Renato Schuch

Henrik Ibsen's drama from 1882 in Ostermeier's vision since 2012. Dr. Stockmann discovers that the source of drinking and spa water is riddled with pathogenic micro-organisms, caused by industrial effluence. He wants to publish the findings in the newspaper and demands that the city council re-route the water pipes. Influential citizens and local journalists promise their support. However, his brother Peter, the mayor, raises some serious concerns: The economic prosperity of the spa town will be threatened. Suddenly the support for Stockman from the town's policymakers begins to wane. They spread seeds of doubt about his plans and try to cover up the fact of the contaminated water. But Stockmann insists on transparency and intends to go public on the matter. For him the affair has long since ceased to be about the polluted health spa, his target is society as a whole.

Sex is power, and Waseem, a Syrian gay-for-pay hustler seeking asylum in Cologne, wields it like a shield. Keeping his johns at an emotional arm’s length while satisfying their most carnal desires in order to eke out a living, he meets his match in Lars: a kind, affluent professional with a growing personal interest in Waseem. This gripping tale of transactional identity explores the tactical exchange of trust and intimacy in a partnership, and the divisions between immigrants and their host countries in contemporary Europe.

After her mother decided that the eighteen-year-old mentally disabled Dora no longer has to take psychotherapeutic drugs, the young woman begins to blossom. The sedated teenager was never a problem for her surroundings – but new challenges arise when the pleasure-loving young woman discovers her sexuality. The family is threatened to fall apart.

Charlie Meinhart lands on the bank in a Berlin park during his alcoholic search for happiness. Tired of homeless life in Germany, he makes his way to Biarritz in southwestern France on the Atlantic. Through this heavenly and, above all, sport-loving patch of earth, he suddenly starts to do sports himself. With the other homeless in tow, he becomes a sports freak. But can his new motto - no money, no home, just sport and wine - also help him find his happiness?

Felicitas Woll lives through the ups and downs of a relationship: Eva and Luis exchanged only a fleeting glance in hot summer Lisbon and knew - this is the real love! They threw themselves headlong into a passionate liaison, got married and had their first child. Everything was perfect. But now the two are on their way to the divorce lawyer. The big feelings have long since expired - at least that's how it seems ...

After the death of her father Georg Inga Hauck drives together with her son Max in their home village. In her old home she meets Anna Kertesz. Inga's parents had taken Anna 28 years ago after her adult brother Zoltan mysteriously disappeared. Since the same day also Ingas was missing then six-year-old brother Magnus. Inga is being overtaken by her past in her parents' house. Soon her nerves are bare. And every day her memories come back.

Bella Figura is a play where the stage direction "flottement" (a suspension, indeterminacy, or oscillation) occurs frequently, indicating a moment of silence when the characters and audience are left in ambiguous tension. The playwright Yasmina Reza wrote Bella Figura specifically for the Schaubühne director Thomas Ostermeier, and I imagine that she included these floating silences with him in mind.