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THE PERSIANS

DIMITER GOTSCHEFF was born in Bulgaria. He came to East Berlin in the 1960 s to study veterinary medicine. However, within a short time he became a pupil of, and assistant to director Benno Besson - first at the Deutsches Theater and later at the Volksbühne am Rosa-LuxemburgPlatz. Gotscheff made his directorial debut in Nordhausen with Heiner Müller's Die Weiberkomödie (Women's Comedy). In 1979 Dimiter Gotscheff left East Germany in connection with the expatriation of songwriter and dissident Wolf Biermann, and returned to Bulgaria. Since the mid-1980s he has worked at theatres throughout Germany and Austria. His stagings have frequently been invited to Berlin's Theatertreffen festival, including Black Battles with Dogs by Bernard-Marie Koltès, Chekhov's Ivanov (both Volksbühne productions), and Molière'sTartuffe (a co-production ofthe Salzburg Festival and Hamburg's Thalia Theater). Several of his stagings have been named "Production of the Year" by a jury of theatre critics and his Ivanov won the Bsat Innovation Prize at theTheatertreffen festival in 2006. Dimiter Gotscheff became one of the Deutsches Theater's in-house directors during the 2006/2007 season. Prior to The Persians he staged Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, GERMANIA. Plays based on texts by Heiner Müller, Ödön von Horvath's Tales from the Vienna Woods, and Ben Jonson’s Volpone. Showered with critical acclaim, his production of The Persians was chosen the best production of the Year 2007 by the critics' poll in the trade journal »Theater Heute« (Theatre Today). THE DEUTSCHES THEATER BERLIN - A PORTRAIT Its outstanding ensemble and magnificent directors have long been the trademarks ofthe Deutsches Theater (DT) in Berlin, Germany. Many consider the theatre, with its intimate auditorium and elegant, historical decor to be Berlin's most beautiful venue. Founded in 1883 by a group of wellknown actors, by the time the DT came under the direction ofthe legendary Max Reinhardt it had the reputation of being Germany's top stage, Reinhardt took over from Otto Brahm the practical founder of naturalistic theatre - in 1905 and remained the DT's artistic director until he fled Nazi Germany in 1933. Located in the heart of Berlin, the DT actually consists of two adjoining stages which share a common, classical facade. The main stage was built in 1850, originally for operettas. Today it has a seating capacity of 606, while the smaller »Kammerspiele«, established by Reinhardt in 1906 for modern plays, can hold 234 spectators. A combined repertory company of 40 actors performs a repertoire of 45 plays that change daily. Each season, the DT produces as many as 20 new productions. Under the direction of Bernd Wilms since 2001, the Deutsches Theater has been able to continue its grand tradition while simultaneously developing new approaches. In particular, the DT's four in-house directors Barbara Frey, Dimiter Gotscheff, Jürgen Gosch and Michael Thalheimer are trend setters in the world of theatre. German theatre critics named the DT »Theatre ofthe Year» in 2004. Jürgen Gosch's staging of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Michael Thalheimer's version of Aeschylus'The Oresteia and Gerhart Hauptmann's The Rats were invited to Berlin's »Theatertreffen«, an annual festival which features the year's best Ger-

Dimiter Gotscheff: (...) This piece is very importent to me. We worked extremely hard on it and spent weds doing intensive readings of Peter Witzmann and Heiner Muller's script until the language had Infiltrated our drains and oar guts. The text is extremely unwieldy : oat it was important to me to get by without using any devices - by that I mean those rlashy theatrical effects to which one resorts on occasion. For The Persians I onlywanted to work with the three basic constants in theatre: actors, language ana sauce. Interview with Der Freitag -May 11,2007

Director Dimiter Gotcheff took part in 20 Bitef 86 with his performance for the Schauspiel Köln, Germany, Heiner Müller Quartett. It was performed in the space of Bajloni Brewery, Skadarlija.

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