Zadek, Peter

(1926- )

   Director. Zadek became well known in the 1970s for his iconoclastic productions of Shakespeare in regional theaters, some of which provoked controversy. He is one of the few German directors (he was born in Berlin) to have grown up in England. He studied directing at the Old Vic School and staged English-language productions in London before working full-time in Germany. Zadek's first productions took place in London: Oscar Wilde's Salome and an adaptation of T. S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes in 1947.

   He thereafter staged several productions in provincial Welsh and English theaters.

   In 1958 Zadek got a directing job in Cologne, his first sojourn in Germany since emigrating with his parents in 1933. He worked throughout the 1960s in Ulm and Bremen, often with designer and painter Wilfried Minks as his collaborator. In Bremen he worked extensively under Kurt Hübner, who hired Peter Stein and Klaus-Michael Grüber as well to conceive new renderings of German stage "classics." Zadek was not interested in classics alone, however; he staged several Alan Ayckbourn German-language premieres, both in Bremen and in Bochum when he became intendant of the city's Schauspielhaus. In Bochum he also staged a series of controversial Shakespeare productions starring Ulrich Wildgruber, among them The Merchant of Venice. Zadek has staged five productions of Merchant, efforts he considers important in an effort to force Germans to confront their anti-Semitism. Zadek regards German anti-Semitism as crucial to understanding German culture; when he adapted Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta and titled it The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew from Malta, he stated that Germans needed to acknowledge the bad side of Jews in order to fathom their antipathy toward Jews in general.

   In 1999 Zadek staged Hamlet with Angela Winkler in the title role, though with little fanfare. His 2004 production of Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (MotherCourage and HerChildren) at the Deutsches Theater (where Bertolt Brecht staged his Berlin premiere production in 1949) likewise aroused little nationwide attention, unlike his Bochum and Bremen productions had once done. He remains nonetheless a significant figure in the German theater—a director with 21 productions invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen. Zadek has been awarded the Kortner Prize, the Piscator Prize, and the Kainz Medal.