Michael Thalheimer (born 28 May 1965) is a German theatre director.
Life
Born in Münster, Hesse, Thalheimer studied from 1985 to 1989 at the Bern School of Acting,[1] now integrated into the University of the Arts Bern. As an actor, he was engaged at many German-speaking theatres, including in Bern, Mainz, Bremerhaven and Chemnitz.
In 2005, Thalheimer made his debut as an opera director with Leoš Janáček's Káťa Kabanová at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, followed in December of the same year by an interpretation of Verdi's Rigoletto.
At Hamburg's Thalia Theater in particular, Thalheimer acquired an excellent reputation as a theatre director with productions of Schiller's Kabale und Liebe, Schnitzler's Liebelei and other classics. He is able to reduce even the most difficult material to its basic content and transport it emotionally and mentally. As a perfectionist, Thalheimer attaches great importance to the facial expressions and gestures of his actors, who sometimes fill minutes of wordless phases, which are then replaced by a flood of text recited in paragraphs and performed in staccato.
After many successful years at Hamburg's Thalia Theater, Thalheimer shifted his work more and more to the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. After he had achieved the greatest success there in years with his two productions of Goethe's Faust I and Faust II, which were acclaimed by critics and audiences alike, he was head director from 2005 to 2008.[3][4]
His production of Dea Loher's play Innocence became the subject of a protest action in spring 2012.[3][5]
