Obituary – Michael Börgerding: Into the open

It was a shock when the Bremen Theater announced on Monday that its director Michael Börgerding died on Sunday after a short, serious illness. Börgerding has led the four-division theater since the 2012/13 season, brought it back on track artistically and economically after difficult times and led the theater successfully through the corona pandemic.

Born in Lohne in 1960, Michael Börgerding initially studied German, sociology and philosophy in Göttingen and gained his first experiences as a dramaturge and director at the Young Theater there. This was followed by positions at the Schauspiel Hannover and the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, where he was chief dramaturge. In 2005 he took over the management of the Hamburg Theater Academy, and in 2010 he was appointed director in Bremen.

Since then, Börgerding’s openness, his curiosity and his interest in theater as an institution for everyone in the city have found expression in many different ways. The festival away game is an example. For two weeks in June 2016, Bremen-Blumenthal, a district characterized by unemployment, vacancies and poverty, vibrated – and felt worlds away from the “Culture Mile”, where Bremen’s cultural temples are located. Breaking down the barriers between high culture and pop, between the educated middle class and urban society was a matter close to Michael Börgerding’s heart: A few years ago, he had the Goetheplatz in front of the theater transformed into the “Common Ground,” where concerts and theater are held in the summer.

He also regularly provided a breath of fresh air in the more classic work of a city theater. The number of dramaturgs he brought to Bremen and who soon took on directorships at venues such as Zurich and Lucerne is not exactly small. For the next season, the in-house director Felix Rothenhäusler, who had attracted attention locally with formally strict and quite controversial directing works, will also be leaving Bremen for Freiburg. Börgerding brought renowned directors such as Armin Petras, Andreas Kriegenburg and Herbert Fritsch to Bremen, but also gave Schorsch Kamerun, who became known as the singer of the Hamburg punk avant-gardists Die Goldenen Katzen, the opportunity to try out musical theater.

However, it was always about more than just exciting directing, namely about opening up in many directions: Hamburg’s Ohnsorg Theater temporarily found a home away from home at the Theater Bremen, festivals like the Mittenmang with disabled and non-disabled artists, that Out Now for young theater professionals and collaborations with a variety of institutions in the city shaped the house’s program.

Opening up to the independent scene was also always important to the passionate theater man: right at the beginning of his Bremen directorship, he engaged the cross-border European-West African performance collective Gintersdorfer/Klaßen as artists in residence for two seasons. The dance department, which had lost its former importance in Bremen, was led by Samir Anika, another member of the independent scene; his company Unusual Symptoms is now a welcome guest at international festivals.

The fact that the Theater Bremen has been increasingly noticed nationally again in the past ten years is due not least to a consistent focus on contemporary aesthetics and premieres, including such prominent ones as “But Sure!”, Elfriede Jelinek’s play on the financial crisis.

The news of his death was greeted with dismay in Bremen and far beyond. Michael Börgerding was 64 years old.