Michael Thalheimer
German director Michael Thalheimer is a radical reductionist who pares classic works to their essence, stripping them of all excess language, gesture, and historical context. The double invitation to the 2001 Berliner Theatertreffen (with Molnár’s Liliom and Vinterberg’s The Celebration) attested of his reputation as one of the most aesthetically unique directors in the German-speaking world. Thalheimer revealed the entire repertoire of this specific way of reading classics for the first time in his Liliom production at Hamburg’s Thalia Theater in 2000 – after exciting approaches that could be seen in his early work in Chemnitz, Basel, Freiburg, Leipzig and Dresden. Since Liliom Thalheimer has tried out his reductionist methods at several theaters and on many other plays. At Hamburg’s Thalia Theater, to which he feels particularly close, Schiller’s Cabal and Love, Schnitzler’s Playing with Love and, in 2004, Wedekind’s Lulu have been produced. Lessing’s Emilia Galotti presented at the Deutsches Theater Berlin (2001) has become a “cult production”. The now 40-year-old director, who has received various awards for his work - in 2001 Thalheimer was awarded the 3sat Innovation Prize at the Berliner Theatertreffen, in 2002 the Viennese Nestroy Prize and the Berlin Friedrich Luft Prize - has been invited with Emilia Galotti to theaters and festivals in Rome, Prague, Bogóta, Moscow, and Tokyo.