Greatest possible playfulness combined with the greatest possible clarity
Sebastian Nübling stages Marlowe's Edward II.
“I always regard the actors as being the focus of everything”, says the Swiss stage-director Sebastian Nübling. “The illusory power of the theatre functions only through them”. Nübling worked as an actor for eight years, experimenting with new subjects and new forms of presentation. Now as a stage-director he gives his actors the possibility to develop freely, whereby body language is an essential means of expression. He has a high regard for Frank Castorf but to a certain extent sees himself as a counterpole. “In my productions I like to combine the greatest possible playfulness with the greatest possible clarity.”
For a long time Nübling’s territory was the free acting scene. Now, however, major theatres and festivals are interested in Nübling the director, who meanwhile has been appointed resident stage-director at the theatre in Basle. In 2002 he was invited to show his Basle staging of Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman at the Berlin Theatre Meeting where he was voted young generation director of the year. His adaptation of Nanni Balestrini’s I Furiosi, first seen in Stuttgart, took the Vienna Festival by storm and at the Steirischer Herbst this year his staging of Händl Klaus’s wilde – der Mann mit den traurigen Augen was highly praised by the critics.
Of course Nübling is no longer one of the really young and wild directors. Even though his witty approach, the emotionality and boundless energy of his productions might suggest this. He is an educated man, born in 1960. During his youth he was interested in early music and studied the recorder, graduating with a diploma but while he was attending the course “Cultural Science and Aesthetic Practice” at the University of Hildesheim he discovered his passion for the theatre. Nübling founded a theatre with colleagues, the Theater Mahagoni which very soon established itself on the free theatre scene. For eight years he experimented with this group as an actor in his own collective system of acting. He then abandoned his career as an actor and became involved in the organisation of the festival Theater der Welt in Basel. It was there that the director of the Junges Theater Basel persuaded him to take on the staging of a play. She enticed him with Die Nächte der Schwestern Bronte by Susanne Schneider.
W.A. Mozart, La clemenza di Tito
He made his debut as stage-director with this play at the Junges Theater and very rapidly developed his own trademark which is characterised by energetic body theatre, an intelligent dramatic concept, mass scenes grippingly choreographed, and scenic fantasy. In a short space of time his stagings caused a stir, were invited as guest productions and were showered with awards. Companions and colleagues in this success are the designer Muriel Gerstner and the musician Lars Wittershagen who make up the team with which Nübling will stage Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II at this year’s Salzburg Festival.
Karin Kathrein
Christopher Marlowe
EDWARD II.
New production (performed in German)
Stage director Sebastian Nübling
Stage and costume design Muriel Gerstner
Lighting design Gérard Cleven
Music Lars Wittershagen
Dramaturge Judith Gerstenberg
Academic consultant Elisabeth Bronfen
Premiere 31 July 2004, 7.30 p.m.
Further performances
1 August, 7.30 p.m.
2 August, 7.30 p.m.
4 August, 7.30 p.m.
6 August, 7.30 p.m.
7 August, 7.30 p.m.
8 August, 7.30 p.m.
10 August, 7.30 p.m.
12 August, 7.30 p.m.
13 August, 7.30 p.m.
Perner-Insel, Hallein
Telephone +43 (0) 662 8045-500
Telefax +43 (0) 662 8045-555
E-mail: info@salzburgfestival.at
Production photos © Karl Forster