Thomas Ostermeier: "95% of today's theater makes me sick."

BarcelonaA generation of Catalan theatergoers has grown up with director Thomas Ostermeier (Soltau, 1968). Àlex Rigola began bringing him to Barcelona when he was running the Teatre Lliure as one of his references for staging radically contemporary classics that, at the same time, maintained the essence of the text. Throughout this time, the Temporada Alta festival has programmed some of its shows and the 34th edition of the festival kicks off this weekend at the Teatre Municipal de Girona with its Hamlet, which was already seen in the Fabià Puigserver hall of the Lliure two nights in December 2008, a few months after the German premiere. The show's run in Barcelona had the curious fact that one of the actors fell ill at the last minute and Ostermeier himself had to play the role of Horacio, with the script in his hand, shirtless, on his knees and wrapped in plastic.

"This Hamlet "It is one of the benchmark shows of the early 21st century," says the director of Temporada Alta, Narcís Puig, who had been fighting for some time to bring this show to the festival, which continues to star the sensational Lars Eidinger. "I'm a little surprised that people say it's a relevant piece of European theatre, because I'm very much into the old, because I'm very much into the old, going very deep into the text and its meaning," says Ostermeier. "It was my second Shakespeare," he adds, "after A Midsummer Night's DreamShakespeare is an author for me because his beauty is that there is never a message, but rather a gaze into the abyss of the human condition. And as the story progresses, especially today, this is more and more relevant, the tragedy of humanity is more and more evident."

Over these seventeen years, the show has evolved. "I've made many changes to the scenes, and Lars keeps changing them without my permission, so the show has too. Hamlet by Lars Eidinger because he says he wants to do it until he dies. We've already done nearly 500 performances and the role is imprinted on his body and soul," explains the director. The creation process wasn't easy: he remembers that some of the performers were angry because he cut a lot of their text when he decided to shorten the show from six to four hours, and that he was very surprised by what he thinks "is what he thinks." It wouldn't last more than two years. But he has realized that time has proven him right in his approach: "I have the feeling that the world is getting closer to my vision. We are returning to the time of Shakespeare, because that was when, in a way, the first great victory of capitalism occurred," he says. "It was the beginning of colonialism, trade grew enormously, and then there was the tragic defeat of the Spanish Armada, which marked the beginning of history. Let us remember this time as an incredibly prosperous time, but at the same time it was a time of terrible violence and religious, ethical and ethnic conflicts." Thus, he portrays Hamlet as "a spoiled child", a character within "the rotten society of the kingdom of Denmark", he warns. And he introduces some touches ofslapstick.

The requirement of not boring the audience

Ostermeier lets slip that, seventeen years later, he has become much more "conservative." "I love being a bourgeois and conservative artist. Why shouldn't I be that way? It's what we all want to achieve. Don't make me feel bad about it," he emphasizes. What he misses about today's theater is that young people put their "voice" first instead of being too focused on what their predecessors did. And the continued proliferation of "clichés." "Ninety-five percent of what we see in the theater makes me sick," Ostermeier laments. "What's the big mistake? Billy Wilder said that rule number one is not to bore the audience. But how? Theater is probably the most boring art form we can imagine, including my shows. But it's also the most sincere art form, or at least the art form that's closest to life."