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Director Anders
Photo: Kerstin Schomburg
Never before have I reached for my cell phone as often as I wake up in the past year.
To check the numbers.
How many people have been infected with Corona?
What do the numbers mean for my theater, for the actors, for me?
On January 24th, 2020 we celebrated the world premiere of “Weltmeister” in Hanover, a play about German culture of remembrance 75 years after the end of National Socialism.
We guided the audience through the theater for three hours, from the basement to the stage.
In the meantime there were lectures, discussions and performances.
The evening ended in a turbulent community.
It was wonderful.
Nobody could have guessed at the time that something like this would soon no longer be possible.
To person
Sonja Anders, 55,
has been the artistic director of the Hanover Theater since the 2019/2020 season.
Before that she worked as chief dramaturge at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.
Only six weeks later, in March, we showed a monologue by the actor Mohamed Achour at our small venue.
It was the last day before the shutdown and there were only 20 spectators.
When speaking out loud, a spray of spit went over the first row.
I thought this is the last time you will see this for a long time.
I haptically registered that it was over.
The painful thing was: the reason people came, the closeness to the actor, was now the reason they should stay away.
When we had to close the theater for the first time in mid-March, we had basically just started doing theater in Hanover, it was my first season as artistic director.
The worst thing about the shutdown was that the crisis came so unprepared, we were suddenly pulled out of our comfort zone and had no plan how to proceed.
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