Interview: Walter Asmus
On 14 August 2014, Walter Asmus spoke with Nicholas Johnson about directing Beckett in a talk and Q&A entitled ‘It’s all poetic, Walter…’ This event took place at the Trinity Long Room Hub during the Samuel Beckett Summer School. It was funded by the Staging Beckett project.
Download and read the transcript: Walter Asmus
About Walter Asmus
Walter Asmus first met Samuel Beckett at the Schiller Theater in West Berlin in 1974, where he assisted Beckett to direct Waiting For Godot. From 1976 Asmus worked as a director at the Schiller Theater, Staatstheater Darmstadt, Staatstheater Kassel, Thalia Theater Hamburg and numerous other theatres worldwide. In 1986 he was made Professor of Music, Theatre and Media at Leibnitz Universität Hannover.
Asmus has staged Beckett’s dramas in many of the world’s most well known theatres, including Dublin’s Gate Theatre and London’s Royal Court Theatre, as well as theatres in New York, Kraków, Paris, Atlanta, Ventura, Copenhagen and Shanghai. In 1988, he recorded Rockaby, Footfalls and Eh Joe for the Süddeutsche Rundfunk Stuttgart with Billie Whitelaw. And then in 2014, he staged Not I, Footfalls and Rockaby with Lisa Dwan at the Royal Court.
