An Enemy of the People as a “Trojan Horse”: Frank Castorf Stages Ibsen in the German Democratic Republic 1988

While Castorf’s staging of Ibsen’s Nora in Anklam in 1985 can be viewed as the highlight of his early work period, his production of An Enemy of the People certainly marks a turning point in his biography: after that, he becomes a theater director producing for the most famous stages of the East (Deutsches Theater, Berlin) and of the West (Schauspiel Köln, Münchner Kammerspiele, Theater Basel).2