It is difficult to consider Thomas Ostermeier’s stage productions as mainstream fare when his radical interpretations of Shakespeare’s classics incorporate rock music fused with video art.

The acclaimed German theater director insists though that he is a traditionalist through and through.

“I would not consider myself experimental,” he said during a roundtable interview with the local press on Wednesday at the Namsan Art Center.

“I use a lot of media, sure, and I try to have a strong conceptual approach with my productions, but still my work is based and focused on actors and the conflict of the drama ― this is why I would say I’m a pretty old school director.”

Ostermeier brought the Schaubuhne am Lehniner Platz ― his theatre company ― to Seoul for the 2010 Theatre Olympics and debuted “Hamlet” on Wednesday at the Namsan Art Center.

The last show will be on Friday.

Since its premiere at the Festival d’Avignon last year, it has created a sensation with its radical new take on an often interpreted story.

After its debut, critics were convinced Ostermeier was the man to revive 21st century interest in Shakespeare.

Ostermeier and his theater company are still riding the gravy train following a series of successful runs with adaptations of classic Henrick Ibsen plays.

The Goethe-Institute once described Ostermeier’s Schaubuhne as one of“the most important venues of German-language theater.”

Widely considered in European performing arts circles as intellectual progressives, Ostermeier and crew have been credited with developing new methods of theater direction ― breaking its traditional paradigm through various media to enhance the stories’ impact.

With such notoriety for adopting unorthodox ways of presenting stage dramas, it might come as a surprise for some that the 42-year-old says he does not consider himself as an experimentalist.

“When I use film and video its not to be experimental or to attract younger people to come to my shows and show people how modern they are,” he said.

“I never thought about such things. It was never my issue. I just do what I have to do and I’m pretty happy young people like what I’m doing. Everything you see is what I like, from music, costume, to sets, it’s my taste and I think when you start thinking of doing things for the sake of being different or that you think will fill seats, you will get caught in a trap.”

In the play, Hamlet is seen as being something of a gadget geek, annoying his family by constantly filming their activities ― all of which are then projected onto a moving background screen.

“The real challenge in staging a production is the actor and the play itself. The convergence of media is easy.”

There is a distinct, overpowering element of chaos that runs throughout the play which is present not only in the art direction but also in the actors’ performances.

Intense is the appropriate word.

So much so that some might think that perhaps Ostermeier’s focus is entirely on rattling the audience, shaking them down to the core through his actors’ frequent interaction with the audience as Wednesday night’s performance showed.

“In the times we’re living in, they don’t provide much live three-deminsional experiences,” he said.

“Most of the time we are not connected with all of our senses. Even when we drive in the car, we are not part of the world because we have windows closed around us so we can’t smell the air or touch things that pass us by.”

“The reason I love theater so much is because it is in the moment. It’s a risky art.”

On whether he would entertain the idea of crossing over to film or television in the near future, his answer was blunt.

“No, because everything is edited in a studio with cinema and television, so its very safe,” he said.

“(Jean-Luc) Godard once said moviemaking is organizing dead material, the moment you take a picture, it’s dead, and he was right.”

By Song Woong-ki (kws@heraldcorp.com)