Presenter Interview プレゼンターインタビュー
35年にわたり現代劇作家を育成
ミュルハイム劇作家フェスティバル
Germany
Nurturing contemporary playwrights for 35 years The Mülheim Theatertage festival
Mr. Udo Balzer-Reher
(Director of Mülheimer Theatertage “Stücke”)
Ms. Stephanie Steinberg
(Publicist of Mülheimer Theatertage “Stücke”)
Mülheimer Theatertage “Stücke” is a theater festival held in the city of Mülheim in Germany’s Nordrhein-Westfalen state. Launched in 1976, the festival is now in its 35th holding. For each festival, seven or eight new German-language plays that premiered the previous year are invited and the Mülheim Dramatists Prize is awarded to the play judged most outstanding. Winners of this prize to date have included leading avant-garde German-language writers such as Heiner Müller for the 1977 play Hamletmachine (1979 prize), Elfriede Jelinek (2002, 2004, 2009 prizes), the Nobel Literature Prize winner and author of The Piano Player , on which the Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix winning film The Pianist was based, and the pioneers of documentary theater, and Rimini Protokoll’s Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel (2007 prize). In this interview we speak with the festival’s director since 1992, Udo Balzer-Reher, and its publicist, Stephanie Steinberg, about its programs and philosophy. (Interviewer: Akiko Yamashita; date: Nov. 4, 2010, in Mülheim)