Mr. Schuch, in the film “Dear Thomas” you play the role of the resistant GDR intellectual Thomas Brasch.

How was that for you?

Kevin Hanschke

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That was a huge gift for me as an actor.

To play someone who turns his inner being and his emotional world outwards is multi-faceted.

He's had so many different lives lived at the same time.

He was an instinctual person, full of bubbling energy.

As an actor, it's great to embody a person with whom you can illuminate all the amplitudes of life.

How did you prepare for it?

I have read many of his works and studied them classically. First I got involved in his literature. Then I researched strange private archives, looked for photographs, in order to get an intimate impression of this person. I also met with female companions - women were an important part of his life. He met many people in the theater scene. Brasch was a superstar back then, everyone wanted to surround himself with him, to be at his parties. He was one of the brightest minds of his time because he never came to terms with superficialities. He also had a huge amount of energy. He is a candle that burns from two sides, that's what companions said about him. At first everything in his life is radiant, and then suddenly it is zapping dark.

You yourself were born in Jena in 1985. Brasch is your first role in which you impersonate an Eastern intellectual. Is that a particular challenge?

No, but an exciting character. I lived in the GDR for only five years, but was always surrounded by people who absorbed this time and felt the change in the system first-hand. Everyone has their own story, whether in the family circle, with friends or at school. You get socialization, either directly or indirectly. And when it's the drum teacher who says he had to replace his bass drum with a shower head because he didn't get the clapper. These are these funny to sadly fateful stories, these stories of rubbing up and betrayal. In that respect, Brasch's story seems somehow familiar. His whole family is extremely interesting - his father as deputy minister of culture in the GDR. He often didn't know where he was, what he really wanted.You can get an idea of ​​him in his lyrics. Then that's my inspiration. But it can't be more than inspiration, otherwise I won't get to play. If I approach a role too much with the amount of knowledge I have gathered, I will go crazy.

Do you find it easier to play fictional characters?

No, I wouldn't say that.

When adapting novels, I mix fictional biographies with real personalities.

How is it that you appear in so many literary adaptations right now?

They are exciting materials, mostly from times when there are great points of friction and when the circumstances are so enormous that they shape the characters.

That gives us energy as actors.

Did you come into contact with Thomas Brasch before?

In drama school I had often read a text by Brasch.

"Why play" was the name.

It hung in my locker in Leipzig and was a passionate pamphlet for acting.

What advantages this profession has over normal everyday life.

It's about holding up a mirror to people, being allowed to lie, to do what you want.

"Why play to play" is the last sentence in it.

There was something serious and easy about it at the same time.

Like all of Brasch's texts, the depth of which I got to know primarily through the interpretation of Katharina Thalbach.

It takes the heaviness out of him, because he has a lot of wit in his texts.