Jury members Tessa Hart and Michael Lang in conversation with Christine Wahl

Tessa Hart, Michael Lang, you and seven other jury members selected the winner of the Theaterpreis des Bundes from a total of 61 applications. Before your decision-making meeting, nine theaters were still on the shortlist. Did the jury debate take all day – or did you quickly reach an agreement?

Tessa Hart: We had four hours scheduled, and to be honest, I don’t remember if and how long we went over that (laughs). But what I can definitely remember are the intensive and appreciative jury discussions: We really listened to each other carefully and let our colleagues’ arguments sink in. At no time did I feel under pressure to make a decision within the next few minutes. The fact that the session went so smoothly – even though the picture was constantly changing because new aspects were repeatedly thrown into the round – was certainly also due to the fact that, first of all, each of the finalists was presented by a jury member and then intensively discussed in the round. I found this extremely important in order to get to know the different perspectives before we entered the final voting phase.

Michael Lang, do you remember how long it took you to reach a decision on the main prize and the three awards in specific categories?

Michael Lang: I can only underscore everything Tessa said. Especially since, in the end, it was also about creating a coherent overall picture. For these national awards, the Theaterpreis des Bundes and the three other awards, it would be of little help if, for example, several prizewinners were selected only from metropolitan areas where theater can be produced under completely different conditions than in rural areas. In this respect, every direction taken in the discussion about the main prize had direct consequences for all the other potential awards, so that you always had to keep many aspects in mind at the same time. And in all of this, we tried to make largely unanimous decisions. We avoided split votes; there was no jury member who wanted to distinguish themselves at the expense of others or push through a particular candidate at all costs.

That sounds extremely harmonious.

Lang: There was indeed a great deal of curiosity, along with a willingness to be open to good arguments and to take them into account in our own decisions. At this point, it is important to me to emphasize that, in principle, all 61 theaters that put themselves forward for the Theaterpreis des Bundes deserve nothing but the utmost respect. After all, behind every submission lies not only the application documents, which are put together with a great deal of effort, but also, and above all, such intensive cultural work over many years that one would ideally like to award many more prizes! In particular, incentive prizes to signal: Although, for a variety of reasons, they did not make the cut for the main prize or one of the three other awards this time, the jury is aware of the outstanding work being done in all of the institutions. And we would like to strongly encourage each and every one of them to apply again next time.

The jury was deliberately composed of a diverse group of people. For example, you, Tessa Hart, are – as you call it yourself – a “cultural maker and wanderer” born in East Berlin, moving between the independent scene, municipal and state theater, while you, Michael Lang, run the Hamburg Ohnsorg Theater, a private theater – and not the first one in your career. How have the different perspectives affected the work of the jury?

Lang: Juries have actually changed a lot over the last 20 years, and the fact that they have become much more diverse naturally brings with it new topics of focus. Management structures, diversity, internationality, participatory work – the fact that such aspects, which used to be much less important, are now in focus is extremely exciting and instructive for me. Not only because you are dealing with interesting productions and formats at theaters that you hadn’t necessarily considered before, but also because you get to know theater people – both when reading the applications and as part of the jury – who work on topics with completely different means and in completely different ways than you have done yourself over the last two decades.

You said that the jury work was “instructive” for you. What exactly did you learn?

Lang: For example, there was a theater that is not among the prizewinners and that I therefore do not want to name, but which personally showed me how well the regional and the international fit together and how the often rather negatively connoted term “Heimat” can be thought of and occupied in a contemporary way. Because this topic of regional specialties in the context of a great diversity is exactly what my team and I are working on at the Ohnsorg Theater, it was particularly inspiring for me in light of my own cultural work.

Tessa Hart, what do you think the deliberately heterogeneous jury composition has achieved?

Hart: The diversity of perspectives has led to a very high level of expertise. The fact that perspectives were present that could assess certain working methods more knowledgeably because they knew them from their own practice was not only valuable, but also essential.

But surely there were also points of contention?

Lang: I honestly can’t remember any arguments. What we had were processes of convergence – that is, taking a break at certain points so that everyone could reflect on their own position in peace and then continue the discussion together in a new light. As I said, we always tried to keep talking until we came to a result that all the jurors could equally support.

Disagreements can be respectful and productive. Do you recall any such disputes, Tessa Hart?

Hart: I can’t think of any situation in which there was a dispute. On the contrary: If one person had a certain view of a place and another was able to offer a different context in this regard, everyone listened very gratefully.

The requirements for the “Theaterpreis des Bundes” are complex. According to the call for submissions, what is needed is “an outstanding program […] that stands out for its convincing aesthetic-artistic development in contemporary issues of (urban) society, multi-perspective audiences, ecological and social awareness and/or technological-digital innovations.” Which of these aspects was particularly important to you in each case, what did you pay most attention to?

Hart: There was definitely no single criterion that was then applied to all the theaters. Instead, we looked at the nominations individually, based on their own conditions and contexts: What stands out in particular, what are their respective strengths? For one theater, the focus might have been on trying out a new management model, while for another, the focus was more on transformation processes or on integrating new audiences.

The difficulty of comparison, which goes hand in hand with a high degree of individuality, certainly doesn’t make the decision any easier – quite the opposite. What criteria did you develop for yourself when you started reading the applications?

Lang: For me, the first question was always: What does the performance look like under the specific conditions of a particular theater – in terms of financial and organizational possibilities, location, environment, history? Because, in fact, you can’t compare apples and oranges. You have to approach a small theater in a rural area with incredibly little money very differently than you would a state theater in Berlin. It is often the case that incredibly valuable and diverse work is done at small theaters under great pressure to keep costs low – and in an environment in which they may not necessarily be wanted by everyone and are pitted by politicians against daycare centers, swimming pools and other regional offerings. When someone achieves outstanding things under these conditions, is courageous, leans out of the window and doesn’t let themselves be blown over by the first headwind, that’s when I turn my spotlight on them.

Hart: Among the applications, there were of course a lot of theaters that do strong, impressive work. To narrow it down to just one that I could actually see as a winner, I first asked myself the question of the context in which the respective theater works – both in terms of its specific location and in terms of funding: How much money does it get, how secure are these funds, what is done with them? A second guiding principle was what the applicants themselves emphasized as being particularly important – and how authentically they work on these priorities. For example, do they merely claim that they want to reach new audiences or become more diverse, or does it emerge from the application documents that these processes have really been tackled? My focus was not necessarily on whether any calculable goal had already been achieved, but rather on the seriousness and credibility of the project and on what intermediate steps and methods of implementation were already being tested.

So far, we have only talked about the big decision-making session, in which the jury discusses and decides on the main prize and the three awards. But that is only the last act in a complex process. What happens before that?

Hart: First of all, the nine jury members are divided into three different juries: one for municipal and state theaters, one for independent production houses and one for private theaters and theaters hosting guest performances. Each jury therefore consists of three people who first look at the applications from their own field and then agree on three pre-nominations in each case in a meeting.

This is how the shortlist of nine theaters is created.

Hart: Exactly. And these nine applications then go to the big round, where they are once again intensively sifted through, reflected upon and analyzed by all nine jury members, before they then discuss the main prize winner and the three awards.

What was it that ultimately tipped the scales for the Schwankhalle Bremen as this year’s main prize winner?

Lang: The enormous diversity of this institution, with national and international in-house and co-productions, along with guest performances in a range of genres! That alone is a wealth of work that one would rather ascribe to a municipal or state theater. And then there is the entire area of promoting young talent, working with young people, and participatory, cross-generational projects with newly conceived forms of assembly, access and opening. In the not-so-big city of Bremen, away from the classic hotspots, the theater takes on such a broad and diverse range of tasks with limited financial resources that the application really stood out.