page_title: Hansgünther Heyme
section_title: Later years
hierarchical_section_title: Hansgünther Heyme / Later years
caption_attribution_description: English: Heyme &amp; Topchi exercising; Shakespeare Deutsch: Shakespeares "Sturm"; Probe mit Heyme &amp; Topchi
context_page_description: Hansgünther Heyme is a German theatre director and prominent figure in the Regietheater movement of the 1960s and 70s. Born in Bad Mergentheim, he studied at Heidelberg University and then under the German director Erwin Piscator. Heyme was the artistic director of the Staatstheater Wiesbaden from 1964 to 1967, the Schauspiel Köln from 1968 to 1979, the Württemberg State Theatre in Stuttgart from 1979 to 1986, the Ruhrfestspiele theatre festival from 1990 to 2003, and the Theater im Pfalzbau in Ludwigshafen from 2004 to 2014. Now in his 80s, he continues to work as a freelance director.
context_section_description: In late 2014, Heyme began what he called his "Sturm-Projekt" (Storm Project). It was a production of Shakespeare's The Tempest updated to the present day and set in the Neckarstadt-West district of Mannheim, an area notorious for its crime and red-light district. He used a cast of mostly amateur actors, many of whom were Bulgarian immigrants living in the district. The dialogue was in German but occasionally switched to Bulgarian. Funded by the city of Mannheim and grants from private sponsors, the production premiered in the Mannheim district in which it was set on 10 July 2015. 
  The Storm Project is also central to Heyme's autobiography, Sturm. Splitter (Storm. Splinter), which was published in August 2015 to mark his 80th birthday. Written during the preparation and rehearsals for The Tempest, the book recounts episodes in his life from his early childhood to the present. Each of his memories takes a quote from The Tempest as its starting point, but they are not presented in chronological order. Also published in 2015 was Theater! Arbeit! Heyme!, a book devoted to Heyme's life and work by Peter W. Marx and Harald Müller.
  Since leaving his post at the Theater im Pfalzbau, Heyme has continued to work as a freelance director. His later productions have included Ronald Harwood's play Quartet at the Hamburg Kammerspiele in 2016, Goethe's play Götz von Berlichingen at the Burgfestspiele Jagsthausen in 2018, and Viktor Ullmann's opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis for the Pfalztheater in Kaiserslautern in 2018. Although Heyme's directorial work has been primarily devoted to plays, he has directed several opera productions during his career. He had earlier directed Puccini's Manon Lescaut for Frankfurt Opera in 1983, Strauss's Elektra for the Pfalztheater in 2009, and Wagner's Ring Cycle for Theater im Pfalzbau and Oper Halle in 2013.
caption: Heyme rehearsing his production of The Tempest in 2015
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