Michael Thalheimer (born 28 May 1965) is a German theatre director.
Life Born in Münster, Hesse, Thalheimer studied from 1985 to 1989 at the Bern School of Acting, now integrated into the University of the Arts Bern. As an actor, he was engaged at many German-speaking theatres, including in Bern, Mainz, Bremerhaven and Chemnitz.
In 1997, he presented his first production at the Theater Chemnitz: Fernando Arrabal's The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria. Since his work at the theatre in Chemnitz, he has worked with the set designer Olaf Altmann as a permanent collaborator. Many productions followed at renowned theatres such as the Theater Freiburg, the Theater Basel, the , the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, the Deutsches Theater Berlin and the Schaubühne of Berlin.Michael Thalheimer on Operabase
In 2005, Thalheimer made his debut as an opera director with Leoš Janáček's Káťa Kabanová at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, followed in December of the same year by an interpretation of Verdi's Rigoletto.
At Hamburg's Thalia Theater in particular, Thalheimer acquired an reputation as a theatre director with productions of Schiller's Kabale und Liebe, Schnitzler's Liebelei and other classics. He is able to reduce even the most difficult material to its basic content and transport it emotionally and mentally. As a perfectionist, Thalheimer attaches importance to the facial expressions and gestures of his actors, who sometimes fill minutes of wordless phases, which are then replaced by a flood of text recited in paragraphs and performed in staccato.
After many successful years at Hamburg's Thalia Theater, Thalheimer shifted his work more and more to the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. After he had achieved the greatest success there in years with his two productions of Goethe's Faust I and Faust II, which were acclaimed by critics and audiences alike, he was head director from 2005 to 2008.Michael Thalheimer on the website of the Théâtre national de la Colline
His production of Dea Loher's play Innocence became the subject of a protest action in spring 2012.Der Freitag, retrieved 28 October 2020
Berliner Theatertreffen Liliom (Ferenc Molnár) at the Thalia Theater Hamburg, 2000 Festen (after the film by Thomas Vinterberg) at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, 2000 Liebelei (Arthur Schnitzler) at the Thalia Theater Hamburg, 2001 Lulu (Frank Wedekind) at the Thalia Theater Hamburg, 2005 Oresteia (Aeschylus) at the Deutschen Theater Berlin, 2007 Die Ratten (Gerhart Hauptmann) at the Deutschen Theater Berlin, 2007 Medea (Euripides) at the Schauspiel Frankfurt, 2013
Theatre (as director) Schauspiel Frankfurt: 2012: Medea by Euripides 2013: Kleiner Mann, was nun? by Hans Fallada 2014: Nora by Henrik Ibsen 2015: Penthesilea by Heinrich von Kleist
Burgtheater / Akademietheater: 2010: Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe by Bertolt Brecht 2012: Elektra by Hugo von Hofmannsthal 2014: by Friedrich Hebbel 2014: Die Schutzbefohlenen by Elfriede Jelinek 2017: The Persians by Aeschylus Ronald Pohl: „Die Perser“: Theaterschlachthaus im antiken CNN-Büro. In derstandard.at, 21 May 2017, retrieved 28 October 2020.
Awards 2001: im Rahmen des Berliner Theatertreffen for Liliom, Thalia Theater Hamburg (with Olaf Altmann) for Emilia Galotti, Deutsches Theater Berlin Nestroy Theatre Prize for Emilia Galotti, Deutsches Theater Berlin Friedrich-Luft-Preis for Faust. Der Tragödie Erster Teil, Deutsches Theater Berlin Nestroy Theatre Prize for Elektra, Burgtheater Wien
References
Further reading Hans-Dieter Schütt (ed.): Michael Thalheimer. Porträt eines Regisseurs.Michael Thalheimer: Porträt eines Regisseurs on GoogleBooks Verlag Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2017, .
External links
Michael Thalheimer: 50 Regisseure im deutschsprachigen Theater. Website of the Goethe-Institut