In an open letter on Monday 20 June to the city senate and German culture minister Monika Grütters, 172 actors, designers and theatre employees protested against the appointment of Tate Modern’s former director Chris Dercon, artnet reports. Their concerns surround the possibility that Dercon’s conceptual designs for the future may transform the Volksbühne Theater into a ‘festival house’, prevent new forms of artistic experimentation for which the theatre is well known, distance the theatre from politically engaged art and threaten job cuts. Although the protests come in the wake of a general assembly with the future management, employees have specified that their criticism is not aimed at Dercon himself but at the decision makers who they have claimed are ‘working hard to destroy the originality and diversity with which the Volksbühne is associated.’
Chris Dercon is due to begin his role as director of the Volksbühne Theater next year.
21 June 2016
