His funeral will be held on Tuesday at 10 am. in the Ritsonas Crematorium.
Hans-Thies Lehmann, one of the leading and most influential European theater theorists, passed away yesterday (16/7) after a long illness.
Hans-Tis Lehmann was born in 1944 in Eringshausen, Germany and studied at the Institute of Comparative Literature of the Free University of Berlin alongside Peter Szondi, with whom he was also a collaborator. Together with Andrzej Wirth, they proceeded in 1982 to found the Institute of Applied Theater Studies at the University of Giessen. From this department emerged a whole generation of important directors and groups of the new German theater, such as René Pollesch, She She Pop, Rimini Protokoll, etc. He continued his academic career by founding the Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Science at the Johan Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Main.
His extremely important work “The Metadramatic Theatre”, published in 1999 and translated into at least 30 languages (unfortunately, but not into Greek), influenced the searches of the modern stage as little as possible. “Postdramatic theater” is only part of Lehmann’s theoretical conception of theater, which includes three sections: the prodramatic, the dramatic and the postdramatic, a system of thought which the French translator of Jean-Louis Besson (Jean-Louis Besson) characterizes as “a modern Poetics”.
Lehmann’s range of literary and theatrical studies spans from Sophocles, Kleist and Buchner, to Brecht and Heiner Müller, decisively influencing the reception of these authors and contributing to new approaches to their work (one can find in Greek his prefaces to the works of Heiner Müller in Agra Publications).
Lehmann’s teaching offer is not limited to the European area, but also extends to the American continent (North, Central and South), to many Asian countries and to Australia. Many important people of the theater of the 21st century, not only in Germany, but also in the whole world, consider themselves his students. He worked as a dramatist alongside important directors such as Yossi Wieler, Thodoros Terzopoulos and Falk Richter.
Hans-Tis Lehmann was closely connected with Greece, due to his classical education and his love for Greek culture. In the last years of his life, he chose to live with his wife, dramatist and critic Eleni Varopoulou, in Athens. He repeatedly taught young Greek artists and theater scholars at the Argos Festival and the Summer Academy of the National Theatre.
Hans-Tis Lehmann was honored with many distinctions: he was President of the International Brecht Society for a number of years, while he was a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, which celebrated his 75th anniversary with a large international meeting at its Berlin headquarters. In 2018 he was awarded the big Thalia prize of the International Union of Theater Critics.
His funeral will be held on Tuesday at 10 am. in the Ritsonas Crematorium.
RES-EMP
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