“We Want to Initiate Participation”

It’s all about the 50^th anniversary of the University of Bremen. And Oliver Behnecke is the one who has been writing the script for the anniversary year 2021 for six months now. The 48-year-old theater scholar is the project leader of “50 Years of Uni Bremen” and brings with him an enormous wealth of experience with cultural large-scale projects and other major projects on a city level. 

One term comes up right away in conversation with Oliver Behnecke: Image – Images. He mainly thinks of images when it comes to all that is supposed to happen at the university and in the city next year. And what he says about it, he emphasizes with raised arms. A director in the creative process; work that had to be about listening for the last months, about sounding out how the university and its various stakeholders want to define and communicate the identity of this institution. It is not an easy process since this truly young university has already had to go through various molts and changes over the five decades of its existence. “It really is a challenge to reconcile all of it,” says Behnecke. “The university is diverse – and we will have a diverse program for that reason.”

Behnecke was responsible for the program at the 400^th anniversary of the Justus Liebig University Giessen, which took place in 2007 with the motto ‘WissenSchafftStadt.’ It was also in Giessen where Behnecke studied Applied Theater Studies and where, in the year 2000, he implemented his first project using the city’s streets and square as a stage. Its title ‘Turn of Time’ was to be understood quite literally as night and day were swapped. 200,000 spectators came to the city of 72,000 inhabitants in order to help shape the turn of the century.

Being a passionate Bremenite by choice, he lives in the Viertel together with his family and has by now also left his marks in the cultural landscape of Bremen. He is co-initiator of ‘Klub Dialog,’ was the artistic director of the exhibition projects ‘Departure into Utopia – on the Tracks of a German Republic in the USA’ and in 2017/18 for ‘Longing for Europe.’ Together with director Esther Steinbrecher, he won the Bremen author and producer award for the computer performance project ‘We’re harvesting!’ in 2009.

What can the people of Bremen expect for the university’s 50^th anniversary? “In these times of the new coronavirus, we all again experience the importance of science,” says Oliver Behnecke. “The University of Bremen has always adhered to the principles of the societal relevance of science. We want to tell that story.” And with dramatist Behnecke at the wheel, it is bound to be a colorful tale.