Tassilo candidates: String puller Lothar Bruns from Neubiberg – district of Munich

Sit down on the phone to win the Neuperlach rapper “Grosses K” for an appearance. Talk to the cultural office of the municipality about new ideas for the program. Directing the performance “The Robber Hotzenplotz and the Moon Rocket”. Find new venues. Lothar Bruns has been committed to culture in Neubiberg for many years, the list of his activities could be extended indefinitely. For the 73-year-old, it goes without saying that he gets involved where he lives. “I wanted to feel at home here too,” he says. All of this also broadens his horizons.

The cultural interest had been dormant in the native of Goslar for a long time – before graduating from high school he played in a cabaret group, later in Munich he visited cabaret stages such as “Heppel und Ettlich”. But it was only when the mathematician, who worked at Siemens, moved to Neubiberg with his family in 1996 – the children were eleven and 13 years old – did he find the time to get involved in cultural life, to contribute many ideas and finally to pull the strings . At the suggestion of his wife, he attended the cabaret course of the journalist Christof Stolle at the adult education center, which eventually formed a cabaret group. “At some point we got really good,” says Bruns.

So good that his former boss at Siemens asked him if he wanted to take part in a cabaret program by the Siemens theater group in Munich. “It was easy for my wife and I to get started,” he says. From then on they were part of the theater group, of which Bruns has been chairman since 2018. Together with the theater group Süd-Munich she forms the renowned amateur theater ensemble TGSM.

Communicative and always open to new things, Bruns grew more and more involved in the work in the theater ensemble. It has already performed with many adult and children’s plays, including in the auditorium of the Neubiberg elementary school, in the small theater in Haar and on various Munich stages. Bruns himself played in performances, for example in “What You Want” by Shakespeare or the fairy tale “The Frog Prince”. Since you always have a say, he thought he might try directing. In the meantime he has staged various plays, especially children’s performances such as “Sleeping Beauty”, “Rumpelstiltskin” and “The Robber Hotzenplotz and the Moon Rocket”.

What does he like about it? “When a piece is finished, you can also enjoy watching it,” he says. That’s especially nice with the performances for children: “They put their heart and soul into it, adults are much more reserved,” he says. In addition to children’s and adult theater, the ensemble has also had improvisational theater in its program for several years. Bruns enjoys it very much. “Because you can develop something new at the moment and because you learn to move on stage without being afraid,” he says.

In addition to playing and directing, Bruns also takes care of other venues. He was only just able to win the “Beccult” in Pöcking. The TGSM ensemble is now so good that it won the Amarena Prize of the Bund Deutscher Amateurtheater in 2022 for a digital production of scenes from Goethe’s Faust.

Bruns also uses his many contacts in other ways, which have also grown over his many years on the board of the Neubiberger SPD, which ended in 2015, and as the chairman of the environmental garden association. He talks to the right people, asks the right questions and just has a good sense of how to think of new things. In the early 2000s, for example, he arranged contact with the cultural office and was able to arrange for a jazz series to take place in Neubiberg with the master students of the gifted pianist Leonid Chizhik, who lives next door to him. “I have such a prominent neighbor, we have to work something out,” he thought.

Open detailed view

In his own words, he also works well with the current Neubiberg cultural office manager, Andrea Braun, and is always in exchange. At the beginning of 2016, it was quite easy for him to take over the organization of the twice-yearly cabaret series “Kultur an Gleis 3” in the local youth center. Bruns has already brought many very different people to the stage there – the SPD member of parliament and poetry slammer Carmen Wegge, a paper artist, two a cappella groups, a Syrian violinist and the cartoonist Dieter Hanitzsch, for example.

His resolution for the program: “It must not fit together, because otherwise it will be boring,” he says. He always enjoys discovering something new, even if he has to tremble every time whether it will work out. As with directing, Bruns sees each evening like this as a gift to himself. “You put a lot of time into it and then you can enjoy it,” he says.

In any case, Bruns still has a lot of ideas. The program for “Culture on Track 3” on March 11 has long been in place. Once again he has succeeded in winning exciting players. The rapper “Big K” will also be there.

We will present candidates for the Tassilo Culture Prize 2023 by mid-February. You can find all the nominees below sz.de/tassilo.