Besson, Benno

Besson, Benno (1922– ), Swiss director, who after working in Paris joined the Berliner Ensemble in 1949. He proved himself the best and most imaginative of Brecht's company, helping him to adapt Molière's Don Juan (1954) and Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer (as Pauken und Trompeten, 1955). He left the company in 1958 and in 1961 joined the Deutsches Theater, being responsible for the production of adaptations of Aristophanes' Peace (1962) and Offenbach's La Belle Hélène (1964), and of Shwartz's modern fairy-tale The Dragon (1965). In 1969 he became director of the Volksbühne, which he revitalized, making it an entertaining and cosmopolitan ‘people's theatre’. In 1973 and 1974 he staged Spectacles I and II, mini-festivals involving as many as 12 different performances under one roof—backstage, on stage, in the foyer, etc.—and in 1975 confirmed the pre-eminence of his theatre in East Berlin with an outstanding production of Die Schlacht (The Battle) by Heiner Müller. His productions outside Germany included As You Like It, Hamlet, and Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, seen at the Avignon Festival in 1976, 1977, and 1978 respectively. He left the Volksbühne in 1978 and in 1982 became Director of the Théâtre de la Comédie in Geneva.