Matinée/Bettina Böttinger meets Andrea Breth
"For me, directing begins with reading; directing begins with a journey between the lines, a journey to the ends of the sentences." This journey to the ends of the sentences began in the mid-eighties at the Schauspielhaus Bochum, between lines by Julien Green and Alan Ayckbourn. The way in which she let her actors entangle themselves in loose ends of sentences has become legendary, setting them snares and throwing out safety ropes, then in the end slackening the wires, ropes and threads so as to allow the helplessly caught-up figures to stumble free into a dreadfully chill freedom. Most recently she has been reading between the lines of Lessing and Schiller. Maria Stuart and Emilia Galotti show in practice what Andrea Breth once summed up in the expression, "Theatre is conflict", going on to say, "The first conflict is with the text, acknowledging the admissibility of questions, experiencing failure and the pleasure of discovery". The relationship of the information given by the director to the work itself is similar to that between finished pieces and the material from which they have been crafted, they remain alive by virtue of their affinity to conflict. It is as though she were showing us, telling us, asking us, where else but in the shadow of conflicts could one hope to tell of both love and fear, of renunciation and loss and of an open approach to all these pressures. Her works are a realm for observation. It is in this sense of being a diviner of inner motivations that she has tackled and radicalised the classics by using the means of the romanticists.
The RuhrTriennale is providing the opportunity to gain an insight into the work of an exceptional director, presenting her current Creation Nächte unter Tage, two productions from the Burgtheater Wien, Theatre on Film and a matinee.