WESTERN EUROPEAN STAGES

Volume 23, Number 3 Season 2011

Editor
Marvin Carlson
Contributing Editors


Christopher Balme
Miriam D'Aponte
Marion P. Holt
Glenn Loney
Daniele Vianello
Harry Carlson
Maria M. Delgado
Barry Daniels
Yvonne Shafer
Phyllis Zatlin
Editorial Staff
Alexandra (Sascha) Just,
Managing Editor
Kalle Westerling, Editorial Assistant
Benjamin Gillespie, Circulation Manager
Christoph Schlingensief
Photo: Courtesy of Christoph Schlingensief
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center-Copyright 2011
ISSN # 1050-1991
Professor Daniel Gerould, Director of Publications
Frank Hentschker, Executive Director
Jan Stenzel, Director of Administration
To the Reader
Our annual Fall issue foregrounds, as usual, spring and summer theatre festivals, in Europe, with reports
on the Berlin Theatertreffen, the Mlheim Festival, the Avignon Festival, the Festival Grec in Barcelona and
Edinburgh, and the annual summer festivals in Bregenz, Munich, Bayreuth, and Salzburg. Among the other reports
we are pleased to offer additional reports on recent offerings in Berlin, Paris, and Madrid, and on a major premiere
by the distinguished Lithuanian director Eimuntas Nekrosius, in Rome.
Although we were able to publish three issues of volume 23 of WES, this being the third, the fnancial
strictures that we explained in the previous volume continue to operate and we will probably be able to offer next
year only a fall issue and a combined issue 2/3 as we did for volume 22.
Nevertheless, we welcome, as always, interviews and reports on recent work of interest anywhere in
Western Europe. Subscriptions and queries about possible contributions should be addressed to the Editor, Western
European Stages, Theatre Program, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, or mcarlson@
gc.cuny.edu.
Western European Stages is supported by a generous grant from the Sidney E. Cohn Chair in
Theatre Studies.
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Journals are available online from ProQuest Information and
Learning as abstracts via the ProQuest information service and the International Index to the
Performing Arts. www.il.proquest.com.
All Journals are indexed in the MLA International Bibliography and are members of the Council
of Editors of Learned Journals.
3
Table of Contents
Marvin Carlson
Philippa Wehle
Jean Decock
Maria M. Delgado
Glenn Loney
Daniele Vianello
Helen Huff
David Savran
Roy Kift
Marvin Carlson
Volume 23, Number 3
The 2011 Theatertreffen
Avignon's Sixty-Fifth Festival: Theater as a Witness of Our Time
Avignon OFF 2011RE/MIX
Spanish-language Productions Dominate at Ricardo Szwarcer's
Final Grec Festival
Festival Productions in Bregenz, Munich, Bayreuth, and Salzburg
Caligula, Camus, and the Tyrant's Mirror: Nekroius
and the Fascination for the Impossible
Theatre in Madrid, April 2011
Review of Richard Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae,
Deutsche Oper Berlin, 7 April 2011
But Is It a Play? Refections on Contemporary Theatre in Germany
April in Paris
Contributors
Fall 2011
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25
39
45
53
69
77
87
91
105
111
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Elfriede Jelinek's Das Werk/Im Bus/Ein Sturz, directed by Karen Beier. Photo: Klaus Lefe.
5
Traditionally in Germany, as in most of
the Western theatre, the stage has been dominated
by men. Male playwrights have dominated the
repertoires, and, in a theatrical culture where, for a
century or more, the director has equaled or surpassed
the playwright in signifcance, the vast majority of
directors have been male as well. Only when we look
at the scenic or costume designers or dramaturgs do
we fnd something closer to gender balance. There
was a time, during the 1980s and early 1990s, when
with the appearance of a new generation of German
women directors, among them Andrea Breth, Karen
Beier, and Katharina Thalbach, there was much talk
of a more balanced theatrical culture, but by the
end of the century men again almost completely
dominated the directoral scene.
The 2011 Theatertreffen selections provide
a welcome exception to this overall pattern, with
three of the ten productions directed or co-directed
by women and three of the ten texts authored or co-
authored by women. Although hardly overwhelming,
this proportion is so much greater than has been seen
for many years at the festival that there was much
discussion, and even one specifc public panel on the
new importance of women in this season's offerings.
The festival opened with a play, Das Werk/
Im Bus/Ein Sturz (The Work/ In the Bus/ A Fall)
a trilogy of plays by Elfriede Jelinek, probably
the best known living playwright working in the
German language. Jelinek has been several times
represented at the Theatertreffen before, but with
male directors. This production is directed by one
of the leading women directors in Germany, Karen
Beier, currently head of the theatre in Kln and
scheduled to assume the leadership of the theatre
in Hamburg in 2013. Beier built her reputation on
Shakespearian productions in the early 1990s and
was twice invited to the Theatertreffen, with Romeo
und Juliet in 1994 and Sommernachtstraum in 1996.
She returned to the Theatertreffen last year with Die
Schmutzigen, die Hlichen und die Gemeinen.
Jelinek's trilogy brings together three
closely related works created over the past decade,
Das Werk in 2003, an earlier version of Im Bus in
The 2011 Theatertreffen
Marvin Carlson
Elfriede Jelinek's Das Werk/Im Bus/Ein Sturz. Photo: Klaus Lefe.
6
2009, and Ein Sturz for the premiere of what is
now called the Cologne trilogy for that theatre this
season. All three plays deal with a theme that has
often concerned Jelinek, the suffering and death
caused by human hubris, especially in the attempted
subduing of nature. Das Werk deals with the building
of one of the world's largest dams and power storage
plants in Kaprun, Austria, a project beginning in the
1920s, continued under the Nazi, and completed with
Marshall Plan support in the 1950s. Although today
a symbol of Austria's progress and achievement, it
cost the lives of hundreds of now forgotten workers,
many of them forced recruits and prisoners. Jelinek's
title surely refers to the memorial stone erected in
honor of the dead workers at Kaprun, which states
simply: "Aus Arbeit und Opferein Werk" (From
Labor and Sacrifcea Work). The other two pieces
contrast this dark success with grim failures. Im Bus
concerns a major tragedy in Munich in 1994 when
a public transport bus plunged into a huge crater
which suddenly opened in the road as the result of
subway construction. Three people were killed, two
so encased in concrete that they were only found
months later, and dozens seriously injured. A fve
year investigation concluded that weakness in the
soil was to blame and no human being was charged.
Ein Sturz, the new work in the trilogy,
opens a still festering wound in the social memory
of its host city, Cologne. In March of 2009 the city's
Historical Archive collapsed in a matter of seconds,
causing several deaths and the loss of many unique
records from the most important municipal archive
north of the Alps. Again the construction of a nearby
subway was the cause, but the city council, the
transport authority, and the construction companies
all denied responsibility, though many faws in the
work had been reported before the collapse.
Jelinek's plays are notoriously diffcult
to stage with their torrents of language and rich
clusters of images but the immediacy of her themes
and the power of originality of her language have
attracted some of the leading directors of Germany
and Austria. Beier has effectively carved out a
performance text that maintains the density, the
central concerns and images of this diffcult work and
made of it a powerful and moving three-and-a-half
-hour evening in the theatre. Her production opens
with a lengthy speech by a self-confdent announcer
(Thomas Loibl), who celebrates the achievements of
the human race as the creature who builds, making
its own creation. This involves a continual war with
nature, and especially with the great elements of
Das Werk/Im Bus/Ein Sturz. Photo: Klaus Lefe.
7
nature, earth, and water. This war is presented in
the most glowing terms, as evidence of man's power
and accomplishments. The curtain then opens to
reveal the basic setting for the frst section, a kind
of water laboratory with a dozen or so small square
tables, each with two large commercial plastic water
bottles and researchers, mostly male, bent over the
tables frantically writing down notes or formulae
(setting and costumes by Johannes Schtz). Walter
is everywhere, a leitmotif (along with building
and death) of the text, and all of these form visual
leitmotifs as well, which carry throughout the
production. Water is dominant, constantly drunk,
spilled, spit out, and sprayed around in the frst
play, and eventually fooding the stage in the last,
with dead bodies awash in it. An English-speaking
cleaning woman (Rosemary Hardy) tirelessly pushes
about a mop and occasionally breaks into choric
comment, her operatic voice adding a rich element
to the texture of the whole (music by Jrg Gollasch)
Throughout the evening a pneumatic drill stands
upright in a block of stone onstage, operating as an
accent to the action from time to time.
In the second section the stage is cleared
away for a kind of parody worker's pageant, an
ironic celebration of those destroyed in the battle
between man's construction and nature's resistance.
The masks of Marx and Mao make an appearance,
presiding over a display of workers with red shovels
and fags. An exuberant mass dance ends with the
drill cutting in the stone and an elegiac chorus by a
ffty-member male chorus from Cologne. As women
mourn over their dead on stage, a trio of grotesque,
cross-dressed men (one in a yellow construction
hat) enter in a spotlight and present a crude cabaret
act full of jokes about falling buses and U-Bahn
accidents. A group of scantily clad women join them
and all exit upstage crying out "Don't die."
The fnal section, Ein Sturz, is the most
grotesquely comic of the three, and Jelinek has in
fact referred to it as the satyr play of the trilogy.
Classical echoes are reinforced by specifc quotes
from Agamemnon about divine retribution and the
fall of cities. The setting now is a contemporary
offce, presumably in Cologne at the time of the
archive disaster with offce workers having lunch and
busily working at the computers and phones. Amidst
them appears a grotesque, almost nude fgure, the
marvelous Kathrin Wehlisch, covered in yellowish
clay dust, a grotesque paw covering one foot, and two
horns twisted out of her hair. She appears very much
the satyr fgure in this satyr play, but even more she
Das Werk/Im Bus/Ein Sturz. Photo: Klaus Lefe.
8
suggests the offended and ignored earth, that now
joins water as the enemy of the destructive planners
and builders. As garbled news of the new catastrophe
pours into the offce the telephones and computers
add their own commentary to the confusion and
automatic shifting of any responsibility. Water begins
overfowing from a grave-like pit in the center of the
stage while the cast drops papers bearing crosses
into in and attempts in vain to rescue other sodden
books and papers from the drowned archives. The
spirit of water takes human form as actor Krzysztof
Raczkowski smears his almost naked body with
blue and enters into an extended dance sequence
with Wehlisch which mixes extreme violence with
heavy eroticism (choreography by Valent Rocamora
I Tor). At the end however, both aspects of nature
are victims of the man-made catastrophe and both
spread lifeless on the fooded stage amid the sodden
wreckage of the destroyed offce. It is an astonishing
and deeply moving evening, full of memorable
images, and all the more relevant today after such
subsequent catastrophes as the BP oil spill and the
Japanese nuclear disaster.
The second offering at the festival was
Gerhard Hauptmann's Der Biberpelz (The Beaver
Coat), directed by Herbert Fritsch, from the state
theatre in Mecklenburg. Although Fritsch is well
known as a director and visual artist, he is perhaps
best known as one of the leading actors at the
Volksbhne from the early 1990s until 2007, during
the years when the production of Frank Castorf were
widely considered the most exciting and innovative
in the German theatre. Thus Fritsch has several times
appeared in the Theatertreffen as an actor, but never
before as a director. This year however he has the
unusual distinction of having two of his productions
selected, a rare honor that certainly will elevate
his stature on the German theatre scene. Fritsch
shares with Castorf a number of features, among
them a high degree of self-conscious stylization
and physicalization, at the expense of psychology
or verisimilitude, an indifference to production
traditions, especially of the standard repertory
works, and an equal indifference to the presentation,
in Peter Stein fashion, of the integral dramatic text
(Biberpelz runs a frantic seventy minutes without
intermission). At the same time, his approach is
quite different from that of Castorf. Hauptmann's
naturalistic village types are transformed into
grotesque caricatures, heavily made up, with
Gerhard Hauptmann's Der Biberpelz, directed by Herbert Fritsch. Photo: Silke Winkler.
9
exaggerated cartoonish costumes, wild gestures,
frequent pratfalls, and distorted, constantly shifting
and grimacing features. The ensemble suggests
some of the most grotesque and savage Georg Grosz
satirical sketches brought to frantic life.
The production begins and ends with a
company shout of "Aye, aye, Herr Hauptmann!"
and most of the text between, in fact, comes (though
much cut) from the play. This even includes a
number of stage directions and descriptions of the
setting, presented in choric fashion and with much
frantic choral gesturing and heightened vocal
delivery by the entire company, forming a tight-
knit group tableau center stage (passages like "a
wooden chair to the left" are delivered with gestures,
winks, and elevated tone as if they were fraught with
hidden and apparently dangerous meanings). The
only scenery (also designed by the director) is a long
panel, perhaps seven feet high, covered with a lively
foral pattern and stretching most of the way across
the stage. To the left is a piano, primarily used for
silent flm style physical farce sequences, when a
character like Mitteldorf (Ozgr Platte) falls into it,
over it, and around it trying in vain to recover his
balance, with appropriate noise. Actually the major
musical of the production is provided by the seaman
Wulkow (Andreas Lembcke), the purveyor of stolen
goods, who appears in yellow oil slicker and rain
hat and grizzled beard to present sea chants and
conspire in the various nefarious turns of the action.
During the curtain calls he leads the whole company
in a procession, singing sea chants, which keeps
unexpectedly reappearing from various exits, still in
full voice, pushing their way through the delighted
departing audience.
The plot of Herr Hauptmann's "comedy
of thieves" can still be traced amid all the frantic
movement and grotesque poses and gesticulations,
but it is totally overshadowed by these visual
and physical effects. Frau Wolff (Brigitte Peters)
provides a note of at least relative normality, but
this only serves to set off the lunacy around her,
beginning with her own family, her huge, crimson
faced, warrior-caveman like mate Julius (Stphane
Maeder), her oversexed voluptuous elder daughter,
in a parody French maid's costume with impossible
bosoms and hips (Sonja Isemer), and, perhaps most
bizarre, the younger daughter Adelheid (Isa Weiss), a
kind of Pippi Longstocking as conceived by Charles
Addams, with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of
Gerhard Hauptmann's Der Biberpelz, directed by Herbert Fritsch. Photo: Silke Winkler.
10
grotesque and rapidly shifting facial contortions.
The social satire of the work is not lost, but it is
turned in a sharper and shriller direction. For those
dedicated to what the Germans call "werktreues
Theater"faithful to the original or the tradition
this is clearly a production to be avoided, but for
those willing to accept striking new approaches to
the classics by gifted directors and casts, this was an
exhausting and highly invigorating evening.
Next came Chekhov's Cherry Orchard,
another Kln production also directed by a woman,
Karen Henkel. Henkel has directed at a variety
of major German theatres since the early 1990s
and was once before invited to the Theatertreffen,
with her 2006 Stuttgart production of Chekhov's
Platanov. Her Cherry Orchard departs radically from
conventional Chekhov, highly realistic in acting and
staging, rather slow-paced and often sentimental.
Henkel turns this rather elegiac work into a circus-
type performance, even a clown show (suggested
not only in the rather grotesque costumes by Nina
von Mechow but in the exaggerated makeup, even
extending to clown white faces in the case of some of
the actors. The setting by Kathrin Frosch reinforces
this theme. It is essentially a bare stage, surrounded
by black, with a small revolving turntable, twinkling
lights at its base, in the center of this large empty
space. As the audience enters, Lopachin (Charly
Hbner) is seen, stretched out asleep downstage.
Behind him, trudging along on the rotating turntable
and holding a lighted candle, is Firs (Jean Chaize),
who will continue to trudge along back and forth,
often far upstage, throughout the evening, when he
is not carrying various cumbersome objects (even
at one point a large photograph of the Moscow Art
Theatre production of this play) on and off stage.
The tranquility of this opening sequence is
abruptly shattered by the arrival of the rest of the
company, all running shouting and laughing in a
frantic rush downstage. From then on the mode is
predominately one of knockabout slapstick. The
unlucky Lephichodow (Yorck Dippe) is of course
almost falling down or knocking into people and
objects, but scarcely a character does not take a
number of pratfalls in the course of the evening,
which clocks in at just under two action-packed
hours, without intermission. The whole is very
presentation, with many sequences calling for actors
Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, directed by Karen Henkel. Photo: Sebastian Hoppe.
11
to play directly out to the audience, often standing
in a line to do so. The turntable is often employed
to present circus-style tableaux, as when after the
opening rush onstage Madame Ranjewskaja (the
incomparable Lena Schwarz) assumes a triumphant
theatrical pose, arms raised, in the center of the
platform, while Hascha (Maik Solbah), Gajew
(Matthias Bunchschuh), and others gather in the
rotating platform around her, gesturing up toward
her as this triumphant tableau vivant slowly turning,
forming a backdrop to the downstage discussion
with Anja (Marie Rosa Tietjen) about the trip and
Paris.
Emotional relationships are similarly
presented in broad cartoonish strokes. Warja's (Lina
Beckmann) interest in keeping Anja and Trofmow
(Jan-Peter Kampwirth) apart, for example, is
indicated not only by her physically inserting herself
between them at every opportunity, but from time
to time circling the upstage area similarly between
them as if the three were out taking an interminable
stroll. When Lopachin announces that he has bought
the Cherry Orchard, he falls to the ground, into a
patch of earth, brought on stage for this sequence
not only before, and arises with the earth serving as
a kind of blackface, which he wears for the rest of
the production. The whole evening is accompanied
by two musicians, one on trombone, the other on
percussion (Henning Beckmann, Michael Lcker)
who normally perform in a small, audience level
pit downstage right, but who move up to the center
revolving platform for the party act. Although
a few tables and chairs are used (mostly carried
on and off by the hard-working Firs) there are
very few physical properties. Objects like Gaev's
eulogized bookcase are simply imagined, and none
of Charlotte's (Brigitte Cuvelier) tricks involve any
physical objects (except the sheet). They consist
instead largely of a series of acrobatic poses on her
part, in keeping with the physical emphasis of the
production. Such extreme physicality reaches a kind
of apogee in the Dunjascha of Laura Sundermann,
who becomes so overwhelmed emotionally that
she literally turns into a living statue and has to be
carried about in frozen stiffness by other actors.
After the party, as Lopachin begins to
take over the house, the party lights in the ceiling
are extinguished and indeed the whole ceiling
is lowered, like the frst phase of a demolition, to
a height about four feet above the stage foor, and
characters in the last act often appear from the
cramped space underneath, a device I did not fnd
particularly effective. The fnal sequence was
equally unconventional but very much in keeping
with the over-all production approach. There is no
offstage chapping of trees, but Firs emerges from
under the ceiling onto a deserted stage. One assumes
that, as in the original, all the others have departed.
As Firs begins to sink down to the foor, however,
the entire company rushes frantically on stage and
dashes, unseeing, past him to disappear on the
opposite side of the stage. They repeat this frantic
rush, going frst one way and then the other, never
noticing the unmoving body of Firs as they rush
past. As the various actors repeatedly shout "To a
new life!" Behind the wild energy of Henkel's clown
show, as behind most clown show, there lurks a deep
sense of meaningless and futility that it turns out has
much in common with Chekhov after all.
There is a tremendous interest in the
contemporary German theatre in the mixing of
material from real life into theatrical performance,
and such work is as widespread today as the
use of video and digital technology was on the
German stages of the 1990s. Perhaps the best
known German group working with material of
this sort is Rimini Protokoll, an important part of
the German experimental scene. She She Pop is
another performance collective devoted to audience
interaction and the use of materials from private and
social life. Formed in 1998, it is based in Berlin and
Hamburg and is made up of seven members, six
women and one man, originally from the University
at Giessen.
Like Rimini Protokoll's Wallenstein,
She She Pop's Testament, invited to this year's
Theatertreffen, uses a classic text to open and
explore contemporary real relationships. In this case
the text is Shakespeare's King Lear. Selections from
a promptbook of that text are often projected on a
side wall of the theatre, actors from time to time read
from that text specifc relevant lines and passages,
and the general act by act outline of Shakespeare's
play serves as the basic organizing scheme of this
production. The production was conceived by the
company along with three of their fathers, and
is performed by the fathers and four company
members. None of the three fathers are actorsall
are retired professional men and all around seventy
years of age. The production is focused, like Lear, on
the tensions and negotiations of a generation passing
and another taking its place, along with its physical
possessions and its power. Three armchairs to the
left of the stage provide the usual base for the three
"Lear" fathers. The production begins with three
of the four She She Pop actors introducing the still
12
absent fathers, while a fourth explains that the father,
while still alive, was not in a condition to participate.
Then the king-fathers are introduced, each heralded
by a trumpet call, actually performed by the third
father. They assume their sofa-thrones and the play
begins. Three large picture frames hang on the
upstage wall on their side of the rather shallow stage
and small video camera placed just in front of each
of them project their live images within these large
frames. Throughout the performance we can see
their reactions to whatever is happening while they
are seated. After the storm scene these chairs (and
therefore the portrait frames) are more and more
frequently occupied by the children, sometimes
wearing gold paper crowns and photograph masks
of the displaced fathers.
The plot of Lear provides the major
structural device, but there is a secondary one, which
is the history of the creation of this work itself.
Scenes are included dealing with the inception of the
project, early planning stages, disagreements with
the fathers both about how Lear should be interpreted
and how they should be displayed (and received) on
stage, and more general discussions both about Lear
and this project. In the early scenes the discussion
is mostly about inheritance and how this relates
to love, building upon the testing of the daughters
by Lear. As the production progresses the scope of
discussion widens, to deal with the obligations of
each generation to the other, the tensions between
them, the need for forgiveness and understanding.
The storm scene becomes a moving consideration of
the necessary confrontation with not only the loss
of power and authority in the elderly, but with the
threat of incapacity and ultimately death. The three
fathers, their shirts and trousers removed, are all the
more mortal and vulnerable in that we realize they
are not actors, but poor forked creatures very much
like ourselves in their vulnerability and humanity.
The fnal sequence, the reuniting of Lear
and Cordelia, involves both reconciliation and the
creation of something that the culture itself does not
really provide, a ritual of the passing of power from
one generation to another. One of the fathers is placed
in a coffn and asked questions about his memories
and his legacy. The inheritance is completed but a
fnal image remains. The new generation does not
long occupy their fathers' throne-armchairs or paper
crowns. One by one they join the already prostrate
bodies of the older generation in the center of the
stage. Mortality is the fnal image and Lear's "let be"
replaces the earlier "ripeness is all."
She She Pop's Testament. Photo: Doro Tuch.
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Schiller's Don Carlos from Dresden is
the frst Theatertreffen invitation to director Roger
Vontobel, who was named most promising Young
Director by Theater heute and who has won since
then a number of important prizes and directed
at some of Germany's leading theatres. The play
might be said to be presented in contemporary
dress (costumes by Dagmar Fabisch) and with a
contemporary acting style, but this is not exactly
correct. Both costume and acting suggests not
the twenty-frst century, but the 1950s or 1960s.
Elisabeth (Sonja Beisswenger) and Princess Eboli
(Catherine Hoppe) appear in Jackie Kennedy style
dresses, suggesting Camelot more than Madrid,
while Don Carlos (Christian Friedel) often appears
with tousled hair, barefoot, shirt-tail half out and
very much acting the somewhat exaggerated rage of
an angry young hippie. Posa (Matthias Reichwald)
is of course more decorous in both costume and
demeanor, but he too has a rather old fashioned,
mid-twentieth century realistic approach, right up to
a nervous tick of absentmindedly scratching his left
wrist in moments of tension.
This modern, if not exactly contemporary
approach does serve to emphasize the ongoing
relevance of Schiller's study of father-son rivalry,
political intrigue, manipulation of situations by
rumor, misdirection, and outright falsehood, and
the tension of operating in a surveillance society
where the state makes every attempt to monitor
any suspicious action or word. Indeed, I would
like to have seen a much more extended dramatic
development of this latter point. The frst act setting,
where most of the upstage area was covered with
thin translucent white hangings (setting by Magda
Willi) gave a wonderful sense of this tension, as
Posa and Don Carlos kept nervously glancing up
at the always slightly billowing curtains, whose
movement might or might not be caused by someone
behind. Similarly, the fve identically costumed and
rather robot-like court attendants very effectively
took out identical small notebooks from time to
time and recorded certain speeches. Neither of
these effects, nor anything like them appeared after
this act, however. The white drapes were removed,
revealing an effective, but quite neutral monumental
background that was normally either a solid wall,
or a series of foor to ceiling openings, when large
portals in this wall were opened. The attendants
often were seen moving back and forth beyond the
openings, and occasionally were enlisted to carry on
and off necessary furniture, but there was never a
clear impression in the later part of the play that they
were a signifcant part of any surveillance system.
Friedrich Schiller's Don Carlos, directed by Roger Vontobel. Photo: David Baltzer.
14
Clearly the selection and the warm
reception of this piece refects a certain reaction to
the radical reworkings of the classics by Castorf
and others during the past two decades. The critic
of the Berlin Tagespiegel specifcally praised the
production for its faithfulness to Schiller's text and
its avoidance of "post-dramatic" excesses. While not
comparing Vontobel to Peter Stein, now the symbol
of "faithful" staging of the classics, the review did
cite Andrea Breth, distinctly, like Vontobel, in the
Stein tradition. The major indication of a more
contemporary vision, aside from the costuming, was
the use from time to time of live video projections
on the dark back wall, most notably of the fnal
scene between Carlos and the Queen. Her breaking
out of that scene and coming directly onto the stage,
the video cameraman in plain view behind her, in
fact looked back to the Castorf video work of the
1990s and, while effective, seemed a bit out of place
technologically in this rather mid-twentieth century
production.
Ibsen was at one time regularly represented
in the Berlin Theatertreffen, along with Shakespeare
and Chekhov, but he has been a bit neglected of late,
the last Ibsen here being Ostermeier's Hedda Gabler,
in 2006. This is Fritsch's frst year to be invited to
the Theatertreffen, but two of his productions have
been selected out of the ten, an unusual achievement
which is certain to considerably increase his national
reputation. Fritsch is an artist of many talents,
perhaps best known as an actor, but also as a flm and
theatre director, author, performer, photographer,
and artist. As an actor, he was a leading performer
in the productions of Frank Castorf at the Berlin
Volksbhne from the early 1990s until 2007, during
the period when that theatre was the most innovative
and talked about in Germany. Castorf was often
called the "deconstructionist" of the German theatre,
and his radical reworkings of traditional texts were
among the most extreme in the German stage at the
turn of the century.
Fritsch is by no means an imitator of
Castorf, though he certainly shares with Castorf
a willingness to take conventional texts in
surprising new directions. As in Castorf there is a
strong infuence in his work from pop culture, in
Fritsch's case cartoons and popular flms. His two
Theatertreffen productions, Nora and Hauptmann's
The Beaver Coat, are totally different in tonality,
but both feature grotesque and highly stylized,
almost expressionist make-up, hair styles, costumes,
movement, and gesture, presented for the most part
Henrik Ibsen's Nora, directed by Herbert Fritsch. Photo: Thomas Aurin.
15
directly to the audience against a very simple and
essentially neutral background. Fritsch designs his
own setting and his costumes are by Victoria Behr.
The tone of Beaver Coat is frantic
knockabout farce, suggesting in its extreme energy
and speed, not to mention is continuous mugging, an
animated cartoon or silent flm. Nora is similarly far
from conventional realism, but in a quite different
direction. The inspiration here is the popular horror
flm, with costumes, makeup, and movement
suggesting a convocation of the living dead and
distinct echoes of Frankenstein or Dracula, but with
the cartoon edge of Charles Addams or Tim Burton.
The bare stage contains only a single piece of
scenery, a large, two dimensional cartoon Christmas
tree, green with glittering accents. It begins upstage,
but moves about in the course of the evening, usually
to hide one or more characters wishing to spy more
closely on a scene in progress. Manja Kuhl's Nora
is truly a doll, wide-eyed, and given to balletic
poses, with faring hair and huge bouffant petticoats
spreading out from just below her bosom and
providing an attractive shelter from time to time for
all of the other characters. All are obviously sexually
attracted to her, and lose no opportunity to peer
up into or indeed physically borrow up into these
voluminous skirts (the costumes are by Victoria
Behr.) All of the men have a zombie-like appearance,
with appropriate deathly makeup, Edwardian dress,
and slow deliberate movements. The shuffing pace
they utilize means that their entrances and exits are
almost invariably slow and ponderous, and so we
normally see them approaching the playing area well
before they enter the scene, and moving away from
it for some time after their scene is over. Since they
arrive in time to participate however, this does not
slow down the action, but on the contrary, adds to
the nightmarish feeling of the whole, as we see one
after another death-like fgures slowly shambling up
to the acting area adding to the feeling of impending
doom.
A grotesque eroticism is as omnipresent
as the sense of decay and death, indeed the two are
often intertwined. It is diffcult to decide which of
the decaying men presents a more disgusting sexual
partner for Nora, but probably the honors go to Dr.
Rank (Henry Meyer), here fttingly renamed Dr.
Krank (Sick), with his long stringy hair and his
crouched spider-like appearance. Krogstad (Jrgen
Sarkiss) literally haunts the production, wandering
about like the ghost of Hamlet's father in scenes
where he is being discussed, making melodramatic
threatening gestures at Nora, who seems at least
somewhat aware of his appearance, and disdainful
Nora. Photo: Thomas Aurin.
16
ones at Torvald (Torsten Bauer), who is so unaware
of him that he absentmindedly sits on the ghost's
knee instead of a chair (there being no furniture
on stage in any case). In this gallery of ghouls,
Torvald is perhaps the most attractive, with a kind
of stiff elegance somewhat reminiscent of Lurch,
the manservant in Charles Addams' cartoons. He is
also the least given to overt display of sexual interest
in Norahis demeanor always calm and unruffed,
even in the closing scene, and his physical interest
in her largely manifested by occasionally lifting her
voluminous petticoats and giving her a sharp slap on
the rear.
Nora Buzalka as Mrs. Linde shares with the
male characters an obsession with Nora as a sexual
object and upon her frst appearance overpowers
Nora with a long and consuming embrace and
kiss that has more than a suggestion of vampirism
in it. She is not an aging ghoul like the men, but a
seductive mature woman dressing in elegant black
with very much of the vampire about her. Nor is
she only attracted to Nora. From beginning to end
of the play she seizes every opportunity to engage
in intimate physical contact with Torvald, to which
he responds with as much passion as his moribund
character will allow. She is of course attracted to
Krogstad as well, and their reconciliation scene
in the last act is an extended parody of passionate
love scenes, with repeated swooning kisses and
false departures, played against a background of
excessive romantic flm music. Indeed the entire
production is scored like a mass-market flm, often
utilizing familiar flm music suggesting the themes
of the production, like that from Hitchcock's Vertigo
(music by Otto Beatus). The lighting is similarly
insistent and symbolic, scene changes often being
indicated by bright fashes of pure colorsyellow,
red, blue, green (the lighting is also by Fritsch).
The conclusion of the play is of course
as unconventional as the rest, but totally ftting to
the overall approach. Dr. Rank takes his farewell
and slowly retreats upstage, but remains a ghostly
spectator to what follows, quietly smoking near the
upstage tree. Torvald gets his letters from the box, and
reads all of them with his accustomed measured and
lugubrious delivery, although his tonality and pauses
suggest that he is in fact much disturbed. When he
comes to the famous "I'm saved" he pauses and
the upstage tree suddenly bursts into a spectacular
freworks display, a dazzling theatrical moment that
delights the audience. The tree continues to burn
quietly as the play continues, but Nora does not take
charge of the action. She sits quietly on the foor
down right simply responding "Yes, Torvald" and
"No Torvald: as he runs on through his remaining
lines. Finally he leaves her alone on stage, still
mechanically repeating "Yes, Torvald. No, Torvald."
Finally she realizes that he has gone. She rises and
follows him off the stage, giving her fnal line "I
don't love you anymore." There is no door slam, no
departure, no declaration of independence. This is
doubtless why the production has been called "post-
feminist," but if that is so, it suggests no movement
forward, no progress, only the eternal play of eros
and thanatos that continues in the world of the living
dead.
Often one or two of the Theatertreffen
productions take me to new Berlin venues, either
because of large space demands (like the Christoph
Marthaler production at the former Tempelhof
airport last year) or because a smaller experimental
work in Berlin is presented in its home space. The
latter was the case this year with Verrcktes Blut
(Madness in the Blood) produced by the Ballhaus
Naunynsstrae in Berlin. The Ballhaus, established
in 1983, was reopened after remodeling in 2008 by
producer Shermin Langhoff, member of a famous
German theatre family, and director Nurkan Erpulat,
born in Ankara, but trained in theatre in Berlin.
Almost immediately the Ballhaus established
itself as a major new experimental theatre in the
city, located in the heart of an emigrant, primarily
Turkish, neighborhood and specializing in plays
dealing with emigrant questions, especially what
have come to be called "post-emigrant" works, that
is, works dealing with the experience of the children
and grandchildren of emigrants.
Verrcktes Blut is very much in that
tradition, and is a highly theatrical and multi-layered
exploration of tensions existing today in Germany
and many other countries around the assimilation or
non-assimilation of representatives of other cultures.
The space is an intimate one, actually two large rooms,
with a wall removed between them rather like a giant
proscenium arch, an audience of about 150 seated in
one room and the other, somewhat larger, serving as
the playing area. For this production a neutral raised
area about twenty square feet, surrounded by chairs
for the actors, serves as the performing space (setting
by Magda Willi). Traces of former architectural
elegance can still be seena decorative molding
around the ceiling of the audience area, and pilasters,
plasterwork, and statues in niches at the back of the
stage, but all these are much splattered and painted
over, a ftting backdrop of the conficting concerns
of the play.
17
The play, created by director Erpulat and
dramaturg Jens Hillje, concerns a German secondary
school teacher (Rahel Johann Jankowski) who
attempts to introduce Schiller and the ideals of the
German Enlightenment to a group of turbulent and out
of control young people from the migrant community
(Sesede Terziyan, Nora Abdel-Maksoud, Erol Afsin,
Amre Aksizoglu, Tamar Arslan, Sohel Altan G., and
Gregor Lbel). Her efforts are completely lost in the
chaos of her unruly classroom until in the scuffe a
gun drops out of one of the boy's knapsacks. The
teacher picks up the gun, trembling, and quickly
realizes that for the frst time she is truly in control
of the class. She forces the terrifed students to lie on
the ground and proceeds to force-feed them Schiller,
beginning with his "Aesthetic Education." She then
goes on to force the students at gunpoint to present
scenes of Die Ruber and Kabale und Liebe, works
whose Sturm und Drang excesses hardly ft with
the tolerance and reason she is advocating. Parodox
piles on parodox. With the gun trained on them,
the reluctant and resisting students frst stumble
through the scripts she forces upon them, and then
somehow inspired either by Schiller or the situation,
they drop the texts and continue with strong and
theatrically effective interpretations of the scenes.
The teacher is fascinated and delighted, but clearly
totally unaware that the violence in the texts and in
her own actions provides a continuing contradiction
of such Schillerean quotations as "Violence leads to
violence" and "Man is only entirely a man when he
plays," or "I do not share your opinion, but I would
defend unto the death your right to hold it." Indeed,
she projects violence onto her victims, heaping upon
them orientalist clichs, that violence is all they
understand, that they disregard human life, that they
oppress their women. In vain her student quote back
at her quotations from Schiller that she presented
earlier in the evening about non-violence, freedom,
liberty, and playfulness. A new dimension is added
when one of the female students gains control of the
gun and becomes a kind of parody of the teacher.
Finally the teacher seemingly steps out of the play
and directly addresses the audience with a series
of challenging self-refective questions: "What are
we doing? For whom?" The actors begin to remove
their student costumes and leave the stage, but the
young man who has most often been the butt of their
attacks (Erol Afsin), perhaps as actor, perhaps as
character, seizes the abandoned gun and the violence
continues.
That is not the fnal image, however.
Jens Hillje's Verrcktes Blut, directed by Nurkan Erpulat.
18
Throughout the production, the cast has from time
to time interrupted the action, faced the audience,
and presenting a soothing choric version of some
traditional German nursery song, more in the style
of a Marthaler song than one by Brecht, the premise
of the work is distinctly more Brechtian. They are
accompanied by notes played automatically on a
full size piano that hangs in the fies above their
heads. The familiarity and gentleness of these songs
provide a sharp theatrical contrast to the violence
surrounding them, but also deepens the tensions and
the ironies of the production, not only because of
their tone of easy optimism, but even more because
they are so deeply imbricated within the German
culture (several specifcally praise the "homeland" or
the "fatherland"). The fnale is a soothing traditional
lullaby"sleep my little one, sleep."
Stefan Bachmann has been four times
invited to the Theatertreffen, the frst three at the end
of the 1990s, when he was house director at the Basel
Theatre in Switzerland. Since 2005 he has worked
at a variety of theatres, and his invitation came this
year from a production he created at the Vienna
Burgtheater. This was Die Beteiligten (the Sharers),
a contemporary work by Austrian dramatist Kathrin
Rggla. The inspiration for the play is one of the
major media events in Austria in recent years, the
case of Natasha Kampusch. Kampusch disappeared
at the age of ten and was given up for dead. In fact
she was abducted and held prisoner for eight years
until she escaped in 2006. The case caused a major
sensation and interviews with Kampusch were
fervently sought by all the media. In fact she became
a major celebrity and in 2008 hostess of her own
talk show. Her autobiography of her captivity, called
3096 Days, has been a major best-seller in Austria.
With this rich source material and the current
German passion for "reality" and "authenticity"
on the stage, one might expect Rggla to create a
kind of contemporary docudrama, drawing heavily
on Kampusch's book, but in fact she made a quite
different and much more interesting choice. She tells
the story of Kampusch, or an ur-story based on hers,
indirectly, through the observations of a group of
clearly unreliable and self-serving "sharers" of her
story, a "quasi-friend" (Jrg Ratjen), a "would-be
journalist (Peter Knaack), a "pseudo-psychologist
(Alexandra Henkel), a "sort of neighbor" (Barbara
Petritsch), "an 'ideal' fourteen-year old" (Katharina
Schmalenberg), and "an inoffensive developing
talent (Simon Kirsch). The second-rate parasites
represent the operations of modern media society
Kathrin Rggla's Die Beteiligten, directed by Stefan Bachmann. Photo: Anna Stoecher.
19
which consumes and uses for its own purposes real-
life tragedies like that of Kampusch, who becomes a
double victim, her childhood stolen by her abductor
and her identity and adulthood by needs, desires, and
fantasies of a mediatized culture.
Although Rggla's text is striking and
innovative, with its indirect method and refracted
visions, generally employing third person narrative
and the subjunctive mood, this present a real
challenge to the traditional frst-person enactment
of the theatre. Bachmann has ingeniously met
this challenge in a variety of ways, many of them
involving theatrical equivalents of Rggla's indirect
text. Film and video are extensively utilized.
In a prologue (not in the original text) one of the
actresses presents a fairly straightforward telling
of the classic fairy-tale "Little Red Riding Hood,"
a story with deep cultural resonance for the
Kampusch case (traditional Victorian illustrations
of this story provide the only visual elements in the
program, along with an article on the wolf by Elias
Canetti). After this somewhat indirect prologue, the
production proper begins, with a more theatricalized
indirection. The six "sharers" are seated to one side
of the stage facing not the audience, but a video
camera across the stage from them, and they begin
to lay out their various versions and interpretations
of "her" or "my" story, full of linguistic and narrative
contradictions but clearly meant to foreground
themselves as authentic narrators.
This sequence ends with the frst of
several interventions in which one of the actresses,
representing the evoked victim, attempts to stop
this usurpation of her story and identity. Here she
enters the stage wrapped in a blanket and throws
it over the video camera. There follows a series
theatrical explorations of this story and its Austrian
context, the most striking of them coming not from
the text but from Bachmann's conceptualization of
it. The frst of this is an impassioned rendering of
the notorious song Jeanny, released in 1985 by the
Austrian artist Falco, banned in that country because
of its lyrics, thought by many to glorify rape, but a
top hit in many European countries. The lyrics are
addressed to a girl the singer seemed to have forced
sex upon in an isolated location, and these lyrics, in
German, alternate with a spoken English newscast,
which says in part: "In the last months the number
of missing persons has dramatically increased. The
latest account from the local police reports another
Die Beteiligten. Photo: Anna Stoecher.
20
tragic case. It is a matter of a nineteen year old girl
who was last seen two weeks ago." The contents of
this popular song troublingly anticipates not only the
Kampusch case, but that of Elisabeth Fritzl, who in
2008 revealed to Austrian authorities that her father
Josef had imprisoned her and other siblings in the
family basement for twenty-four years, raping her
repeatedly. This horrifying story inspired a powerful
essay, "My Own Private Austria" by Slavoj iek,
most of which is reproduced as the frst essay in the
Beteiligten program.
In this wide-ranging essay, iek considers
Freud's idea of the primordial father, the all-powerful
patriarch who, among the "ape-men" exercises
total (especially sexual) control over his family/
tribe. In modern society this urge has been turned
to sublimation and fantasy, hidden in a psychic
underground, occasionally, as in these two notorious
cases, coming back in the form of literal basements
and real domination. iek warns that this is not a
uniquely Austrian phenomenon, but is played out
in different ways in different cultures. Although
the Austrian embrace of and sequent denial of and
sublimation of Nazism bears traces of this fantasy,
iek feels that the "kitsch musical" The Sound of
Music, with its all-powerful father, expresses this
dynamic equally clearly, through a Hollywood
perspective, which ironically, has helped shape the
modern Austrian self-image.
Clearly Bachmann has found the iek
essay a rich source of imagery for his production,
especially in its frequent flmic sections. The most
extended of these begins with a touristic fight over
the Alps and continues with a series of scenes from
The Sound of Music showing the Baron von Trapp
ruthlessly imposing a kind of military drill on his
children. Then, against an Alpine scene from the
flm, a spotlighted SS offcer dances, orates, and
eventually ascends triumphant into the fies. Quite
possibly the Red Riding Hood references were at
least in part inspired by iek's description of the
Fritzl case as resembling "a bad fairy-tale." Even
Freud's primordial father and his tribe make a flmic
appearance, apparently attacking and recapturing
the girl when she makes a frantic attempt to
escape through the woods (all flmed from her own
perspective).
The endings, like much of the production,
plays with a number of levels of reality and illusion.
The "sharers," earlier dressed and made up as
physical doubles of Kampusch, here appear as their
"true selves," at frst apparently nude, but in fact still
hidden, now behind nude body costumes. The girl
whose identity they have usurped exacts her revenge
by killing them, one by one, with a samurai sword.
She is then carried offstage by a fgure in the shape
of a large troll doll with a shock of red hair, a fgure
the director noticed on a shelf in a photograph of the
abducted Natasha's bedroom. Does this represent
an escape at last, or a regression to childhood, or a
fight into fantasy? It is a striking but unclear stage
image, but then the situation and the future of the
real Natasha Kampusch, whoever she now is, is no
less ambiguous.
Stefan Pucher was a regular participant
in the Theatertreffen in the early years of the new
century, and returned this year with his production
of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman from Zurich.
Among these productions, Death of a Salesman
is the closest to a traditional reading of the text,
though it is still far from what one might see on
a London or New York stage. The acting in fact
is close to American psychological realism, with
Robert Hunger-Bhler's distraught and harried Willy
Lohman faintly reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman's
recent interpretation of this role. His family, the
volatile Biff (Sean McDonagh), the easy-going
Happy (Jan Bluthardt) and the rather colorless
housewife Linda (Friederike Wagner) seem a
familiar, almost clichd American family from
countless flm and TV depictions. This impression
is reinforced by the fact that almost every scene is
reproduced on two or three large screens above the
acting area in black and white, strongly suggesting
scenes from some mid-twentieth century realistic
family TV drama. The lesser characters, Charley
(Siggi Schwientek), Bernard (Jonas Gygax), Miss
Howard (Julia Kreusch), Ben (Markus Scheumann),
and the woman (Michaela Steiger) are much closer
to caricatures, with somewhat more exaggerated
demeanor, costumes, makeup, and hair styles.
Except for the conclusion, the production
follows Miller's text fairly closely scene to scene,
but in fact much has been cut, even though the show
runs some three hours (almost twice as long as many
of the productions, both modern and classic in this
year's Theatertreffen). A good deal of material has
been added, much of it visual, and it is the visual (and
musical) elements of the production that most clearly
separate it from a conventional American production.
I have already mentioned the video replications of
the scenes, and one is often aware of the scurrying
back and forth of the video cameramen, setting up
their equipment for each scene or moving it about
for a close-up or better angle. They never actually
enter the acting area, as in a Castorf production, but
21
they are a constant presence in the space between
the audience and the actors, who perform on a raised
stage but in settings on the same level as the frst
row of spectators. At certain moments the ongoing
video duplications of scenes are supplemented by a
bombardment of other projected images, multiple
sleazy neon motel signs for the scenes with the
woman, for example, or images of Alaskan sled dogs
and industrial complexes for the appearances of Ben.
A handsome, pristine Thunderbird is located at one
end of the huge playing area during the frst part of
the evening, and when Willy drives it, sometimes
with his two sons, sometimes alone, the video screen
above him flls in a moving background on the blue
screen behind him, so that he seems to be speeding
through the countryside.
The production was not presented in a
conventional theatre, which could not accommodate
the massive setting designed by Stphane Laim
for the original production in the very large
Schiffbauhaus in Zurich. Instead the Theatertreffen
utilized a space it has employed before for such large
productions, the cavernous Radialsystem V near the
Ostbahnhof. Here the audience was seated along
one side of the large rectangular space, and a series
of performing areas, rather like the Valenciennes
medieval mansions, were stretched out along the
other side. For the frst act these were a large vestibule
with sweeping staircase, a kitchen, breakfast
room, a patio, a bedroom, a living room, and the
Thunderbird area. In the second act the Thunderbird
space was empty, a bar/nightclub occupied the patio
space, the bedroom space became an offce, and the
bedroom has been moved to the former living room
space. This Lohman home, like this Lohman car, are
clearly far beyond the fnancial means of Miller's
protagonist, and rather more suggest the settings of a
Hollywood flm of that era depicting a very well-off
urban or suburban family. Apparently Pucher and his
designer have taken us entirely into Willy's fantasies,
showing us the home he imagines, not the one
where he actually lives. I found this an interesting
interpretation, but was unable to ft it well with his
fruitless journey downtown to the home offce to ask
to be taken off the road. His trip there is suggested
by a nightmarish montage of urban flm clips, but the
streets and traffc shows are clear from the 1920s. Is
Willy reverting to his earliest years on the job? The
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, directed by Stefan Pucher. Photo: Tanja Dorendorf.
22
sequence is visually striking but its message is far
from clear.
Aside from the extensive use of live video
and clips, the feature that most marks this as a
German production is its use of popular songs. One
of the most common effects on the contemporary
German stage is the insertion in plays from all
periods, of popular contemporary songs, often
American and sung in English, which have some
thematic connection to the action. Thus in this
Death of a Salesman the woman, dressed in a slinky,
red spangled costume when she is not in her dressing
gown and/or undergarments, performs a rather over
the top siren song in each of her two major scenes,
frst a suggestive Mae West type number, "Do it
Again," and later the more familiar "My Heart
Belongs to Daddy." By far the most radical departure
from the original is another musical intervention,
this one forming the conclusion of the show. Willy's
fatal crash is represented by a loud sound effect and
the lights all going out. Then, instead of Miller's
epilogue, we see Linda in the nightclub set, sitting
at the piano. One by one the other cast members
gather in the setting to create a musical ensemble
Happy on the drums, Biff, Charley, and Bernard on
guitar, the woman and Miss Howard behind the bar
with violins, joined by Ben on a harmonica. The
lead singer, on a microphone downstage, is Willy,
and this ensemble ends the production with several
verses of the Velvet Underground song "I'm set free."
the chorus of which runs: "I'm set free. I'm set free to
fnd a new illusion."
The fnal production of this year's
Theatertreffen was also one of most eagerly
anticipated. Between the mid-1980s and his death
in Berlin with lung cancer in 2010, Christoph
Schlingensief was one of Germany's most innovative
and controversial flmmakers, experimental artists,
and theatre directors. In the mid-1990s he began
regular travels to Africa, seeking to build theatrical
bridges between Europe and that continent, centering
upon the state of Burkina Faso. The fnal fruit of
this work was the posthumous Via Intolleranza II,
still incomplete at his death, but fnished by his co-
workers, headed by his assistant Stefan Kolosko,
and presented in Africa, in Munich, and at a number
of major European festivals during the past year.
The theme of the work is the ongoing
relationship between Europe and Africa, where the
heritage of colonialism continues under the guise
Death of a Salesman. Photo: Tanja Dorendorf.
23
of humanitarian and cultural aid, both still based on
European power and the assumption of superiority,
and demonstrations, as Schlingensief put it, of
Europe's own "helplessness and intolerance." The
starting point for the director's work in Burkina
Faso with a combined company of actors from
that country and others from Germany, was the
one-act opera by Luigi Nono, Intolleranza 1960,
a passionate condemnation of intolerance without
a normal plot but combining incidents and found
material. Schlingensief kept something of this
structure, some images, a few musical passages,
and the overall theme, but his own work builds
up its own set of references, mixing elements of
African folklore, Calypso, European nightclub
entertainment, anthropological and art flms, appeals
to charity, African revival meetings, hospital scenes
with witch doctors, songs, monologues, fghts, and
dances.
The Nono opera provides a kind of
orientation for the production in that it deals with
intolerance and Schlingensief is centrally concerned
with the exploitation of Africa by intolerant and
manipulative Europeans, but aside from that Nono's
work has little to do with this ninety-minute verbal
and visual collage. Indeed one of Schlingensief's
Burkino Faso actors, Kandy, married to a Professor
from France, comments in the production that she
read Nono's libretto and found it totally irrelevant to
the third world. "Enough of Nono!" she concludes.
If there is an external work that serves as a kind of
unifying element it is in fact a 1911 silent flm of
Dante's Inferno, created by Francesco Bertolini.
Selections from this, interspersed with clips from
European anthropological flms and images of
Africa icons like the Hottentot Venus, are projected
on a variety of curtains at different positions on the
stage, throughout most of the evening, but these
images, like much of the production, are often seen
as rather disjointed fragments, projected for example
on a curtain only partly pulled on stage, so only part
of the image can actually be seen.
In front of and among these various
projections a complex collage of other images and
Christoph Schlingensief's Via Intolleranza II, directed by Stefan Kolosko. Photo: Aino Laberenz.
24
theatrical sequences are presented, often overlapping
each other so that a complete assimilation of them is
quite impossible. Nevertheless certain moments and
sequences stand out and some are quite memorable.
Among this is one of several featuring a European
actor requesting some sort of performance from an
African. In this case the Africans asked to present
a physical image of hunger. Facing the audience he
extends his arms and somehow draws in his upper
body so as to create a ghostly hollowed out space
where his stomach should be. The demonstration is
physically memorable and even more symbolically
powerful. In another scene a French dancer tries
in vain to impose a classic dance sequence on the
movements of a clearly talented but unresponsive
African. The dense text contains many references
to Schlingensief's African project, including his
unfulflled plan to create an opera there, all of which
provide further opportunities for ironic refection
on contemporary interculturalism. There are half-
serious appeals for fnancial aid for the impoverished
Africans, and as is often the case in Schlingensief
productions, many autobiographical references, in
this case, not surprisingly to the terminal cancer he
was suffering as he was developing this piece. A
fgure on a death bed submits to the exorcism of a
witch-doctor, while another, in agony, "Father, my
black father, why hast thou forsaken me?" Kolosko
appears dressed as the author in a heavy dark coat,
thanking Jesus for the insight the Africans have
given him that one should be thankful even for shit,
to which he likened his life. Dancing and shouting
"Hallelujah," he collapses and is carried from the stage
in a combination of mourning and triumph. Scenes
take place in African villages, hastily assembled
as crude cardboard cutouts of huts (the Europeans
remark on how well they are painted) in European
night-clubs, with parody party dancing to the music
of Harry Belafonte, and in roundtable discussions
on art, poverty, colonialism, and orientalism,
carried on in a mixture of French, German, and
the African More languages. The whole is a lively
and engaging phantasmagoria, but ultimately less
than the sum of its often striking parts. I found it
considerably less impressive on the whole than other
Schlingensief works I have seen, though its ambition
was impressive. One cannot avoid the feeling that
had Schlingensief lived to complete this last work
it probably would have been no less complex, but
very likely more impressive as a whole. Even so,
it brought the very strong Theatertreffen of 2011
to an impressive close and indeed in its inevitable
associations with the recent death of this major
fgure of the contemporary German stage, served as
Don Carlos, directed by Roger Vontobel. Photo: David Baltzer.
25
Our humanity or lack thereof was much
in question at the sixty-ffth Avignon Festival (6 to
26 July) and children were featured players in the
questioning of man's inhumanity to man. Many
shows dealt with what it means to remain human
in a world that ignores man's suffering, a world
that accepts violence and cruelty with indifference.
Angelika Liddell's fascinating Maldito sea el
hombre que confa en el hombre (Cursed is the Man
Who Puts his Trust in Men), Arthur Nauzyciel's
powerful dramatic poem Jan Karski (My Name is
a Fiction), a testimonial to the courage of one man
who risked his life to warn the Western world about
the extermination camps, and Romeo Castellucci's
profoundly disturbing Sul Concetto Di Volto Nel
Figlio Di Dio (On The Concept of the Face of The Son
of God) that explores the nature of human suffering
through the story of a very ill father and his devoted
son who live their calvary under the indifferent gaze
of a portrait of Christ, were haunting reminders of
the sins of humanity and human suffering. Katie
Mitchell and Leo Warner's Kristin, nach Frulein
Julie (Strindberg's Miss Julie seen from the point of
view of Christine, the cook), and Pascal Rambert's
Clture d'amour (The End of Love) a devastating
portrait of a couple's breakup, also spoke of the
cruelty that human beings are capable of visiting on
each other. There were some lighter moments in the
festival's programming, but on the whole, this year's
Avignon Festival refected the major concerns of
today's world.
Protests to the contrary, the festival
continues to favor creative innovation over
mainstream repertory. Out of the thirty-seven shows
in this year's program, twenty-six were creations or
frst showings in France, and many offered audiences
opportunities to explore those "unknown lands" dear
to the hearts of festival directors Vincent Baudriller
and Hortense Archambault. "The festival's principal
role," in the words of Baudriller, "is as a forum for
artists to present new aesthetic forms." Once more,
the festival achieved it goals in terms of numbers:
128,000 seats sold out of 137,000 available (12,000
more than last year). Attendance was at ninety-three
percent of its capacity.
For the frst time, a number of shows were
scheduled at off-hours during the day and at night.
The most unusual scheduling decision was made by
Avignon's Sixty-Fifth Festival: Theater as a Witness of Our Times
Philippa Wehle
Avignon Festival Space. Photo: Courtesy of Festival Avignon.
26
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Bjorn Schmelzer,
to begin their dance/music performance in the
Honor Court at 4:30 a.m. Their goal was to have the
audience in their seats (all 2,000 of them) so that
the show could start when the sun came up. Other
performances took place at 2:30, 3:00, 5:00 and 6:00
in the afternoon and early evening, thus providing
audiences with more opportunities than previously
to see a variety of shows. New venues opened up
as well. Festival goers traveled more frequently out
of town than ever before. One had to go all the way
to Cavaillon (twenty-one kilometers from Avignon)
to see Katie Mitchell and Leo Werner's Christine. It
was well worth the trip.
The festival opened on 6 July with two
major theater pieces, both commissioned by the
festival, one a recounting of the Holocaust in
dramatic terms through the words of Jan Karski, the
man who risked his life in 1942 to inform the Allies
about the horrors of the camps, directed by Arthur
Nauzyciel, the other The Suicide, by Nicolai Erdman,
a very funny farce written in 1928 and given new life
by director-actor Patrick Pineau. Despite their very
different styles, both spoke of the question of one
man's survival against all odds.
Arthur Nauzyciel's Jan Karski (My Name is
a Fiction), is an adaptation of Yannick Haenel's 2009
novel of the same name that recounts Karski's heroic
actions when in 1942 he alerted the Allies to the mass
exterminations in the Warsaw Ghetto and the death
camps. Like Haenel's novel, Nauzyciel's tale is told
in three parts. The frst recreates Karski's interview
with Claude Lanzmann for his 1985 flm Shoah. The
second is based on Karski's own autobiographical
Story of a Secret State published in 1944, and in the
third, which is Haenel's fctional account, Karski
relives his years of sleepless nights haunted by the
ghosts of his terrible ordeal in the form of a series of
inner monologues, beautifully delivered by Laurent
Poitreneau.
Nauzyciel took on the diffcult task of
adapting Haenel's novel for the stage for several
reasons. For one, members of his own family were
deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and somehow
managed to survive to tell their story. He wanted
to give voice to those disappeared witnesses even
though it meant reviving this painful past. It was
important to transmit this powerful message to
today's audiences. "Our generation must fnd ways
to become witnesses as well," Nauzyciel told Le
Monde on 7 July.
Before the lights in the Opera Theater are
dimmed, the scene is set through sounds. Recorded
voices in Polish and German, with no translation, are
heard along with the sounds of trains, no doubt the
trains transporting the Jews to the death camps. In
front of the theater's iron curtain, a simple wooden
table and two chairs and a projection of the Statue
of Liberty's eyes, nose, and part of her crown set the
scene for part I.
Nauzyciel comes forward and describes a
man of about sixty, seated across from Lanzmann for
his interview for Shoah. The man speaks awkward
English, he says. It is Karski, a Polish Roman
Arthur Nauzyciel's Jan Karski (My Name is a Fiction), directed by Arthur Nauzyciel. Photo: Courtesy of Avignon Festival.
27
Catholic, member of the Polish underground, who
has remained silent for more than thirty years about
the horrors he witnessed in the Warsaw Ghetto,
and the death camps in 1942, and the mission that
he was sent on to warn the Allies about the mass
exterminations. Nauzyciel sits in for Karski in one
of the chairs; the other remains empty. He reads
the words of Karski's testimony. "Now, I go back.
thirty-fve years." But in Lanzmann's flm he can't
go back and he breaks into sobs, gets up, and leaves.
When he returns, he begins again, as does Nauzyciel
as he continues to read Hanenel's description of
Karski's extraordinary tale. Approached by two
Jewish Resistance leaders in Warsaw, he is asked to
deliver an eye-witness report on the situation in the
Warsaw Ghetto and the death camps to the British
and American governments asking for help for the
Polish Jews. After a while, Nauzyciel unexpectedly
gets up, crosses the stage, and mysteriously executes
a rather awkward tap dance number.
In part II, Karski's words from his
autobiography are read by German actress Marthe
Keller in a voice over, while flm images of a map of
the streets once occupied by the Warsaw Ghetto, are
projected onto a large screen. These videos of street
names and blocks by Polish artist Miroslaw Balka
move back and forth across the screen, making us
painfully aware that there is nothing left of the ghetto
that once occupied a quarter of the city. Karski's
words foat over us in surround sound, as we listen
to his devastating descriptions of what he witnessed
in the ghetto and in the death camp he visited. We are
left with a profound sense of emptiness and absence.
In the third section, which is fction but
inspired by real events, Haenel imagined what
Karski might have said to himself during those
years of silence and wakeful nights. The stage is
transformed into the corridors of the Warsaw opera
house with its crystal chandeliers, richly appointed
trappings and elegant red velvet benches. A dressed
handsome man, Laurent Poitreneau, sits on one of
the benches and begins to speak Karski's imagined
thoughts and memories. He takes up Karski's story
once again, the story of the Polish Roman Catholic
contacted by two Jewish resistance leaders who sent
him to London and the United States, to deliver the
message of the horrors that he had witnessed in the
Warsaw ghetto and the extermination camps. He tells
of his meeting with President Roosevelt and how his
message was not heard. He also recounts his life as a
professor at Georgetown University, and how he met
his wife, Pola Nirenska, a professional dancer whose
family was exterminated in the camps. He speaks
of having to come to terms with his realization that
Jan Karski (My Name is a Fiction). Photo: Courtesy of Avignon Festival.
28
salvation would never come, but he also tells us that
it is through his wife that he learns to understand that
"only love can defy the abyss." Poitreneau's delivery
is introspective, his head is frequently lowered and
he rarely looks out at the audience. As his monologue
comes to an end, a dancer inexplicably appears in
the corridor to perform a strange, intense, powerful
dance. Many words have been heard throughout the
two-and-a-half-hour performance. For Nauzyciel, it
was time to express Karski's and others' suffering in
physical terms.
Le Suicid (The Suicidal), Patrick Pineau's
wonderful production of Nicolai Erdman's 1928
comedy about a simple man who fnds himself the
center of attention when his neighbors learn that he
is about to carry out his plan to take his life. Each one
has a reason to want him to commit suicide. Some
critics were not happy that this comedy of manners
was performed in the vast Boulbon Quarry which is
usually used for larger pieces, but Pineau wanted his
production to be like a carnival, a sort of outdoor
banquet, and he used the entire space like a "grande
piste de cirque"(a large circus ring). He also included
music composed especially for the show, played live
on the stage in the manner of circus bands.
His reasons for staging a rather old-
fashioned farce that was written under Stalin and
censored by the Stalinist regime, were numerous but
one of the main reasons was his company of very
talented actors with whom he works at the Scne
Nationale de Snart, a new town not far from Paris.
Pineau not only directed this delightful farce but he
also played the lead role.
Erdman's eighteen colorful characters offer
a variety of strong portraits, ranging from Semione
Semionovitch Podsekalnikov, an ordinary man who
has been out of work for a year, his wife and his
mother-in-law, to the village butcher, a writer, a
church deacon, a deaf-mute, a funeral director, a
waiter, ladies of the night, and the Grand-Skoubik
Aristarquea panoply representing various
members of society under Stalin. His versatile
company takes them all on with alacrity; they are
quick-change artists, experts in rapid-fre dialogue
and fast-paced action, and the result was an evening
of nonstop fun.
Pineau's set is composed of crates turned on
their sides to create several slanted shacks, some of
which are open so that we can see the interiors. A
very long building on one side of the stage forms
what looks like an extended wall. Semione wakes
his wife in the middle of the night and asks her if
Nicolai Erdman's Le Suicid, directed by Patrick Pineau. Photo: Courtesy Avignon Festival.
29
there is any sausage left from the day before. He is
hungry. We watch them bickering like Punch and
Judy in their tiny lop-sided house. His wife is so
worried about her husband's state that she appeals
to her mother-in-law who then alerts the neighbors
and the whole zany farce takes off. Semione is so
distraught that he gets a gun and writes a suicide
note. He soon changes his mind, however, but the
ball has been set rolling. Word gets around very
quickly that Semione Simoniovitch is going to take
his life and before you know it, there is a parade of
opportunists knocking at his door. Each one has a
cause and they want Semione to die for their cause.
For one, it's the Revolution, for another, it's for the
aesthetic beauty of the gesture. Clearly Semione is
worth more dead than alive. The only people who
want him alive are his wife and mother-in law. As
for Semione, he has no intention of dying. Instead he
decides to learn to play the tuba. "You have to live,"
he tells his wife in a wonderful scene in which his
attempts to get a single note out of the tuba are met
with little success.
Soon, the undertakers from the Eternity
funeral home arrive, complete with coffn and
wreaths. Hats are delivered to Semione's wife and
mother-in-law to wear to the funeral, and the long
wall is moved over to make room for the poor fellow's
grave. Meanwhile, a farewell banquet is being held
stage right with everyone around the table discussing
Semione's death and singing his praises as a hero who
has saved the country. The funeral cortege marches
in with Simeone in a coffn. To everyone's surprise,
he is not dead, just drunk. Semione has the last word
after all. As he rises up out of his coffn, he shouts:
"I do not want to die for humanity" and chases after
them all with a gun. As uproariously funny as The
Suicidal is, there is a serious component as well. On
the one hand contemporary audiences can certainly
relate to Semione's predicament of joblessness and
desperation about the future. On the other, Erdman is
clearly criticizing a totalitarian regime and creating a
hero who stands up for himself despite the pressures
of an entire society.
A similar carnival spirit reined in Vincent
Macaigne's Au moins j'aurai laiss un beau cadavre
d'aprs "Hamlet" de William Shakespeare (At Least
I Will Have Left a Beautiful Cadaver After William
Shakespeare's Hamlet), one of this year's must-
see. The difference was that Macaigne's version of
Hamlet was messy, disruptive, and rowdy, whereas
every moment in Pineau's Russian farce was
impeccably controlled.
For starters, Macaigne's stage was
overfowing with objects (a skeleton in a glass
cabinet, a white cross, two skulls, funeral wreaths, a
soft drink dispenser, and most importantly a pool of
mucky water containing fsh and a cadaver). This is
Macaigne's choice for Hamlet's father's grave. The
stage is covered with a pungent smelling grass. The
frst three rows of the Carmes Cloister Theatre were
Le Suicid, directed by Patrick Pineau. Photo: Courtesy Avignon Festival.
30
covered with a tarp to protect the audience members
from the splashing water coming from the pool every
time Hamlet dives into it.
As the show begins, one of the actors is
shouting at the audience to come join him on the
stage. "Tout le monde debout," ("Everyone stand
up") he yells. A number of people comply, dancing
and clapping on the stage for at least half an hour.
Macaigne seemed to want to create a spontaneous
happening. To some, it felt coerced, contrived, and
quite annoying.
Four fgures appear in a glass enclosure
above the stage. Access to the enclosed space is via a
spiral staircase stage right. It is the new King's court.
They are about to greet the people of Elsinore and
celebrate their wedding. A neon sign overhead warns
us that there are not going to be any miracles. ("Il n'y
aura pas de miracles.")
Loud music announces that the wedding
celebration is about to begin. Buckets of confetti
fall from above, covering the revelers as well as the
audience. The party has begun. The only malcontent
in the group is Hamlet who is wailing and moaning
and carrying on. The wedding party dismisses his
grief. For them, he is a party spoiler, a "putain de
dpressif," ("a fucking depressed kid") in the words
of his new stepfather.
Macaigne's Hamlet does not speak his
grief, he screams it and acts it out by plunging
again and again into the muddy water, coming up
with a fsh, diving back in again, and emerging with
a cadaver that he drags out of the pool onto the
grass. He even holds up a stuffed animal, a ferret
that he insists is the very image of his father. The
audience, especially those in the front row, reacts
appropriately with laughter rather than pity. Ophelia
appears in the middle of the audience, on the stairs
that lead down to the stage. She is wearing a t-shirt
with an image of Christ with a crown of thorns on
it. She comes running down the stairs, breaking a
bottle of champagne on her way, happily spritzing
those audience members next to her. For Macaigne,
Hamlet and Ophelia are immature, pimply, bratty
kids, rebelling against their parents who don't have
a clue who their kids really are or how to talk to
them. Gertrude and Claudius are much too busy
enjoying sex and power. Macaigne's idea of their
wedding night is quite wonderful. Here is Gertrude,
the temptress in bra and panties, coyly murmuring
"Boop-Oop-A-Doop" and shaking her booty at
Claudius, and Claudius responding accordingly.
They agree that they will make a better world and
Vincent Macaigne's Au moins j'aurai laiss un beau cadavre d'aprs "Hamlet" de William Shakespeare.
Photo: Courtesy of Avignon Festival.
31
as they get down to their love making, they declare:
"The tyrant is dead, the old king is dead," followed
by "we're feeling good." In Macaigne's view,
Claudius comes across as a hero who killed Hamlet's
father to rid the kingdom of an evil despot. Ophelia
and Hamlet's love affair, on the other hand, is a
lost cause. Ophelia's idea of love is that she misses
exchanging songs with Hamlet, eating hamburgers
with him, and hearing his voice on her answering
machine, to which Hamlet responds with: "I never
loved you. I'm just being honest. Scram!"
Clearly, Macaigne never intended to present
Shakespeare's Hamlet but rather to create his and his
company's own take on the events that took place in
Elsinore, seen from today's perspective. When there
are familiar scenes taken from Shakespeare, they are
not in any chronological order nor are they complete.
The second part of the four-hour-show moves even
further away from the bard. The play takes place
thirty-fve years earlier. Hamlet and Ophelia are
children: Hamlet, dressed in short pants, is four, and
Ophelia four and a half. It's as if Macaigne decided
to reduce them to powerlessness in order to focus
more on Claudius. Here, he is sitting on a white sofa,
wearing a paper crown and crying. He is covered
with blood and feeling sorry for himself. He would
have liked to have been Marcel Proust, Rembrandt,
Godard, or Duchamp, he tells us, but instead he
must govern, and therefore, he will invent socialism,
capitalism, nuclear energy, and everyone will be
equal.
As he ruminates, large numbers of bottles
of fake blood are brought onto the stage and emptied,
one after the other, until the entire stage is covered
with blood. Suddenly the stage begins to rise up. The
bench where Claudius was sitting is being infated.
It grows and grows until it becomes a gigantic white
infatable castle, leaving Claudius standing in the
middle of rivers of blood. His moment of truth has
come. It is time to confess his crime: "I killed my
brother with my own hands," he admits. "I am a
monster." He then begins to undress, enumerating
the cost of each thing he takes off: his watch, 35,000
euros, his Chanel jacket, 8,000 euros. When he's
completely naked, he traces lines around his neck,
stomach and knees and continues his list. Knee
replacement 54,000 euros, triple bypass surgery,
580,000 euros, and so on. Stripped of all vanity,
reduced to begging our forgiveness, he claims:
"I am sorry for what I did. Hamlet is the noblest
of us all. I would have died for each one of you."
Perhaps Macaigne has redeemed Claudius. Perhaps
not.
To judge from the grand fnale of Macaigne's
deconstructed Hamlet, it would seem that everyone
gets their just desserts. All of the players end up in
a large glass case flled with water. One by one they
climb in until they are all jammed together in the
blood red water like fsh in an aquarium. Perhaps
there weren't any miracles, but for a large number
of audience members and critics, Macaigne and
his jolly band succeeded in creating an impressive
evening of total theater.
Romeo Castellucci's new piece Sul concetto
di volto nel fglio di dio (On The Concept of the Face
of the Son of God) was another must-see at this
year's festival. Unlike most of Castellucci's work,
the set for Sul concetto is surprisingly hyperrealistic,
a living room with sofa, coffee table, TV, and potted
palm on one side of the stage, a bedroom on the other
Au moins j'aurai laiss un beau cadavre d'aprs "Hamlet" de William Shakespeare. Photo: Courtesy of Avignon Festival.
32
and a dining room in between. Everything is white.
An old man wearing a white bathrobe is sitting on
a white sofa. He is watching TV. This might be the
beginning of a bourgeois drama if it weren't for the
gigantic reproduction of Antonello da Messina's
1465 portrait of Christ entitled Salvatore mundi
(Savior of the World ) that takes up the entire rear
of the stage. Scott Gibbons' pounding soundscape
composed of loud voices and metallic noises,
contradicts the tranquility of the scene.
A well-dressed gentleman comes into the
living room. "Is everything all right, Papa?" he asks
in Italian. "How are you this morning?" "Did you
sleep well?" "What are you watching?" The father
mutters something about animals. The son gets
ready to go to work but before he can leave, his
father is having some sort of attack. A dark brown
stain appears on the father's bathrobe and then on
the sofa. The Father has lost control of his bowels.
With loving kindness, the son tells him not to worry.
He gets a bucket of water, latex gloves, towels, and
a fresh diaper. He meticulously tends to his father's
needs, taking off his bathrobe and soiled diaper,
washing him and putting on a fresh diaper and
clothes. He cleans up the mess without a complaint.
The father is devastated, of course, and is constantly
apologizing and weeping. Son and father next move
to the center of the stage where there is table set for
breakfast. No sooner does the father sit down than he
loses control again. Same scenario, same gestures,
same feeling of caring on the part of the son for his
father. Not a detail is missed of what clearly has
become a routine in the son's life right down to the
smell of feces that wafts throughout the theater. As
the son of God looks on, impassive and serene, the
father has yet another accident and the son must
once more wash and change him, this time with a bit
more impatience. The son must fnally go to work,
leaving his father sitting on the edge of his bed,
the embodiment of dejection and shame. In a fnal
gesture of despair, he pours a bottle of his feces over
the bed and himself. A young schoolboy appears out
of nowhere. He takes off his backpack and begins to
throw fake grenades at the portrait of Christ. He is
soon joined by other schoolchildren who follow suit.
The explosive sounds of the grenades hitting the
image of Christ is deafening as well as unsettling.
Yet the portrait remains undamaged and the children
sit in a semi circle staring at it before leaving.
Wearing only his soiled diaper, the father
Romeo Castelucci's Sul Concetto di volto nel fglio di dio. Photo: Courtesy of Avignon Festival.
33
walks slowly over to the rear of the stage and out a
back door. Black liquid begins to stream down the
face of Christ. Loud rumbling noises accompany
the astonishing fnal moments of Sul concetto.
Something strange and extraordinary is happening
to the portrait of Christ. It is being torn to pieces by
three stage hands standing on scaffolds behind the
image. Large white letters begin to appear in English
on the remains of the portrait. At frst we read: "The
Lord is my Shepherd." But within a few minutes,
another word becomes visible, the word "not" in
parentheses. "The Lord is (not) my Shepherd."
The son of God, the Savior of the World (the title
of Massina's painting) has not provided succor to
this father and son. Overwhelmed by this intense
experience, we are left to ask ourselves to what
extent we, too, are implicated in the gaze of this
indifferent Christ?
Whereas the children in Castellucci's Sul
concetto express their rebellion against the Savior of
the World with their fake grenades, a frightening view
of possible things to come, Angelika Liddell begins
her condemnation of mankind with an idyllic image
of childhood. A little girl wearing a gold colored
dress and hood in the form of rabbit ears crosses the
stage to an upright piano and begins to play. More
girls come on stage wearing the same gold outfts,
and begin a game with Lola Jimenez as their teacher.
She recites the alphabet and they repeat after her: "A
comme argent, b comme bande, c comme comdie,
d comme douleur, e comme enfant," etc. (A for
money, b for group, c for comedy, d for sorrow, e
for child). The girls execute various exercises and
do summersaults. Angelika and Lola wearing short
dresses, high white socks, and high heels, dance
and skip around together as well. Everything seems
hopeful and happy in this fake Garden of Eden made
of cardboard trees with apples painted on them.
The premise of Liddell's Maudit soit
l'homme qui se confe en l'homme, un projet
d'alphabtisation (Cursed is the Man Who Puts
his Trust in Men, a Project in Alphabetization) was
to create an alphabetically arranged list in French
in an attempt to rename and reorganize a world
that Liddell sees as flled with distrust, contempt,
and cruelty. Her list is not the "abcd" order of the
beginning of her piece, however, it is a series of
letters arranged according to her central concerns
and how they relate to the letters that come before
and after. H for hatred, for example. "And you will
hate your neighbor as you hate yourself," comes
before o for ombre (shadow) "And you will survive
thanks to the darkness," which comes before r for
rage, "And you will think thanks to your rage."
Her alphabet begins with e comme enfant, and the
comment that goes with it is: "I never knew a single
Sul concetto di volto nel fglio di dio. Photo: Courtesy of Avignon Festival.
34
child who became a good adult," cancels out the
happy throng in the frst scene. Having learned not to
trust in humanity, money is the only thing for which
Liddell has any respect. She prefers the friendly
exchange between the seller (a Chinese grocer in
this case) and the buyer. Ask the Chinese grocer: "Is
there any more bread?" And if he answers yes, you
ask how much, and he answers "sixty centimes."
End of transaction. This is how you avoid fnding
out that a person is despicable, according to Liddell.
"You may argue that there are some good people,"
she continues. "That you have to respect human
beings. But if that is what you think, either you're an
imbecile or you've never had to cry enough, never
known enough disappointment," and she takes off
on a familiar Angelika Liddell rant. "Stick your
good intentions up your ass," she declares. "Stick
your false love of your neighbor up your ass." The
words pour out of her. Like Macaigne, Liddell uses
the stage to discharge her rage or what she calls her
"pornography of the soul." And she does it with an
intensity and fury that leaves one gasping. Her stage
is a battlefeld and her goal is to "tell the truth out
loud."
Softer moments are possible, but they are
few and far between, and they are mostly sad or
wistful glimpses or what might but cannot be. When
a player piano plays a Schubert's andante, as it
does several times during Maudit, Liddell stops and
listens closely to this piece that is a refection of her
profound sadness. She even suggests the possibility
of a love relationship that might lead to redemption.
One of the most moving scenes in the show is a duo
between herself and one of the Chinese acrobats that
she invited to perform in her show. The two of them
are seated on the foor, facing each other with a tray
of rice between them. They speak in sign language,
she to him in Spanish, and he to her in Chinese
ideograms. They are writing their love in the air.
"Why are you crying," he signs. "I am thinking of
the children I won't have," she replies. He comforts
her and she allows herself to cry. But a lasting love
is an impossibility in Liddell's world.
B is for group (bande), a group composed
of solitary individuals. A group that can be alone
together. A group such as the performers with whom
Liddell creates her work, a team that shares their
hatred of the world and their desire to get even. And
especially Angelika and Lola, friends since forever,
yet separate individuals, who also share their idea
of theatre. And Sento as well, who has worked
with Angelika for twenty years, who performs
an impressive solo in Maudit, in which he plays
a young man telling the story of growing up in an
Angelika Lidell's Maudit. Photo: Courtesy of Avignon Festival.
35
oppressive family, and his attempts at rebellion
he tried to set their house on fre three times. "T for
table." He draws a square on the stage with a piece
of chalk, and introduces each member of his family
seated around the table, each hiding their secret lives
and violent thoughts from the others.
For three hours, Angelika and Lola interact
with stuffed rabbits and wolves heads, scattered
throughout the stage as symbols of death but also as
constant reminders of the impossibility to explain the
world, to reduce it to twenty-fve letters. They skip
with the rabbits, line them up, lie down next to them
playing dead. L for loup (wolf): "When did children
begin to eat wolves?" And fnally u for utopia. "May
no child be conceived on this earth."
Maudit ends with an unforgettable
monument to the atrocities of mankind. Sento brings
in white plaster fgures, one by one, and begins to
build a sculpture of them. Each one is covered with
blood and their arms, hands and legs are distorted
as if they had died in agony. He arranges the bodies
into what looks like a pyramid of death, bathed in
iridescent light.
In Kristin, nach Frulein Julie (Christine
after Miss Julie), British director Katie Mitchell
and video artist Leo Warner reimagined Strindberg's
Miss Julie through the eyes of Kristin, the cook,
using real-time flm and live sound effects. Theirs
is a fascinating process to watch: actors not only
play their assigned roles, (Julie, Jean and Christine,
played by two different actresses) but they must also
operate video cameras on stage, move cables, props,
and tri-pods around, operate the lights, do voice-
overs, and make live sounds. How fascinating to put
Jean and Julie in the background and focus on what
surely must have been Christine's great sadness at
losing her fanc to her casually firtatious mistress.
What must she be experiencing as she overhears
the conversations between Jean and Miss Julie, or
realizes that they have spent the night together?
What is her daily life like as the cook in a household
where the mistress allows herself to hobnob with
the help? What is she thinking when she looks in
the mirror and compares herself to the vivacious,
beautiful Miss Julie? These are the questions that
Mitchell and Warner are asking as they create a live
flm of Christine's world.
Their frst order of business was to reduce
Strindberg's text to those parts in which Christine
appears, thirty percent of the play. The rest of
Kristin is composed of invented moments that
Mitchell imagined would be taking place based on
Angelika Lidell's Maudit. Photo: Courtesy of Avignon Festival.
36
indications in the play. This called for dismantling
Strindberg's play to give it this new interpretation.
For example, the camera follows Christine leaving
her kitchen, moving down the hallway, entering her
bedroom, getting ready for bed, placing herbs on
her pillow, and going to bed. These moments do not
exist in Miss Julie, but they clearly must be part of
Christine's life. We see her lying in bed overhearing
Jean and Julie's conversation in the kitchen below,
or watch her as she eavesdrops behind doors. We
watch her wind a clock, put herbs in a dish, pour
liquid into a bottle, and heat a hair pin on a candle in
preparation for attending the dance with Jean. There
are bits of text in Kristin, but Mitchell's main interest
is in fnding ways to represent the tiny details of
human perception and behavior that words do not
express.
The opening set for Kristin is composed
of the faade of a house with its dirty stucco walls
and windows as well as long tables on either side
of stage on which laptops, a typewriter, glasses, a
basket, cameras on stands, and the other objects
needed to make this live flm. There are also shelves
stage right, covered with pitchers and bowls for
Christine to use in her kitchen. There is a screen
above the action on which a live video feed will
present close-ups of Christine going about her daily
routine at the same time that we see her performing
her duties below.
The wall of the house rises up and is moved
about to reveal different interiors: the kitchen where
Christine kneels at the table preparing the kidneys
for Jean's meal, a small room where a woman is
playing the cello. Someone off-stage is reading a
poem about nature and there are sounds of a party
outside. A close-up shot of the rain pouring down
a window suggests unshed tears and another of
Christine pricking her fnger on a thorn, drawing a
drop of blood, hints at the violence to come. The
images and tone are Bergmanian.
"Christine half hears conversations, half
sees the events that are happening," notes Warner in
a press conference in Avignon. This can be enough
to cause her excruciating pain. Some times the pain
is shown full on. At others, it is muted and only
glimpsed. In one scene, she is walking down a hall
when she overhears a muted conversation between
Jean and Julie. She doubles over in so much pain that
she has to return to her room where she is barely able
to breathe. In another, when Miss Julie comes into
the kitchen wearing a white party dress and inviting
Jean to come dance with her, the camera catches a
Katie Mitchell's and Leo Warner Kristin, nach Frulein Julie. Photo: Courtesy Festival Avignon.
37
brief moment of disgust and sadness on Christine's
face in close-up.
To achieve these effects calls for all hands
to be in complete control of their jobs at all times.
If the cables get tangled, then the video equipment
stops, and the whole show must stop. Mitchell admits
that eighty percent of the time is spent on cables and
flming: "There is little time for art." (Meeting with
Avignon public, Ecole des Arts). Perhaps, but the
intensity of the emotions and the distinctive world
that Mitchell, Warner, and all of the actor-technicians
create is astounding.
Mitchell's and Warner's version of Miss
Julie does not end with Julie possibly killing herself
with the knife that Jean has handed her, but with a
dream-like image of Julie's body in a pool of blood.
This may suggest that it was Christine getting her
revenge, or it may just be her fantasy. Whichever it
is, it is a ftting conclusion to the story of Christine's
suffering that we could only have imagined in
conventional interpretations as Frdric Fischbach's
Miss Julie, starring Juliette Binoche, that was also on
the Avignon program.
In the early days of this year's festival,
people were talking about an article in Le Figaro
from 4 July in which Fabrice Luchini, a well-known
and respected French actor of screen and stage,
accused the offcial Festival of pandering to a cult
(un secte) by which he meant those of us who are
interested in innovative scenography and new
dramatic discoveries. Luchini would prefer a more
conventional stagecraft and a return to the classics.
Where is the Comdie-Franaise, he asks? Every
year, similar complaints are heard, and every year
the current directors respond with the argument
that the Avignon festival is and has been for some
time a festival of new aesthetic forms, not a place
for pure entertainment for entertainment's sake.
Nevertheless, this year's festival included the work
of New York's Nature Theater of Oklahoma with the
frst two episodes of their new piece, Life and Times.
Based on twenty telephone conversations with
Kristin Worrall, one of the company's members, that
were transcribed word for word and set to music,
Life and Times is entertainment for entertainment's
sake. For six hours, the audience listens to every
detail of Kristin's early years, from birth to age seven
and age eight to fourteen, sung to a lively score
and performed in a relentlessly monotonous knee
bending choreography by an amazingly dedicated
group of performers. Co-directors Kelly Coopper
and Pavol Liska believe that the banalities of daily
life can be just as artistically valid as dramatic events.
Perhaps, but replaying sixteen hours of a telephone
Katie Mitchell's and Leo Warner Kristin, nach Frulein Julie. Photo: Courtesy Festival Avignon.
38
conversation (there are more episodes of Life and
Times to come), with no clichd detail left out
including all the "I means," "likes," and "whatevers"
does not enrich my understanding of art or the world.
Reviews of Life and Times were mixed, but I for
one, felt it to be a puzzling choice to put in a festival
dedicated "to examining the important existential
questions of our time" to quote the festival directors
in their introduction to this year's program.
Kristin, nach Frulein Julie. Photo: Courtesy Festival Avignon.
39
At frst glance, the heavy album size
program shows cultural trends are-a-changin'. The
IN still offers rather non-verbal, expensive directorial
productions in privileged locations (mainly the Cour
des Papes). Meanwhile, the OFF is ever growing
in numbers: twenty-six regional French and twenty
foreignmostly English with French subtitles
productions. Even if there still is a dominant number
of entertainment offerings, there are actually more
cultural and literary plays than before, where the text
prevails.
Let me start with French authorsif there
were a Grande Palme in the OFF it should go to
the singularly successful Ionesco's masterpiece
Rhinocros (1960). You may remember Jean-
Louis Barrault's staging with its quaint small town
squareterrace, French baguettes, and technicolor
sun umbrellas. Some forty years later, the collective
sickness "rhinocrite," the contagion of conformism,
fanaticism, and cowardice combined has not
disappeared. Germany, Japan, USSR, China, and
America have all left awful traces thereof. Alain
Timar went to Seoul, Korea, to create his own new
staging within our Western context of contemporary
market economy and globalization, where people and
body parts become marketable for a price. Ionesco's
hero Brenger is the only human left in his offce
to reject the dominant propaganda and its values
with the accompanying cowardice. He has only old-
fashioned love, friendship, and brotherhood. What
was in the past a theatre of the absurd is now the
theater of awareness and resistance. Under the helm
of Frenchman Timar in a Coproduction of Thtre
des Halles and Soul Performing Arts, the cast of
nine Korean thespians emoting in their own language
at is remarkable. The set consists of sliding white
panels and mirrors la Chorus Line which refect us,
the audience. The delicate accompaniment by Young
Avignon OFF 2011RE / MIX
Jean Decock
Eugene Ionescos's Rhinocros, directed by Alain Timar. Photo: Manuel Pascual.
40
Souk Choi is perfection.
In the adjoining chapel a single voice
tries to make sense of the unexplainable: How can
a whole people submit to the power of one? This
is Discours sur la servitude volontaire by Etienne
de la Boetie (Discourse on Human Servitude). In
1550, before the religious war against Protestants
by the Catholics, this amazing text was written by
de la Botie, then a seventeen-year-old disciple of
Montaigne. Today we have the Arab Spring and next
year's presidential election in Francea warning of
things to come and an appeal to vote and resist. He
goes even deeper than that though, internalizing with
metaphysical, ethical, emotional shades the process
of love relationships before Freud. The modern
version, Cie avec vue sur la mer, superbly served
by Franois Clavier, is directed by Stphane Verrue.
Then there is the irresistible ascension of
Xavier Durringer who wrote some ffteen plays over
the last ten years in a recognizable snappy style
and jargon about young adults in suburbia, who
are closer to white trash and multi-racial punks. He
even succeeded in reaching the classiest with his
impressive Surfers (1998). Then slowly aimed at
TV and flm so much so that his La Conqute (about
Sarkozy and his Sarkoboys) was one of the most
expected flms at the Cannes Festival last spring.
Unlike in the United Kingdom or the United States,
this was a frst in French cinema to paint the portrait
of a living president of France. Too bad it turned out
to be a positively respectful, rightist docu-fction.
We can now move back to earlier Durringer:
Une envie de tuer sur le bout de la langue (With an
Urge to Kill at the Tip of the Tongue), 1994. The title
summarizes it allwords lead to real aggression or
suicide. In the vein of early Tarantino: Sex and power
change society. Outside an acid rock club, the cast is
two girls for four guysnot misogynistic mind you,
women are as strong as their male partners. Rou is
the new leader of the pack who takes over from his
older predecessor who wants out of this trapped life.
Tension increases to fghting with the youngest gang
member naively using a rife not against the others
but himself.
Pessimism decreases in Ex-Voto (2000).
A couple connects after a Jeff Bailey concert and
decides to share their lives and take off into the
French Wild West. Carpe diem red is her dress and
his jacket. Sandrine Molaro is plump and Gilles-
Vincent is no Brad Pitt, but they enjoy life to the
fullest. Durringer does give them a chance in life,
as does director Christophe Luthringer in this more
upbeat production.
As in Cannes last May, Avignon abounds
with the themes of children; parent(s) and
dysfunctional families exploring the limits of love
Adeline Picault's Ex-Voto. Photo: Courtesy Avignon OFF.
41
and destruction, tenderness and revenge. Young
Adeline Picault gives us a two-character combat
segmented into fve rounds in Bats l'enfance (Beat
Childhood). The mother is a classy elegant employee
in a chic TV advertising frm about to be laid-off at
ffty. The young lady Lyly, wearing sneakers and a
sweater, wants to be a dancer, yet is also fnancially
dependent. The play is a shifting masochistic game
in color with cello music accompaniment. The two
superb actresses are directed by Serge Barbuscia at
the famous Thtre du Balcon with Emmanuelle
Brunschwig as the mother and Pauline Jambet, the
girl who falls for a traffc cop with whistle and kepi,
and with whom she will most certainly experience
another kind of love.
One of the most performed contemporary
writers, Jean-Luc Lagarce, died at thirty-eight,
leaving some twenty-fve plays dealing with the
velvet trap of the family. This year I saw J'etais dans
la maison et j'attendais que la pluie vienne (As I
was waiting in the house for the rain to come) which
reveals waiting as the very pattern of his theatre. He,
the son who had disappeared, is back, laying in his
bed behind gauze netting, dying, perhaps already
dead. Around him his mother and four sisters lament
a kind of verbal ritual, "a danse macabre." When
the father, brother, and son disappear, prejudice and
ignorance remain. Violence comes through words
and acts into revenge.
In Le Bain (The Bath), the diary of a young
man between his two lovers Berlin/Paris, the secret is
never revealed, the word not even pronounced: AIDS.
In spite of his own love for bodies and humanity,
Lagarce doesn't hide the mental devastation when
death is lurking. Each carries in his heart the absent.
The two thespians, Romain Arnaud-Kneisky and
Sebastien Harquet, as directed by Bruno Dairou, are
unforgettably moving.
For Courbet Model Proudhon, the whole
width of the stage is the master's unfnishedl'atelier
(work room). We are in Ornan, Franche Comt,
the hearth of France. Courbet with his huge fresco
is aiming for the Exposition Universelle to come.
When his friend Proudhon, the socialist Marxist
revolutionary who has spent three years in jail,
(compliments of Imperial France under Napoleon
III) comes to visit, we are in for the preferred
national sport of debate: Art against political power.
A frustrated yet ambitious painter who wants a
Pavilion of realism versus Proudhon, a mind at
workno wine, no women, a bit misogynistic to
boot. To fesh out the eternal themes, we see and
hear plenty of Jenny, the nude model, provides
a prelude to feminism as well as the innkeeper
Bacchus Cie 's Courbet Model Proudhon, directed by Jean Petrement. Photo: Courtesy of Theatre Bacchus.
42
poacher, the reactionary voice of the common man.
Will Proudhon shape Courbet, and then who shapes
whom? We know the poor will almost never win
over the rich. There is something for everybody.
Jean Petrement directs and he is Proudhon as well
as the founder of the Bacchus Cie. The production is
warm, with sets in brown and yellow la Rembrandt
more than Courbet.
When words lead to rebellion what we
have is revolution and barricades. Outlaw in Love
by Alain Guyard is directed by Franois Bourcier
with an enthusiastic audience of students, actors-
residents, and workers on vacation. As you enter, a
cop wearing a badge for law and order checks your
ticket. The music and staging are so hard rock that it's
like a pressure cooker inside as the seven thespians
"try to blow your mind" (Julian Beck). An experience
rather than a re-hash of the 1870 Commune, the 1968
Odeon occupation, and Hair in NY, 1989 Tiananmen
Square, or 2001 Genoa. The plot is not prevalent.
One cop is killed, what's next for the gang? Prison
or revolution? The government wants to end it
all, once and for all, sending in the
National Guard and the army. Shall we
overcome? To be continuedon your
daily dose of paternalistic TV. This is
an experience la Living Theatre since
watching this show is like falling in
love with freedom and brotherhood.
The Compagnie des Barriques was the
producer.
Cendres sur les mains
(Cinders on the hands) is by Laurent
Gaud, a well-know playwright and
novelist. The stage is black and sandy.
Where are we? Nothing is specifc,
yet it reaches something in all of
usapocalypse, genocide, enemy
army, epidemic, famine, sand tornado,
tsunami we all have seen on TV (could
be South East Asia, Africa, Poland,
Bosnia) We are in the realm of the
dead. The text is for three actorsthe
two males wear Balinese-like masks;
they are actually grave-diggers.
Their concern is what to do with the
corpses before cholera strikes: a pit
for hundreds with lime, brimstone,
and fre. Meanwhile they have their
own comic needs for survival: soap,
water, sweltering smoke, infection,
scratchinga drop of Beckett. The
only sign of compassion and charity is
a woman's earring, hidden by a veil. She is a tragic
fgure who cares for the bodies, shutting their eyes,
combing their hair, touching them, talking to them.
The two grotesque men die, and only the woman
walks on towards an encampment of the surviving
wretched of the earth. Superbly directed by Anne
Rousseau.
Coming around Elsewhere in Europe
The production is in French by Stanislas
Grassian who adapted and directed Mystre Pessoa,
one of the greatest if baffing poets of contemporary
literature (1888-1935). A case of multiple
personalities, this production incarnates the creative
Portuguese doubles, the counter-hero monsieur
nobody (binoculars, felt hat, bicycling la Jarry)
anonymous employee with moustache and beard.
Solitary Fernando imagines a group of young virtual
male companions, some writers. Grassian focuses on
only four "heteronyms," all different from the real
photographs of Pessoa we know. They hide and burst
in, to pay homage around the young corpse on the
Alain Guyard's Outlaw in Love, directed by Franois Bourcier.
Photo: Courtesy Avignon OFF.
43
foor. Not clones, mind you, but each with his own
personality, a name he gave them and their poems.
Melancholic, surprising, using pantomime they
"come together." The performance urges you to read
and discover his monumental oeuvre, now available.
From Sweden's greatest playwright Lars
Norn: Bobby Fischer Lives in Pasadena (2002),
a puzzling, non-sensical title since there are two
lines about chess in one of his longest plays, a cruel
quartet about a not so young family over the edge
torn by resentment and guile. The father is retired.
The mother, a well-known stage actress, gave up
her career for the sake of her children who are not
gratefulher daughter of forty-four, a teacher, lost
her own two-year-old child and has become a serious
alcoholic, whereas the son, thirty-two, is a paranoid
schizophrenic, as Norn himself is. One can assume
there is a heavy autobiographical base. Bitterness,
cruelty, retaliation, incessant logorrheawith the
constant feeling that words are useless. Echoes of
Strindberg and O'Neill. It was presented by the Cie
Remue-Mninges et du Corbeau, directed by French
Roumanian Calin Blaga.
From Germany comes Le Moche (Der
Hliche; The Ugly, 2007) by Marius von
Mayenburg, disciple of Thomas Ostermeier at the
Schaubhne, Berlinan acid comedy on beauty.
Lette, the non-hero is told he is ugly. For the sake of
his industrial companythere is only one obvious
solution, plastic surgery! Even if his wife Fanny
only reluctantly agrees. The operation is a success
so much so that his entourage (boss, colleagues) all
want to look like him. We all know this trend to look
alike through TV commercials. However Lette loses
the little personality he had. Here is the catch: nobody
is actually handsome nor ugly on stage. Lette wants
his face back. Impossible. He will commit suicide
by jumping from the roof of the building. The text is
rapid with no interruptions, no acts. It is a perpetual
motion, flmic montage. The cool gray set, glass,
and chrome (home, offce, operation room), panels
rapidly changing. The author's idea of using only
four actors for seven characters, none charismatic, is
really disappointing. We really don't care. Director
Nora Granovsky unfortunately does not improve
matters. There was another company who staged the
same play, but I was unable to attend in spite of my
curiosity.
Criss CrossMedia Connection,
Film equals Stage
Even in the United States I never understood
the need to adapt a perfect flm, be it a masterpiece,
into a musical. Probably a box offce operation? Yet
it happened to the silent flm Faust by F.W. Murnau.
One of the greatest flmmakers (1888-1930), Murnau
made masterpieces in both Germany and Hollywood.
Faust is an expressionistic, poetic, black and white,
silent super production. Here we see the entire flm
with the three accomplices of Cartoon Sardines
Theatre, adding what was not there in 1926: music
(piano, saxophone), verbal articulated title cards.
Plus the natural sounds: wind, fying, special gothic
effect, crowd panicking. A short intro commentary
by Murnaunot himself, of course. Not a parody,
just a pure joy.
Cie Birdy Nam Nam also adapted a Robert
Bresson script with dialogues by Jean Giraudoux
for eight women and two men: Les Anges du Pch
(Angels of Sin). Since it was flmed in 1943, we can't
Marius von Mayenburg's Le Moche. Photo: Courtesy Avignon OFF.
44
help asking how was the flm produced in German
occupied France? The answer comes with the
question: To get away from the unbearable reality,
perhaps more livable and safer in a Dominican
monastery, since the subject was not offensive for
German censorship. After her stay in prison, the
heroine is accepted by the Bethany sisters. As we
know from Bernanos' Dialogue des Carmelites,
there is no refuge (domination and submission)
from human cruelty. Good and evil are everywhere.
What ensues, in the stern gray and black set and
dark lighting, is a battle of ladies/sisters plus another
murder. All the nuns pray in dignity as directed by
Laurent Le Bras. The problem is that the sisters have
no name, with the veil they are hardly recognizable.
Heavy to bear.
Let us now dive into the material of our
original myths at the inception of mediterranean
theatre, the tragedy of family clans are always
present at any festival. Our basic emotions can be
found there, raw and unbearable: passion, adultery,
treason, infanticide, betrayal, bloodbaths, retaliation
at the edge of madness. I chose not Sophocles, but
Creon's Antigone rewritten by Croatian Miro Gavran,
translated into French by Andrea Pucnik, staged in
black leather, wigs, and costumes. Mathieu Barbier
is at once a director in search of his Antigone, as well
as Cron. Since he is paranoia in power, she will die
in two weeks but not rebel against his authority.
Antiquity reshaped by feminism. Marie Broche has
all the strength that is required to question Crn's
machismo.
Euripides' Medea (with quotes by many
others) is directed and performed by Diana Dobreva
and her lush flm personality. The production is
lavish, with support of Bulgarian Theatre Sfumato
in Sofaa spectacular and provocative variation:
Men are billy goats, women are bitchy sorceresses.
Text is either classical Greek or Balkan dialect, or
both. I couldn't refrain from watching Euripides'
actually seldom performed Alceste also in Greek
with subtitles by Thtre de Vivi and The University
of Crete. In this familiar rivalry between gods and
royalties the dominant theme is death. Alceste is
actually the wife of king Admate who died young,
although Alceste as a favor agrees to take his place
in Hades. All ends well when Herakles retrieves
herlove proves stronger than death. This is an
unusual tragedy with a happy ending. Courageous
Alceste retrieves her resurrected Admete, looking
like the young Marlon Brando.
Dance as Utopia: Youth and Beauty
Presence is inspired by a lecture by Michel
Foucault Le corps utopic (published in 2009), Pascal
Taillet choreographed fve young dancers, some with
physical disabilities, some naked. There is music
(piano, Japanese wood instruments). Taillet blends
them together. "Only the mirror, the corpse and then
love perhaps" (let me add dance), may allow us to
escape solitude and our body. This was presented by
Cie Cascarabia and Chemins de traverse.
One last little gem before the fnal curtain,
Nijinsky 1919, genius of contemporary dance by
Compagnie Salticidae. First Vaslav was the lover
of Diaghilev, then in 1913 the husband of Romola.
With her in Saint-Moritz, he starts writing his
cahiers, now published, about his soul and mystical
delusions sliding away into madness. He no longer
dances and will die in London in 1950. She remained
constant. The piece is divided in two: Words and
body. First his notes while she is seated back to the
audience, then fortunately for us Gilles Guillain will
dance on a delicate sonata by Olivier Messian.
To sum up a quite stimulating summer,
there were some outstanding re-runs of last year
(Fassbinder, Mayorga, several Lagarce) by different
companies. Greek classics were always welcome.
Authors were more prevalent than directors, text
more than staging. Perhaps the IN and OFF will
exchange their priorities in the future.
45
For his ffth and fnal Grec Festival, director
Ricardo Szwarcer brought back favored directors
as with Romeo Castellucci and lex Rigola. There
was a marked concentration on work from France
and the French-speaking worldincluding Peter
Brook's Magic Flute, Olivier Cadiot, and Ludovic
Lagarde's Un Mag en t, Koff Kwahul's Jaz,
Patrice Chreau's production of Jon Fosse's I am the
Wind, Jol Pommerat's Cercles/Fictions and Le Petit
chaperon rouge, Jean-Luc Lagarce's Les Rgles du
savoir-vivre dans la socit moderne (The Rules
of Etiquette in Modern Society) and a production
of Waiting for Godot by Joan Oll. In addition,
there has been a crop of home-grown productions.
Home-grown, however, has not merely included the
Catalanas with departing Teatre Lliure director
lex Rigola's Tragdia and Carles Fernndez
Giua's production of Esteve Soler's Contra la
democrciabut also a notable percentage of
productions presented in Spanish by directors based
in Madrid. These include two productions that
had earlier played at Madrid's Espaol theatre to
excellent audience responses.
The frst of these, Argentine director
Claudio Tolcachir's reading of Miller's All My
Sons, begins very promisingly with a storm that
announces the danger to come. Elisa Sanz's set is
informed as much by American art of the 1950s
with its clapboard houses and pruned lawns as it
is by discourses of realist dcor. Tall trees provide
a curtain of sorts and announce the thematics of
disguise and deception that inform the play. The
trees are a pseudo-expressionistic elementalmost
like something from an Egon Schiele paintingand
ominously suggest a lost-in-the-forest-scenario. The
production begins with an impressionistic energy:
overlapping dialogue; deft, almost dance like moves;
Joe Keller (Carlos Hiplito) and his son Chris (Fran
Perea) reading the papers with identical gestures;
Frank (Alberto Castrillo-Ferrer) jogging onstage
Spanish-language Productions Dominate at Ricardo Szwarcer's
Final Grec Festival
Maria M. Delgado
Arthur Miller's All my Sons, directed by Claudio Tolcachir. Photo: Jean Pierre Ledos.
46
to provide a sense of the world that is about to be
defnitively destroyed by the revelations that are to
follow.
Hiplito is a notable Joe Keller: he may be
slight but his physique serves him well to suggest
vulnerability. As the production moves on through
the play's creaky dramatic mechanismsstill very
evident despite Tolcachir's pruninghe appears
increasingly hunched and susceptible. His clothes
hang off him as he shrinks before the audience. He
is also, however, able to bring out a certain humour
in Joe. This Joe can have a laugh even if his wife
Kate cannot. Gloria Muoz as Kate appears too
much the homely Andalusian stay at home mother.
Fran Perea is able to bring out some of Chris's
awkwardness but never quite convinces as the lover
besotted with his dead brother's girlfriend. As Ann
Deever, the girlfriend who is no longer waiting
for her serviceman to return, Manuela Velasco has
something of Maribel Verd about her. It's a lovely
performance, negotiating delicacy, reticence, and
willingness. Her luminescent beauty points to the
attraction she held (and indeed still holds) for the
Keller brothers. Jorge Bosch is a decent George
Deever but as with Muoz's Kate, never quite
captures the character's development through the
action of the piece.
While the production is never dull, it fails
to really take off. Following the electric opening,
there is too often a stolid quality to the action that
never proves compelling. Tolcachir creates a series
of memorable images: a stolen kiss between Chris
and Ann at the side of the house; a weeping Chris on
his knees at the end of the play; a jovial Joe trying
to keep appearances as his past returns to haunt him;
the blank look that Joe provides as he is faced with
the implications of his past deeds. Nevertheless,
the fnal impression is that of images in search of a
production. Tolcachir has proved one of a number
of Argentine directors (like Javier Daulte and
Daniel Veronese) who have both imported to (and
staged infuential productions in) Spain, bringing
something of the spirit of the found space, of high-
energy performances, and of the unpredictable to
their reading of the classics or formative Western
myths. Here, working with Spanish actors, the
results are not as compelling as the work he has
realized with Argentine actors, but it does announce
a willingness to play with the classical canon that
may reap rewards in future productions.
At the Tvoli, the Espaol's artistic
director, Mario Gas, has provided one of the sell-out
productions of the Grec with an intelligent staging of
Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. The production
has many things going for it: a tight translation
by Jos Luis Miranda, a beautiful set replete with
elegant projections by Juan Sanz and Miguel ngel
Coso, atmospheric lighting by Juan Gmez Cornejo,
and a stellar cast headed by Vicky Pea in the role
of the wounded Blanche. Somehow, however, the
production doesn't quite come together. There are
many reasons for this but perhaps the key one is Pea
who just doesn't have the sexual charge necessary for
Blanche. She is able to suggest the coquettishness
of Williams' eponymous protagonist: mannered,
hot, and bothered, she arrives in town tripping over
herself and her bags. She is defnitely, not, however,
in her forties and lacks the overt appeal and
vulnerability that Rachel Weisz brought to the role
at London's Donmar Warehouse in Rob Ashford's
2009 staging. There's an indication of the terrible
solitude of Blanche but the desperation never quite
comes off. Certainly, she becomes more matronly
as the play progresses, celebrating her birthday in
a conservative dress that visibly contrasts with her
earlier apparel. Pea is a rather wizened Blanche,
more Joan Crawford than Vivian Leigh but there's a
fint-like toughness that outstrips the susceptibility.
Roberto lamocurrently to be seen in
Almodvar's The Skin I Live in (Le temps de mon
esprit)as the brutish brother Zecaimbues Stanley
with a harsh masculinity. There is less of the swagger
here and more of the fst. This is a man with a temper
who is not afraid to show it. There's no real charm, no
moments of tenderness with his wife Stella (Ariadna
Gil). lamo has an imposing stage presence and
here he gives us a cold, calculating animala
million miles from Marlon Brando's characterization
in Kazan's 1951 flm or Elliot Cowan's smug, self-
satisfed Stanley in the 2009 Donmar production.
It's certainly an unglamorous portrait but it's hard to
sympathize with him at any point in the production.
He seems vindictive from his opening appearance.
Gil delivers a put upon Stella who rarely
imposes herself. She's delighted to see her sister but
proves weak as she fnds herself caught between
her violent husband and manipulative sister. lex
Casanovas steals the show as Mitch, observing
Blanche in admiration from the side as the card game
is underway, grabbing a few embarrassed lines with
her while Stanley imposes his demands, clutching
her hand awkwardly after a night out. He's terrifc
as the shy, lonely bachelor trying to make the frst
move and then comes into his own as he discovers
Blanche's terrible secret and turns up in a drunken
state to voice his despair and anger.
47
Gas knows how to craft a staging and this
is on many levels a pleasing piece of work. Blanche
emerges from the mist in the production's opening
scene as the sound of the tram flls the air. Mitch
and Blanche return from their date to a sky full of
twinkling stars. Sanz and Coso's set proffers different
pockets to give a veritable sense of both the cramped
apartment and the hustle and bustle of the tenements.
Projections capture a tram hurtling towards the
audience and noirish milieu. Anabel Moreno is good
as the kindly, brash neighbor Eunice, lifting the
pace with her every appearance. Atmospheric sound
effects offer both ambient noise and a comment on
the action. But for all the technical brilliance of the
production, Pea just can't pull Blanche off. It's not a
bad performance by any stretch of the imagination
Pea is too good an actress for that. It just seems that
here a piece of miscasting has drastically affected
the cadence of the production.
Calixto Bieito has now left the Romea to
head Focus's BIT (Barcelona International Theatre), a
platform for international collaborations that has a UK
Shakespeare staging planned for 2012. With a range
of international partnerships in placeincluding the
Barbican Centre London, New York's Baryshnikov
Arts Center, Madrid's Centro Dramtico Nacional,
and Buenos Aires's Teatro General San Martn
its opening production in November 2011 will be
a staging of Caldern's El gran teatro del mundo
(The Great Theatre of the World) to be presented by
German and Spanish actors. Plans for 2012 include
a compilation of texts from Shakespeare by Catalan
and English actors titled Forests (coproduced with
the Shakespeare International Festival and the
London 2012 Cultural Olympics) which will open
at Birmingham Repertory Theatre in August 2012.
Outside BIT Bieito has plans to direct Camino Real
for Chicago's Goodman Theatre in a production due
to open in March 2012.
At the Grec Bieito has presented two
pieces: Voices, a contemporary oratorio presented in
Danish, and Desaparecer (Disappearance) based on
texts by Edgar Allan Poe. The latter is a show about
storytelling and narrative conventions where Juan
Echanove weaves together The Crow and The Black
Cat as tales of the eerie and the uncanny. Musician
Maika Makovski sits at the pianoa reminder of
Horatio at the piano in Bieito's 2003 Hamlet and
provides a sung commentary to the action. Both are
in formal evening wear, as if temporarily distracted
from another engagement. There's no denying
Echanove's force as an actor but here the performance
seems too much like a recital (and an emphatic one
at that) and lacks the nuances that the actor brought
Tennessee Williams's Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Mario Gas. Photo: Andrs de Gabriel.
48
to their earlier collaboration on the 2007 stage
adaptation of Michel Houellebecq's Platform. I
would have welcomed an element of mystery in the
dcor or costume, something less glamorous or chic
that might match the creepy, disarming qualities of
the Poe texts.
There were two stand-out offerings in the
Spanish-language productions I saw at the Grec this
summer and they couldn't be more different. The frst,
Das estupendos (Marvellous Days) sees Alfredo
Sanzol return to the festival for a second successive
yearthis time at the Teatre Villarroelwith a piece
that follows the vignette formula deployed to such
powerful effect in Delicades (Delicacy). Only while
Delicades seemed to have its roots in the post-Civil
War era of his grandparents, here the action seems
more rooted in the 1970salbeit an imaginative
take on the decadeas holiday makers head to the
beaches and mountains in search of fun and frolics.
It's a playful landscape dominated by a grassy,
undulating surface evoking something of the great
outdoors of Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills.
A single tree recalls the world of Waiting for Godot,
only here there's no waiting for a Godot who may or
may not come. These characters are on a journey and
nobody is going to stop them.
An array of fgures are conjured by the
dramatist-director and his cast: young and old,
male and female, boisterous and bashful, firtatious
and shy, Spanish and foreign. A slight move or the
simplest of entries and exits suggests a change of
role and situation. It's fuid and fast moving; for
ninety minutes the audience are transported off
on a temporary holiday where they are privy to
moonlight encounters, revelations by a campfre and
mischievous encounters in the hot sun. Atmospheric
lighting by Baltasar Patio expertly suggests the
different locations without ever appearing unduly
labored. Indeed, Sanzol's production is as deft and
light as his writing.
A Civil Guard offers a warning to a nudist
bather but his remarks speak of a world at the point of
changethe move from dictatorship to democracy.
A bullfghter cries uncontrollably after having run
over his cat and contemplates a change of direction
much to the despair of his friends. The death of
one brother and the survival of another generate
anger and frustration on the part of a woman who
mourns the loss of her loved one. An ETA activist
returns home from prison (with a guitar case that all
Edgar Allan Poe's Desaparecer, directed by Calixto Bieito Photo Josep Aznar.
49
the locals feel hides a sinister weapon) to fnd his
loyal friend has a new husband who happens to be
in the military. A pregnant woman speaks to her
unborn baby of the future ahead. A mother listens
to a letter received from her son on a school holiday
camp which is read aloud by her husband. At frst
we witness her tenderness but as it becomes evident
that her son really doesn't want to come home and
asks to be adopted by his temporary guardians, the
mood shifts to horror. A goodbye scene between a
group of friends is perfectly pitched; only when the
departing Sofa returns to pick up an umbrella she'd
forgotten, the remainder of the gang hide. They have
played out their farewells and feel that attempting
them again would simply destroy the memories that
remain as well as the moment they have just shared.
The production is able to comment on the
wider Zeitgeist without ever appearing pedantic.
Whether it's the factors that lead a liberal to vote for
the right of center Partido Popular, or the shift to a
new era in the dying days of the Franco regime, the
current economic crisis (a couple face losing their
house and resort to desperate measures to keep the
punters coming to their bed and breakfast), or the
issue of exile and historical memory. The piece just
has its fnger on the pulse of the moment and is able
to suggest a time span that moves from the fnal
years of the dictatorship to the contemporary present
without ever appearing disjointed. Friends discuss
spotting Javier Bardem and Eduard Fernndez in
Barcelona in one scene while the spectres of the
dying days of the Franco era hover in another.
The cast of fve are uniformly excellent.
There are no changes of costume, no wigs or
accoutrements to distract the viewer: a shift in
posture or a move of the head suggests a new
role. The characters range from German tourists to
adolescent giggly girls, from a couple contemplating
separation to a nudist enjoying some privacy in the
summer sun. Natalia Hernndez is terrifc as the
mother who realizes her son is happier at school
camp than at home. Pablo Vzquez provides laughs
Das estupendos, directed by Alfredo Sanzol. Photo: David Ruano.
50
as the guy who is more interested in sex with a melon
than a girlmuch to the anguish of his best friend.
Juan Antonio Lumbreras is superb as the titillated
Civil Guard and the returning ETA activisttwo
hugely contrasting roles that evade easy caricature.
Elena Gonzlez is delightful as the mother giving
pragmatic instructions to her unborn child and Paco
Dniz strikes the right note as the boyfriend meeting
his partner's close friend recently released from
prison. But it seems churlish to single out individual
roles in a production marked by its attention to the
ensemble and the wider thematic links between the
tiny tales that are woven before the audience. Sheep
are conjured by an actor sounding two bells. Bodas
de sangre (Blood Wedding) is gently evoked by
two lovers meeting in a forest, with a woodcutter
making a timely appearance, as in Lorca's play. The
characters appear only briefy but Sanzol never opts
for simplistic characterizations or typecasting. It
would be too easy to pigeonhole the characters into
"good guys" and "bad guys" but Das estupendos
instead offers a nuanced examination of the spirit
of summer holidays refracted through a fresh, light
humor that never feels forced. With Das estupendos
Alfredo Sanzol confrms his position as one of the
most original dramatists currently working in the
Spanish language and one of the most assured young
directors of his generation.
There are few directors who have been
brave enough to tackle Ramn Valle-Incln's Luces
de Bohemia (Bohemian Lights). The play, frst
published in 1920although lacking scenes two,
six and eleven which were added in 1924offers
an odyssey through an absurd, brilliant, and hungry
Madrid. Its episodic structure is both a refection
of and a comment on the fragmentary, divisive
nature of Spanish society in the aftermath of 1918
with religion, political instability, and corruption,
police brutality, industrial unrest all commented on
through the fabric of the play. Jos Tamayo opted for
formalismand moments of the folkloricin his
1971 reading; Llus Pasqual for a brilliant mirrored
foor that refected the chaos surrounding the blind
poet Max Estrella in his 1984 production. Oriol
Broggi's extraordinary new staging at the Biblioteca
de Catalunya couldn't be more different to Pasqual's
reading but is similarly and blisteringly effective in
capturing the grotesque qualitiesor esperpento
as the author termed itof Valle-Incln's mad, bad
world.
Broggi, collaborating with Sebasti Brossa
on the set, uses the width of the space beautifully,
offering an expanding, open space with raked
seating on two sides. A bar is at the extreme edge
of the stage facing one of the seating blocks. The
space between the second longer seating balcony
and the bar is a sandy foor where the action moves
along as the scenes fow into one another with
two tables and four chairs brought on and off and
moved around as required. Broggi has opted to read
a number of Valle-Incln's stage directions, notably
in the opening scenes of the play. This offers both
a tangible sense of place and mood. It also allows
for the elegiac, melancholic tone to be set from the
opening as an actor addresses the audience directly,
welcoming them with a cordial "Good evening"
before going on to describe Max's attic home and
bringing on Max and his wife Madame Collet.
Actors watch from the doors of the bar, hover in
the distance and on the balcony above the stage,
and provide musical and sonic commentary. "Viva
Espaa!" sounds ironically on the guitar at the end
of scene 1 and the refrain is repeated by the parrot in
the closing moments of the play.
The width of the stage is beautifully used
to ensure that the scenes fow effortlessly into each
other. Actors create the sounds of animals that form
such a part of Valle-Incln's stage universe without it
ever appearing strained or corny. Characters pack up
and move the furniture as they leave the stage; it is
almost as if it were part of theman extended arm
or legdeparting as they do. The light is crepuscular
and nocturnalscenes 1 to 12 chart a twelve-hour
period from dusk to dawnmutating from scene
to scene. The characters too (with the exception
of Llus Soler's Max Estrella and Jordi Martnez's
Don Latino) mutate from role to role. Soler gives
a majestic Max a hunched weakening fgure with a
rasped voice and a well-worn suit. He captures the
moral authority of Max, the sense of a tragic hero
who's seen better days. There are echoes of Lear
on the heath in his impotent raging and escalating
madness, and his otherness comes out in a potent
Catalan accent that is strongly infected through his
spoken Castilian.
Martnez is a young Don Latino (perhaps
too young I would argue) and while he captures
the hypocrisy of the fawning two-faced friend, he
appears a little too clean and tidy to be a stellar Don
Latino. We don't sense the repugnance and seediness
that was a feature of Carlos Lucena's acerbic
conception of the role in Pasqual's production. And
while he certainly suggests a fgure used to living
off his wits who makes the most of any opportunity
presented to him, we don't really grasp the ruthless
avarice and degeneracy of a character all too often to
51
be found in a gutter.
Xavier Boada excels as the wandering
tourist Don Peregrino Gay, replete with beret and
rucksack, sharing his bizarre experiences of foreign
travel with Max and Don Latino. Boada is also
terrifc as the bar owner Pica Lagartos as well as the
mean but dapper red-scarfed Dorio de Gdex. Manel
Dueso is both cocky and aggressive as the companion
of the prostitute Enriquita la Pisa Bien and a pedantic
Don Filiberto, editor of the newspaper El Popular.
His Ruben Dario is perhaps less distinctive and too
anonymous to be effective. Jacob Torres stands out as
the defant Catalan prisoner and the creepy Dieguito,
assistant to the corrupt Home Secretary. Camilo
Garca is also impressive as the pedantic Home
Secretary, the squalid bookshop owner Zarathustra,
the preposterous Basilio Soulinake and the spooky
but stately Marquis of Bradomn.
The imaginative casting sees Marissa Josa
as Max's despairing wife, the poignant mother of the
dead child, an old prostitute past her best days and
one of the pretentious modernist poets (among other
roles). Mrcia Cister takes on Max's feisty daughter
Claudinita, the "in-yer-face" Enriquita la Pisa Bien
and the young prostitute La Lunares. She also evades
easy parody in her characterization of the "more than
my job's worth" law enforcer Captain Pitito. All the
actors are outstanding in capturing the essence of a
character, however briefy they appear. The posture
of Enriqueta under a streetlamp in scene 4; the
weaving of the modernista poets in and out of each
other later in the scene; the Catalan prisoner hunched
in a darkened corner of the stage in scene 6 with his
luminous white shirt; the home secretary in scene 8
who looks as if he'd be more suited to vaudeville than
politics; the stoical gravediggers in the cemetery in
scene 14 who effciently shut the doors leading out
to the toilet area as if shutting the cemetery gates; the
waiter at the Caf Coln in scene 9 who bursts into
song. On the night I saw the production, an audience
member chose to join him in singing "La poesa es
una arma cargada de futuro" ("Poetry is a gunshot
into the future"). All these moments offer a window
into the soul of each character allowing the cast of
eight to build up a world populated by hundreds
of diverse personalities. The eccentricities are
beautifully captured and never descend into facile
parody. Max's death is a model of scenic effciency.
Valle-Incln's Luces de bohemia, directed by Jos Tamayo. Photo: Bito Cels.
52
His body wrapped in a carpet that has something of
the magic carpet of antiquity capable of transporting
the person into another world.
With the political turbulence of recent
months and the economic chaos of a country
where unemployment runs at twenty-one percent,
the play proves both timely and resonant and the
contemporary parallels are certainly not lost in
Broggi's elegant staging. The sound of gunshots and
breaking glass, scuffes and street fghting punctuate
the play lending something of a contemporary air to
the action. The fnal scene may sometimes give the
impression of looking at a sepia photo but the choice
of "Walk on the Wild Side" as the closing number
infects the production with a resolutely modern
feelechoed in the cut of the costumes which are
1918 Madrid infected with a contemporary touch.
I have greatly admired Broggi's work as a
director to date but Luces de bohemia strikes me as
his most mature production, up there with the very
best productions I have seen this year. Its attention
to the rhythms of Valle-Incln's semi-absurdist
language, to the sounds and colors of a city on the
edge; its energy and attention to pacing; its sense of
a world imploding in on itself through hedonism and
avarice; its precision in characterization are all very
special indeed. This is a lithe, supple production with
echoes of Cheek by Jowl and Pasqual's early work at
the Lliure, and it fts like a glove into the crumbling,
worn space of the Biblioteca de Catalunya. The fuid
magneticism of Broggi's inspired staging sets a very
high standard for this play which Llus Homar's
forthcoming production at the Centro Dramtico
Nacional in this coming season will be pressed to
match.
Perhaps it's not surprising that Broggi's
innovative work with his company laperla29 has
caught the attraction of Barcelona's politicians
rumor has it he was offered the directorship of the
Grec but chose not to succeed Szwarcer opting instead
to pursue his own directorial interests. This might
prove a canny decision in a year where state fnances
for theatre are tumbling as the governmentsboth
national and localseek to make cuts to stop the
economy crashing further. Szwarcer's fnal Grec saw
over 116,000 spectators with sold-out runs for Luces
de bohemia and 12,373 tickets sold for A Streetcar
Named Desire and 9,705 for All My Sons. While
this is down on the 120,000 registered last year; this
has proved a diffcult year with institutional budgets
cut and the economic climate meaning Spaniards
have less disposable income. The announcement
of Szwarcer's successor, Ramon Sim, has failed to
ignite enthusiasm. A past director of Trrega's street
theatre festival and a member of the advisory panel
of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, Sim is also a
theatre director but one whose appeal has remained
local rather than national. He has plans to develop
the Grecalthough his opening press conference
gave little concrete information of what this might
involvebut might fnd it diffcult to gain the
support of theatre makers following an appointment
that was made by politicians behind closed doors.
Catalonia may wish to disassociate itself from some
of the nepotistic practices that it locates in Madrid,
but the appointment of Sim indicates that there's a
long way to go in Spain before cultural appointments
are subjected to an open and transparent competitive
process freed from political machinations.
53
For more than a decade, directors have
dominated the stages of Western European Festival-
Theatres, as well as the regular repertoires of both
opera houses and drama-theatres. This overarching
directorial presence is often at the expense of the
composer or playwright, whose original visions are
now frequently eclipsed by stage pictures and visual
narratives at odds with the librettos, scores, and play-
texts. Not only is this a conscious decision to avoid
historicism or romanticism (who now wants to see
Die Meistersinger in a medieval Nuremberg?), but
also because it's widely believed that subscription
audiences are tired of seeing Carmen once again
taking a break outside her historic cigarette factory.
At Bayreuth, Katharina Wagner's
Meistersinger places the action in what appears to
be an Arts Academy, populated by young female
students in uniform. Hans Sachs no longer cobbles
shoes: that rat-a-tat-tat in the scoreto indicate
Sachs hammering nails into a shoeis now the
clickety-clack of Sachs' typewriter! Well, Sachs
was a poet and playwright, after all, not just a wily
old Nuremberg shoemaker. The late great critic
Kenneth Tynan once said of modernist Shakespeare
productions that the bard could now be viewed as
a long-dead playwright with no agent to protect
him. The same might well be said also of Wagner,
Verdi, and Puccini. But this primacy of the director
would not be possible without the visual assistance
of ingenious stage and costume designers, not to
mention the often unnoticed complicity of lighting
designers, whose best work does not call attention
to itself.
Andr Chnier and Achterbahn in Bregenz
Ever since 1946, the city of Bregenz
handsomely sited on the southern shore of Lake
Constancehas featured an opera, operetta, or
musical on a great lake stage. Over the years this
Festival Productions in Bregenz, Munich, Bayreuth, and Salzburg
Glenn Loney
Keith Warner's Andr Chnier Photo: Courtesy of Bregenz Festival.
54
has evolved from a foating barge into an incredibly
complex stage, erected on concrete piles driven into
the lake bed of what Austrians and Germans prefer to
call the Bodensee. For the 2011 edition of the festival,
the stage that had been constructed for Aidashown
in 2009 and 2010was taken down, to be replaced
with a giant head, modeled on the famous painting
of Jean-Paul Marat, dead in his bathtub, after having
been stabbed by Charlotte Corday. But the opera
was not about Marat, but about the dissident poet
Andr Chnier who paid with his own head during
the Revolutionary ravages of the terror that wracked
Paris from the storming of the Bastille to the rise of
Napoleon.
Every Bregenz lake stage production is
distinguished by some amazingly constructed set
piece. For its recent Toscawhich you might have
seen in a James Bond/Daniel Craig flmthis was
a giant eye, moved by a massive crane. For Ein
Maskenball (A Masked Ball) an immense skeleton
loomed over the lake stage for two summers,
surviving even the alpine winters. Aida, which
preceded Andr Chnier, featured two huge blue
star studded legs from a blown up Statue of Liberty,
whose torch was sunk into the waters of Lake
Constance!
The huge head of Marat, which is the visual
signature of Bregenz's Andr Chnier, is not just a
3-D rendering of that Marat-in-the-bath painting.
It also has a series of stairs and steps that seem to
bulge out of Marat's head, looking like a computer
pixel breakdown of a more complex image. This was
achieved by frst building up the stairs on a set model
with a series of lego blocks. David Fielding was
responsible for the design concept, but a legion of
technicians helped achieve its fnal effect under the
energized guidance of Gerd Alfons, the over-arching
technical director for all aspects of production and
planning for the festival. And Fielding would not
have developed this stage picture without the vision
and guidance of Keith Warner, the stage director for
Andr Chnier.
The head doesn't just sit there. It's an active
participant in the production. Some of the huge
cast can be seen oozing out of Marat's eyes, among
other orifces. Acrobatic dancersCirque du Soleil
styleeven cavort on top of the head when it is
covered with a giant patterned cloth of late eighteen
century design. Later, this immense expanse of
fabric is drawn back up over the head. Eventually,
a piston opens up the head, revealing mounds of
immense books, the intellectual treasures of the age
of enlightenment! Spikes also spring out from the
head near the close and Chnier's own end. Even
Andr Chnier Photo: Courtesy of Bregenz Festival.
55
though the head is the center of attraction, there have
to be other acting venues, because the playing area
of the lake stage is so large. Stage right of the head,
high in the air, is an open book: Chnier's poems,
with silhouettes of scenes projected on the vertical
page, the horizontal providing an acting surface. A
door for entrances is also concealed in the standing
page. Down in the lake, below the head, but also
stage right, is what appears to be a great calling card,
held by Chnier's thumb. Onto this card march and
gallivant a troupe of fantastically wigged and garbed
lords and ladies of the ancien-rgime, elegant fodder
for Robespierre and the guillotine. Later, the card
foats in front of the head, ending stage left, below
a giant oval golden baroque empty mirror frame.
Now, it becomes effectively the revolutionary nest
of vipers tribunal who decide who shall live and
who shall die. It is a tradition of operas and musicals
on the lake that the water between the stage and
the hundreds and hundreds of bleacher seats shall
be crossed by one or more boats or ships sometime
during the performances. For Chnier, death chooses
a small rowboat.
For Warner, the major problem obviously
was how to fll this remarkable stage picture with
action, when many of Umberto Giordano's opera
scenes are, in fact, very intimate. This also was visibly
a problem with the recent Aida: Who is singing where?
Spotlighting the operative singers in intimate scenes
proves effective, but the ingenious sound system
is also of major importance. The costumesfrom
Incroyables and decadent, bewigged Aristocrats to
the revolting Revolutionarieswere the ingenious
confections of costumire Constance Hoffman.
The Bregenz Festival always opens with
a smaller scale opera indoors in the Festspielhaus.
This past summer it was Judith Weir's Achterbahn
(Miss Fortune). Weir was fortunate that the
Bregenz premiere was a co-production with Covent
Garden. Alfons's shops have devised an ingenious
visiondesigned by Tom Pyewhich involves
only two major set-pieces. Thus, the Royal Opera
has a handsome, stripped-down production ready
to go. One of the extremely light weight pieces
resembles, at frst, the prow of a ship, but it later
seems to assume other shapes, as well as serving
as a projection surface for intriguing patterns and
images. The other construction looks like a red
lattice, or even a section of railroad track, seen in
diminishing perspective. It can rotate on a pivot,
set in the Festspielhaus stage foor. LCDs enable it
to light up with useful information, such as lottery
Judith Weir's Achterbahn. Photo: Courtesy of Bregenz Festival.
56
numbers. Although Achterbahn is a German term,
it also refers to the American roller coaster. In
effect, this is the roller coaster of life. Emma Bell
energetically plays and sings the role of Tina, or
Miss Fortunean intended pun. Her insufferable
Louis Vuitton-toting parents, Lord and Lady Fortune
have just lost it all. Their ill prepared and essentially
ignorant daughterfollowing the counter tenor
advice of fateplunges disastrously into the real
world. This involves several spectacular scenes:
one of them is in a sweat shop, with fles of girls at
what seem endless sets of sewing machines. Later,
Tina is employed at Donna's launderette, with two
levels of green washers, stretching across the stage.
Something is going on inside, but it isn't wet wash.
Then, there's Hassan's kebab wagon. Brit thug boys
set it on fre. It explodes on stage: Spectacular! And
so much for that old rule about no open fames! Tina
wins the lottery and marries a rich young man whose
money can fx everything. This will not be coming to
the Met anytime soon.
In Munich: New Visions for Old Operas
Festival operas in Munich can be drawn
from the regular repertory, or specially mounted for
the summer, then passing into the Repertory Festival
productions used to be cast with more famed artists
than appeared during the season, but now that the
Bavarian State Opera is a major force in the opera
world, audiences do not have to settle for second
best in November or March. For directorial and
design innovations in Munich, it would be diffcult
to surpass the new staging of Antonin Dvok's
Rusalka.
Rusalka is infrequently staged, however,
given its scenic problems: swimming out of the river
and into the palace. There is another problem, but
this is for the soprano who sings Rusalka. She longs
to become human, to leave her watery element, to
feel the passions that people experience. But when
the witch, Jezibaba, makes this possible, Rusalka
loses the power of speech. You can do a lot with
mime, but when the composer makes you mute,
there is defnitely a problem. The handsome young
Princewho encounters Rusalka on a hunt and falls
in love with her, begging her to return with him to the
palaceloses interest because she doesn't speak. He
thinks her cold and indifferent. So, he falls in love
with a foreign princess, devastating the unhappy
Rusalka. In the palace, she even longs to return
to her watery home, diving into a big aquarium,
frightening the goldfsh! The production photos
can provide some idea of this unusual staging, but
Antonin Dvok's Rusalka. Photo: Munich Opera Festival.
57
Dvok surely would have been surprised to see a
deer actually killed and eviscerated on stage as the
climax of the Prince's hunt. When this occurred at
the premiereso it is reportedthere was an outcry!
Every performance would require a new dead deer!
By now, the deer is a prop, but that doesn't prevent
a bevy of white-clad nymphs from wrestling with
other deer carcasses and smearing blood all over
themselves and their pristine gowns! This may
be a kind of tribute to Viennese Aktionsknstler
(performance artist) Hermann Nitsch, who long
ago made his reputation by slaughtering pigs and
letting their blood drip down onto a naked woman
lying below. Another unlooked-for visual surprise in
the current Rusalka is the Wasserman (an aquarius)
apparently mounting a nymph from behind.
Munich's National Theater is blessed with
a complicated system of stage wagons that can
move up or downstage and to right or left, onto very
large side stages. Of course, there's also a turntable,
and there's also an elevator, so audiences get to see
not only the Prince's palace, but what lies beneath:
It looks like the boiler room. Or perhaps this is
supposed to suggest the underwater world? Rusalka
at last is desperate to return to her lake or stream, but
there's a curse on her. She must kill the Prince, who
has abandoned her. She is even given a knife for this
deed, but she cannot stab him. She seemsalong
with other desolate nymphsto be in the fever ward
of a charity hospital. When the Prince comes to her,
instead of stabbing him, she kills him with a kiss!
This unusual staging was the concept of director
Martin Kuej, with stage and costume designers
Martin Zehetgruber and Heidi Hackl abetting him.
Tom Hanus conducted, with his head above water.
Considering that both Figaro and Don
Giovanni are literary/legendary citizens of Seville,
why do opera stage directors feel it necessary to
move the narratives of plays and operas to other
locales or venues? Last summer, at the Salzburg
Festival, the lusty Don seemed to be skulking around
a dark patch of trees in the Black Forest, dense woods
in which there was also a bus stop! In Munich,
however, director Stephan Kimmig has found new
use for all those cargo containers that seem to pile
up near most major dock facilities. He and his stage
designer Katya Hass have devised a two-tiered pile
of the containers for their Don Giovanni, having
them endlessly shuffed back and forth during the
various scenes. This is fascinating to watch, but
something of a distraction if you are really intent on
plot developments.
Then, of course, there's also the danger
of singers getting hit by a huge iron box that was
recently on a train, truck, or ship. Actually, Gerald
Finley does very well as the sex-driven Don,
Mozart's Don Giovanni, directed by Stephen Kimmig. Photo: Courtesy of Munich Opera Festival.
58
although he seems to have three personalities, for
which he also has three wigs. The frst is the long
hair of a hippie tough. Then, with the long blond
second wig, he seems a gold-clad rock star. With the
third, close-cut, he looks a bit chastened. But he's
really not: He plays a TV chef as he prepares the
fnal meal for himself and the Commendatore, whom
he had earlier slain, but just recently has invited to
dinein the cemetery.
The cemetery seems another tribute to
Nitsch: there are sides of beef, recently skinned
and dressed. What is it with carcasses at the BSO?
For Masetto's wedding festivitieswhich seem set
in Antarcticaa cargo box car interior is all snow
and ice and penguins! But when Masetto gets a real
beating, it's with modern baseball bats, not icicles.
This production rejoices in graffti, as well as some
sexual explicitness. While Donna Anna seems
properly outraged at the very idea of being defled
by the Don, Donna Elvira longs for more. In addition
to the distraction of the endless re-conformations of
the cargo containers, there's also a small horizontal
screen hung above the boxes. It shows images
and videos that must have some kind of meaning,
some form of relevance unknown to this viewer.
Constantinos Carydis conducted: his cargo container
was fully loaded!
On the other hand, the beautiful sparseness
of the Munich Ariadne auf Naxos made this
production one of the most impressive I have ever
seen. It also revealed to me a potent relationship that
I'd never before sensed. Less certainly is more! The
experience of seeing and hearing this elegantly simple
staging and performance was worth the whole trip
to the Munich Festival. Originally conceived as part
of a very special Max Reinhardt style production of
Molire's The Bourgeois Gentleman, complete with
ballet, commedia, and opera, that performance proved
too longalthough the Juilliard School did make an
effort at reconstruction/revival some seasons ago. As
Ariadne fnally emerged from the this more complex
work, it remained both an opera and a commedia,
but with a somewhat hidden love story that I'd never
before detected. The most overwhelming Ariadne
I've ever seen recreated the backstage area of what
looked like an eighteenth century court theatre in
the palais of a Viennese nouveau riche grandee. Not
only was there an elegant grand staircase leading
up to a grand salon, barely visible at top stage right,
but the stage itself was teeming with the riggings
and drapes of old-fashioned productions. In short, a
theatre historian's wet dream.
Don Giovanni. Photo: Courtesy of Munich Opera Festival.
59
Director Robert Carsen, however, has
chosen simplicity, aided by his designers, Peter
Pabst, Falk Bauer, and Manfred Voss. Instead of
two hundred years ago, the time is now. The self-
important host seems to be a CEO, accustomed to
being obeyed, his wishes transmitted by an offcious
young man. He has invited guests to enjoy a repast,
prefaced by an opera he's commissioned, as well
as some fun and games from a traditional Italian
commedia troupe. But now that the hour is at hand,
he's concerned that the roast may dry out before the
entertainments are concluded. So, obviously, the
opera and the commedia will have to be performed
simultaneously!
The young composerfor whom this is
his frst important performanceis understandably
distraught. Not to mention the Prima Donna, whose
Ariadne has not only been abandoned by the fckle
Theseus on the barren Island of Naxos, but whose
hopefully stellar performance is sure to be damaged
by all those commediens, trying to cheer her up.
What I never before noticed may in fact be owing to
Carsen's intuitive direction, rather than to anything
very explicit in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's libretto.
Although the traditional commedia love interest,
Zerbinetta, seems completely immoralfirting
with everyone and even admitting a life of fun and
follyshe is, in fact, desperately alone and unloved.
She is, somewhat like the composer, an outsider,
longing for connection and genuine affection. They
connect! When the desolate Ariadne has almost
given up hope of rescue, a simple shaft of light
upstage reveals the god Bacchus, who has come to
claim her. This is a brilliant staging, brilliantly sung
and acted. Darkness, mirrors, and simplicity focus
attention on the powers of the opera-fable and on
Strauss's unusual score.
Neither Lucrezia Borgia nor I Capuleti
e i Montecchi are major works of their respective
composers. One thinks with admiration more often
of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and of Bellini's
Norma. Lucrezia, in fact, is based on a potboiler of a
play by Victor Hugo, who had much better luck when
his Les Miserables was musicalized. For that matter,
Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos is hardly his
most beloved or frequently produced opera. As with
Lucrezia and The Capulets and the Montagues
to return those feuding families to their rightful
Shakespearean heritagethese three operas are not
and never have been popular favorites. Can it be that
the BSO's artistic director Klaus Bachler, decided
it was time to take a new look? When the curtain
Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia. Photo: Courtesy of Munich Opera Festival.
60
rose on Christoph Loy's very spare production of
Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, what struck me most
was that the young bloods who are hanging around
the piazza were all dressed like English public
school boys in uniform. That and the fact that large
white letters, forming LUCREZIA BORGIA on the
backstage wall, kept moving off-stage right, until
they were gone. Then there was that ragtag group of
what looked like nineteenth century peasants, who
seemed out of place in a postmodernist production.
Edita Gruberova was powerful as Lucrezia. As this
is not top drawer Donizetti, one might think that
the opera was also staged for her to show her great
strengths as a vocal and dramatic artist.
But you want to be careful what you drink
if you go to a ball at the Borgiasespecially if you
are her long-lost son, Gennaro, whom she poisons
before she learns who he really is. His friends mock
him for being, as they imagine, Lucrezia's lover.
Her jealous husband, the evil Duke Este of Ferrara,
believes that as well. So Gennaro defaces the ducal
escutcheon on the Castle of Ferrara. In the current
production, this involves knocking the letter B off
the back wall, with its rapidly disappearing BORGIA
name. Lucrezia demands the death of the person who
has done this. Gennaro is apprehended, and the Duke
forces Lucrezia to administer the death penalty.
So Lucrezia poisons him, only to learn almost
immediately after that she is his mother! She gives
him an antidote, only to poison him againafter
having dispatched all his friends. This time, Gennaro
refuses the antidote, because this opera cannot have
a happy ending. Paolo Arrivabeni conducted. He
arrives very well indeed!
As staged by Vincent Boussard with the
ingenious cooperation of designers Vincent Lemaire
(sets) and Christian Lacroix (costumes), the Munich
I Capuleti e i Montecchi is a long way off from any
well-known opera or ballet with a Romeo and Juliet
title. In fact, Vincenzo Bellini's librettist, Felice
Romani, created his own version of the Veronese
tragedy. No nurse. No Friar Lawrence. There is a
Lorenzo, but he is a doctor, a well intentioned go-
between for Romeo, in his quest to win Giulietta and
end the family feuding. But Giulietta has a problem.
She cannot make up her mind. So she is going to
marry Tebaldo (can this be the bard's Tybalt?) as her
irate father wishes. But then she has second thoughts:
she really does love Romeo! So she drinks a potion
to feign death. Romeoas per Shakespearearrives
Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi, directed by Vincent Boussard. Photo: Courtesy of Munich Opera Festival.
61
at the tomb, sees her presumed corpse, and drinks
poison. Giulietta awakes. She fnds Romeo dead and
resolves to join him in death. Lorenzo accuses her
father of having murdered both the lovers.
Production photos can provide an idea of
how unlike most Romeo and Juliet stagings this was.
At the opening, a score or more of riding saddles
are suspended overhead. No horses in sight. This
tumultuous gathering of Veronese citizens seems
to be more about men in funny top hats. Giulietta
is discovered alone on a virtually bare stage, with
what seems to be a white ceramic washstand bolted
to the wall. High above on the stage right side of the
wall is a white sculpture, whose inhabitants are not
at frst easy to decode. Reaching out to this sculpted
symbol, Giulietta precariously perches on the
washstand. She even sings in this odd pose. But the
master stroke in the production is the massive fight
of stairs that seems to originate in the cellar of the
National Theater, rising up through the entire stage
space, to disappear in the fies above. Up and down
its wide steps, a company of bizarrely clad women
slowly moves. They do have escorts, but this seems
to be panoply of fantastic female costumes. It makes
the top hats seem as naught in comparison.
This is a co-production with the San
Francisco Opera. It looks like it might cost a small
fortune to transport all the elements of the staircase
to the Golden Gate. One hopes San Francisco
Opera's David Gockley has already seen the scenic
specifcations! Yves Abel, conducting, kept a tight
rein on the singers. When this production breathes
its last, which gets all those saddles? Munich or San
Francisco?
The Bayreuth Festival:
Always on the Cutting Edge
Last summer in Bayreuth, Wagner for Kids
was only one of the varied directorial innovations.
But the idea of introducing young audiences to the
masterpieces of Richard Wagner, while basically
admirable, might misfre, if they come to believe that
Tannhuser is about the search for a pink famingo.
Nonetheless, it was vastly amusing to see Venus
zooming in on a skateboard, looking very much
like Lady Gaga! This was but a prelude to the new
adult production of Tannhuser, staged by Sebastian
Baumgarten this past summer. It premiered to a
chorus of boosnot unusual in the new Katharina
Wagner Bayreuth. The Sddeutsche Zeitung
reportedamong other surprisesthat Venus was
pregnant and had a baby in her arms at the close. The
reviewer was not amused. The central set decoration
was an art installation by Joep van Lieshout, frst
shown as a free-standing artwork in 2003 and 2004.
Richard Wagner's Tannhuser, directed by Sebastian Baumgarten. Photo: Courtesy of Munich Opera Festival.
62
Known as The Technocrat, it was entitled a "Closed-
Circuit of Food, Alcohol, Excrement, and Energy."
The unfortunatebut saintlyElizabeth commits
suicide by plunging into its biogas tank.
The Salzburg Festival
Claus Guth is a genius! Seeing his new
production of Cos fan tutte was worth the entire
trip to Europe this summer. Not only the journey to
Salzburg. I was so overwhelmed; I could not resist
telling Helga Rabl-Stadler, the festival president,
how much I admired the very original insight and
ingenuity of Guth's remarkable staging. This did not,
however, get me off the waiting list for a ticket to
see Guth's magnifcent production of the Mozart/
Da Ponte Figaro. Instead, I watched it on the giant
screen (sponsored by Siemens) behind the cathedral.
In immense HD: you could see the pores in Anna
Netrebko's lovely and superbly expressive face!
Guth has now completed the Mozart/
Da Ponte opera trilogy for the Salzburg Festival.
The powers of Mozart's scores and of Da Ponte's
librettos for both Figaro and Don Giovanni are so
well known and loved that they remain in many
opera repertories worldwide. But Cos is often
regarded as lightweight, not in the same league at
all. Trivial. Even insulting to women. After all, the
plot simply shows how the handsome young offcers
Guglielmo and Ferrando discover through the plots
of their older friend Don Alfonso that all women are
fckle. The late, great stage director/designer, Jean-
Pierre Ponnelle, however, found it very disturbing
that Don Alfonso was always hanging around the
young offcers' barracks, and thought the Don might
have a problem: Was he possibly an overgrown
scout master hung up on young male bodies? As for
the two girls, Ponnelle made a visual jest of them
admiring cameos of their respective lovers, but
mixing them up and not being quite sure which was
which. Dorabella and Fiordiligi, for Ponnelle, were
in love with the idea of being in love!
The ingenious East German stage director,
Harry Kupferperhaps at a loss to make some kind
of marxist political and social sense of Da Ponte's
librettohad Guglielmo and Ferrando working out
in a gym. Guth sees the two young couples in quite a
different light. His Don Alfonso is not a scoutmaster,
but, dressed in black, with black wings, he seems to
be an angel of death. Despina, the girls' maid, is also
in black and black winged. Instead of being at their
beck and call, she is now, with Alfonso, an agent in
what may be an unusual interactive experiment. In
factinstead of being discovered in some charming
eighteenth century Italian localethe two couples
are imprisoned in a stark white box with all doors
locked. They cannot escape! This almost clinical
postmodernist chamberwith a fight of white stairs
Mozart's Cosi fan tutte, directed by Claus Guth. Photo: Courtesy of Salzburg Festival.
63
and a horizontal upper level deckcould well be
seen as a kind of lab.
Both the young men and the young
womenclad in casual, modern clothesmake
some astonishing discoveries about themselves. In
all previous productions that I've seen of Cos
including Ponnelle's and Kupfer'sthere was never
the slightest suggestion that the girls were dying
to get into bed with the boys before they went off
to war. Nor, when they accepted the proposals of
the young Turksor Waldensians, or whatever
these charming lovers might bethat their double
weddings would be immediately followed by some
lusty sex! Guth, however, leaves no doubt about
what the girls have discovered about their previously
buttoned up sexuality. Mysteriously, some of the
white panels of the back wall of
the chamber rise to reveal a dark
forest beyond. This is, in fact, the
forest from Guth's previous Don
Giovanni stagingwhich now
provides a visual link with the
sexual passions and frustrations
of the Don and his women. Rich,
loamy, dark earth spills down the
stairs onto the stage foor. The
girls roll about in it sensually,
getting really dirty. Should they
accept the proposals? They rush
over to the pristine white walls
and write "SI!" ("YES!") with
the dirt on their hands. Well, this
was a revelation to me, as well
as to many in the audience, I'm
sure. Nice eighteenth century
Italian gentlewomen always
looked too corseted to jump into
the sack.
What also surprised
me was that Mozart's musicso
often supporting what previously
appeared to be cute and coy
expressions of socially misplaced
affection and desirebecame in
this interpretation, passionate,
even driven. Michle Losier and
Maria Bengtsson were certainly
fascinating and passionate as
Dorabella and Fiordiligi. It's
much more diffcult, however, for
the actors-singers impersonating
the uptight and self-important
Ferrando and Guglielmo (Alek
Schrader and Christopher Maltman), because they
must also become the sexy, unbuttoned suitors who
are to deceive and win the hearts of the women. Bo
Skovhus as the black winged Don Alfonso seemed
already to know how things would turn out. As for
the Despina of Anna Prohaska, for the frst time she
really seemed to be in control, instead of subservient
to the girls and to the masquerade whims of Don
Alfonso. This was a thoroughly modern vision:
Despina did not revive the young men with a giant
magnet, an historical left over from the mesmerizing
days of Franz Mesmer in Vienna. Marc Minkowski
conducted with an alacrity and even a sensuality
that drove the action forward. This remarkable
production should be seen in major opera houses; in
America, as well as in Europe! Paired with Guth's
Cosi fan tutte. Photo: Courtesy of Salzburg Festival.
64
Don Giovanni, there's also the scenic saving of not
having to have two sets of trees! Guth's designers
have done their job well: Bravos, Christian Schmidt,
Anna-Sofe Tuma, and Olaf Winter!
When I frst saw a scene from this woodsy
Salzburg staging of Mozart's Don Giovannion
the giant screen behind Salzburg cathedral, I had
just wandered by, arrested by the projected scene
from Guth's stunning Salzburg Figaro, with Anna
Netrebko as Susanna. The next HD scene seemed to
be taking place in the Andalusian National Forest.
I had missed any identifcation of the scene, so it
was a while before I realized this was Don Giovanni
and that Leporello was singing his catalogue Aria,
apparently reading his list from the bus schedule
posted in the metal bus shelter. Local buses don't
usually run in National Forests, but where could this
forest be: possibly in the Black Forest? It certainly
couldn't be near Seville, the nominal venue of the
opera, as all the woods there have been chopped
down long ago.
The next afternoon, I was watching the
actual production in the Haus fr Mozart, formerly
the Kleines Festspielhaus. Some fellow spectators
were hating Claus Guth's Don Giovanni, but I
think it's an interesting new view of an old war
horse of the opera repertory, with live automobiles
actually moving in the Giovanni forest and
Zerlina and Masetto having fun in the woods! The
Commendatore catches his daughter, Anna, in the
arms of the libidinous Don deep in the forest and
dies there for his fatherly efforts to protect her from
sexual violation! Or was he already too late? The
woods are dark and deep, so it's not so easy to see
what's going on. When I realized that this revolving
forestit's on a turn-tablewas going to represent
all the locales in Lorenzo Da Ponte's libretto, I
wondered how Guth and his set designer, Schmidt,
would be able to recreate the cemetery scene, with
the great monument of the life sized Commendatore
in bronze or marble. In fact, in this novel production,
at the close, the Commendatore is busy digging a
grave for that unrepentant sinner Don Giovanni
rather than pull him down into the fames of hell with
him. Instead of a huge statue of the Commendatore,
perhaps on horseback, Guth and Schmidt have opted
for a small primitive stick fgure, stuck into a fallen
tree!
As the burnt out Don, Maltman is a
desperately addicted libertine, at the end of the
road, all his resources exhausted, but unable to stop
himself. There is nothing attractive or dashing about
his Don: he is instead both pathetic and threatening.
The Commendatore, seems like a minor offcial. But
Mozart's Don Giovanni, directed by Claus Guth. Photo: Courtesy Salzburg Festival.
65
then he is out in the woods, not in Seville, where
he should be. The Don's three womeneven in the
forest, even in a bus sheltermanage to pay attention
to their hair and make-up, now really necessary
for opera in HD! Dorothea Rschmann's Donna
Elvira, Aleksandra Kurzak's Donna Anna, and Anna
Prohaska's Zerlina were all excellent and different,
even at times amusing in their confusions of desire
for and hatred of the desperate Don. The ineffectual
Don Ottavio (Joel Prieto) and the foolish Masetto
(Adam Plachetka) do their thing, as required in the
libretto. But best of all is the Leporello of Erwin
Schrott: he can do pull-ups and push-ups! He can
knock back a can of Red Bulla Salzburg produced
product placementwith the best of them. He can
also shoot up and inhale, which he graphically
demonstrates in the bus shelter!
Today, we are very concerned about
population control. Billions of people are
overrunning the earth. Its resources are being
dangerously depleted. Fortunately for the creation of
the Strauss/Hofmannsthal Frau ohne Schatten (The
Woman without a Shadow), however, this was not
at that time a perceptible danger. Unborn children
needed to be born: their plaintive, innocent voices
ring out in this score. The ravishing music that
Strauss composed for Hugo von Hofmannsthal's
fascinating libretto urges both the otherwordly
Empress (an affecting Anne Schwanewilms) and
the Dyer's wife (Evelyn Herlitzius) to desire to
bring children into the world. The Emperor, out
on a hunt, wounds a gazelle. It transforms into a
beautiful woman, the daughter of the spirit king,
the Keikobad. This does end well, but only after
harrowing experiences for all concerned. Frau
ohne Schatten is not often mounted, as its various
semi-magical scenesincluding the collapse of the
Dyer's housecan be diffcult to realize on stage,
as well as encourage scenic designers to go far
over budget with splendid special effects. Having,
however, seen at least two thoroughly magical Frau
stagings, I was a bit disappointed to discover that
director Christof Loy chose to avoid all that. Instead,
the entire opera is sung in what at frst looked like
the ballroom of a shabby ex-four star hotel. But, on
reading the program after the performance, I learned
that this was, in fact, a recreation of a chamber in the
Sophiensaal in Vienna, where rooms could be rented
for special events. We were watching a recording
session for Frau!
This ingenious Loy ployably abetted by
designers Johannes Leiacker, Ursula Renzenbrink,
and Stefan Bolligercertainly saved money on
the fabulous settings that could have made this
production unforgettable. But it deliberately robs
Frau of its darkly threatening demonic magic and
the triumph of the human spirit over the spirit world.
This is undercut not only scenically. Even if the
performers become passionately involved in what
they are singinginteracting even on-mikewhen
they fnish their scenes, they then pack up briefcases,
have a coffee, put on a coat: generally dropping out
of character. Nonetheless, the performancesin and
out of characterof Barak, the Dyer (Wolfgang
Koch), the Empress' evil nurse (Michaela Schuster),
and the Emperor (Stephen Gould) were impressive.
The much and justly admired Christian Thielemann
conducted, possibly with an eye both on the score
and on the recording microphones. After all, this
performance could become a Deutsche Grammophon
Strauss's and Hofmannsthal's Frau ohne Schatten, directed by Christoph Loy. Photo: Courtesy Salzburg Festival.
66
album!
Rain in Salzburgsummer or winteris
not a novelty. There is an old saying: "You look as
sad as forty days rain in Salzburg!" Nonetheless, it
was a big disappointment to see Jedermann spread
across the vast stage of the Grosses Festspielhaus,
instead of magnifcently deployed on platforms,
ramps, and stairs in front of the great baroque faade
of the Salzburg cathedral. There is a majesty to the
cathedral that cannot be approximated with some
stair-units on a broad, broad indoor-stage. Nor do
the various folkloric elements that are charming in
the dying light of the late afternoon in the cathedral
square seem even necessary to the telling of this
medieval tale when it's moved indoors. Jedermann
is Hofmannsthal's adaptation of a medieval English
morality play, known then and now as Everyman.
But Jedermann is not really your basic everyday
Everyman. He is very rich, very selfsh, very self-
centered, very self-indulgent, very sexual, very
gluttonous: the catalogue of his faults is almost
endless. When death comes to summon him, he
suddenly discovers that his money won't make the
journey with him to the other side. Nor will his
mistress or his friends. What can save Everyman and
give him the gift of eternal life? Quite simply: Faith.
Ever since Max Reinhardt frst produced
the modern version of the play before the cathedral
faade, it has been a tradition that the role of
Jedermann should be played by a leading actor of
the German speaking stage. As, also, the role of
Buhlschaft should be sexily impersonated by a
great and popular actress. This past summer, Birgit
Minichmayr was a very striking bit of Buhlschaft
which also has, in addition to the concept of mistress
or mover, overtones of lewdness and prostitution.
The popular and much admired Nicholas Ofczarek
played Jedermann as though it were a great role of
the German classic theatre, something by Goethe or
Schiller. This means he played at times like a man
driven mad, at top force, something close to rant,
with overtones of physical violence. For years, this
has been the standard for great acting in classical
roles on the German stage. Subtlety is not required.
The speeches have to sound important!
The tragedy of an innocent girl, seduced
and then abandoned by a worldly, wise man, always
has wide appeal. Perhaps that's why the frst part of
Frau ohne Schatten. Photo: Courtesy Salzburg Festival.
67
Goethe's Faust is so popular as an opera. But the
original drama is not so often playedif at all
outside German speaking lands. This is a loss, as
the complete drama is essentially about the striving
of the aged scholar Johann Faustus to achieve all
knowledge and mastery. It's not fundamentally
about having sex with village maidens, and then
running away. To achieve wisdom and power, Faust
makes a pact with the devilMephistophelesthat
makes him young again. But not really smart yet.
That comes later. Poor Gretchen, whom he seduces,
impregnates, and abandons, is merely road kill on
his way to fnal fulfllment. But to get beyond the
devastation of Gretchen, one has to progress to Faust,
part II. This is almost never produced, owing to its
philosophical and scenic complexities. Also, could
you get a modern audience, equipped with iPhones,
iPods, and Blackberries, to sit still that long? Thus,
it seemed a wonderful opportunity to see both parts
of Faust on the same evening this summer at the
Salzburg Festival.
This is not the frst time both parts have been
shown at the festival. Years ago, the great German
actor/director Gustaf Grndgens staged and starred
in a glittering modernist productionspread over, as
I recall, two evenings. He had previously presented
both parts, starring himself, at the Deutsches
Theater in Hamburg of which he was then the
artistic director. This summer's Faust, incidentally,
was a co-production of Hamburg's Thalia Theater,
second-tier in Grndgens' time. Of course, Faust has
never been done on Broadway, properly speaking,
although Grndgens toured his production to the
City Center in the mid-1960s. Christopher Martin
and Karen Sundewhen they were the artistic
directors of the Classic Stage Companyactually
mounted a creditable account of both parts I &
II, and this major project has been more recently
undertaken with considerable success by the Target
Margin Theatre, headed by David Herskovits, with
David Greenspan in Grndgens's old role.
Actually, Nicolas Stemann's postmodernist
production of Faust, Parts One and Two in this
year's festival was not played in Salzburg, but in
the Salt Drying Hall at Hallein, site of some of the
area's richest historic salt mines. Stemann played it
complete for a total of nine hours! Festival guests
those who were not motoring down to Hallein,
site of a pre-historic Celtic settlementtook a bus
from the other side of the great Mnchsberg that
protects the old city of Salzburg. This bus would
be returning to Salzburg, I was told, around three
am the next day. Oddly enough, Stemann himself
got up on stage to introduce the production. Later,
Goethe's Faust, directed by Nicolas Stemann. Photo: Courtesy Salzburg Festival.
68
during all the Rock 'n Roll festivities in Auerbach's
Keller, he took the mike and functioned as a kind
of DJ. But what most impressed me were the
three "monologists" in Faust, Part Two. Stemann
seems to see Faust and Mephistophelesif he isn't
actually another aspect of Faust himselftogether
with Gretchen as monologists, with other Faustian
characters as mere dramatic conveniences. Actually,
this worked rather well. As I'd studied both parts
of Faust at UC, wrestling with understanding and
translating them, the power of Goethe's words and
visions were renewed. Initially, when Faust began to
slop colorful dollops of paint in wide graffti loops
on a door in a free standing door frame, I feared we
were in for a Hair infected staging. Not long after,
however, another young man appeared on the stage
to begin reading aloud from Faust, Part One. To
the anger and consternation of the frst young man
who was already so forcefully speaking the same
words. Philipp Hochmair and Sebastian Rudolph
were excellent Faustian foils for each other, with
Patrycia Ziolkowska as an almost protean Gretchen,
suggesting das ewige Weib (the eternal woman).
Yes, Faust does make a pact with the Devilthere's
magic in the air!but it's not all about seduction and
conquest, whether of Gretchen or Helen of Troy.
In Part Two, Faust goes far beyond such
affairs. Indeed, one of the program essaysby
Manfred Ostencites Faust as a doom seer of the
twenty-frst century. Even more to the point, perhaps
our CEOs have made their own pact with the devil,
in the guise of "Globalisierung, Gold und Magie"
(globalization, gold, and magic); that's the title of
Hans Christoph Binswanger's exploration of the
economic meaning of Goethe's Faust. Who knew
Goethe could look so far into the future. What this
also suggests, howeverespecially as European
stage directors love to update both history and
the classicsis an even newer Faust production,
featuring Faust as a potent CEO, with Karl Rove as
Mephisto!
But this might not play so well across the Atlantic:
Rove is not a generic Satan over there. How about
Silvio Berlusconi as the devil?
Goethe's Faust. Photo: Courtesy Salzburg Festival.
69
It is not surprising that the disturbing
fgure of Caligula, the mad, tormented emperor,
associated in the brief span of his reign (37-
41 A.D.) with extravagances and excesses of
every sort, has attracted the attention of the most
signifcant contemporary theatre artists. The greatest
theatre leaders of our time have engaged with this
controversial fgure, from the sublime interpretation
of Carmelo Bene, an "excessive" actor and director
par excellence, to the most recent staging in Rome
by the Lithuanian director Eimuntas Nekroius,
whose performance will be the object of analysis of
the present essay.
In the Lives of the Caesars, one of the rare
writings, and certainly the major source from which it
is possible to derive information on the controversial
emperors, Suetonius describes Caligula as a very
tall man, bald, with a sinewy and athletic body (an
excellent charioteer). He had shining eyes, sunken
and piercing. He never slept more than three hours
a night, and was continually troubled by strange
visions. He grew up among soldiers and has worn
their shoes (caliga), from which he had received the
affectionate nickname Caligula. "Once, among other
nights, he appears to be in communication with the
spirit of the ocean. Growing weary with watching
or lying down for the greater part of the night,
now he sits on his bed, now he wanders through
the immense porticos, awaiting and calling for the
dawn." This same image of the unstable Emperor,
prey to fantastic nightmares, would be revived in
more extended form in the play Caligula, written
in the time right before and during the Second
World War by the French author and existentialist
philosopher Albert Camus (winner of the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1957).
The work, a fundamental step in the history
of the twentieth century theatre and a favorite piece
Caligula, Camus, and the Tyrant's Mirror:
Nekroius and the Fascination for the Impossible
Daniele Vianello
(translated by Marvin Carlson)
Albert Camus's Caligula, directed by Eimuntas Nekroius. Photo: Courtesy of International Festival of Villa Adriana.
70
for generations of international directors
and actors, returned to the stage in the production
by Eimuntas Nekroius, as part of the ffth annual
International Festival of Villa Adriana, held 16-20
July 2011. This year the announced program offered
again a panorama of the most interesting new
creations on the international scene: China, Russia,
the United States, Israel, Belgium, France, Italy,
Romania, and Lithuania are the countries which were
represented at the festival. The large open-air stage
of the villa, situated in the area of the Great Baths,
is one of the most important archaeological sites in
the world, recognized by the UNESCO as a World
Heritage site. Already in 2009 Nekroius
brought here, with great success, his
staging of Dostoevsky's The Idiot.
The European premiere of
Caligula, the most recent work by the
Lithuanian director, achieved this year an
even more irresistible appeal. The event
was in fact amplifed by the imaginative
relationship created between the blood
thirsty Emperor and the site where the
performance took place: the sumptuous
setting of the Villa Adriana, situated
between Rome and Tivoli, a wonderful
philosophical oasis conceived and brought
into being by the personal and utopian
vision of the Emperor Hadrian, "the
good Emperor" of the famous novel by
MargueriteYourcenar (1951), who ruled a
century after the death of his embarrassing
predecessor.
There were only two performances
(on 1 and 2 July) of this diffcult and
fascinating work by the author who
was a native of occupied Algeria. Three
and a half hours performed in Russian
(with Italian subtitles), during which
the Lithuanian director confronted the
daunting task of translating into powerful
thoughts and a cascade of emotions the
drama that Camus himself described
as "The theatre of the impossible." The
performance could not escape having all
the features of a unique and unrepeatable
event. And so it was. Nekroius directed
the actors of the Moscow State Theatre of
the Nations (the producer of the show),
whose leader, Yevgeny Mironov, the
undisputed star of contemporary Russian
theatre and cinema, took on the role of
the mad, bloody emperor. Alongside
Mironov (who had previously appeared as
Lopahin in The Cherry Orchard, the only previous
experience of the Lithuanian master with Russian
actors), worked actors of the highest professional
level, including Yevgeny Tkachuk (Scipio), Maria
Mironova (Cezonia), and Igor Gordin (Gelikon). The
settings and costumes were designed respectively
by Marius Nekroius and Nadezhda Guiltiaeva, the
director's son and wife, who have contributed to the
major productions staged by Nekroius.
The Lithuanian director here has taken
on for the frst time a French author, after many
successful incursions into other literary domains
Caligula. Photo: Courtesy of International Festival of Villa Adriana.
71
(from Chekhov to Gogol, Pushkin, Tolstoy,
and Dostoyevsky). The drama is presented in an
almost complete version, with the exception of
two scenes and a few minor cuts. As the director
himself says: "We began to think about this project
fve or six years ago, when we were in Moscow to
stage Chekhov's Cherry Orchard. Caligula is not a
traditional text, but a philosophical one, and gives a
great deal of freedom to the director and to the actors.
But it remains a diffcult work. The rehearsal period
was particularly dense and concentrated and did not
allow time for exasperating readings. All went well,
however, with the company, several members of
which had worked with me before. Mironov was a
very powerful and sensitive protagonist. The words
and thoughts of Camus are very deep. We made
use of many means of expression, and only when
the sense of some lines remained impenetrable,
we made a few small cuts. Structurally, the whole
play is there." (From an interview by Rodolfo di
Giammarco, Repubblica, 1 July, 2011).
Nekroius traces the trajectory of Caligula
from beginning to end, in linear sequence, faithfully
following the development of Camus's drama.
Unlike in his other productions, he did not need to
cut, to alter, to break up or to rearrange the text. The
text became a pretext: "For me it is not important
what I stage" he often repeated, emphasizing his
strong predilection for the visual score. Developed in
different versions between 1937 and 1958, Caligula
was brought to life shortly before the Second World
War by the amateur theatre group of Radio Algiers.
On this occasion, the title role was reserved for the
author himself. The stage premiere took place in 1945
at the Thtre Hbertot in Paris, in a version which
was not yet the fnal one. It brought great fame to
the leading actor, the then newcomer Grard Philipe,
and was considered one of the most important events
in postwar French theatrical life.
From this historic staging there survives a
precious, charming, somewhat faded photograph,
taken backstage during the rehearsals of the
production. At center stage is a youthful Grard
Philipe, dressed in a tunic which deliberately
suggests no particular period. He is performing,
and in the fervor of his delivery, shaking his fst and
raising it up to his face. In the foreground, an elegant
man is watching him. This man in the wings is Albert
Camus. The playwright appears visibly pleased with
this newcomer, Grard Philipe, destined to become
the idol of France and Europe after the War. Since
then Caligula went on to become a classic and a
crucial text for any twentieth century actor on the
international stage. It was presented with great fanfare
in 1946 by Ingmar Bergman in Sweden and Giorgio
Strehler in Italy, whose production Camus found
unconvincing due to the choice of Renzo Ricci in the
title role, whom Camus thought "too romantic." The
author denied Laurence Olivier the authorization to
stage Caligula. In Italy, Caligula's frst milestone for
Carmelo Bene, then only twenty-two, was his 1959
production. Later came productions by Giancarlo
Sbragia and Giovanpietro in the seventies, by Pino
Micol and Maurizio Scaparro in 1983, and a bizarre
version of the emperor-tyrant in feminine form by
Cristina Liberati, who took over the role after the
controversial renunciation by Carla Gravina.
Freedom always exists at someone's expense
In Camus's drama, the emperor-poet stands
as a monstrous but fascinating symbol for those who
consider themselves omnipotent, lucidly mad with
totalitarian power, that same power represented in
Europe of the 1930s by Hitlerism. Sometimes bored,
sometimes cruel, Caligula is a tremendous man,
dramatically alone. "How I pity you and how I hate
you and how flthy must your solitude be" as the
poet Scipione says (Caligula, act 2, scene 14). He is
alone, yet in the company of so many predecessors
and successors; the many tyrants from every age and
every part of the world. In the collective imagination,
this personage has become the symbol of absolute
power, the man who wants to impose his own
Albert Camus and Grard Philipe.
Photo: Courtesy of Daniele Vianello.
72
will, his own interests, his own concerns,
his own immoderate and crazy dreams. "Freedom
always exists at someone's expense," pronounces
Caligula (Caligula, act 2, scene 9), who seeks
through arbitrary and evil actions an impossible
rescue from the anguish of living.
Caligula is a tyrant whose absurd existence
is dramatically split between a desire for the infnite
and a condemnation to futility. The playwright-
philosopher makes a romantic hero of the youthful
Roman emperor, yearning for the impossible (the
moon, in fact). The character aspires to build a
"kingdom of limitless freedom," to obtain which
he does not hesitate "to sell his soul to the devil,"
plunging into an abyss of despair and endless vices,
denying any human feelings. Around him are only
servility and cruelty. The fatal outcome of all this
will be the slow, inexorable transformation of his
courtesans into assassins who orchestrate his death.
Caligula embodies the polished mirror in which the
literary intelligence of the twentieth century has
succeeded in exposing the grotesque nature of power
that especially in the last century claimed "to have
no limits." The unbridled lust for worldly power
comes tragically into resonance with the absurdity
and futility of human life with the scandalous
discovery of its ephemeral nature and the vanity of
every undertaking: "Men die and are not happy."
(Caligula, act 1, scene 4)
It is no coincidence that in this production
of Nekroius it is precisely the mirror that occupies
the stage and strikes the eye of the spectator. In
Caligula, as in almost all of the productions of the
Lithuanian director, the stage is already inhabited
when the scene opens, flled with frenetic gestures,
noises and cries (these are created by the actors
themselves, always busy behind the scenes). The
actors break glasses, wash their hands and faces in
rough tubs, throw about primitive objects. Every
action is the pretext for the composition of images of
refned pictorial beauty, foregrounded scenes which
alternate with choric arrangements. In the director's
imagination, the mirror is established as a kind of
protagonist from the very frst scenesthe play of
light in dazzling mirrors, sharp fragments of mirrors
that later become daggers. This is one of the few
indispensible elements, following the suggestions
of Camus himself, in which everything is allowed
except the Roman folklore: "Scene: it does not
matter. Everything is allowed, except the Roman
folklore It is enough to have a mirror" (Caligula,
act 1) Every senator, every member of the chorus
of victims and accomplices in the methodological
madness of the emperor seizes a mirror fragment,
waving it about like a fan. Pieces of glass produce
sonorous vibrations and dazzle the eyes of the
spectators with broken refractions of light. Light,
in this case, no longer illuminates the unifed image
of a monstrous anomaly, like those of the despots
in Shakespeare. Hell, for this Caligula, is "of this
world only," it is the people who surround him, it
is the other, who becomes his mirror. This Caligula
is the human and alienated portrait of an Ubu Roi,
in a performance outside of time. The stage director
himself has noted: "Perhaps these two works have
certain roots in common. Both of these protagonists
attempt to understand or to change the impossible,
all the while knowing that they can do nothing about
the impossible. (From an interview by Rodolfo di
Giammarco, Repubblica, 1 July, 2011).
The productions of Nekroius are always
rich in instances of contaminations between Eastern
and Western authors. He is inspired equally by
Dickens as by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. "From
international literature," he says, "I draw many
visions." But above all it is on the pillars of Chekhov
and Shakespeare that the Lithuanian director has
built his theatrical fortune. He does not like to stage
contemporary work. "The classics" he explains,
"are more interesting, because they offer more
levels of interpretation. Moreover I am able to see
the works of the past from a greater distance, from
a broader and more extended perspective. I have
attempted to work on contemporary drama, but
their authors are not receptive to the fact that their
works are fragmented and open to reinterpretation.
The classics provide more possibilities." In truth,
Nekroius is more a creative author than a critical
interpreter; he is as "conservative" in the selection
of the works he presents as he is "revolutionary" in
their reconfguration.
Caligula, like all the best works of
Nekroius, happily fuses together avant-garde and
tradition. Text and scenic space, words and gestures
are marvellously combined to revive in the theatre
the pleasure of the "tale," by now a rare thing on
the European stages. Nekosius privileges the visual
score. Thanks to a montage technique which is similar
to that of flm, his productions develop like a stream,
in which the story is "told" more by the progression
of images than by words. His productions are not
mounted on the stage, but in the rehearsal room. In
rehearsals, Nekroius does not go from beginning
to end; he almost always works on sections out of
sequence. The production is put on stage only when
it is ready and the remainder of the
73
time is spent almost entirely upon technical
matters.
During the rehearsals there is no reading
around a table: Nekroius immediately translates the
text into actions and requires that each single scene be
generated by multiple experiments and suggestions
on the part of the actors. In reality, physical action
presupposes for him a rigid framework for the
production: rarely do the actors utilize the mode
of improvisation (nor the etude which is typical of
the Stanislavskian system) and their creativity is
expressed in the realization of the details and the
genial ideas proposed by the director. Someone has
observed that Western actors in seeking to escape
from realistic and psychological delivery tend to
separate words from movement, the text from the
action, leading to abstractions. The actors who work
with Nekroius seem instead to follow a different
course: They avoid psychological naturalism giving
life to a primitive theatre made up of characters
who "feel with the heart rather than with the
head." Nekroius, in fact, goes directly to seeking
the strongest emotional pointsthe mainstay of
his stagingand at once concentrates the work,
sketching out and fxing the action by main lines.
The scenes are enlarged to an excessive
measure, then in turn made more precise and placed
in order. The episodes as a result are deformed,
almost as if a single cell of an organism were placed
under the lens of a microscope, and the director
creates images from what is not suggested in the
text, but which is related to it, stressing the excess
rather than the necessity. Thus the production is born
from research with small details, successively fused
together.
On the one hand, then, Nekroius expands
every fragment through a process of baroque
accumulation; on the other, he seeks the essence
and the maximum simplicity in every element that
makes up his productions. From actions and objects
Caligula. Photo: Courtesy of International Festival of Villa Adriana.
74
actions, objects, metaphors are
systematically subjected to a sort of primitivization
and the unifying principle and scenic drive are not
abstract ideas, but strong emotions, the theatre of
life.
Following the suggestions of Camus,
the staging created by the Lithuanian director for
Caligula is a space made up of undulating panels
"without any suggestion of Rome," a kind of remote
and imprecise courtyard in the center of which was
the single scenic element a ruined triumphal arch.
The entire production utilizes only simple objects,
made up of simple materials, utilized many times
over for various purposes. The space
is brought to life through symbolic
gestures, woven together in a dense web
of warm and intimate images, at the end
expressing an extreme but unspoken
theme: "the total liberty of mankind."
On the stage the action unrolls
almost as a musical danced piece, thanks
to musical phrases from Bruckner,
Wagner, and Hndel, to the stylized
gestures and acrobatic movements
which the director invariably imposes
on his actors. Nekroius puts together
a production in which the foundational
element is music. Every action is
derived from music, a real and proper
spine of sound. Continuous, enveloping,
preponderant, it flls the stage, sometimes
even covering up the voices of the
actors. Small cellular units, repeated to
infnity, obsessively, provoking a kind
of drunkenness, at times intoxicating or
dizzying. This allows Nekroius's love of
the lyric to appear, his Wagnerian desire
for a "total theatre," in which, thanks
to a wise "polyphonic montage" he
combines music, declamation, objects,
and pantomime.
It is thanks to this pure and
moving scenic language, the stylistic
and communicative mark of this director,
that the actions and the psychological
dynamic of Caligula come to be re-
created. The athletic and acrobatic
protagonist Mironov comes on to the
stage crowned with laurel, like a poet
freshly arising from an immersion in
nature. The twentieth century tyrant is an
artist ready to renounce all creation in the
name of destruction. Nekroius appears
to embody the words of Camus: "He does
whatever he dreams of doing. He transforms his
philosophy into corpses. You call him an anarchist.
He believes himself to be an artist." (Caligula, II, 2).
Nekroius generally leaves intellectual
concerns, politics and propaganda outside the
theatre, confronting instead universal problems in
an equally universal language, made up of symbols
and elements comprehensible to all because they are
present everywhere, always. His productions seem to
take no account of ideological, political, or cultural
barriers: "Politics have never entered my theatre. I
do not regard the theatre as a duty, a goal, a mission"
Caligula. Photo: Courtesy of International Festival of Villa Adriana.
75
he has many times
repeated. Concerning Hamletas,
one of his most successful
productions, he said: "First of all,
I do not put on stage a political
spectacle. In any case, a part of
today's reality will be, obviously,
present in the staging, but it is
not my intent to focus on precise
political allusions. Sometimes
it might be worth ignoring the
pressing importance of politics and
stop trying to discover a KGB spy
in every work of Shakespeare."
And yet the subtle and
sarcastic humor in Camus's
text does not disappear in the
interpretation of Nekroius, and
it is tempting to give it a reading
in a political key a posteriori. He
seems to transform the irony into
farce, tyrants into comedians, with
that typical taste for clownerie that
distinguishes many Russian and
Eastern European directors. The
Caligula/Mironov of Nekroius
is a hyperkinetic, occasionally
even acrobatic character, who
has something of the demonic
histrionics of characters in
Dostoyevsky (reminiscent at times
of Ivan Karamazov, a character
who attracted both the French
philosopher and the Lithuanian
director). His decrees are dark and deadly, the
words and actions that accompany them are those
of a buffoon. The emperor of a crumbling realm, he
is more similar to the contemporary politician, to
the elevated clown who turns his own reign into a
theatre, into a stage that goes beyond fction, upon
which the performance comes dangerously near to
reality and where dreams assume, fatally, corporeal
reality.
In 1945 the spectators of the implacable
and lucid delirium that drove Caligula "to transform
philosophy into corpses" perceived in the character
as interpreted by Philipe the trajectory of the just
defeated Hitlerism, the end of all those powers
that with the false promise of transforming the
world into a paradise fnished by decimating it.
Today, the excessive gestures of Caligula, such as
the provocation of appointing his horse a senator
of the Roman Empire, have probably lost some of
the sarcastic, corrosive and ridiculous charge of the
time. The tyrant's extravagant ideas do not seem very
different, in terms of contempt, from the squalid
naming of escorts and showgirls to offcial positions
(for the Italian public, thoughts need go no further
than the little-big man who is the protagonist of the
theatre of Roman politics in our day). What is the
"philosophical gesture" of Caligula if not the power
that we all have, the power to do one thing rather
than another, the awareness of our own free will?
In Nekroius's production, every participant
had in his hand a piece of the mirror, frequently
brandished by the emperor. "When a man is in front
of a mirror," writes Camus in his notebooks, "this
sows the seeds of satisfaction and complacency.
Therefore we need to eliminate the mirror." In the
fnal scene Caligula confronts the conspirators.
They wave fragments of mirrors like fans, and then
transform them into sharp and deadly daggers. The
tyrant dies screaming: "To history, Caligula, to
Caligula. Photo: Courtesy of International Festival of Villa Adriana.
76
history." (Caligula, act 4, scene 11)
Nekroius's production, faithful to the
frst version of 1938, stops there. But in the second
version (1941), the emperor, buried under the
blows of the conspirators, has time to scream "I'm
still alive." (Caligula, act 4, scene 11). And Camus
himself explained the new ending, commenting:
"Caligula is not dead, he is here and there, and is
in each one of you." It is the strongest lesson about
power, power in every age and society. Power does
not die with a tyrant, it survives and endures within
ourselves, at least until we agree to refect on its
desire, to desire what it refects.
Camus, as has been said, provides a clear
indication for the staging of his work: "Everything is
permitted, except the Roman folklore." The director
Nekroius has taken the playwright at his word. For
his staging he has chosen materials commonly used
to construct the roofs of sheds, corrugated metal
to create respectively a triumphal arch, a throne,
the imperial palace walls. The extremely simple
scenes and basic costumes give no indication to the
spectators of any place or time. Sometimes it seems
as if the text were set in a Shakespearian atmosphere:
If the mad emperor called himself Hamlet and
his sister-lover Drusilla answered to the name of
Ophelia, this would not be surprising.
And yet this outstanding European
premiere, presented in the magical atmosphere of a
warm sunset of a summer evening in Rome, among
the ruins of the Villa Adriana, betraying thus the
wishes of the author, offered unexpected emotions.
Once the lights are off, and despite any suggestions
by the author, it is impossible not to resonate with the
insistent sweetness of the poetic rhythm of Caligula
and Scipio. They seem to paint the very framework
of this villa, which for two times became a splendid
stage, immersed in the magic of this "profle of
the Roman hills, and the transitory and disturbing
peace that descends in the evening with the cry
of the swifts lost in the green of the heavens and
that subtle moment when the sky, still fooded with
the gold of the sun suddenly falters and shows us
another face woven with shining stars the odors of
smoke, trees and water that arise then from the earth
toward the night the cry of the cicadas as the heat
is dispersed away." (Caligula, act 2, scene 14).
Caligula. Photo: Courtesy of International Festival of Villa Adriana.
77
Madrid is beautiful in spring and the theatre
scene offers traditional fare, but through some new
lenses. This performance review focuses on three
productions: Falstaff, directed by Andrs Lima at
the Teatro Valle-Incln, Ibsen's A Doll's House (La
Casa Muecas) at Teatro Fernn Gmez, and Luisa
Fernanda, at the Teatro de la Zarzuela.
Falstaff, adapted by Marc Rosich and
Andrs Lima from several Shakespeare texts, is
arguably the most non-traditional production of the
three. Lima, co-adapting the text, and also directing
and performing, sets out to rework Shakespeare's
textsHenry IV, Parts One and Two, Henry V,
and Richard IIto present a postmodern focus
on Falstaff. This is not the frst time this has been
attempted. Lima gives credit to and takes inspiration
from Orson Welles's 1966 flm, Chimes at Midnight,
which used the same Shakespeare texts. But Lima's
purpose is to place Falstaff in the central protagonist
role and show him in all his vices and defects. In the
program notes, Lima equates Falstaff's girth (gordo)
with marginality, arguing that postmodern societies
see fat people as marginal, worthless, problematic,
barely acceptable, and even dangerous. Lima's
production argues that, in this postmodern world,
Falstaff, this "devil encased in an old fat man, a
barrel for a companion," is still relevant to us. To
Lima, Falstaff is life itself, with its grandeurs and
miseries. For Lima, Falstaff's response to his world
of violence, war, betrayal, and ambition is to drink,
eat, have sex, and enjoy life in all its excesses.
Lima presents Falstaff's response as the only choice
available, not only in Shakespeare's time but in our
present violent world. While I'm not sure if Lima's
approach is fully successful, it made for a very
interesting and satisfying evening in the theatre.
Theatre in Madrid, April 2011
Helen Huff
Marc Rosich's and Andr Lima's adaptation of Falstaff. Photo: Courtesy of Teatro Valle-Incln.
78
The Teatro Valle-Incln features a fat
proscenium stage with a modern auditorium, putting
the audience close to the action. The production
opens on a bare stage, with a raked platform mid-
stage and a small desk and chair downstage right.
While the audience fles in, there is singing off stage.
Actors begin to slowly move onto the stage area. The
desk has a bright desk lamp that is, in many instances,
the only illumination for that part of the stage.
Rumor, portrayed by Lima, occupies that area as he
comments on the action. He begins with his opening
speech from Henry IV, Part Two and the play is off.
In his ratty suit, with a portable microphone in one
hand and a cigarette in the other, like a hopped-up
Edward R. Murrow, he roams the stage, interrupted
by Falstaff who enters from the audience, briefy
contesting Rumor's presence. But Rumor is more
than just the narrator, as he is in Henry IV, Part Two.
In Falstaff, Lima has Rumor actually directing part
of the action and commenting like a journalist or TV
interlocutor on the play's developments.
After this brief set up with Falstaff, Rumor
begins the action by announcing, like a newsman, or
game show host, "England, 1403, here and now." A
blast of loud music begins and a staircase rolls down
center stage with all the characters in the play on it.
Accompanied by smoke and fog, they all wave as
if they're running for election. On this staircase is
the King, looking old, thin, and dissipated, as well
as other members of the court and entourage. Percy
is dressed in boots and spurs and oddly looks like
an American highway patrolman. Rumor announces
the members of the court as if they're rock stars or
politicians. The characters look odd; they have shaved
heads, they're hunched over, and are constantly
smoking. During this coronation scene the crown
is clearly made of cardboard and the celebration is
accompanied by fashing disco lights and pulsing
techno music. Rumor does "celebrity" interviews
with the King and Hotspur and continues to move
in and out of the action, sometimes interviewing,
sometimes commenting, and sometimes being out
of the action, as well as sitting at his desk, cigarette
in hand, observing the action. There are violent
physical motions as the characters continue their
wild celebration, simulating sex and violence in slow
motion, as the lights continue to fash and pulse, as
music continues to blare and smoke pours out over
the audience.
Scene two takes place in the tavern and the
scenic change is gloriously theatrical. The actors
playing the court characters change into the tavern
characters onstage in front of the audience. This
change has an orgiastic aspect as the characters
simulate sex on the table and inebriated or stoned
characters wander around aimlessly smoking or
drinking. There is a sense of depravity and deformity,
both in body and spirit. Everything looks dirty and
diseased. Women wear garish makeup, high heel
boots, short skirts, and torn fshnet stockings. Doll
Tearsheet carries a whip and Falstaff carries a six
pack. During the scene change, the Archbishop's
cape becomes the Turkish rug for the tavern, as the
actress playing the Archbishop reveals her Mistress
Quickly (Doa Rauda) outft, while putting on the
wild red wig of this character. As she switches back
and forth between these two characters, Carmen
Machi, playing both characters with excellent
delineation of character, simply picks up and lays
down the rug. A simple table, switched between
upstage and downstage, combined with the rug,
suggests the totality of the tavern.
The costume designer, Ana Isabel Turga,
creates an appropriately seedy, dirty world in the
tavern and the court scenes. The production's
costume design is mostly postmodern with stark
black and white business suits worn in the court and
political scenes, while dirty, torn t-shirts and jeans,
ripped fshnet stockings, stilettos, and short skirts are
the norm in the pub scenes.
Lima's adaptation jumps easily from one
original Shakespeare text to another as Rumor leads
us to follow Falstaff's and the Court's developments.
For example, Lima has an extended scene between
Lady Percy (Mara Morales) and Hotspur (Alejandro
Sa) and the Mortimers (Chema Adeva and Rebeca
Montero) that is almost orgiastic as they plot and
scheme for power. A later scene in act 1 is an oddly
romantic, slow motion scene in which Falstaff is in
a red light, moving slowly downstage, followed by
his "crew" of misfts, all with upturned bottles of
wine. This is an arresting and quite powerful stage
image. This procession of misfts is accompanied
by slow, romantic piano music. Falstaff sits with
his companions, including Doll Tearsheet (Rebeca
Montero) and Doa Rauda, on the edge of the stage
to ruminate on life and meaning.
This melancholic scene is interrupted by
sounds of battle explosions and fashing lights as the
scene shifts to political and actual battle. The King
and Percy are on opposite sides of the stage, at the
top of moving staircases, while in the middle the
characters are in a huddle, fghting in slow motion,
many, including Falstaff, with paper crowns on their
heads. The only costume element from Shakespeare's
day is Hotspur's armored breastplate during this
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scene. During the battle scene between Percy and
Hal, the others ring the stage, egging on the action.
Banks of lights upstage highlight the action in stark
headlights, with Hal delivering the fnal physical
blow in slow motion.
The ending of act 1 is quite non-traditional.
While Hal cries over the "death" of Falstaff, the
characters that conspired with Percy are executed
upstage. They climb the portable staircase and are
shot, one by one, in the back of the head by a brown-
shirted executioner. As soon as they're executed,
they rise, climb down the other side of the staircase,
and repeat the process. This never-ending execution
suggests the non-ending cycle of mediatized images
in today's world, where you can watch the World
Trade Center towers fall, planes crash, tsunamis
crash over seawalls, over and over and over again.
The second act begins with the clash
between violence and peace. This is refected in the
music that precedes the second act in which a soft,
romantic piano clashes with rhythmic booms and
bangs of striking metal. This continues until lights
up. Projections of smoke are presented with talk
of battles, losses, injuries, "muerte," all presented
by Rumor (this continues Rumor's introduction in
Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part Two). A brief, touching
scene of the grief of Lady Percy is included here,
possibly to show some compassion in the midst
of the political intrigue and violence. Action then
switches to the pub. Falstaff is now walking with a
four-prong walker, as a result of his so-called battle
injuries. King Henry IV reports on his triumph from
the top of the staircase, as Doll Tearsheet sings in the
tavern over the sleeping Falstaff. The king is even
more frail and creepy with his ghostly white skin,
black eye makeup and long white hair, suggesting a
slug that never sees the sun.
Lima inserts another gloriously theatrical
scene at this point, as other characters quick-change
Mistress Quickly into the Archbishop for his/her
death scene. These dressers ceremoniously remove
Quickly's wig to reveal the "bald" head, before
draping the Oriental rug/Archbishop cape over her.
This could be interpreted as an inversion of the
ceremonial donning of the Archbishop's miter. The
gift to the Archbishop is a bottle of champagne that
pops with a boom sound effect like a bomb, and he
drops the champagne bottle with a loud boom when
he realizes he's been tricked. The death scene of
Henry IV is simply and starkly played as the King
Falstaff. Photo: Courtesy of Teatro Valle-Incln.
80
lies on his deathbed and he and Prince Hal literally
fght over the crown before the King reluctantly
hands it over to Hal. As the lights go down on this
scene and Hal cries over his father, lights come up on
another part of the stage and reveal Doll singing in
the tavern. The next scene in the tavern uses pulsing
lights and loud music to reveal the pub characters
having table-top sex again as they react to the
King's death and what that will mean to them. Hal
is "coronated" in the pub with loud music and with
tavern cronies throwing glitter on him. Falstaff is
talking and drinking to celebrate and uses pet terms
such as "el nio" and "mi hijo" to refer to the Prince.
Falstaff and the new King Henry V retire to the
rolling staircase for the rejection scene. Hal rejects
Falstaff and literally turns his back on Falstaff as he
stands over him on the staircase. Rumor approaches
Falstaff and brings him a bottle of sack. He empties
out the wine like blood and then drops it. Falstaff's
pub "buds" gather round him while the Ghost of
the King watches from downstage. The play ends
with Falstaff and Rumor dancing around the stage
and exiting together, leaving the tavern group still
drinking.
Much of this production's interest lies in
the actors. With just a few actors playing all the
roles, they use all the crafts of the actor to delineate
character. Physicality is the strength of these
characterizations. The minor male pub characters
Pistol, Bardolph, and Simplehave very interesting
physical quirks for their characters. Postures, faces,
expressions that suggest disease, inbreeding, and
long-time substance abuse give us
a deliciously fun cast of characters
to watch, even when they have no
dialogue. Their grotesqueness and
monstrous qualities are not only in
their appearance but also in their
voices. At one point in the frst pub
scene, one of the characters sings
"Somewhere Over the Rainbow" as a
sad lament. Marchi, especially, uses
physical and vocal characteristics
to delineate her characters of the
Archbishop and Mistress Quickly.
As the Archbishop, encased in the
robe/rug, with a bald head and a
cigarette constantly in her fngers,
she suggests the dissipation of the
modern Catholic church, while
as Mistress Quickly she moves
easily between the "goodtime girl"
persona and the seasoned and tired
businesswoman who has seen it all.
Pedro Casablanc doesn't get to play
two characters, but acquits himself
admirably as the swollen Knight.
His Falstaff is the traditional one:
fat, red, feshy, with busy eyebrows
and a large, red nose. Prince Hal is
defnitely not the hero, and Ral
Arvalo's performance supports
that. It is even easy to miss him
in his scenes. The younger Percy,
Hotspur (Espuela ardiente), played
by Alejandro Sa, is appropriately
impetuous and dynamic and creates
a sharp portrait of a young man
eager to seize power.
Falstaff. Photo: Courtesy of Teatro Valle-Incln.
81
Lima plays Rumor, "the presenter," an
allegorical character from Henry IV, Part Two, who
in Shakespeare's play, serves to introduce the action
and set the tone of misguided rumor that runs like
a thread through that play. In a modern mediatized
world where millions fuel themselves on headline
news, Twitter feeds, and Facebook and blog posts,
this character is particularly interesting to the
audience and integral to the action on stage. Rumor
deals in false appearances and is no stranger to a
2011 world that is governed by rumor. No wonder
Lima played it himself.
The royal Court characters are
appropriately self-satisfed. Jsus Barranco, as the
King, is especially creepy in his dirty suit, with long,
scraggly, thin, gray hair. With his emaciated frame
and white face, he looks like a creature from a sci-
f movie, with no blood, no life in him. His frailty,
however, is deceiving as he briefy comes to life
when he cruelly taunts his sons. Northumberland,
played by an actress, Sonsoles Benedicto, is a
portrait of a self-satisfed functionary, swinging a
briefcase and barging in like a bulldog.
We see the sadness of Falstaff being left
behind by Hal, but in this production we really see
the ordinariness of Falstaff. Lima presents Falstaff
as a survivor of the battles of life, both physical and
emotional. In his small way, Falstaff thinks he would
beneft from his association with the Prince, now the
King, but he is ultimately cast aside as Henry moves
into his new role as King. Falstaff is a survivor,
however, and like all small people who get crushed
in the maw of events, he continues to survive.
Lima's major accomplishment in this production
is to remind us that it is the ordinary person with
vices and virtues, who struggles simply to survive
the vicissitudes of history's movers and shakers. He
shows us the Falstaff in all of us. To Lima, Falstaff
is the true hero. As Lima says in the program, "we
produced this masterpiece because in this world
where we only survive, we need to know how to
live. But living is diffcult"
Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (La Casa
Muecas) was mounted at the Teatro Fernn-
Gmez in a traditional and satisfying production.
The production premiered in January 2010 at
the Lope de Vega Theatre in Sevilla. Directed by
Amelia Ochandiano, the production reaches Madrid
after a successful tour of Spain. Ochandiano does
not include the famous door slam, as she is more
interested in Nora's "search for dignity and a place
in the world." Seen in this light, the entire production
Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, directed by Amelia Ochandiano. Photo: Courtesy of Teatro Fernn-Gmez.
82
illuminates an attempt by all the characters to fnd
their place in the world. In Ochandiano's production,
the protagonist just happens to be a woman.
The play opens on a realistic sitting room.
The stage of the Fernn Gmez is very wide and rather
shallow, but the scenic designer (Ricardo Snchez
Cuerda) did a credible job in creating a parlor of a
middle-class, nineteenth-century European family.
The auditorium of the Fernn-Gmez is quite large
with stadium seating. The sound of a violin flls the
auditorium as the curtain is pulled away. Two maids
uncover the furniture and slowly reveal the living
area in slight disarraypacking crates and stuffed
birds lie around waiting to be put in order. A small
settee is upstage with a desk and a small piano on
one side of the stage and a small lamp on the mantle.
A few chairs are scattered about, including a rattan
or cane rocker, appropriate to the time period. The
sound of a crying baby is heard off stage and one
of the women hurries off to tend to it. Nora (Silvia
Mars) enters with packages, playfully happy and
energetic, yet with an edge of panic, as she hides the
candy upon hearing Torvald enter. Torvald, played
by Roberto lvarez, is offcious and costumed to
look like a successful businessman of the period, as
he enters with the bare Christmas tree. Nora crawls
over to him playfully, smiling and laughing, trying
to get him to stop scolding her. In these early scenes
with Torvald, Ochandiano stages much of the action
with Nora on her knees "petting" Torvald, trying to
get him to do what she wants.
The scenic design is simple and, combined
with the lighting by Felipe Ramos, produces a gloomy
effect that presages the gloom of the play. A scrim
serves as the back wall of the living space, while also
serving to reveal, in silhouette, upstage action and the
entrances of other characters. The scrim silhouette
effects reveal certain character elements. For
example, when Krogstad enters, his shadow is large
and looming, suggesting that it will eventually be
cast upon Nora. When Mrs. Linde (Rosa Manteiga)
enters, she is dressed in black with a black veil over
her head that she starts to take off behind the scrim.
As these scenes progress, Mars skillfully reveals
the complex layers of Nora's attempt to keep balance
between her lies and deception, and her carefully
constructed "happy" home life. Her scene with Mrs.
Linde is ripe with reacquainted friendship and the
telling of confdential secrets, yet also contains a
barely disguised terror of what may come. In the
scenes with Krogstad (Pep Munn), we see Nora at
her most nakedly realistic as she tries desperately to
fnd a way out. Munn plays Krogstad as a stubborn,
yet not unsympathetic man who is determined to go
through with his blackmail. Krogstad is passionate
about doing well for his children and the actor
does a fne job with that arc in his later scene with
Nora. Pedro Miguel Martnez's Dr. Rank is clearly
infatuated with Nora, but does not overplay his
ardor. The audience sees a subtle, yet keenly felt
attraction to a younger woman in the early scenes,
replaced in the later scenes with a sincere concern
for Nora's mental health. The scene of his attempt to
declare his love for Nora is realistically sad, but not
heartbreaking. Martnez hides Rank's pain well and
this scene is staged particularly well, especially in
light of the wide proscenium and stage width.
Act 2 reveals a more muted, less distinctly
lit scene with less furniture and with a now grandly
illuminated Christmas tree. The music, primarily
piano and violin, underscores the emotional tone
of the play as it speeds up to refect the unraveling
emotions of the denouement. Dramatic piano music
fades into a more discordant tone as the lights come
up to reveal Nora talking to herself. The packing
boxes are gone. Nora is now more extravagant in
her physical mannerisms with more physical and
quicker gestures. Mars does a fne job here of
building Nora's desperation and her sense of having
no way out of her situation. There is a beautiful
scene of Nora playing with the children behind the
scrim. The audience sees their shadows fitting and
fying around, as a refection on the ethereal nature
of happiness. Upon Krogstad's entrance, his shadow
looms, once again, this time not only in the house
but directly over Nora and her children. In this
scene, Munn reveals Krogstad's growing shame
and humiliation in a simple, yet convincing manner.
Krogstad and Mrs. Linde then share a poignant scene
of possible connection.
The last scene is staged with the fnal
confrontation between Torvald and Nora in the living
room, each seated in a chair, separated from the other
by a wide distance. They stay divided in this way
throughout the scene. When she exits to go to her
bedroom to pack, Torvald attacks the tree, knocking
it down and having to struggle to get it back up.
Nora returns in her traveling clothes and they close
the scene. With melodramatic music playing, Nora
exits. She has a moment in shadow behind the scrim,
in which we see her compose herself and straighten
her back before she leaves. Even in the twenty-frst
century, A Doll's House packs an emotional wallop.
At the performance I saw, the audience had a large
number of young women in it and many of them
were not just in tears, but were sobbing by the end
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of the play.
Mars played Nora with youthful energy
and a sense of wild abandon. While a little older than
most traditional Noras, she fnds the essence of the
layers within Nora. Her last scene with Torvald is
very good and she plays it with skill and expertise. In
fact, Mars won her second Ercilla Award in Bilbao
for this role and has been nominated for the Teatro
de Rojas Awards in Toledo. lvarez plays Torvald,
with restraint during the early scenes, yet with an
appropriately dangerous tone at the end. There is
excellent sexual chemistry between Mars and
lvarez, especially in the second act. The costume
design by Mara Luisa Engel is realistically beautiful
and lush with great attention to period detail. Nora's
tarantella costume in particular is colorful and
sensuous.
Teatro de la Zarzuela is one of the oldest
theatrical houses in Madrid and I was fortunate to
see the zarzuela that epitomizes the genre. Zarzuela
is Spanish operetta, and as a result shares aspects of
both opera and musical, or lyrical comedy. The vocal
demands are similar to opera, but the genre also
includes formal dancing requiring choreography
as well as extended scenes written in dialogue that
requires non-singing actors. Teatro de la Zarzuela
opened in 1856 and it is a classic example of
nineteenth-century Spanish theatre architecture
with a horseshoe shaped auditorium and an ornate
proscenium stage front.
Written in 1932, Luisa Fernanda is still
a very popular piece in both Europe and Latin
America. The original production debuted at
the Teatro Caldern de Madrid and ran for 158
consecutive performances. The music is by Federico
Moreno-Torroba Larregla, with a book by Federico
Romero and Guillermo Fernndez-Shaw. It was the
fourth operetta by Moreno Torroba and is his most
famous. The musical director for this production was
Cristbal Soler and Luis Olmos, the artistic director
A Doll's House. Photo: Courtesy of Teatro Fernn-Gmez.
84
of Teatro de la Zarzuela, was the stage director.
The story is epic in scope and the music is lush and
romantic. Set in the Spanish Revolution of 1868
in Madrid, the story revolves around the ousting
of Queen Isabel II and the resulting revolution, as
seen through the eyes of Madrideans. Mimicking
the horrors of war, the time of the operetta occurs
between May and October that fateful year and
occurs in a disrupted Madrid and in the idyllic
countryside. In addition, music of the "Havana
mulatta" forms an important part of this zarzuela.
Taking the syncopated rhythms of new-world Cuban
music, Torroba blended old-world European music
with the energy of new-world forms. Luisa Fernanda
is known as both an urban and a regional operetta,
since in the short third act, the action moves out of
Madrid to an idyllic countryside, featuring a night
scene in a green bower.
What marks this production is its
technological wizardry in its scenery and projections
combining traditional and modern aspects. All of
the scenes feature modern LED screen projections
on traditional fats brought in from the sides and up
from slits in the stage foor. This allows the scenes
to change almost instantaneously and be more
animated throughout the performance. For example,
in the third act the trees are actually on projection
screens and the leaves and branches "move" as
the individual LED lights on the screen are lit. All
this technological scenery requires several people:
Mariona Omedes (audio-visual director), Juan Pedro
de Gaspar (scenery), and Fernando Ayuste (lights).
All the scenes are well-staged by Olmos with
attention to period detail. The costume design by
Pedro Moreno is especially opulent and detailed and
makes for a lovely mise-en-scne.
Don Florito (Jess Aladrn), Luisa's
sentimental father, opens the action in the square
where Mariana (Amelia Font) runs the inn, which
is populated by a disparate group of Madrideans.
Don Florito supports the status quo and is a self-
described "pencil pusher for the monarchy." Nogales
(Xavier Ribera-Vall), the intellectual romantic, has
a goatee and wild, abundant hair. Mariana supports
the revolution and is a maternal fgure for Luisa,
dispensing love advice as well as being an arbiter of
common sense. She encourages Luisa to fnd a "good
man." The frst, short scene is traditionally viewed as
a one-act farce, full of physical action, analogous to
modern farces, as the Inn's porter runs around the
square tending to business and gossip. Luisa is in
love with Javier (Jos Manuel Zapata), a humble
soldier, who has been rapidly ascending in the ranks,
but his love for Luisa is tempered by his ambition.
As a result, he firts with the Dutchess Carolina
(Yolanda Auyanet), a politically-minded aristocrat,
attempting to infuence events. His rival for Luisa
is Vidal Hernando (Juan Jess Rodrguez), a rich
farmer from the Extremeo region. On learning that
Javier is involved in a factional conspiracy, Vidal
declares he will himself use the political situation to
express his love for Luisa.
Vidal and Luisa's frst duet was well staged
and convincing. Jess Rodrguez is viral and heroic
in the baritone role and Cristina Gallardo-Doms, as
Luisa Fernanda, has a crystal-clear soprano and is
delicate in this Romantic role. Zapata is in excellent
voice as the tenor Javier but seemed a little stiff in
the frst act. Auyanet created a convincing portrait
of the seductive power of the aristocratic Dutchess,
assisted by the lovely costumes. One scenic effect in
this frst act was the silhouette of the Dutchess and
Javier in the window of the Inn. It is this silhouette
that Luisa observes and overhears, and the frst act
Frederico Romero's and Guillermo Fernndez-Shaw's Luisa Fernanda, directed by Luis Olmos. Photo: Courtesy of Teatro de la Zarzuela.
85
ends with Vidal comforting her in the midst of this
romantic betrayal.
Act 2 transfers the action to a large, urban
park or plaza, and continues the narrative action
of the romantic intrigue, as well as the back and
forth action of the political maneuvering. In scene
1, Javier, now dressed in civilian clothing, and
Vidal vie, in a public charity auction, to dance with
the Dutchess. Their disagreement results in a duel
challenge. This scene contains the lovely "umbrella
mazurka" dance and music, featuring the chorus
singing and "strolling" with umbrellas and top hats.
This was another scene where the costume designer?
was able to indulge in lush period detail and a riot of
color. The projections in this scene support the action
with images of red, twirling umbrellas moving over
the fats. The audience seemed to especially enjoy
this famous scene. The comic scenes in this act were
invigorating and full of life. The duet between the
Dutchess and Vidal was firtatious and lyrical, yet
the political undercurrents as the Dutchess tries to
change the political mindset of Vidal, were also
emphasized. In scene 2, the action switches back to
the inn, beginning with a short acting interlude of
the Churrera, selling her "churros" and discussing
the upheaval in the neighborhood. The rest of the
act traces the street battles taking place in Madrid,
using projections to add to the sense of battle. As
Luisa exhorts the crowd to stand frm, projections of
fre, war, and violence recede into the distance. The
crowd carries guns, staffs, and sticks as weapons.
The revolutionaries are defeated and Javier intends to
arrest Vidal, but he is rescued when Nogales, another
revolutionary, declares that he himself, rather than
Vidal, is head of the rebel forces. On seeing Carolina
and Javier embrace each other, Luisa agrees to
become Vidal's wife. Again, the projections support
the action. Slashes appear on the buildings as Luisa
rejects Javier and turns to Vidal.
The third act takes place in the idyllic
region of Extremadura, and the action reveals yet
another turn of events. The revolutionaries have now
won and the characters have escaped to the country
until the turmoil in Madrid has settled down. In true
romantic fashion, Javier has been discarded by the
Dutchess and he shows up at the estate. Vidal realizes
that Luisa will never love him and renounces the
marriage, allowing Javier to propose to Luisa. This
act contains Spanish country dances that revealed
the athleticism of the ballet corps.
One of the pleasures of this piece is its
integration of the narrative historical line with the
romantic story. It is also one reason why this piece
is still enormously popular today with Spaniards.
It reminds Madridians of their history and their
popular revolution, but it also has a beautiful score
and a typical romantic narrative. Actually, the story
of social, political, and economic unrest seems
applicable today. Its narrative of greedy banks,
precarious fnancial institutions, fnancial and
economic crises, misspent income, and political
turmoil is painfully familiar to all audience members.
In light of Spain's current fnancial crisis and the
very high unemployment rate in Madrid, it may be
doubly familiar to local audience members.
The dance number in the second act,
familiarly called the "mazurka of the umbrellas,"
is arguably the most popular part of the operetta. In
this production, choreographer Cristina Arias does
an excellent job of incorporating dance with twirling
umbrellas and a crowded stage. Historically, the
mazurka, a French dance, was brought to Madrid
Luisa Fernanda. Photo: Courtesy of Teatro de la Zarzuela.
86
in 1828, and in the time period of the operetta, was
wildly popular with Madridians. A "quick" review
with romantic music, the piece is a delight for the
eyes, with couples dancing and singing around the
town square, the women twirling umbrellas and the
men doffng their top hats. The last duet in the third
act, "Cllate, corazn!" between Luisa and Javier
is one of the most famous in the zarzuela genre and
was beautifully performed in this production. Again,
projections assist as the scene changes to a starry
night with stars twinkling and light clouds moving
across the scene. This was a beautiful effect that ably
assisted in the fnal aria. The fnal tableau has Vidal
with his back to the audience, looking upstage at the
falling stars. This is a visually stunning stage image
that is a ftting ending to a Madridean idyll.
87
Kirsten Harms's production of Richard
Strauss's late masterpiece, Die Liebe der Danae,
(The Love of Danae) proved an eye- and ear-
opening experience. Written between 1938 and
1940, it is one of Strauss's most theatrically
ambitious operas, combining the myth of Danae
and Jupiter with that of Midas, and requiring a large
cast and multiple settings. In Harms's production, it
emerges as Strauss's crowning glory, an opera that
looks back not only at his own career and works,
but more important, at the history of German
music and opera. With scene design by Bernd
Damovsky, the opera's frst two acts take place in
Pollux's starkly monumental palace of concrete-
like slabs, a kind of giant, gray, mottled cube (that
reminded me of a World War II bunker), flled with
large Renaissance and Mannerist canvasses that
depict the four mythological queens who appear
later in the opera, the objects of Jupiter's previous
seductions: Leda, Europa, Semele, and Alkmene.
The costumes (designed by Dorothea Katzer) are
more or less contemporary. The most inspired of
Harms's choices was to turn Danae's shower of gold
in the second scene into a shower of pages of sheet
music that slowly, over the course of the scene, waft
to the stage foor. That choice was associated with
the rather remarkable feat, during the chaotic frst
scene, of turning a grand piano center stage upside
down, attaching it to cables, and hoisting it about
twenty feet above the stage, where it remained for
the rest of the opera. One review complained of this
"affectation," but I found it revelatory because it
transforms an opera that is usually seen as a personal
valediction into an allegory about music as a gift, the
Review of Richard Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae,
Deutsche Oper Berlin, 7 April 2011
David Savran
Richard Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae, directed by Kirsten Harms. Photo: Barbara Aumller.
88
greatest, most precious gift of all.
These frst two scenes also reminded me of
the Nazis's attempted destruction or erasure of what
they called entartete Musik (degenerate music),
much of it written by Jews who were, after all, central
to the development of the German/Austrian musical
tradition. That the frst bars of the opera unmistakably
echo the opening of Kurt Weill's Aufstieg und Fall
der Stadt Mahagonny (The Rise and Fall of the City
of Mahagonny) was emphasized by the very frst
gesture in the performance. During those frst few
measures, members of the chorus bring onstage what
looks like a painting by the Viennese Secessionist
Gustav Klimt, which is summarily ejected by the
others. It is as if the inhabitants of the bunker are
obliged to rid themselves of everything that smacks
of Entartung.
Jupiter (Mark Delavan) frst appears
disguised as Midas in gold while the real Midas
(Matthias Klink) enters as a messenger, wearing
leather gloves lest whatever he touch turn to gold.
In the showdown between the two, just before the
rapturous duet between Danae (Manuela Uhl) and
Midas, Jupiter strips Midas of his gloves and the
inevitable happens: Midas goes to kiss Danaethey
kiss passionatelyand she collapses, lifeless on a
cold slab. In the scene that follows, the god gives
the immobilized Danae the power to choose between
himself and Midas, both of whom attempt to win her.
She chooses love over riches and royalty, returns to
life, and escapes with Midas while Jupiter laments
the loss of his youth and his power to seduce.
The third and last act of Harms's production
is set in the ruins of the palace, the concrete slabs
having fallen willy-nilly and the rich colors of the
furniture and costumes turned to black and white,
all of it shrouded in mist. For me, this image could
not help but evoke the photographs of Berlin at the
end of World War II, a pile of smoking rubble. Or
the countless German theatres and opera houses
destroyed by Allied bombs. Newly impoverished
and homeless, Danae and Midas reach out for each
other in this wasteland, conscious of all they have
sacrifced, affrming their unshakable love. In the
second scene, the four queens try to win Jupiter
backto no avail. He is still set on the unattainable:
Danae.
The fnal scene of the opera is one of
Strauss's greatest and features only Danae and
Jupiter. It opens with an Interlude, which Strauss
Die Liebe der Danae. Photo: Barbara Aumller.
89
referred to as Jupiter's Renunciation, which is the
most Mahlerian piece of music Strauss ever wrote,
Mahler being the key (Jewish) composer marking the
endand ironizationof the German symphonic
tradition. Danae lifts the pseudo-Klimt onto a corner
of the set and brings onstage a rescued suitcase flled
with sheet music. In the duet that follows, Jupiter
tries to seduce Danae but she refuses the man she
describes as "ein Alter" ("an old man"). Jupiter
remembers his moment of greatest happiness during
his youth, with Maia, whom he lost when she turned
into the fowers of spring, and he hopes that Danae
will help him relive his youth. But she tells him that
he has not lost Maia: "She'll keep on blossoming
forever and ever! / The gift that the god gave to his
sweet Maia / Blooms again and again, spring after
spring!" And she gives him her last piece of gold,
a clasp hidden in her hair, which in this production
becomes the music hidden in the suitcase. He leaves,
but not before giving her his benedictionhis
selfsh, possessive love having been transformed
into benefcent, generous, paternal love.
The last scene of the opera acquires
enormous power because of Harms's superimposition
of the personal onto the political. For it attests to the
end of a great musical tradition, destroyed by the
Nazis and World War II, a cataclysm of which Strauss
was intensely aware. Indeed, while composing the
opera, at a Festkonzert in Vienna for his seventy-
ffth birthday in 1939, he was spotted standing alone
with tears in his eyes, saying, "Jetzt ist alles aus!
Alles ist vorbei!" ("Now all is over!") Yet in Danae,
and against all odds, Strauss both continues that
tradition and mourns its end. Jupiter leaves defeated,
but he also has been transformed from a bringer of
destruction to the bestower of love and grace. And
he may depart with the pages of music, but the music
survives, as Danae sings out at the last to her love,
"Midas!" with a triumphant, ringing high C#. In
other words, music alone (as Strauss would prove
again with his Metamorphosen) has the power to
redeem a shattered world.
What made Harms's production so strong
was the clarity and power it gave an opera that in
lesser hands could seem a sprawling muddle. For
Danae remains contested in the Strauss canon. Some
fnd it an overblown; others, like Harms, clearly fnd
it an encomium to the power of musicand theatre.
Relative to other German opera productions, hers
was rather traditional and, except for the substitution
of music for gold, it dramatized the story quite simply
and directly. In other words, it made a powerful
Die Liebe der Danae. Photo: Barbara Aumller.
90
case for an underappreciated and misunderstood
opera. Harms was fortunate in her choice of musical
collaborators. Ulrich Windfuhr conducted the score
with the rhapsodic clarity it requires, while both Uhl
and Klink were extremely sensitive to the piece's
musical and dramatic values. Delavan was the one
weak link; he was too underpowered vocally and
too unconvincing an actor to invest Jupiter with
the authority he requires. Uhl may not have a plush
soprano voice for one of Strauss's most taxing
roles, but her mezza voce at the top of the staff
was breathtakingly beautiful. And she and most of
the other singers penetrated to the heart of one of
Strauss's most challenging works.
Let me close by commending both the
historicism of Harms's production and its contextual
specifcity. Although Berlin was hardly the only
German city destroyed during World War II, Berlin
commemorates its agonizing history by leaving
bullet holes still visible on government buildings
and everywherefrom the heights of the Reichstag
dome to the depths of the U-Bahnjuxtaposing
old and new, destroyed and rebuilt. A kind of living
memorial to the victims of the Nazis and the Stasi,
Berlin seems always to cry out: "Nie vergessen!"
("Never forget!") Harms's Danae, performed in the
austere, geometrical splendor of the 1961 Deutsche
Oper house, is carefully calculated to evoke
Berliners' memories not only of the tortured past of
their city, but also of a German cultural heritage that
was similarly ruined and remade. And who better to
exemplify that tradition than Richard Strauss, radical
modernist and confrmed anti-modernist, opponent
of fascism and tool of the Nazis, whose late operas
represent both a glorious culmination and trenchant
critique of the entire German operatic tradition?
Die Liebe der Danae. Photo: Barbara Aumller.
91
As I write, Germany is in the throes of
several social and political upheavals. Although the
domestic economy seems to be riding the general
crisis in Europe which has brought Greece, Ireland
and Portugal to their knees and thrown the idea of
a general European economy and currency into
question in many circles, an earthquake is rumbling
beneath the polis. The conservative/liberal governing
coalition is hopelessly divided: the liberals in
particular have suffered since their handsome young
shooting star Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenberg
(a baron to boot) was forced to resign his post as
defence minister after his doctoral thesis was
exposed as a shameless piece of plagiarism. There is
considerable unrest throughout the country, not only
from traditional circles like students and left-wing
activists but, more worryingly for the conservatives,
from the educated middle class who feel threatened
by the fragile economic climate and the vagaries of
global companies who seem to be able to hire and
fre at will, and also from a sense of helplessness
at their inability to infuence government policies
through normal democratic channels. The unrest
reached a high point in the conservative city of
Stuttgart after the regional government stitched
up a deal with German railways to build a new
central station at nightmarishly high costs and, more
importantly to the protesters, with huge damage to
the environment. The ongoing protests escalated to
such an extent that the state government sent in the
police with tear gas, water cannons, and truncheons
to disperse the crowds, an action which inevitably
resulted in grave physical injuries to many self-
styled law-abiding educated middle-class citizens
whose natural home had always been until now,
the conservative right. The ecological movement
in Germany, which has always been comparatively
strong compared to other European countries,
received a further boost with the nuclear reactor
disaster in Fukushima, and the national government
has been forced to perform a complete volte-face on
its pro-nuclear policies and announce a program to
shut down all nuclear reactors by 2022. Finally, the
"Fortress Europe"-policy of keeping out all refugees
from non-EU countriesthis mostly means "blacks
from Africa"has been thrown into turmoil by
the wave of democratic revolutions along the belt
of countries in North Africa. The conficts have
inevitably resulted in a stream of refugees desperate
to fnd peace and a new life in more secure and
wealthy countries, the nearest of which has been
Italy. It goes without saying that, for the refugees,
Italy means a foothold in Europe and a foothold in
Europe means the chance to settle in other European
countries including Germany which has a good
reputation for taking in political refugees from other
countries, as a result of its own particular trauma
under the Hitler regime. This in turn tends to arouse
racist reactionary forces who fear for the threat to
what they regard as their Christian, white (if not to
say Teutonic) culture. The debate has been further
fuelled by a former banker and fnance senator
in Berlin, Theo Sarrazin, ostensibly a member of
the center-left SPD party, who published a best-
selling, controversial polemic entitled "Germany Is
Doing Away With Itself," in which he warned that
diminishing domestic birth-rates combined with a
huge infux of mainly Muslim immigrants, whose
racial genes (sic!) make them unsuitable to integrate
with the indigenous population, would eventually
spell the end of the German nation as such.
Enough said. How, if at all, are these
questions refected on the contemporary German
stage, where the theatre has traditionally been
regarded primarily as a place for social and political
debateSchiller's "moral institution"and a space
for "practical wisdom," and where comparatively
astronomical sums of public money are poured into
theatres large and small all over the country? Not to
speak of the countless number of theatre festivals.
The best known theatre festival in Germany
is undoubtedly the annual Theatertreffen (Theatre
Meeting) in Berlin which takes place every year in
May and features the most "remarkable" productions
of the year in the German-speaking world. [See
Theatertreffen essay in this issue.] In any other
country the most remarkable productions would
almost certainly mean the most remarkable new
plays. In Germany, over the past few decades, this
has come to mean the most remarkable directorial
interpretations, and these can and do include
interpretations which can turn a text on its head,
or even transform it into something so far from the
original that it would indeed be diffcult to guess
what the original text might have been, let alone
what the author might have intended. This year,
But Is It a Play? Refections on Contemporary Theatre in Germany

Roy Kift
92
simultaneously, a festival of German theatre for
young people entitled Augenblick Mal! also took
place in the city, and since young people's theatre in
Germany is a potential source of social and artistic
experiment I decided to go along and take a look at
the latest developments. More later.
The second major festival in Germany, also
in May, is a competitive festival geared to fnding
the best new German play of the year. The Mlheim
Theatre Days, have been taking place annually
since 1976. The festival generally consists of the
presentation of seven or eight plays in production
which have previously been selected from around 130
suggested texts. Once the texts have been sifted by
a preliminary jury, they are sounded out to establish
whether or not they are still in a theatre's repertoire
(there may even be two or three simultaneous
productions) and if so which productions appear to
refect the text most accurately. Since 2007 there has
also been a concomitant competition for the best
new play for young people, and in 2011 fve plays
made it to the fnal round. An additional attraction in
the festival is that audiences have the chance to take
part in public discussions after the show, to vote for
their own favorite and, on the fnal night
of the festival to listen to the expert jury
discussing the relative merits of the plays
and deciding on the offcial winner.
A play called Gesprche
mit Astronauten Conversations with
Astronauts by Felicia Zeller opened the
Mlheim Festival. Far from being an
exploration of space travel, this was a
grotesque satire on au pairs, mostly from
Eastern Europe, and their situation in
German households; "households" in this
case meaning mostly working mothers
because working fathers are generally
too busy and distant to lower themselves
into an everyday female universe.
Hence the metaphor of male astronauts,
physically refected in this production by
an unfortunate male actor who was forced
to hover over the proceedings like David
Bowie's eponymous Major Tom, out of
touch with the chaotic events happening
down at ground (un)control. The text itself
has no story and no through line, but is
rather a huge slab of dialogue allowing
the director a free hand to unravel it and
distribute it amongst the actors at will;
in this case four women and a man. The
problem here, of course, is that once the
dialogue is regarded as interchangeable,
all the characters become interchangeable and
indistinguishable from each other. Whereas many
theatre people outside Germany would regard such
an approach as an unforgivable generalization,
German writers and directors appear to believe this
endows their shows with some sort of universal
value: an approach increasingly found in the use of
choruses to speak individual dialogue. (I even saw
it used in Arthur Miller's Crucible two years ago!)
By all accounts Ms Zeller devoted a huge amount
of research to the theme before sitting down to
write her text. Unfortunately the theatrical results
were pretty meagre. The cascade of individual and
choral gymnastics interspersed with juvenilesorry
satiricalpuns on the various countries of origin
(Rustland and Ukulele are two translatable versions),
seemed to have only one aim in mind: to show us
that women with children are mindless, egotistical,
and superfcial. (In a program note Ms Zeller notes
that she has no time or wish to have any children.)
The message was clear during the frst ten minutes
and then hammered home relentlessly for the next
100. I have nothing against satire but to use it against
Felicia Zeller's Gesprche mit Astronauten. Photo: Courtesy Mlheim Festival.
93
a relatively helpless section of society, rather than
against politicians or global bankers is too easy. As
I fed the theatre after the show I began to ponder on
how this could possibly have been selected as one
of the best new plays of the year. I dread to imagine
what would have happened had this farrago been
written by a man. Give me The Nanny or Desperate
Housewives any day.
The second play in the festival was a
three-hour epic entitled we are blood (the non-
capitalized original title is indeed English, whatever
it might signify), by a dramatist called Fritz Kater
(literally: Fritz the Cat). This is a pseudonym used
by Armin Petras, the artistic director of the Maxim
Gorki Theater in Berlin. Mr. Cat is no stranger
to the festival as he has been here before on four
different occasions, once with a play entitled WE
ARE CAMERA (we are clearly not English). Indeed,
in 2003 he won the festival with his play, time to live
time to diemy translation, his non-capitals. Like
most of Kater's plays, we are blood deals with the
former East Germanyhe was born and brought up
there before feeing to the West in 1987and how
its inhabitants have been affected by its "unifcation"
with the capitalist Federal Republic in 1989. The
play opens in 1985 in the GDR on a river bank
beside a dacha belonging to a communist deputy
minister, Hilmar. Here he is celebrating his fftieth
birthday with his partner Susan and two friends,
an engineer called Tim and his pregnant girlfriend
Yves. All of them, even Hilmar, are frustrated with
their lives over which they feel they have no control.
Susan would like to design creative architecture but
is reduced to working on uniform high-rise housing
blocks. Yves, a trainee journalist has been demoted
to writing columns on shaving products and garden
furniture after an attempt to write a critical article on
a local reactor and environmental policies. To make
matters worse, her boyfriend Tim is being sent to
Burundi for two years by the government. The scene
ends abruptly with Susan wondering where Tim has
disappeared to, and why he has not returned after
two hours.
Yves: Outside? He cannot swim.
Susan: Smoke, back there is smoke.
Yves. The power station.
Hilmar. The reactor's burning. Shit.
The laconic dialogue seems to indicate that Tim might
Fritz Kater's we are blood. Photo: Courtesy of the Mlheim Festival.
94
have drowned in an accident, and that a "nuclear"
catastrophe is about to begin. But no sooner has the
author set up this prologue, than he mysteriously
abandons all of the characters apart from that of
Yves, and we learn nothing more whatsoever about
their fate. Instead, the second half of the play mainly
revolves around a hospital and a law court in a
town modelled on the former East German town of
Wittenberge. Before the fall of the Wall it was a
technical center, but after unifcation most of the
works were closed, and all that remains is an idyllic
area of marshland inhabited by thousands of cranes
around the River Elbe. Yves, having been through
several jobs and periods of unemployment, is now
a nurse in the convalescent section of a hospital.
Here she has to care for two hopelessly mentally and
physically injured teenage boys, one of whom is the
son of a local judge; and the other the brother of a
woman called Lisa who gets personally involved
with a senior doctor, Professor Zwerenz. Needless to
say all the characters are in some way damaged and
depressive in some way or another.
The fnal confict in the play takes place
before the judge in court, where two old school
friends fght over how best to revitalize the economy
and beneft the remaining inhabitants. One of
them, an engineer argues that the town can only
be economically revived by turning the area into a
nature park for tourists, complete with hotels and
restaurants. The other, a hard-line environmentalist,
regards the case as non-negotiable because the
project would destroy the natural ecology. I suspect
Kater is trying to use the hospital and the court
room with its intractable cases as metaphors for
Germany as a whole. But, as with Zeller, all the
characters apart from Yvette, are too unrounded
and one-dimensional as to make them little more
than caricatures. There is very little real interaction
between them and most of them indulge in self-
pitying monologues when they are not caught up in
almost incomprehensible philosophical musings on
medical and social problems. This defcit is further
emphasized by the insistence of the director on
bombarding us with banal metaphorical images like
having an actor run hysterically around the stage
with his hands and feet bound in rope, or having
the characters balance precariously on thin strips
of timber to hammer homein case we haven't
understoodhow insecure their lives are. The author
has clearly done a lot of research into the background
material. Indeed, he has the honesty to cite no less
than fve different sources for his play including the
US novelist Richard Powers (remember the cranes
and the accident in the The Echomaker?). But it is
precisely this magpie picking at disparate elements
which is the downfall of the play. Nothing holds
together, everything seems arbitrary. Or is that the
message?
Much of the current rejection in Germany
of cut-and-thrust dialogue between well-drawn
characters stems from an attempt to demarcate
theatre from the dominant psychological realism
of television and flm. This means that there has
been a lemming-like trend on the part of directors
to deconstruct and de-psychologize even the most
"realistic" plays in the hope of throwing a fresh light
on them beyond their narrative value. The trouble is
here that when the narrative gets abandoned there
is little chance of understanding what the author
might have intended, let alone written, in the frst
place and, in the eyes of English and American
audiences, the result is destruction rather than
deconstruction. I shall never forget witnessing a
mind-boggling production of John Osborne's Look
Back in Anger in Bochum a few years ago, where the
frst twenty-fve minutes was devoted solely to two
actors reciting the dialogue from a Mike Leigh flm,
and the rest of the evening was devoted to actors
making their entrances or interrupting the scenes
from the auditorium. Needless to say, the director in
question was not banned from the theatre for life,
but promptly engaged on the permanent staff of a
leading Berlin theatre.
Whether the Austrian author, Elfriede
Jelinek, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
in 2004, has been a victim of or a collaborator in
this trend is not for me to say. One thing is clear:
her current plays, if we can defne them as such, are
nothing other than huge slabs of monologue which
allow directors a free reign to cut, alter, re-arrange,
and allocate as they wish. Her latest effort entitled
Winter Journey is one such slab of text covering no
less than seventy-seven pages of typescript. When I
tried to read it I gave up with an incipient migraine
after three pages, and as a result, almost decided to
spare myself the torture of a marathon evening. To
my amazement, I was enthralled by much of the
production. Winter Journey is inspired by a cycle
of Schubert songs and is a long elegy on growing
old and nearing death in isolation. Jelinek's theme is
"falling away," in German abfallen. The noun Abfall
also means garbage. "Everything falls away from a
person who then falls away from himself. He cannot
simply remain faithful to himself. What remains?I
am a person and I have also fallen away from myself
like melting ice (). The waterfall full of tears
95
always weeping for oneself."
Happily Johan Simons, the director of the
production from the Munich Kammerspiele, saw ft
to reduce the original text by about ffty percent with
the result that the show lasted around three hours.
Taking the metaphor of a winter journey, he set the
play in a snow storm against which the actors have
to struggle even to get on stage. Jelinek varies her
central theme of coldness and isolation by dividing
her play into different sections dealing with specifc
personal and political events, such as her relationship
with her parents, the kidnapping of an Austrian
teenager Natascha Kampusch who was held in a
cell for more than eight years, an Austrian banking
scandal, and fnally the "falling away" of her aging
father. Despite the occasional confusions in my
mind as I attempted to grapple with the personal and
national references, the evening was worth it alone
for its fnal sequence, a consummate monologue
by a confused old man in the throes of Alzheimer's
disease, equally consummately played by Andr
Jung. This was literary theatre at its greatest. But
can one call a text with no dialogue, no characters,
and no stage directions a play at all? In the German-
speaking world, apparently yes. The problem is that
young authors and directors tend to regard Jelinek
as the norm to be copied (see Felicia Zeller above)
especially when Jelinek, as this year, continues to be
awarded the jury prize for the best play of the year.
But was it the best? The problem of fugitive
asylum seekers from North Africa was dealt with
by no less than two plays in Mlheim. Alone the
title of Kevin Rittberger's Kassandra oder die Welt
als Vorstellung (Cassandra or the World as End of
the Imagination/Performance) forebodes an over-
intellectualized approach. Before writing the play
Rittberger spent many months in Spain where he
interviewed and videoed African fugitive workers.
Unfortunately this shows. The play can be divided
into two halves. The frst is a Brechtian-type
Lehrstck featuring the case of a young couple,
Boubacar and Blessing, who decide to make a break
to Europe and whose efforts endafter fve years
of traumatic setbackswith Blessing drowning in a
boat off the coast of Sicily. Rittberger frst read of
the case in a magazine and this is what inspired him
to tackle the subject. The production opens with six
white actors "blacking up" their faces whilst they
relate no less than twenty-two case histories, each
beginning with the words "This is the story of"
(Hey folks, I've done my research!) Case number
twenty-two, need it be said, relates the story of the
Elfriede Jelinek's Winter Journey, directed by Johan Simons. Photo: Courtesy of the Mlheim Festival.
96
author searching for and commenting on the "truth".
In reality "this is" a classic case of German overkill,
as rsum number twenty-onethe case which the
play deals withis given no special emphasis and by
this time our attention has long since been hammered
into numbness and we are desperately wondering
when the actors will fnish blacking up and get on
with the show. What follows is little more than out-
front narration accompanied by a Brechtian display
of the events. The second half of the play switches
radically to deal with the luxurious problems of a
white European documentary flmmaker, a cynical
prize-giving ceremony, and much anguishing as to
how it is possible to even come near to capturing
the horrifc reality of the fugitives' situation. This
culminates in the flmmaker's decision to sink
the camera below the water as it documents the
drowning victims, followed by an excerpt from one
of the author's video interviews. To sum up: instead
of dealing with the theme, the author gets lost in his
own agonized "liberal" philosophizing on all the
"impossible" ways to deal with the theme.
Thank God for the infnitely more direct
and effective approach to the theme adopted by
Michael Mller in his play ber die Grenze ist es nur
ein Schritt (It's Only One Step Across the Border).
The play opens with a moment of tension. A young
colored teenager, Dede, storms into a classroom on
the pretext of looking for his lost sister Benedicta.
But further remarks reveal that he might be on the
run from the police. He is so nervous that he cannot
stop talking and before long we/the classmates learn
that before coming to Germany he once lived in
unbearable conditions in Toxic City, a hellish ghetto
suburb in the capital of Ghana, Accra. Before long
he is joined by his white girlfriend, Melle, who has
discovered that Benedicta is on a class outing and no
one knows the exact time of her return. In a series of
very clever duets the two actors play out the tale of
how Dede got to Germany from Africa, and we learn
not only of the vile tricks played on the family during
the journey by customs and government offcials but
also of the exploitation endured by Dede and his
family at the hands of his Ugandan uncle Addo in
Berlin, the fnancial guarantor for their being allowed
into Germany in the frst place. Gradually it becomes
clear that Addo has withdrawn his guarantee and that
Dede and his family are on the run from the German
police, that his mother has already been arrested
and, once Dede and his sister are caught, they will
Kevin Rittberger's Cassandra or the World as End of Imagination/Performance. Photo: Courtesy of the Mlheim Festival.
97
almost certainly be deported back to the horrors of
Accra after years of acculturation in Germany. At the
end of the play, Dede manages to locate his sister
via Melle's cell phone and with the help of some
money which Melle has stolen from her rich father,
he decides to make a break and try to join up with
her. Intelligently, the play leaves us to imagine the
ending for ourselves. By contrast with Rittberger,
Mller's play works because it takes a specifc case
and allows the audience to enlarge it into an example
of universal validity. It is strong and swift on
narrative and dialogue, and the theatrical dimension
is enhanced by the ever-present threat of arrest and
deportation. In addition, the characters of Melle and
Dede, who are clearly in love with each other, allow
us to compare their particular situations in a very
clear way. Thus, when Melle talks about traveling
on holiday to Australia with her father, we are made
aware of the privileged freedoms enjoyed by white
Europeans by contrast with the humiliating poverty
and lack of freedom endured by Dede. It is the
combination of fnely-drawn characters, extremely
well played by the two actors, in a dramatic life
or death situation which brings the play alive and
sensitizes us to the real situation in the world. In case
you haven't guessed by now, this play was one of the
fve plays for young people presented in Mlheim: in
my opinion a worthy winner.
The other outstanding play at Mlheim,
this time in the adult play competition, was also
set in a classroom, and came from Berlin. "Crazy
blood" is a Turkish expression used to explain
away unacceptable delinquent teenage behavior.
When the hormones run riot the kids tend to do
so too. Verrcktes Blut (Crazy Blood) is also the
title of the play based on a prize-winning French
flm starring Isabelle Adjani called La Journe de
la Jupe, and adapted into a German context by a
German dramaturg, Jens Hillje and a Turkish theatre
director, Nurkan Erpulat. It tells of a class of no-hope
school students in Berlin, all of whom come from
a Turkish background and one of whom is a Kurd.
Their teacher, Frau Kelich, attempts to impose order
and arouse their interest in Friedrich Schiller's play
The Robbers. The constant noise and interruptions
around her increase to the point that the audience can
hardly hear a word of what she is trying to say. At
this point two of the lads begin to fght in earnest,
and when Frau Kelich tries to intervene, a gun falls
onto the foor. In horror the teacher picks it up and
Michael Mller's Over the Border is Just a Single Step. Photo: Oliver Fantitsch.
98
waves it around demanding to know who has brought
the weapon into the classroom. When one of the lads
attempts to tear it out of her hand the gun goes off
wounding him slightly in the wrist. Suddenly the
situation is transformed. It is the students who are
terrifed of the teacher, and she realizes in a state
of heightened panic and delight that she at last
possesses the means to force them to listen to her
and learn something about German culture. At gun
point, she compels each of them in turn not only to
speak complete sentences with good pronunciation
but also to read and then perform scenes from the
play with each other. This is at once terrifying and
hilarious. Slowly, each of the students learns not
only something about Schiller, but about themselves
and their own culture, their attitudes to sex, work
and life. As they gradually free themselves of their
cultural shacklesthere is a moving scene when one
of the girls tears off her Islamic headscarf in rage to
tie up one of the boys and is caught between terror
and joy at what she has donewe inevitably begin
to think the play is telling us that the only way to
"civilize these barbarous Muslim youths" is by
threatening them with violence. And then comes the
coup de theatre: The teacher addresses the students
in a foreign language and it becomes clear that she
too is of Turkish origin. But unlike the students
Frau Kelich has decided to make the most of the
unexpected advantage of immigration and assimilate
into the culture of the country of her parents' choice.
The play ran for around two hours non-stop and
during this time you could have cut the tension
in the audience with a knife. Given the almost
simultaneous publication of Theo Sarrazin's book,
the play has unexpectedly shot to fame and will be
on the repertoire of several theatres in Germany next
season. Not surprisingly, it walked away handsomely
with the audience prize at Mlheim. [See report on
the 2011 Theatertreffen in this issue.]
The remaining two plays in the adult
section in Mlheim both dealt with the fate of men in
the modern business world. Unfortunately, I missed
Lutz Hbner's The Company Abdicates, a realistic
satire on the laying off of an experienced company
manager following an international take over.
The Company Abdicates also proved an audience
favorite. For the jury, however, it was far too old-
fashioned and conventional (i.e. it had a plot and
real characters) to be considered for the prize. One
of them even criticized it as a Gebrauchsstcka
play for everyday use. Was he really implying that
"useless" plays are better? I fear so. The last play,
Jens Hillje's Crazy Blood, directed by Nurkan Erpulat. Photo: Photo: Courtesy of the Mlheim Festival.
99
entitled Warteraum Zukunft (Waiting Room Future)
by Oliver Kluck, was little more than a radio play with
out-front slabs of monologue (the sole character is
played by three different actors sometimes speaking
together in chorus and at other times individually).
For seventy-fve minutes the actors raced around a
set consisting of an oversize broken classical statue
of a female nude in a desperate attempt to make us
empathize with businessmen in a state of impossible
stress due to the demands of capitalist competition.
No plot, no character, no development, no theatrical
tension. Nothing. Nonetheless a minority of the
expert jury preferred it to the Jelinek play.
The other play which impressed me at
Mlheim was also a play for young people and came
from the GRIPS theatre in Berlin. Jrg Isermeyer's
Ohne Moss nix los (No Bucks, No Luck, my
translation) tells the story, with songs, of a teenage
girl from a poor family whose favorite leisure time
activity is stalking strangers and fantasizing about
their personal histories. Her single mother is caught
between trying to scrape together enough money for
food and rent and enrol in an adult evening course
to better her job chances, whilst her elder brother
is part of a gang of thieves involved in stealing and
reselling bicycles. The play had all the virtues of good
dialogue, strong characterization and plot twists, but
was badly let down at the end when everything was
suddenly brought together in an utopian manner.
Had Isermeyer (or perhaps the director?) had the
courage to remain open-ended the play might easily
have challenged Michael Mller's play for the prize
in the young people's category.
At the Augenblick Mal! Festival in Berlin,
which took place just a week before the Mlheim
festival, I was lucky enough to see a number of other
highly stimulating productions for young people;
many of which were rich in genuine experimentation.
The best of these came from Stuttgart and Nuremberg.
Nach Schwaben, Kinder! (Off to Swabia, Children!)
presented by the Junges Ensemble Stuttgart was an
extraordinarily moving play set in 1882 in Tyrol, a
time when the barren meadows of the Alpine valleys
were unable to provide enough food for families to
subsist. As a result, every year at the end of winter,
children were sent off through the snowy alps to the
state of Swabia in South Germany, where they were
sold on the market place or forced into ill paid work
as shepherds, maids or servants. Because of their
cultural differences the children were inevitably
Oliver Kluck's Waiting Room Future. Photo: Mike Schuck.
100
subject to racial prejudice. There are clear parallels
here with the problems of poverty, xenophobia, child
labor, and contemporary immigration in Germany.
However, the company was clever enough not to
hammer them home, rather allowing them to resonate
from specifc situations. In addition, they devoted
an extraordinary amount of imaginative energy to
producing a highly theatrical show complete with
brass band music and actors playing recalcitrant
cows and hens.
The word Pftze in the name of Nuremberg's
Theater Pftze means puddle, for in a puddle is where
all children love to play. For over twenty-fve years
the company has been producing challenging shows
for children and young people. The Child of the Seal,
written by the Dutch author Sophie Kassies and
directed by Christopher Gottwald, was no exception.
The play is based on an Inuit fairy tale and tells of a
lonely fsherman who one day observes female seals
shedding their skins and dancing on the cliffs in the
shape of human beings. He promptly falls in love
with one of them and asks her to marry him. She
agrees on one condition: that he promises to return
her skin after seven years. Not long afterwards a son,
Oruk, is born. Life is idyllic, and it is diffcult for the
boy to imagine that it could ever be otherwise; until
his seventh birthday, when his mother announces
she must return once more to the sea. The play,
originally written and produced in Mannheim as an
opera for young people, tackles the themes of love,
separation, conficts, fear, loneliness, and pain in an
extraordinarily honest and direct manner. But it is
the production which makes it so outstanding. The
story is related by fve actors in light blue everyday
clothes, refecting the colors of the landscape and
the sea. There is no attempt to portray characters as
such, and the text is often spoken in choral form in
rhythmic poetic stanzas. The stage is bare apart from
a steel cube on wheels which is primarily there to
carry cymbals, a massive gong, a vibraphone, and
a marimba. In the course of the seventy-minute
play the huge construction is spun around the stage
at a giddy speed, and taken apart and rearranged
at will to indicate a tent, a cliff, or even a sledge.
This was one of those evenings in the theatre where
everything gelled: text, direction, music, and most of
all the intuitive sensitivity of the actors who worked
together from start to end to achieve the highest level
of ensemble work. The Augenblick Mal! Festival
of young people's theatre was an eye-opener in
Sophie Kassies's The Child of the Seal, directed by Christopher Gottwald. Photo: Courtesy of Courtesy of the Mlheim Festival.
101
many ways as it showed the breadth and wealth of
imaginative theatre work currently being produced
for young people in Germany: work which addresses
children as intelligent persons who are curious about
the problems of the world, rather than as fodder for
empty-headed clowning and trivial fairy tales. On
the evidence of this festival and the young people's
plays on show in Mlheim, the future bodes well for
children's theatre in Germany.
So what can one say about the state of new
plays for adults? There are undoubtedly "big" names
on the scene besides Elfriede Jelinek, but whether
these will prove of lasting value remains to be seen.
At the moment Roland Schimmelpfennig is probably
the most-produced dramatist in the German-
speaking world, and his play The Golden Dragon
walked away with the jury prize at Mlheim in 2010.
The story concerns an illegal Chinese restaurant
worker who has a troublesome tooth pulled out by
a wrench because he has no health insurance. The
tooth lands in the soup of a German air hostess who
is a regular customer at the restaurant. In a parallel
story a corner-shop owner misuses a young Chinese
immigrant girl. The play cuts away on a surreal level
to the story of a hungry cricket that is plagued by an
ant. The man who has lost his tooth bleeds to death
and his corpse is sent back to China wrapped in a
carpet: and it transpires that he was originally sent
abroad to fnd and bring back his sister. German
critics and theatres have taken this play to their heart
because it ostensibly deals with themes like global
exploitation, greed, illegality, and brutality in an
artistic rather than a realistic manner. For my part
the production of the play which I saw in Dsseldorf
left me utterly baffed and bored.
The current "favor of the month" (indeed
she seems to be the on-going "favor of the last few
years") is Juli Zeh, a trained lawyer and successful
novelist whose frst play Corpus Delicti, set in an
Orwellian "health dictatorship" in the future, was
adapted from her highly successful novel of the same
name. When I saw its premiere at the Ruhr Triennale
Festival in 2007 I was appalled to note that her so-
called stage version was little more than descriptive
sentences cut out of the novel and distributed
amongst the actors, interspersed with monologues
and scraps of dialogue. Nonetheless many critics
promptly hailed Ms Zeh as a new theatrical discovery
and over the years she has been showered with
prizes. Not wanting to give up on her completely
and thinking I might be utterly mistaken in my
judgement, I decided to give her another chance with
a play about a student running amok in a high school
called Good Morning, Boys and Girls. This turned
out to be a heavily researched and intellectually
constructed, non-chronological associative series
of scenes, many of them consisting of little more
than anguished actors reading newspaper reports,
with the additional appearance of a character called
Amok portrayed by an actor in a white mask. The
most memorable element in the production were
the hundreds of empty cardboard boxes which were
put together, taped, torn apart, and thrown around
the stage. They were intended, so I understand, to
represent the empty packaging and chaos in the
hearts of today's young people. None of the elements
came together because the storyline was so thin as to
be non-existent and the only dramatic "surprise"
the student running amok turned out to be a girl and
not a boycould be seen coming a mile off.
In Germany there are currently a host of
festivals catering to promising young dramatists,
the most notable of which is the Berlin Play Market
which takes place at the same time as the annual
theatre meeting, and which features readings from
plays submitted by different publishing houses, most
of which never seem to manage a full production.
One festival which does present productions but
rather readings is the Recklinghausen Theatre
Festival. Amongst this year's selections was a
new play by Dirk Laucke, one of the few young
dramatists whose plays have been staged regularly
throughout the country during the past few years.
A few months earlier I had seen a production of
his best known play Alter Ford Escort dunkelblau
(Old Ford Escort, Dark Blue) at the renowned
Schauspielhaus in Bochum. Laucke was born in
1982 in East Germany and, like Fritz Kater, many
of his plays deal with characters who are trying to
come to terms with the effects of reunifcation. Old
Ford Escort, Dark Blue is no exception. It features
three young men, Schorse, Paul, and Boxer, whose
daily work consists of shifting crates in a beverage
market. One day, tired of the daily drudgery, they
make a spontaneous decision to take the day off,
travel through the country in an old Ford Escort with
Schorse's son Paul to visit Legoland. Needless to
say, all of them are losers, Schorse is separated from
his wife and has to kidnap Paul to get him away.
Boxer's mother has committed suicide by throwing
herself off her balcony when he was thirteen. And
Paul, a simpleton with no academic qualifcations,
is destined to inherit the mind-numbing beverage
market from his father. The play follows their aimless
journey through the barren landscape of the old East
Germany, and we witness how the whole enterprise
102
comes to a disastrous end when the car breaks down
and the characters end up in a state of drunken chaos,
with the son forgotten and locked in the trunk. The
play is amusing enough in its own way but in the
end it is diffcult to discern what the author is trying
to tell us. Are the characters themselves responsible
for their own lives or are they victims of a social
environment which allows them no chance to escape
from their own misery?
Laucke's much anticipated new play in
Recklinghausen in June this year, Alles Opfer (All
Victims) is due to be taken into repertoire at the
Dresden Playhouse in the 2011-2012 season. It
tells of a group of mostly senior citizens on a coach
journey through Eastern Germany on the way to
their old Heimat (home) in Silesia, accompanied by
their middle-aged guide and leader Lennert Wagner,
an ex-singer. During the journey they are bombarded
with banal German popular music in expectation of a
live concert to be given by Lennart's daughter, an ex-
pop star in the old East Germany. Towards evening,
however, the bus goes out of control and hurtles over
a cliff killing everyone apart from fve survivors,
Lennert, his daughter, a young journalist named
Torsten, an old-age pensioner named Martha, and a
biologist by the name of Antonia Lammert. So far so
good. Lennert's frst reaction is to try to climb back
to the road and get help, but he soon abandons this
because it is too diffcult. Thorsten quite reasonably
suggests they wait there until the police and
ambulance arrive. To which Lennert objects that they
will never be spotted, an objection which is accepted
by everyone without further discussion, and which
hammers the frst nail in the plausibility of the play.
These people are in the middle of Europe; not aliens
lost in a desert or stuck in a prison in a totalitarian
country. There seem to be no police around, no
helicopters, no passing cars near the scene of the
accident, and most implausibly all their cell phones
seem to have stopped working simultaneously. To
make things even more incredible, despite the fact
that everyone else has died immediately, all the
survivors are completely unscathed, except for the
aging Martha who is physically fne apart from the
complete loss of feeling in both her legs. She appears
to be suffering from a traumatic shock which leads
her to ramble on about her dead husband's past as an
offcer in the German army. Upon which Laucke's
ultimate theme is revealed and the play gets lost.
For the rest of the evening we are bombarded with
a debate about which system, the Nazis or the
Communists, was most responsible for the present
state of Germany, and why everybody feels that they
are in some respect a victim. In addition to the string
Dirk Laucke's Alles Opfer. Photo: Courtesy of Courtesy of the Mlheim Festival.
103
of mutual recriminations and self-justifcations
we are subjected to private philosophical musings
recorded by Thorsten on his recorder (which has also
miraculously survived unscathed along with a large
urn containing the ashes of Martha's husband) and a
broadcast on the coach radio which just happens to
feature a 1959 recording by the German philosopher
Theodor Adorno in which he discusses at length the
problem of neo-Nazi organizations. Enough said.
And so the play meanders to its endless conclusion.
After a passing car on the road above fails to stop,
Lennert tells a joke about the difference between
capitalist and socialist hell: "Everything runs
smoothly in Capitalist hell as it should. The people
wail and bleed, are tortured, burn. In Socialist hell
there are material bottlenecks regarding the fre and
the torture instruments; that's a real scream I can tell
you!" Upon which his daughter sings a snatch from
one of her old hits and we hear Lennert's joke yet
again: this time as a recording.
I take no pleasure in recounting this story
in some detail because the problems in this play and
in many of the others I have discussed clearly refect
a crisis in current playwriting in Germany: a crisis
which may be summed up as too much research, too
little fantasy, too much reliance on philosophical,
social, and political theories, poor plotting and
characterization, a rejection of any attempt at
psychological realism, a complete disregard for
plausibility if it gets in the way of the "message," and
an utter lack of playfulness. All of this is combined
with a modish consensus that none of this matters
any more in a postmodern world where all genres are
melting into each other. One of the most interesting
and revealing comments by a member of the jury
in Mlheim when deprecating the virtues of Crazy
Blood, was that much of the dialogue seemed to have
been written from improvisations, so that it could
hardly be called a written play in the frst place. Had
I been invited to serve on the jury I could have told
him something about standard practices in rehearsal
in Britain and the USA, and perhaps pointed out that
this might be a reason why British and American
plays are far more successful internationally than
their German counterparts. Which brings us back
to the differing cultural expectations of theatre.
Perhaps things are so much better here than I
imagine: and my British background disqualifes
me from appreciating German plays for what they
are. Whatever the case, the jury member in question
should have listened to Crazy Blood more carefully.
For at one point the teacher quotes the following
from Friedrich Schiller: "A person is only a complete
person when he is playing."
Do modern plays in Germany need an
author at all? Years ago the legendary director Peter
Stein remarked that playwrights should leave their
texts at the stage door and only show up for the frst
performance. I believe this was in relationship to a
play by Botho Strauss which was set by the author
in a room, and immediately reset by Mr Stein in
a garden. Since then changes to authors' scripts
mostly without consultationhave become a
standard part of a director's work in Germany, and
the director has come to regard him/herself as the
ultimate creator. Might the dismantling of the writer's
status and banishment from the rehearsal room be
one of the reasons why theatre writing in Germany
is in the condition it is? How would Shakespeare,
Molire, and Brecht have responded? For surely one
of the reasons why all three continue to be played
on stages around the world is precisely because they
learnt their trade within the everyday conditions of a
working theatre.
On the "fringe" scene the very latest trends
in Germany continue to dispense with an author
and even professional actorsat all. It is possible to
trace this development back to a group called Rimini
Protokoll who attempts to produce "authentic"
modern theatre in an aesthetic area between reality
and fction. Like many other persons active on the
experimental scene in Germany, the three project
leaders of Rimini Protokoll, Helgard Haug (born
1969), Stefan Kaegi (1972), and Daniel Wetzel (1969)
studied at the Institute for Applied Theatre Sciences
in Giessen. Each of their projects begins with a
concrete situation in a concrete space, and after a
period of intensive research into their themes, which
have included Turkish garbage collectors in Istanbul
and Egyptian muezzin in Cairo, they then stage their
situations either in a theatrical space or outdoors.
The particular point here is that they dispense with
professionally trained actors completely in favor of
using the real people in question, whom they call
"experts." The gain for the audience is that they are
confronted with the "real" people" and not mimetic
substitutes. The loss, however, might be that the
"real people" tend to be very awkward once they are
put on show like some exotic species behind bars
in a zoo. Many audiences seem to appreciate this
form of "voyeurism." I fnd it both interesting for
its subject matter and irritating, if not distasteful in
its presentation. Another group experimenting in the
fashion are the "Gob Squad"note the pop music
connotationa German-English company who
play the international scene from Wales to Eastern
104
Europe. One of their most recent shows Before Your
Very Eyes actually put a group of children in a room
behind a glass case, with a recorded voice asking
them to enact themselves as they imagined they
would be in their twenties, forties, and in old age.
These enactments were accompanied by excerpts
from video interviews with the children.
The trend to dispense with both actors
and performance reached a climax in the "Impulse"
theatre Festival, which ostensibly points the way
forward for theatre in Germany, with a show entitled
Tagfsh by a group called Berlin. A "tagfsh" is
a poker expression for a player who, despite his
relative experience, is stuck in a rut believing he
is doing everything well, whilst failing to fulfl his
ultimate goal. In the case of poker the goal is to
win money. In the case of the characters in Tagfsh,
it was attempting to persuade a rich Arab sheik to
invest huge amounts of money in building a hotel
and creative village on a UNESCO world cultural
heritage site in the industrial city of Essen in north-
west Germany. The presentationI won't call it a
play for reasons which will soon become clear
is based on real facts and consists of a collage of
excerpts from interviews with six protagonists (an
architect, an entrepreneur, a town-planner, a state
offcial, a journalist, and a critical third-party) who
are artifcially brought around a conference table
for the frst timeunfortunately without the sheik
who never appears. The forty-minute show has no
actors whatsoever, unless you include a young man
who laconically hovered the red carpet in front of
the table for a couple of minutes before the lights
went down, and at one point in the show brought
a glass of water to the table. Instead the videos of
the interviews with the six real-life protagonists are
projected onto each of the chairs and we watch them
(non-) communicating with each other and trying to
provide reasons why the project has not succeeded
to date. As an experiment in the presentation of a
documentary flm, it was highly interesting. But can
an evening with no authored text and no professional
actors in any way be described as pointing the way
forward for theatre?
To paraphrase Theo Sarrazin: the question
is not so much "Is Germany doing away with itself"
but "Is Germany theatre doing away with itself?"
What was that phrase in Hamlet? "The play's the
thing." If only it were!
Ensemble Berlin's Tagfsh. Courtesy of the Mlheim Festival.
105
Spending a few days in Paris just after
Easter, I was able to sample some of the very
attractive offerings available at that time in the
leading housesthe Comdie and the Odon. I
began at the Comdie, with the new production of
Brecht and Weill's Three Penny Opera, which for
reasons I have never understood becomes four-
penny in French. The staging was the frst at the
national theatre by Laurent Pelly, who has gained
a major reputation in the regional theatres. I was
fortunate enough to see, earlier this season, his
imaginative and highly effective stage adaptation of
Victor Hugo's Mille francs de recompense at Lille.
Pelly sets the Brecht play in contemporary
London, but does not emphasize possibly current
material. Only the costumes and an occasional
property really suggest the present. The original
emphasis on the corrupting power of greed is kept
in a fairly neutral visual context which well suits
its concerns. Pelly's usual designer has created the
setting, which is a monumental and basically rather
abstract composition of wall fragments, scaffolding,
and platforms, with simple small insets to serve for
the Peachum living quarters, the brothel, Mack and
Polly's bedroom, and so on. Scene changes are made
within full view of the audience and are elaborately
choreographed, with the actual changing of elements
embedded in a visual cacophony of apparently street
actionquarrels, fghts, police chasing criminals,
etc., with a background of appropriate urban street
noises.
The visual elements are distinctly
subordinated, however, to the actors, who present a
great ensemble working at the peak of its powers,
with performers generally known for their work on
the spoken stage showing a dazzling skill at musical
presentation as well. Thierry Hancisse dominates
the production as Mackie. His smooth and suave,
almost feline delivery strikingly offsets the more
physical and crude presences of the other gangsters
in the early scenes; his desperation at the end then
is even more powerful. Other long time favorites
at this theatre, Bruno Rafaelli and Vronique Vella,
he tall and imposing, she much shorter but even
more intense in her ferocity, oppose Thierry as the
Peachums, again with formidable skills in both
April in Paris
Marvin Carlson
Bertolt Brecht's and Kurt Weill's Three Penny Opera, directed by Laurent Pelly. Photo: Enguerand.
106
acting and swinging. Lonine Simaga portrays a
Polly with an engagingly nave sensuality, but with
a cold calculation underneath. The "Pirate Jenny"
song, which she presents according to the original
concept, and which she delivers up on a table like
an improvised cabaret performance, is absolutely
chilling. The scenes between her and her rival
Lucy (Marie-Sophie Ferdane) are powerful and
richly comic. As Jenny, Sylvia Berge strikes a quite
different note, musically and visually. Tall, thin,
elegant, sometimes in a deeply cut clinging dress,
others in a heavy mink coat, her languorous and
world-weary delivery contrasts sharply and very
effectively with the lively approach of Mackie's
other female companions and her delivery of the
"Solomon" song, lounging isolated in a downstairs
chair, is one of the high points of the evening.
Pelly has chosen an approach that effectively
blends a slightly exaggerated realistic style with
a much more Brechtian direct presentation. The
songs are always at least partly directly presented
to the audience, sometimes in part and sometimes
in their entirety. Some of the most effective begin
realistically and evolve into something more
presentational, as in Polly's song to her parents,
"Sorry," attempting to explain her fascination with
MacHeath. The frst verse she sings standing in the
doorway to their small living room, consisting only
of two plain fats and a sofa. Her parents are seated
in the sofa, facing her and turning their backs to the
audience. She sings the next at frst close to them,
and the next actually standing on the sofa between
them and facing the audience. Then she climbs over
the back of the sofa and fnishes the song at the
footlights, with them turned to watch her. Most solos
and duets are similarly broken up, with a distinctly
different confguration for each verse. One of the
most elaborate and most effective, is Mackie and
Jennie's "There Was a Time," sung in the brothel,
which is essentially represented by a staircase up
from below to the right and a hallway with three
bedroom doors. Mackie sings the frst verse with the
whores, who then bundle him as a group into one of
the bedrooms. Jennie then sings a verse alone in the
empty hall, after which the back wall rises to reveal
the three beds and Mackie alone on the center one,
where they sing the fnal verse together.
Laurent Natrella, another familiar fgure
at this theatre, plays Tiger Brown, suggesting
something of a Mafoso gangster with his slicked
down hair and little mustache. His "Army Song"
duet with MacHeath is an impressive, highly spirited
male romp, with much fake wrestling and punching,
all the more striking in that these two characters are
normally highly controlled, even delicate in their
movements. One striking directorial choice is to
bring back Tiger Brown, in resplendent red military
gear, as the victorious messenger, a device I have
never seen before, leaving us with the message
that the saving of MacHeath is not only a theatrical
con game, as Brecht had it, but a huge con game
within the world of the play itself, and one quite in
Three Penny Opera. Photo: Enguerand.
107
keeping with the general air of all appearances being
negotiable.
The next evening I attended, also at
the Comdie, Lee Breuer's staging of Tennessee
Williams's Streetcar Named Desire, a major landmark
production at the French National Theatre, as it is
not only the frst American play to be staged there
in the more than 300-year-history of this theatre, but
indeed the frst non-European play. The selection
of Breuer makes this choice an even bolder one,
as there is probably no current American director,
with the possible exception of Breuer's long-time
collaborator at Mabou Mines, JoAnne Akalaitis, or
the Wooster Group, also associated with challenging
and idiosyncratic interpretations of canonical
works. Certainly Breuer's Streetcar lives up to his
reputation, a far from a conventional production of
this American classic as his well-known Dollhouse
was from conventional productions of Ibsen. The
play is still set in New Orleans, but that locale is
largely evoked musically, with a piano, prominent
trombones and saxophones, and a base, offering
occasional musical comment in a general jazz and
blues improvisatory style (music by John Margolis).
The physical setting is quite neutralrather elaborate
rolling platforms brought on from either side of the
stage and offering a variety of steps and levels all
in black, against a black cycloramic background. By
far the dominant element of the production is visual,
and despite clear American touches in the costumes
(by Renato Bianchi), especially of the jazz musicians
and of Mitch (Gregory Gadebois), who appears
as a leather-clad, tattooed biker, the major visual
evocation, in both costume and setting, is of Japanese
design. The design is the creation of puppeteer
Basil Twist, building upon his previous work with
Breuer. Almost every scene, and frequently specifc
sequences within scenes, is accompanied by familiar
prints from Hoksai and similar material that appear
for the black background above the actors, usually
in pairs, but often in two halves of a single design
that join in the center. Sometimes these function as
screens, parting to reveal a player upstage center.
And this device is used a number of times in the play,
always with extremely great effect, as in Blanche's
frst appearance, the appearance of the young man
of her fantasy, or Stanly with accompanying demons
all appearing as fearful Japanese demons in masks,
wigs, and fowing purple silk pajamas. More often
however these screens simply appear as a visual
accent, with thematic material refecting the onstage
action in some way.
Aside from the screens, perhaps the most
striking Japanese element is the four actors in
kurogo, the traditional black costumes and hoods
of bunraku puppeteers. Unlike the similar visual
quotations of kurogo in Ariane Mnouchkine's
memorable Tambours sur la digue, however, these
puppeteers made no pretense of manipulating
the actors, but served more in the manner of the
"invisible" stagehands of the traditional Chinese
theatre, suddenly and silently appearing to move
stage platforms into position or to hand props to the
actors. Here, too, Breuer added his own particular
touch, allowing the kurogo actors also an occasional
choreographed turn in which their normally
unobtrusive moments were developed into a small
moment of group movement.
Many of the most famous moments of this
familiar text are given startling and memorable,
totally new confgurations. Just before the
intermission when Stanley gives his famous scream
for "Stella," she comes drifting down on a fy wire,
white Japanese silks billowing out behind her, to
carry him off toward the heavens, all this against a
totally black background. It is the only fying effect
Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Lee Breuer. Photo: Courtesy of Mabou Mines.
108
in the production and stunning in its daring and
visual simplicity.
Impressive and imaginative as the visual
effects are, they do not overshadow the excellent
cast assembled for this production. Anne Kessler
is both physically and vocally stunning as Blanche.
Her ethereal quality perfectly suits her kimono
style dresses and the elaborate orientalism of the
production soon comes to suggest her own dream
world. Eric Ruf as Stanley takes a completely
different direction from the macho virility of
Brando, his delivery often suggesting the extreme
range and theatricality of kabuki (complete with
an occasional mie) and his abrupt shifts in tonality
providing a frightening and unpredictable adversary
for Blanche. Franoise Gillard is a rich and nuanced
Stella, and there is an emotional intimacy between
the two sisters that adds greatly to the tensions in
the drama.
The weight of the production is borne
beautifully by these three regulars of the company,
but they are ably supported by Christian Gonon as
Pablo Gonzales, Lonine Simaga as Eunice Hubbel,
Bakary Sangar as Steve Hubbel, and a small
versatile band of musicians, singers, and bunraku-
style stage assistants.
A very different experience awaited me the
following evening at the Odon, where I saw the
premiere of Aeschylus' The Persians, directed by
Olivier Py. This was the last of a trilogy of plays by
the Greek dramatist to be offered in repertory this
spring by Py, the other two being The Suppliants and
The Seven Against Thebes. This opening was given
a special poignancy because of the announcement
a few days before that Py's contract would not be
renewed by the Ministry of Culture when his present
term ends in March of 2012. The non-renewal of the
frst fve-year contract of a director at this national
theatre is most unusual, and since Py has been
generally successful and well regarded, there is a
good deal of speculation about why and how he lost
the confdence of the minister. The next director, Luc
Bondy, is one of the leading fgures of the European
theatre, but he is a generation older than Py and
many consider that a younger director is more in the
interests of the Odon tradition.
Certainly the Persians represented an
unconventional, though minimalist approach to
this classic work. The performance, designed to be
performed as "street theatre" in schools and other
locations outside the walls of the Odon, nevertheless
began its career within that building. It did not
utilize the main auditorium, however, but a small,
but elegant room, the Salon Roger Blin, opening off
the refreshment area in the upper foyer. The room
is a long rectangle, with wall paintings illustrating
some of the most famous fgures in French dramatic
literature, such as Phdre and Rodigue. A long,
A Streetcar Named Desire. Photo: Courtesy of Mabou Mines.
109
narrow acting area has been created down the center
of this space, with two rows of twenty-four seats
each between it and the wall on either side. The eyes
of the seated audience were just about shoe level
of the actors on the platform, and the three actors,
all dressed in black, the men in almost foor-length
frockcoats and the actress in a simple black gown,
towered over the spectators with an effective and
appropriate monumentality.
Philippe Girard as the chorus opened
the play and carried through much of it a roster of
the dead, the production's only property, to which
he often referred and which he brandished as an
accusation against the messenger and the ghost
of Carius, both played by Frdric Giroutru with
passionate intensity. His Darius, delivered almost
entirely in a rasping whisper, was especially chilling.
The suffering Queen, caught between them, was
stunningly performed by Mireille Herbstmeyer,
one of the great fgures of the contemporary French
stage, creating a monumental portrayal in every
sense of the word. Within the narrow confnes of the
Salon Roger Blin, the intensity of the Aeschylean
text and the power of these three actors made the
performance, though lasting only a bit over an hour,
of almost unbearable power, but I was pleased to
have the opportunity to see it in this concentrated
form rather than in the some more dispersed form
it will presumably have when it moves outside the
theatre.
A Streetcar Named Desire. Photo: Courtesy of Mabou Mines.
110
A Streetcar Named Desire. Photo: Courtesy of Mabou Mines.
111
CONTRIBUTORS
MARVIN CARLSON, Sidney C. Cohn Professor of Theatre at the City University of New York Graduate Center,
is the author of many articles on theatrical theory and European theatre history, and dramatic literature. He is the
1994 recipient of the George Jean Nathan Award for dramatic criticism and the 1999 recipient of the American
Society for Theatre Research Distinguished Scholar Award. His book The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory
Machine, which came out from University of Michigan Press in 2001, received the Callaway Prize. In 2005 he
received an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens. His most recent book is The Theatre in North Africa
(Palgrave, 2011).
JEAN DECOCK is a professor of French Literature with a Ph.D. from UCLA, where he wrote his thesis on Michel
de Ghelderode. After teaching at UCLA, UC-Berkeley, and UNLV, he is now retired, splitting his time between
Paris and New York. He was the editor for the French Review on African Literature and Film for many years.
MARIA M. DELGADO is Professor of Theatre & Screen Arts at Queen Mary University of London and co-
editor of Contemporary Theatre Review. Her books include Other Spanish Theatres: Erasure and Inscription
on the Twentieth Century Spanish Stage (MUP 2003), Federico Garca Lorca (Routledge, 2008), Contemporary
European Theatre Directors (Routledge, 2010), three co-edited volumes for Manchester University Press, and two
collections of translations for Methuen. Her co-edited volume, A History of the Theatre in Spain will be published
by Cambridge University Press in 2012.
HELEN HUFF is an Associate Professor in the Theatre and Speech Department at the Borough of Manhattan
campus of the City University of New York. She has recently published an article on the Twelfth Night Club
archive in Broadside and is currently readying an article for publication in the ffteenth volume (2011) of the online
journal, Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos. She has published in Theatre History Studies, Theatre Symposium,
and The Companion to American Drama. Dr. Huff is currently directing Lysistrata in New York City.
ROY KIFT is a writer who has lived in Germany for the past thirty years. His latest play The True Story of Adam
and Eve is a three-hander comedy debunking the creationist myth as a man-made fction designed to justify
an authoritarian patriarchal system. There are plans to present his holocaust play Camp Comedy (University of
Wisconsin Press) in Paris in 2012.
GLENN LONEY is Professor Emeritus of Theatre at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He
is Senior Correspondent of NYTheatre-Wire.com and of NYMuseums.com, and Founder/Advisor of Modern
Theatre.info, based on his chronology of British and American theatre, Twentieth Century Theater (Facts on File).
His ffty-year archive of art, architecture, history, and design photos he has made worldwide is now online at
INFOTOGRAPHY.biz. His digitally-preserved audio interviews with performing arts personalities will soon be
online at ArtsArchive.biz, along with press photos of major theatre, dance, and opera productions. He is the author
of numerous books, including his latest, Peter Brook: From Oxford to Orghast.
DAVID SAVRAN is a specialist in twentieth and twenty-frst century U.S. theatre, music theatre, popular culture,
and social theory. His most recent book is Highbrow/Lowdown: Theater, Jazz, and the Making of the New Middle
Class, the winner of the Joe A. Callaway Prize for the Best Book on Drama or Theatre published in 2008-09. He
has served as a judge for the Obie Awards and the Lucille Lortel Awards and was a juror for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize
in Drama. He is the Vera Mowry Roberts Distinguished Professor of Theatre at the Graduate Center of the City
University of New York.
DANIELE VIANELLO is professor of History of Theatre and Performing Arts, Dramaturgy, and Theories and
Techniques of Theatre Staging at the University of Calabria (UNICAL). He taught Theatre History and Performing
Arts at the University of Rome La Sapienza from 2002 to 2008. He has published on the Rennaissance and
contemporary theatre. His main book is L'arte del buffone. Maschere e spettacolo tra Italia e Baviera nel XVI
112
secolo, Roma, Bulzoni, 2005 (series La Commedia dell'Arte, VII). He collaborated for several years with the
cultural activities of the Teatro di Roma, where he also worked as assistant to Italian and foreign stage directors
(among others, Eimuntas Nekroius).
PHILIPPA WEHLE is the author of Le Thtre populaire selon Jean Vilar and Drama Contemporary: France and
of Act French: Contemporary Plays from France. A Professor Emeritus of French and Drama Studies at Purchase
College, SUNY, she writes widely on contemporary theatre and performance. She has translated numerous
contemporary French language plays and is currently working on a translation of Stphanie Brards Thtres des
Antilles: traditions et scnes contemporaines, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2009. She is a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and
Letters.
113
Four Plays From North Africa
Translated and edited by Marvin Carlson
As the rich tradition of modern Arabic theatre has recently
begun to be recognized by the Western theatre community, an
important area within that tradition is still under-represented in
existing anthologies and scholarship. That is the drama from the
Northwest of Africa, the region known in Arabic as the Maghreb.
We hope that this first English collection of drama from this region
will stimulate further interest in the varied and stimulating drama
being produced here. It engages, in a fascinating and original way,
with such important current issues as the struggle for the rights of
women and workers, post-colonial tensions between Maghreb and
Europe, and the challenges faced in Europe by immigrants from
the Arab world.
This volume contains four plays based on the Oedipus legend by four
leading dramatists of the Arab world. Tawq Al-Hakim's King Oedipus,
Ali Ahmed Bakathir's The Tragedy of Oedipus, Ali Salim's The Comedy
of Oedipus, and Walid Ikhlasi's Oedipus as well as Al-Hakim's preface
to his Oedipus on the subject of Arabic tragedy, a preface on translating
Bakathir by Dalia Basiouny, and a general introduction by the editor.
An awareness of the rich tradition of modern Arabic theatre has only
recently begun to be felt by the Western theatre community, and we hope
that this collection will contribute to that growing awareness.
The Arab Oedipus
Edited by Marvin Carlson
Price US $20.00 each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
This volume contains four modern plays from the Maghreb: Abdelkader Alloula's The Veil
and Fatima Gallaire's House of Wives, both Algerian, Jalila Baccar's Araberlin from Tunisia,
and Tayeb Saddiki's The Folies Berbers from Morocco.
Please make payments in US dollars payable to : The Graduate Center Foundation Inc.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY10016-4309
Visit our website at: www.segalcenter.org Contact: mestc@gc.cuny.edu or 212-817-1868
114
Quick Change: Theatre Essays and Translations
Written and translated by Daniel Gerould
Quick Change is full of surprises. It is a nicely seasoned tossed-salad of a
book concocted by an ironic cookmeister with a sometimes wild imagination.
And how many quick changes has he wrought in this book of 28 pieces.
The writings range from translations of letters and plays to short commen-
taries to fully-developed essays. The topics bounce from Mayakovsky to
Shakespeare, Kantor to Lunacharsky, Herodotus to Gerould's own play,
Candaules, Commissioner, Gorky to Grotowski, Shaw to Mroek, Briusov to
Witkacy. From ancient Greeks to Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe,
from pre-revolutionary Russia to the Soviet Union, from France and England
to Poland. From an arcane discussion of medicine in theatre a "libertine"
puppet play from 19th century France.

Richard Schechner
Quick Change: Theatre Essays and Translations, a volume of previously uncollected writings by Daniel Gerould
from Comparative Literature, Modern Drama, PAJ, TDR, SEEP, yale/theater and other journals. It includes es-
says about Polish, Russian and French theatre, theories of melodrama and comedy, historical and medical simu-
lations, Symbolist drama, erotic puppet theatre, comedie rosse at the Grand Guignol, Witkacy's Doubles, Villiers
de L'Isle Adam, Mrozek, Battleship Potemkin, and other topics. Translations include Andrzej Bursa's Count Ca-
gliostro's Animals, Henry Monnier's The Student and the Tart, and Oscar Mtnier's Little Bugger and Meat-Ticket.
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Please make payments in US dollars payable to : The Graduate Center Foundation Inc.
Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY10016-4309
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Price US $20.00 each plus shipping ($3 within the USA, $6 international)
115
Barcelona Plays:
A Collection of New Works by Catalan Playwrights
Translated and edited by Marion Peter Holt and Sharon G. Feldman
The new plays in this collection represent outstanding playwrights of three generations. Benet
i Jornet won his rst drama award in 1963, when was only twenty-three years old, and in recent
decades he has become Catalonia's leading exponent of thematically challenging and struc-
turally inventive theatre. His plays have been performed internationally and translated into
fourteen languages, including Korean and Arabic. Sergi Belbel and Llusa Cunill arrived on the
scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with distinctive and provocative dramatic voices. The
actor-director-playwright Pau Mir is a member of yet another generation that is now attract-
ing favorable critical attention.
Playwrights Before the Fall:
Eastern European Drama in Times of Revolution
Edited by Daniel Gerould.
Playwrights Before the Fall: Eastern European Drama in Times of Revolution contains
translations of Portrait by Sawomir Mroek (PL); Military Secret by Duan Jovanovi
(SI); Chicken Head by Gyrgy Spir (HU); Sorrow, Sorrow, Fear, the Pit and the Rope
by Karel Steigerwald (CZ); and Horses at the Window by Matei Viniec (RO).
martin e. segal theatre center publications
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The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY10016-4309
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116
Claudio Tolcachir's Timbre 4
Translated and with an introduction by Jean Graham-Jones
Claudio Tolcachir's Timbre 4 is one of the most exciting companies to emerge from Bue-
nos Aires's vibrant contemporary theatre scene. The Coleman Family's Omission and
Third Wing, the two plays that put Timbre 4 on the international map, are translated by
Jean Graham-Jones and Elisa Legon.
Four Works for the Theatre by Hugo Claus
Translated and Edited by David Willinger
Hugo Claus is the foremost contemporary writer of Dutch language theatre, poetry, and
prose. Flemish by birth and upbringing, Claus is the author of some ninety plays, novels,
and collections of poetry. He is renowned as an enfant terrible of the arts throughout Europe.
From the time he was afliated with the international art group, COBRA, to his liaison with
pornographic lm star Silvia Kristel, to the celebration of his novel, The Sorrow of Belgium,
Claus has careened through a career that is both scandal-ridden and formidable. Claus
takes on all the taboos of his times.
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
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Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
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117
Czech Plays: Seven New Works
Edited by Marcy Arlin, Gwynn MacDonald, and Daniel Gerould
Czech Plays: Seven New Works is the rst English-language anthology of Czech plays
written after the 1989 "Velvet Revolution." These seven works explore sex and gender identity,
ethnicity and violence, political corruption, and religious taboos. Using innovative forms and
diverse styles, they tackle the new realities of Czech society brought on by democracy and
globalization with characteristic humor and intelligence.
Jan Fabre Books:
I am a Mistake - 7 Works for the Theatre
The Servant of Beauty - 7 Monologueues
Flemish-Dutch theatre artist Jan Fabre has produced works as a performance artist,
theatre maker, choreographer, opera maker, playwright, and visual artist. Our two
Fabre books include: I am a Mistake (2007), Etant Donnes (2000), Little Body on the
Wall (1996),
Je suis sang (2001), Angel of Death (2003), and others.
Jan Fabre: Servant of Beauty
and I am a Mistake - 7 Works for the Theatre
Edited and foreword by Frank Hentschker.
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
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Mail Checks or money orders to: The Circulation Manager, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center,
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118
roMANIA After 2000
Edited by Saviana Stanescu and Daniel Gerould
Translation editors: Saviana Stanescu and Ruth Margraff
This volume represents the first anthology of new Romanian Drama published in the United States and
introduces American readers to compelling playwrights and plays that address resonant issues of a post-
totalitarian society on its way toward democracy and a new European identity. includes the plays: Stop
The Tempo by Gianina Carbunariu, Romania. Kiss Me! by Bogdan Georgescu, Vitamins by Vera Ion,
Romania 21 by tefan Peca, and Waxing West by Saviana Stanescu.
This publication produced in collaboration with the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York and Bucharest.
BAiT epitomizes true international theatrical collaboration, bringing together four of the most important
contemporary playwrights from Buenos Aires and pairing them with four cutting-edge US-based directors and their
ensembles. Throughout a period of one year, playwrights, translator, directors, and actors worked together to deliver
four English-language world premieres at Performance Space 122 in the fall of 2006.
Plays include: Women Dreamt Horses by Daniel Veronese; A Kingdom, A Country or a Wasteland, In the Snow by
Lola Arias; Ex-Antwone by Federico Len; Panic by Rafael Spregelburd. BAiT is a Performance Space 122 Production,
an initiative of Saln Volcn, with the support of Instituto Cervantes and the Consulate General of Argentina in New
York.
Buenos Aires in Translation
Translated and edited by Jean Graham-Jones
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
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119
Josep M. Benet i Jornet, born in Barcelona, is the author of more than forty works for the
stage and has been a leading contributor to the striking revitalization of Catalan theatre in
the post-Franco era. Fleeting, a compelling "tragedy-within-a-play," and Stages, with its
monologueical recall of a dead and unseen protagonist, rank among his most important
plays. They provide an introduction to a playwright whose inventive experiments in dramatic
form and treatment of provocative themes have made him a major gure in contemporary
European theatre.
Josep M. Benet i Jornet: Two Plays
Translated by Marion Peter Holt
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
Witkiewicz: Seven Plays
Translated and Edited by Daniel Gerould
This volume contains seven of Witkiewicz's most important plays: The Pragmatists, Tumor
Brainiowicz, Gyubal Wahazar, The Anonymous Work, The Cuttlefish, Dainty Shapes
and Hairy Apes, and The Beelzebub Sonata, as well as two of his theoretical essays,
"Theoretical Introduction" and "A Few Words About the Role of the Actor in the Theatre
of Pure Form."
Witkiewicz . . . takes up and continues the vein of dream and grotesque fantasy exemplified
by the late Strindberg or by Wedekind; his ideas are closely paralleled by those of the
surrealists and Antonin Artaud which culminated in the masterpieces of the dramatists of
the Absurd. . . . It is high time that this major playwright should become better known in
the English-speaking world.
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120
Theatre Research Resources in New York City
Sixth Edition, 2007
Editor: Jessica Brater, Senior Editor: Marvin Carlson
Theatre Research Resources in New York City is the most comprehensive catalogue of New York
City research facilities available to theatre scholars. Within the indexed volume, each facility is briefly
described including an outline of its holdings and practical matters such as hours of operation. Most
entries include opening hours, contact information and websites. The listings are grouped as follows:
Libraries, Museums, and Historical Societies; University and College Libraries; Ethnic and Language
Associations; Theatre Companies and Acting Schools; and Film and Other.
This bibliography is intended for scholars, teachers, students, artists, and general readers interested in the theory and
practice of comedy. The keenest minds have been drawn to the debate about the nature of comedy and attracted
to speculation about its theory and practice. For all lovers of comedy Comedy: A Bibliography is an essential guide
and resource, providing authors, titles, and publication data for over a thousand books and articles devoted to this
most elusive of genres.
Comedy: A Bibliography
Editor: Meghan Duffy, Senior Editor: Daniel Gerould
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
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121
The Heirs of Molire
Translated and Edited by Marvin Carlson
This volume contains four representative French comedies of the period from the death of Molire to the French
Revolution: The Absent-Minded Lover by Jean-Franois Regnard, The Conceited Count by Philippe Nricault
Destouches, The Fashionable Prejudice by Pierre Nivelle de la Chausse, and The Friend of the Laws by Jean-
Louis Laya. Translated in a poetic form that seeks to capture the wit and spirit of the originals, these four plays
suggest something of the range of the Molire inheritance, from comedy of character through the highly popular
sentimental comedy of the mid-eighteenth century, to comedy that employs the Molire tradition for more
contemporary political ends.
This volume contains four of Pixrcourt's most important melodramas: The Ruins of Babylon or Jafar and Zaida, The
Dog of Montargis or The Forest of Bondy, Christopher Columbus or The Discovery of the New World, and Alice or The
Scottish Gravediggers, as well as Charles Nodier's "Introduction" to the 1843 Collected Edition of Pixrcourt's plays
and the two theoretical essays by the playwright, "Melodrama," and "Final Reections on Melodrama."
Pixrcourt furnished the Theatre of Marvels with its most stunning efects, and brought the classic situations of
fairground comedy up-to-date. He determined the structure of a popular theatre which was to last through the 19th
century.
Hannah Winter, The Theatre of Marvels
Pixrcourt: Four Melodramas
Translated and Edited by Daniel Gerould & Marvin Carlson
MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PUBLICATIONS
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