Nele Hertling

MARRANCA: Since some of our readers may not know about the Hebbel Theater, could you first place the theatre, which has an international reach, within the larger context of the Berlin theatre scene.

HERTLING: Yes, it is very international, and in that sense alone it is more or less singular in Germany. You know that German theatre is based on repertories, city-owned, state-owned, big companies belonging to a particular theatrical house. When we proposed to run the Hebbel, which was after Berlin had been chosen as the cultural capital of Europe in 1988, this building had just been restored the year before and the city gave us this house to use as a site for the cultural capital. Even though this building is a very traditional building, we tried to present all sorts of contemporary performing arts just to demonstrate that even in a traditional building it is possible to present contemporary art forms in theatre, dance, music.

So we proposed then at the end of 1988 to go on using the house for international theatrical projects and to run it on a completely different structure, based on a very small crew of highly professional people doing the work here--office workers, public relations staff, etc.--but having no company, no technicians, nothing whatsoever as in a big company, but moving people project-wise. For each project we hire a project group--sometimes the same people--which is completely different from any other German theatre. This enables us to be open to all sorts of projects--producing, co-producing, inviting, going on tour, because we don't have that heavy body to keep us on the ground which other theatres have. So we started in early 1989 when there were more traditional theatres in Berlin than now. We now add something to the city that is indeed different and which is open and really international, and does not have any problem with foreign languages and that is mixing up forms--dance, music, literature, architecture, everything which is open to all that is developing in the contemporary arts--and so far that hasn't changed in our ten years of existence.

MARRANCA: One of the things we have noticed in the German theatre in over two decades of going to the bigger theatres is that the repertoires are usually fixed and rooted in the classics. One doesn't get to see a lot of contemporary new work in any language. It is always a breath of fresh air to come to the Hebbel and see a much wider range of theatrical and performative styles. Even as recently as ten years ago in Berlin there was so little of any sort of performance art and alternative traditions. Did you have a difficult time getting audiences at the start, and how about the press?

HERTLING: In the beginning it was quite difficult. You have to imagine that we opened in January 1989 before the fall of the Wall and nobody at that time could imagine what was to happen later that year. Our theatre was situated at the far end of West Berlin near the Wall, with hardly anybody in the streets and no one knew anything about what was on the other side of the Wall. We started here with something unknown, and many names that are now very familiar in Germany but were then unknown were first presented here. They include very famous names such as Tadeusz Kantor, who had never been to Berlin before, and the larger audience had no idea who he was. So we opened the house with him, with Jan Fabre, etc., unknown names at that time for Berlin audiences, and so it was very hard work to get audiences. We put an enormously high percentage of our budget working to obtain an audience and to inform the city about the idea of the Hebbel Theater, the artists we were presenting...