Frank Raddatz, ed. Republik Castorf. Berlin: Alexander Verlag, 2016. 360 pages. Dorte Lena Eilers, Thomas Irmer, and Harald Müller, eds. Frank Castorf. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2016. 184 pages.

Summary

To anyone outside the closely knit worlds of theater and cultural politics, the ongoing conflict about the directorial change at the Volksbühne Berlin may seem a little exaggerated. Like a storm in a teacup or like one big fuss, the affair seems all the more incomprehensible because the change in question will take place only after an unprecedented twenty-six years, during which the Volksbühne, also known as Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, remained under the reign of Frank Castorf, who, after an already controversial career in pre-unified Germany (both East and West), had been installed as the theater's new head in 1992.

It is worth noting that the two books, which commemorate the past twenty-six years at the Volksbühne, have their focus clearly on Castorf and his dual function as the theater's artistic director and stage director. The title of the first, Republik Castorf (2016), published by Alexander Verlag in Berlin, suggests that the Volksbühne should be regarded as a state of its own, with Castorf as its ruler, while the second, Frank Castorf (2016), by the equally renowned publishing house Theater der Zeit, presents the Volksbühne as Castorf's chef d’oeuvre, with other directors, curators, artistic staff, and dramatic advisers as a supporting cast.

This perspective, although it will offend some, is not entirely removed from the realities of the Volksbühne. The theater on the north side of Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz has never been a democratic institution—neither in its early years, when it played an important role in the political wars of prefascist Berlin, nor in the cultural wars that marked the first twenty or so years after German reunification. Nowhere in the interviews collected by Frank Raddatz for Republik Castorf is it suggested that Castorf should be regarded as a democratic ruler or a director who encouraged the ideal of equal footing or collaborative work. Instead, the recurrent metaphor is that of the more or less benevolent dictatorship (dramatic adviser Carl Hegemann even calls Castorf a “Stalinist”), combined with an artistic egocentrism and a pronounced lack of interest in the administrative or organizational aspects of theater management.