‘We need a challenge to disturb ourselves’

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“When you tour with a production like this, it provides insight into the political discourse of a country. We bring a film team and you can go on the website and see how audiences across the world have responded,” says Ostermeier, “As for the actors, we need a challenge where we disturb ourselves. The interaction is a moment of aesthetic anarchy and we don’t know what will happen next and this gives us a thrill.”

Ostermeier had little respect for status quo even when he was made artistic director of Berlin Schaubühne at the age of 31. Schaubühne, which brought An Enemy of the People, is among the most reputed companies in Germany and, possibly, the world, with legendary Peter Stein as a former director. “I was very radical and arrogant. In every microphone which was given to me, I said we will change the theatre world,” recalls Ostermeier. While most German theatre re-interpreted the classics, Schaubühne began to work on contemporary writing. “I didn’t do German classics and I still don’t touch most of them. We had a difficult time initially because the audience was between 55 and 70, they were shocked because they didn’t like what they saw and the theatre was empty. Then, step by step, we built up our audience of international people,” he says. Today, the Schaubühne foyer is said to buzz with languages from around the world as the students, academics and artistes, who have made Berlin home, catch sub-titled shows.

Even in An Enemy of the People, Ostermeier maintains a youthful mood. Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s Dr Stockmann becomes, in this version, a young scientist who plays in a band and lives in an upmarket house with a young wife and a baby. “In Berlin and every city of the world, there is a new group of people called hipsters — people who pretend to be politically concerned and enlightened but, when it comes to political action or political change, they are pretty weak and pretty cowards,” says the director. Ostermeier himself is hard to stare down and not only because he looms at 6 ft 4 in. When the director, who is also an actor, speaks, he conveys iron conviction with his eyes. “I was a part of the radical left when I was younger though now, besides my theatre, I am not active anymore in politics,” he says.

Growing up in a poor family in Bavaria, Ostermeier remembers feeling constantly angry — with the political situation in Germany, the society he was living in and his “special family situation”. “I come from a conservative background, which was very Catholic, very patriarchal and very violent. I wanted to escape so I was into music a lot and played in a lot of bands. I did theatre and it happened by chance that I became director. Basically,

I was looking for a stage to get rid of anger,” he says.