“We were consistentists”: Claus Peymann on Thomas Bernhard, the “Notlicht scandal” in Salzburg in 1972 – and theater that moved the world.
Claus Peymann is back, in all immodesty. In 2019 he was so ill that one had to worry. But the 84-year-old seems to have recovered well from that. At the Stadttheater Ingolstadt he recently staged “Die Nashörner”, Ionesco’s classic of the absurd, interpreted as an astute commentary on the present. We meet in a small meeting room in the house, where Peymann is sprawled casually, tall and gaunt, dressed entirely in black, on a sofa. He’s wide awake, in a very good mood and as big a mouth as ever. After stints at the Staatstheater Stuttgart and the Schauspielhaus Bochum, Peymann was director at the Burgtheater in Vienna before taking over the Berliner Ensemble for 18 years in 1999. He wrote theater history with the plays by Thomas Bernhard. Also scandal story.