Lilienthal’s commitment to the Volksbühne is good for Berlin and the theater world

Even if it is no longer a surprise: Matthias Lilienthal, once dramaturge on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, becomes director of the Volksbühne. The 65-year-old receives a five-year contract and competes at the 2026/27 season.

He doesn’t do it alone. Florentina Holzinger, who kept the battered house alive with her radical creations, forms the so -called Artistic Board together with the Cape Verdish choreographer Marlene Montero Freitas. And will certainly have violent influence on the quality and orientation of the Volksbühne. This is the second good news: the dance should take a large room, at least a third of the game plan.

The dance becomes more important

There were thirty applications that numerous candidates were dealt with, says Chialo. Finally, the advisory committee, to which theater makers Milo Rau and Kai Voges and the director Beate Heine belonged, unanimously spoke out for Matthias Lilienthal. Already last summer there were discussions about a three -year interim intent. This nonsensical idea was soon given up.

Because the Volksbühne needs security, after all the disasters since Frank Castorf’s departure. But it also needs something else: the Volksbühne is “the most beautiful theater in the world,” explains Lilienthal. You always have to find the “exceptional situation”. He promises his artists a “freedom that also includes failure” – and “that we have fun with each other.”

The choice of Lilienthal is as sensible as it is brave. It does not fit into the common gender pattern. And yet: the festivals he curated, from the theater of the world to performing exiles, stand for diversity and internationality.

And he knows the Volksbühne. He was a maker and thinker of the big Castorf years. He left this theater over 25 years ago when it was at the peak. Lilienthal then founded the Hebbel on the shore, the house that he had successfully led. Later he was the director of the Munich chamber games, maybe his most difficult time. Munich was never really his city.

Lilienthal is Berlin. The chamber games left him a dent, a longing for an adventure playground. He is, today, he says, today, other than in 1998, when he amazed many observers with his departure.

It is obviously fun to lead a theater and “reinvent himself again with a young generation” – which Florentina Holzinger is about the most beautiful in Viennese. The directorate of the director did not want to stand up.

He is a Berliner

Lilienthal is back. He was never gone. Berlin, his birthplace, he always has in his luggage. If it succeeds in combining tradition and future, the Volksbühne could actually be again tone again, one day. Experience does not harm. And Lilienthal is not an artist. Also good. He can devote himself to the house.

He briefly comments on the game plan. So much: Stefan Kaegi is supposed to set up an East German Parliament in the Volksbühne that processes the association’s mistakes. And with the Polish director Lukasz Twarkowski, Eastern European topics come, perhaps a Dostojewski series, like at Castorf. The topic of Russia is burning.

In its best times, the full-time stage represented a forum of the east, an intelligent, open and unideological east-west connection. Lilienthal wants to play the city, like at Hau, when he developed the “X apartments” series that was launched across Europe.

He will have a lot of problems. The Senate also shortens the budget at the Volksbühne. There are reserves, but now the renovated Prater is finally to be played again, and a new directorate always costs a little more. But like Florentina Holzinger says: “Let’s fuck it up!”

There was a pleasantly cool tone at the performance. Chialo has done something, and Lilienthal doesn’t really have to prove anything. If a rock was searched for in the surf, it was found. A very movable rock.