It has been a long time since the beginning of an artistic directorship was expected with such great excitement. With René Pollesch’s takeover of the Berliner Volksbühne, nothing less than the question of whether the director can reanimate what was once the most popular theater in the country. For four years, since the end of Frank Castorf’s anarcho directorship, the theater bunker on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz has been dragging itself from crisis to disaster to defeat. Castorf’s successor, the curator Chris Dercon, appointed by the long-forgotten Secretary of State for Culture Tim Renner, provoked an entertaining culture war, but failed after a few months due to an astonishing mixture of conceit and ignorance and a very thin game plan. His successor, the theater manager Klaus Dörr, showed a less exciting program on stage and a tight management style towards the workforce. After allegations of sexual assault, he had to end his interim term prematurely.