The first time Ersan Mondtag (°1987) appeared in the media, he was just 17. In 2004, he spent a year in Washington as an exchange student. That was a first: never before had such a thing happened to a child from migration in Germany. The news made the press. Ersan Mondtag immediately became known as a child prodigy - and he seized the opportunity with both hands.

His grandfather had moved to Berlin from Turkey as a guest worker – more on this later – and his father ran a café in Neukölln. In the five-person household where Ersan grew up, art and culture were not part of daily life. The precocious teenager understood early on that he would have to emancipate himself to transcend the boundaries of his background. In Washington, he immersed himself in a cultural feast, spending hours in museums, striving to understand the works he encountered. 'It was not pop culture that fascinated him, but so-called high culture. He wanted to learn, learn, learn,' says Till Briegleb. 'During that time, by listening a lot, he also laid the foundations for his knowledge of the classical music repertoire, which now makes him so suitable as an opera
director.'

Turbo

Till Briegleb managed to convince his fellow judges and Tyrannis' invitation to the Berliner Theatertreffen in 2016 put a turbo on Mondtag's theatre career. Which, however, had started with fits and starts. Briegleb: ‘Ersan had enrolled in directing school at the Otto-Falckenberg-Schule in Munich after secondary school, but broke it off prematurely because he couldn't ground himself in the school system.’ Instead, he went on to direct rebellious performances on the streets with his own Kapitæl 2 Kolektif. Dressed in burkas, he and his companions took up post at the shooting range at Oktoberfest, for example. In 2014, he shot a cartoon about Turkish president Erdogan, who, wearing a grotesque mask as a power-hungry despot, gets excited about unflattering newspaper articles.

‘From the very beginning, Ersan's work has had a political slant,’ Till Briegleb explains. Where that commitment comes from? 'Ersan has charisma and esprit and he is extremely interested in what is going on in the world. Then, I think, you can't help but develop a political attitude. But he is sovereign in that and above all never didactic. He does want to offer ideas through his work, but the political and the poetic always go hand in hand. His pieces are also always highly entertaining.'

Mondtag would be invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen twice more after Tyrannis, in 2017 with Die Vernichtung (Theater Bern) and in 2019 with Das Internat (Schauspiel Dortmund). A major achievement for a beginning director, which immediately put him on the map in Germany and beyond. Briegleb: ‘All the intendants wanted to work with him. He was on a positive wave. In the years that followed, Ersan directed for the biggest stages in Germany and after about five years he was ready to make the leap to opera.'

For Der Schmied von Gent, Ersan Mondtag and Till Briegleb devised an ingenious update, with a challenging (provocative?) reference to our own colonial history. They drew the parallel between the Southern Netherlands being oppressed by the Spanish in the 16th/17th centuries and the violence Leopold II and his subjects perpetrated 300 years later in their colony Congo. The victim had become perpetrator and perpetrator of violence himself, they made the Belgian audience understand. The dramatic highlight of the performance was the insertion of Patrice Lumumba's courageous speech after Congo's declaration of independence in 1960 - while the main character Smee (who had taken on the skin of Leopold II) was baking Brussels waffles in the background (that smell!).

‘Ersan's aim is to create an opulent spectacle that people enjoy watching and through which he nevertheless conveys ideas and attitudes about society today’

— Till Briegleb

Press and audiences reacted wildly enthusiastically, and much had to do with the exuberant setting in which the opera played - a fairy-tale castle - and the colourful costumes worn by the singers. (For the set design, Mondtag won a prestigious Oper! Award.) Briegleb: ‘We always try to create a throbbing universe where things come together that at first glance seem unconnected, but which in the end have everything to do with each other - because that's the way it is in the real world. Erzan's aim is to create an opulent spectacle that people enjoy watching and through which he nevertheless conveys ideas and attitudes about society today. He tries to bring a new narrative to the times we live in today. In his aesthetics, he accepts no limitations.'

Lightning fast

Working with Ersan Mondtag is lightning-fast, says Till Briegleb. 'For Salome, I had the idea to set the story in a set inspired by Soviet architecture as seen in vassal states like Belarus. Ersan is very good at designing sets and coming up with images. Barely half an hour after I explained my concept, he forwarded me 40, 50 sketches, which he created with the help of artificial intelligence. Ersan also has a talent for gathering artistic teams around him and getting the best out of people. He can tolerate being contradicted, by the dramaturge, for example, or by the musicians or conductors he works with.'

Hasan Aygün

Finally, as promised, back to the Turkish grandfather. Last summer (and still until 24 November 2024), Ersan Mondtag scored high honours at the 60th Venice Biennale, where he had the honour of curating the German pavilion with Israeli multimedia artist Yael Bartana. His work, entitled Monument eines unbekannten Menschen, is an ode to that grandfather, Hasan Aygün, who emigrated from the Ankara area to West Berlin in 1968 to work in an Eternit factory. He died shortly after retiring from asbestos-induced lung cancer. The promise of a better life had become a delayed death sentence.

With this very personal work, Ersan Mondtag took another step in his already extremely rich career - and he was still only 37. Till Briegleb: ‘Although the themes of immigration and isolation were present in his work from the beginning, Ersan never wanted to stress that he was of Turkish origin. For example, if he was announced in a panel discussion as a Turkish director, he corrected that and said: no, I am a German director.' For that reason, he also changed his name from Ersan Aygün to Ersan Mondtag, which is a literal translation from Turkish into German (‘Ay’ means moon and ‘Gün’ day in Turkish). Briegleb: ‘Ersan has taken time to tell his own story, but I think we will hear it more and more in his next productions.