Even during his lifetime, Peter Zadek was a legend. Also and precisely because many of his productions often deeply divided audiences and critics. His Hamburg "Lulu", perhaps his most famous production today, even caused a real theater scandal. The director was born in Berlin on May 19, 1926, ie 90 years ago.
Your own theater company - a childhood dream
Peter Zadek called his first autobiography "My way" - and he always went his own way, rarely straight ahead, often with surprising twists and turns. The dramaturg Hermann Beil, a long-time companion, once put it this way:"I find that so sympathetic about him, that he doesn't stick stubbornly to one line, but rather curves, wavy lines, he takes turns - and in that respect he is always curious."
In 2005, four years before his death, Zadek fulfilled a childhood dream. Together with Tom Stromberg he created his own theater company, which, of course, "My way productions". The works of Shakespeare, which were so central to him throughout his life, were to be played. And that from actors from the "Zadek family" that has grown over decades - such as Eva Mattes, Uwe Bohm, Susanne Lothar and Angela Winkler.
Peter Zadek could remain silent for days during rehearsals
The relationship with his actors was central to Peter Zadek. During rehearsals, he often just let them play for days - and drove them to despair because he didn't comment, but simply waited and observed. Gert Voss, who has also died in the meantime, described Zadek's method as follows:"There's an awful lot of lies in the theatre, so in acting too, and he got us actors to reveal ourselves instead of disguising. And with the whole person."
Theater scandals "Othello" and "Lulu"
Ulrich Wildgruber and Eva Mattes during a theater rehearsal of "Othello" in 1976. This production was also considered scandalous.Yes, it took a lot of courage or self-will to reveal yourself like that. But if that succeeded, great theater was created. Like "Othello" in 1976 at the Hamburger Schauspielhaus, with Eva Mattes and Ulrich Wildgruber. The black-painted colossus Wildgruber raced across the stage - and the theater scandal was perfect:"A gravedigger of the theater. The capitulation to people is this idea, simply horrible. An abuse of Shakespeare, an abuse of the actors, it sucks," according to the press.
Twelve years later, again at the Hamburger Schauspielhaus:"Lulu" with Susanne Lothar. The next scandal. In those years, Peter Zadek was also director of the largest German spoken theater, but administrative work was not his thing. From 1989 he worked only as a freelance director. "My talent is definitely working with people in the theater and from the people, from the mixture, from what people bring to the topic or the play or the film in terms of imagination and what I get to then formulate it" , he described his work himself.
"World Theater" from Bremen
At the same time, Zadek considered himself a shy, tense person. He once confessed that he didn't know exactly why he decided to go to the theater. He brought out his first productions in England. He had emigrated there with his parents in 1933. "The directing work I did in England was always in quite a comical discord with English audiences," he recalled. "But not the kind of discord that arises here, but in England I was simply a German."
Zadek takes the theater into a new era
At the end of the 1950s, Peter Zadek returned to Germany and in 1962 he went to Bremen with Kurt Hübner. That's where "Welttheater" was created, says Claus Peymann, who comes from Bremen and had a youth subscription to the theater at the time:"That was the dawn of a new era. German theater caught up with international theatre. The post-war Biedermeier era , from the people who somehow got involved with the Nazis, was over with a bang."
Here, too, Zadek staged Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure", an equally legendary performance. In Shakespeare the director found everything that made his theater special. Beauty and wildness, horror, obscenity and grace. Peter Zadek died in Hamburg on July 30, 2009 after a long illness.