of not performing because the child is ill just won’t do!”

The thirty-three year-old is currently rehearsing with Thomas Ostermeier in Berlin. Otherwise, she has taken a break this season so that the father of their four-year old son, a writer, can get a chance to work again professionally. The equilibrium of a family organized on the basis of partnership has to be balanced out again and again. And the people around them are part of the balancing act: for instance, in the form of annoyed looks when Hobmeier, after returning from her short parental leave, now regularly goes to pump milk during rehearsals. And recently a dresser, referring to Hobmeier’s working trip to Berlin, said to her: “You’re not going to leave your family in the lurch, are you?” Even the current main breadwinner feels it repeatedly: “The accusation of being a wild dog who only wants to live it up”. Sometimes, says Hobmeier, it requires an effort “not to become furious”.

Not so rosy

Younger women at the beginning of the experiment in compatibility see reality as far less rosy than do those already established – despite consistently committed partners and eager grandparents. Friederike Heller and Patrick Wengenroth can rely on three sets of grandparents for care “backup” of their two and three year-old children. Two of the three live in Berlin, where the couple currently has their family and artistic home base. Since the theater season’s start, Heller has been engaged as a dramaturge with commissions to direct at the Schaubühne. This too is an experiment, one that nearly came to grief before it started because she made it a condition that she be able to see her children on one or two afternoons a week. The interviewers called in the next round of candidates.

With refreshing outspokenness, but without frustration, Heller speaks of “logistics madness”, which today at all events has become more small-scale than at the time she and her husband were alternately traveling to various cities as freelance directors. She talks of questioning looks, but also of curious questions from colleagues, and the fact that from time to time she let her kids run round the theater, which in itself answered many a question. “I’d no longer pass up giving meaning to my life outside the theater”, she says, “because it cushions professional up and downs wonderfully”. As, too, for example, Sebastian Nübling, who describes his first big successes as a director as “exhilarating” – and the contact with “normality” at home as important: “This balancing act between two poles was good for me”. “No, there’s no risk here of leading a monotonous life”, says as Julia Lochte. “Thank God I have my child!” says Brigitte Hobmeier. “A life that revolves only around work is unhealthy!”