This loss is difficult to put into words. On Thursday last week, November 10th, one of the most wonderful, warmest and smartest, yet most humble people who ever worked in the German theater died. Uwe Bertram is dead, cancer has defeated him. That is infinitely sad.
In 2003 he took over the management of the Wasserburg Theater, turning the small but lovingly supported theater into a gem of theatrical art, proving that wonderful art can be created outside of the big cities. He proved this as an imaginative director, as an animator for young people, as a keeper of the house, as the inventor of his own festival. And if it should be, also as an actor. He learned that at the Ernst Busch School, Rostock branch, in the last days of the GDR.
Uwe Bertram was born in Magdeburg in 1962, trained as a locksmith, then as a lighting technician, then as an actor. He knew how to make theater. And he played in many houses, starting in Rostock, ending up at the Munich Residenztheater (then “Staatsschauspiel”), played under Andrea Breth at the Salzburg Festival and the Ruhrtriennale, went to Frankfurt with Elisabeth Schweeger and returned to Bavaria to pursue his dream to be fulfilled by the big picture. The management of one’s own house. And he succeeded in doing so in an inimitably grandiose way.
Bertram staged the Tom Waits/Robert Wilson trilogy (including “Black Rider”), told Chekhov’s “Cherry Orchard” in a GDR gazebo, whether Büchner, Kafka, Fallada or Shakespeare, he was always interested in the (injured) person at the center. He had unbelievable apparatus built, into which he conjured up his very own idea of a political, poetic, humanly touching theatre. He got involved, was represented on juries. And he gathered a (young) team around him at Belacqua, that is, at the Wasserburg Theater, hopefully they will continue. But it doesn’t help, he will be missed. a friend is dead