The Iceland-born opera and stage director Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson recently teamed up with third-year acting students at the Max Reinhardt Seminar to tackle one of the greatest theatrical tragedies of all time: Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In this interview with mdw Magazine, he speaks about the joys of working with a new generation of actors, aspirations for his role as a visiting instructor at the Max Reinhardt Seminar, and just why Shakespeare’s analyses of power and people manage to outlast every era.
Things are astir at the Max Reinhardt Seminar: young students hurry through the corridors and stairwells, rich green leaves rustle above the picturesque forecourt, and a May afternoon sun plays upon the wood-panelled walls. Weaving one’s way through this colourful activity, one might suddenly wind up in a large room with a spacious feel to it. Romantic herbaceous accents and stately wooden panelling characterise the atmosphere here, as well, along with—surprisingly—silence. At the room’s centre sits Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson. This director of operas and spoken drama, who hails from Iceland, was invited to spend the 2025 summer semester at the Max Reinhardt Seminar working with third-year acting students on their annual performance—in the midst of which we met him for an interview at his temporary place of work.
For his project with the Max Reinhardt Seminar students, Arnarsson chose material with which many years of intense involvement have made him deeply familiar: Shakespeare’s Macbeth. “I wanted to offer the students a play that’s both sophisticated and something they have to wrestle with—and that also, I think, provides a glimpse into the soul of our own era.” The Reykjavik-born director, who studied acting at the Iceland University of the Arts and directing at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin, has already led productions works by this greatest of all English dramatists on numerous renowned stages: “Because he’s simply the best. He was writing at precisely that moment when the “ego” came into being. Shakespeare did more than perhaps any other author to define the self-concept of modern humanity—well, Shakespeare and the Greeks. And every Shakespeare character is a universe unto themselves.”
So why is this work particularly well suited to these young third-year students? Challenging texts in which one has to invest lots of work, that lead one to connect with others when acting them out, and that also confront one with a specific form of theatre: this, says Arnarsson, corresponds pretty well to the needs of young actors at the beginning of their careers. “What Macbeth describes so well are the mechanisms of power. I feel that Shakespeare, in his analysis of how power works, is virtually unsurpassed in terms of how he portrays the demands it makes from a human perspective—what you need to sacrifice in order to make it to the top.”
Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson’s work at the Max Reinhardt Seminar was a welcome opportunity to share with young talents his decades of experience as a stage director at venues including the Burgtheater in Vienna, the Volksbühne in Berlin, and numerous other distinguished institutions. “For a director, it’s great getting acquainted with a new generation along with its language and its approach. After all, part of what makes working together with students interesting is seeing how their approach to their art looks—individually as well as collectively. I wanted to know: What do they think of the material, what do they think of these ideas?” Their work on Macbeth involved more than the purely scenic development of this play’s interpretation, also being interdisciplinary in nature: the students took part in a costume workshop with the production’s stage and costume designer as well as in music workshops that were intended to help undergird their performance. Arnarsson and the students thereby found themselves in a collaborative “laboratory” where the principle of “creating-by-doing” prevailed. “Moreover, and most importantly, it’s simply about friction. They’re not just talented but also extremely courageous—including where form is concerned. They’re so open, and that’s very, very fun,” says the director of his group of students.
“I can remember very well how it was for me back when I was studying. And I think the problem for almost everyone who pursues formal artistic training is that you’re simultaneously a student and an artist, which is really difficult in certain respects.” For this reason, he now considers it part of his job as a teacher to allow students to experience how the process of staging a play actually runs: “Some of it’s rough. Ideas get killed, lines cut or redistributed … it’s a rather brutal machine.” This by no means entails that one need go about it in an insensitive way, but even so: “Doing art just plain isn’t a nice walk in the sun”—especially when it’s about such dark material as Macbeth. Another of this director’s important concerns in doing theatre with the students is that they learn how to bring their own worlds with them as actors “and also make these worlds available.” And what’s more, he says, their personal thoughts about the text or the play should likewise have an important place in the performance.
To Arnarsson, the questions of whether and how one can translate this over 400-year-old play for 2025 are purely rhetorical ones. “As human beings, we have the ability to cast off our own realities, to step outside our own worlds: we place ourselves in a ritualistic setting such as an auditorium, the lights go up, and we perceive a different reality. This doesn’t make my actual reality disappear, though. Children take theatre at face value. But at some point in our lives, and as the only species to do so, we develop this unfathomable ability to bear multiple realities within us simultaneously.” For this reason, Arnarsson prefers to refrain from situating a given theatrical production within a specific era. “I always find that a bit problematic since this is a space where we can think freely.” For theatre, he adds, is also a locus of the imaginary, after all.
With art being a realm of free thought, Arnarsson also experiences Austria and specifically Vienna as one corner of our world that’s a great place to live and indeed quite easy to love. “This city is totally permeated by culture. And one notices how the arts are also a central pillar of its identity. It’s something you see neither in Berlin nor in Iceland. […] In our highly capitalised, individualised times, where everything’s increasingly about escaping into entertainment and fleeing the real world, I have the impression that this deep yearning and support for the artistic world and the artistic realm manifest quite a magnetic quality, here.”
Arnarsson hence felt at home in Austria right from the beginning. He also perceives some strong similarities between the Icelandic and Austrian souls: “the subversive humour here, these ambiguities and false bottoms.” Moreover, how things get resolved “from person to person” likewise feels similar to the way things work in his tiny home country of Iceland, where people also come together in a way that’s fast and direct.
With Macbeth having been presented to the public this past June, autumn 2025 will see its performers continue on to the annual Absolvent_innenvorspiel—where each academic year sees the Max Reinhardt Seminar’s final-year students present themselves to a specialist audience. And Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson, for his part, will most certainly be returning to Austria after having finished his collaboration with the Max Reinhardt Seminar students. “I’m incredibly fond of Vienna, and I’m sure that I’ll be coming back here.”
