Thomas Ostermeier
After studying direction in Berlin in the 1980s, Thomas Ostermeier's name first appeared on the map when he was appointed artistic director of the Barracke at the Deutsches Theater, where he worked from 1996 to 1999. There, he directed plays by modern German and English-speaking playwrights, to great acclaim. In September 1999, aged 31, he became co-artistic director of the Schaubühne, where he continued his work as a discoverer of new texts. Marius von Mayenburg, Lars Norén, Sarah Kane, Jon Fosse, and Caryl Churchill joined Georg Büchner, Bertolt Brecht, Henrik Ibsen, Frank Wedekind, and William Shakespeare in the repertory of the theatre. Classic or modern, those texts are always reinterpreted and integrated to the reality of post-reunification Germany and of an officially-united Europe. Yet those plays, like the German and European states, remain splintered, echoing the reality of a world in which conflicts are multiplying and barbarism hasn't disappeared. Thomas Ostermeier's engaged, living, critical, and generous theatre is just as concerned with the role of the individual within society as with great timeless questions.
