ABSTRACT
Thomas Ostermeier has arrived at a set of core principles that underpin his Regie work. Regie is the communication with the playtext, with the Stoff, with the space, and with the actors and their possibilities. It is the communication between all these diverse elements, and out of this interplay something new will emerge, which neither the one part nor the other part is able to know beforehand. The experience of reading the play and conducting further research can only be a first step of the director's communication with the play. Staging a play means translating literature into a dramatic process that happens in the here and now. A dramatic situation therefore articulates and embodies, in an exemplary way, some fundamental conflict in our society. In a dramatic situation, personal intentions and societal pressures and contradictions are therefore closely interlocked: a character never acts out of a single motivation, but is driven by a multi-faceted motive.
