Freyer, Achim

(1934- )

   Designer, director. Freyer is one of the few outstanding designer-directors working in the German theater. He began his career in the German Democratic Republic in the 1950s, designing Benno Besson's productions of Bertolt Brecht. He came under a cloud in 1970, when a production of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Clavigo he had designed was banned; he thereafter began working steadily in West German opera. In the mid-1970s his association with Claus Peymann in Stuttgart started, and his directing debut took place at the Schlosspark Theater in Berlin. By the late 1970s he was both directing and designing operas. His most notable success came in 1988 when he worked with Robert Wilson (1941- ) on Einstein on the Beach, which led to subsequent directing/design projects exclusively for spoken drama at the Burgtheater in Vienna. His adaptation of Ovid's Metamorphoses at the Burg was invited to the 1988 Berliner Theatertreffen.