Claus Peymann is a theatre director born in 1937 in Bremen. Between 1966 and 1969, he was head of drama at Frankfurt’s Theater am Turm (TAT), and in 1970 founded Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer in Berlin together with Peter Stein and others. He returned to Stuttgart where he directed the Württembergisches Staatstheater drama department between 1974 and 1979. He left Stuttgart at the end of the ‘70s and worked as a director for Schauspielhaus Bochum. In 1986, he settled in Vienna and became the director of Burgtheater, where he spent 13 years fighting for contemporary Austrian drama. In 1996, he left Vienna for Berlin, where he led the Berliner Ensemble until 2017. During this time, he collaborated with great directors of the contemporary stage, such as Peter Zadek, Peter Stein, Robert Wilson, and George Tabori.
Throughout his career, Claus Peymann directed numerous performances based on classic plays (Faust I/II by Goethe, Richard II and Richard III by Shakespeare, The Chairs and Exit The King by Eugène Ionesco, etc.) and contemporary plays, including Publikums-beschimpfung by Peter Handke and Raststätte by Elfriede Jelinek. Moreover, he staged almost all the Thomas Bernhard’s plays.
