Views, Positions, Legacies: Interviews with German and British Theatre Artists, 1985-2007

The proposed book collects 24 interviews that I conducted with German and British theatre artists over the period of 20 years. The first set of interviews focuses on British actors, directors and dramatists involved with Plays about Famous Artists. That section complements the material discussed in my book with CSP, Biographical Plays about Famous Artists. The second set of interviews focuses on German actors and directors involved with boulevard comedy theatre. That section complements the material discussed in my book with CSP, Boulevard Comedy Theatre in Germany. Interviews with two British theatre artists feature in the interviews in Part III: David Ian Rabey combines his job as a professor of Drama and Theatre at the University of Wales Aberystwyth with an active career as a theatre actor, director and dramatist. Mike Pearson is a performance practitioner and professor of Performance Studies in the same university department. The final part of the book provides a range of interviews both from the UK and from Germany, starting off with Sir Richard Eyre’s account of his seminal production of Hamlet at the Royal Court in 1980. German Director Heinz-Uwe Haus combines the legacy of Brecht (he trained with some of Brecht’s foremost disciples) and politics (Haus lived and worked in the former German Democratic Republic-the totalitarian regime’s repression influenced his everyday life and work considerably). Ursula Dinkgrafe, finally, represents both personal legacy and the numerous well-trained and highly capable and successful actors across the world who do not (want to) attain star-status.