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© Hartwig Klappert
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Dietlind Antretter
Austria
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Dietlind Antretter was
born in 1961 in the Austrian city of Salzburg. After attending grammar
school she began studying German Language and Literature in her home
city, during which time she was already working as a journalist and in
a theatre. At the same time she was employed in the press office of the
Salzburg Festival, was a trainee of George Tabori at the Munich
Kammerspiele and was taken on by the Salzburg State Theatre. Regular
visits to France resulted in her moving to Paris, where she completed a
traineeship at Jean-Louis Barrault's Theatre, and worked at the Comédie
Française and the Théâtre de l'Odéon. After receiving a doctorate she
carried out assignments for the ORF in Vienna in 1988 and eventually
settled in Paris. Here she was engaged as an assistant director,
executive producer, co-director and dramatic advisor. In 1996 she moved
to California and worked as a freelance author and journalist for, for
example, the »Salzburger Nachrichten« and NDR, for which she made radio
programmes dealing with Sandor Marais's last exile in San Diego or
William Faulkner's work in Hollywood. She wrote a new version of »The
Abduction from the Seraglio« for the Salzburg Festival, which was
performed in 1997 and 1998.
Life in different countries is also a
central topos of the eight short stories which make up her literary
début »Immer wie immer« (2005; t: Always as always). Here, Antretter's
floating prose displays a unique tension through its calculated
sketchiness. Just as is the case with the author herself, the
protagonists are products of the artist and theatre scene, and the
settings are often places where Antretter herself has worked. In the
first and longest story »Es scheint so« (t: It appears so) Antretter
grants the reader an authentic insight into the milieu of established
theatre, whose extroverted yet vulnerable main figures indulge in
ceaseless hedonism in their search for human warmth. In this way Irina,
Marcel, Christelle, Jeremy and Beatrice mutually betray their spouses
and partners; mostly, however, they betray themselves. Although
labelled in the subheading as »love stories«, the other stories deal
rather with the desire for love, often unsuccessful endeavours towards
affection or the evanescence of love. In the second story the
characters seem capable only of loving their dogs and totally unable to
operate in relationships between people.
The author is the mother of twins and lives in southern California, southern France »and sometimes in Prague«.
© internationales literaturfestival berlin
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Immer wie immer
Haymon
Innsbruck, Wien, 2005
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