Der Theatermacher

At the request of Kaaitheater De Veere will be staging a rerun of Der Theatermacher by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. This work has been in their repertoire since 1984. It is the story of Bruscon, director of a small family theatre that travels around from one miserable village hall to the next. Bruscon writes his own plays. He considers himself to be an unrecognised genius. In his delusions of grandeur he summarises the history of the world in The Wheel of History. He is constantly grousing throughout the play with an insistence that only Thomas Bernhard could portray: about the ignorance and stupidity of his fellow players, and the oafishness and dull-wittedness of his audience. Nobody understands him or the high values of the culture he wishes to disseminate. It is a play about theatre, history and the history of theatre.

De Veere will be performing Der Theatermacher with actors from 't Barre Land, under the name Belgisch-Nederlandsche Repertoirevereeniging 'de Veere' (Belgian-Dutch Repertory Society ‘de Veere’). In the past Discordia has worked under this banner with tg STAN, De Roovers and others.

Two chambers of the same heart
Anyone who has been familiar with the Dutch theatre company Maatschappij
Discordia for many years will probably immediately think of text and
repertory theatre. Those who have only come to know it in recent years
have seen productions in which visual qualities come to the fore.
Nowadays the stage space, the way objects, clothing and furniture fill
that space and the way the players move in it seem – more than the
script – to provide the theatrical 'basis' for their work. This does not
however mean that Discordia has turned its back on the written text and
the repertoire. On the contrary: however different the past and the
present approach may seem, there is a strong affinity between the two.
They are two chambers of the same heart. Which is why we would like to
bring together these two different guises of Discordia.