The Witches' Coven Called Reality
2006 Theatertreffen (i.e. Theatre Encounter): the documentary play has made a comeback
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Peter Laudenbach, 22.05.2006, 7877 Chars
Alongside old acquaintances such as Mr Macbeth, Mrs Hedda Gabler or the famous three sisters hailing from the Russian provinces, it was possible to come across only those people at the 2006 Berlin Theatertreffen (i.e. Theatre Encounter) who are not to be found in any theatre guide. For example, an officer cadet in the German Federal Armed Forces giving an account of strange training methods, the head waiter from the Hotel Elephant, an admirer of Schiller clad in short sports trousers or a CDU politician, apparently just a little insane, who explains why spaghetti with tomato sauce is an ideal choice as the favourite dish of a politician: "This doesn't put anyone's back up and the best thing is that people believe me when I say I can cook it myself. Luckily I really enjoy eating spaghetti." Then he gives the same camera smile he had on his grinning face as seen on his election campaign pamphlet during the political contest for the mayoralty in Mannheim.
Schiller, the door-opener
From time to time the proprietor of an ‘amorous escapade agency', a lady with dyed blond hair, receives phone calls from her customers on the stage with the words: "Well, Fritz, this is how it works – you pay 125 euros and you get a list with the names of 30 ladies..." This passage can not be found in Schiller's work, but it fits well into the performance with the astonishing title Wallenstein, with which the Rimini Protokoll writing-directing team was invited to Theatertreffen. The fact that there are no actors on stage, but people – nothing but specialists of real life – recounting stories from their own lives, does not make the whole thing any less off-putting. Instead of simply staging Wallenstein, the two directors, Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel, use motives from Schiller's text as a type of key with which they open various doors into German reality – ranging from the Federal Armed Forces via politics to an astrologist's studio. with female Iran performers Tips Festivals in Transition (FITS) - International initiative of eight theatre festivals Our success depends on your help Subscribe to our newsletter Arts Theaterkanal News and background facts by German TV station ZDF
Theatre in reality
While the audience is watching the strange people whom the Rimini directors have discovered behind these doors, it has the instinctive feeling of living in a fairly exotic country. Instead of merely bringing reality into theatre, Rimini Protokoll discovers theatre in reality. The role plays in politics and other self-portrayal art forms from an extremely wide range of jobs in the service industries then have merely to be linked with their own private obsessions and staged in as undiluted a form as possible. The more realistic the action on the stage is, the more unrealistic is the effect of the reality it evokes. What then develops are strange double exposures. Within the respective logic of functions, for instance in Mannheim local politics, in the match-making business or in the military, the moves of the protagonists in Wallenstein are perfectly logical. Seen only from the outside they appear to be totally bizarre. Theatre that scouts out reality, with which Rimini Protokoll has for six years been exploring social sub-systems for their theatrical aspects, ranging from the justice system (Zeugen! Ein Strafkammerspiel – Witnesses! A Play of Criminal Court Matters) via politics (Deutschland 2 – Germany 2) to industry (Sabenation) and the undertakers' business (Deadline), more or less functions in the way that Alexander Kluge described the strategy in his essay films: "The closer you look at a word, the further it looks back: Germany." With Rimini Protokoll the reality of infinitely differentiated parallel realities looks back in a fairly close and strange way.
The return of documentary theatre
In view of the no lesser potential to confuse, which this Wallenstein displayed, it is no wonder that there was so much talk about the return of documentary theatre during the Theatertreffen panel discussions and première parties. Up until only a few years ago it was a genre in which Rolf Hochhuth made a fool of himself with astonishing regularity, and the otherwise more or less closed chapter in the history of theatre had been filed away as having been something of importance in the 1960s. Working with documentary material in the theatre was seen as proof of artistic impotence and, at best, well-meant and hopelessly old-fashioned. The success achieved by Rimini Protokoll, which this year have been invited for the second time to Theatertreffen after the production of Deadline two years ago, signifies the renaissance und redefinition of documentary theatre. The crucial difference between then and now is that the documents from real life are no longer transformed into art by actors, but are staged in a personal way – as dramatic ready-mades, as it were. Just as documentary film has been the subject of increasing fascination over the last few years, theatre directors are also trying with a wide variety of techniques to do studies of reality that are something more than empty simulations. Falk Richter builds interviews with financial consultants into his plays on the paranoid worlds of anti-capitalists (Unter Eis – Under the Ice), Hans-Werner Kroesinger creates clever, dry theatre installations on the Treuhand [the agency that privatized the East German state-owned enterprises from 1990 until its demise in 1994], Arabic suicide bombers (Suicide Bombers on Air) or the South African Truth and Reconciliation Committee. Feridun Zaimoglu collages together interviews with radical young Muslim women (Schwarze Jungfrauen – Black Virgins). The above-mentioned plays are theatrical investigations into social parallel worlds, as is Der Kick (The Kick), the second documentary play invited to Theatertreffen. The documentary film director Andres Veiel investigated a terrible murder perpetrated by skinheads under the influence of alcohol in the Brandenburg village of Potzlow; he spoke to the parents and friends of a sixteen-yearold who was murdered by adolescent skinheads and visited the murderers in prison. His play is an attempt to reconstruct the murder and the events that preceded it. Veiel compressed the interview material into a montage of verbatim accounts enlarged upon by two actors in a laconic manner and without a trace of sentiment. It is precisely in its harsh soberness that this production reveals a depressing insight into the social environment of a neglected post-reunification village in the former East Germany, largely secluded from the outside world and characterized by a mixture of brutalization, alcoholism and an existence without any prospects. Investigators at their wit's end What unites all these works is their detachment from the ideological certainties with which documentary theatre of the 1960s announced its social diagnoses. Whereas Hochhuth (Der Stellvertreter - The Representative), Heinar Kipphardt (In der Sache J. Robert Oppenheimer – The Case of J. Robert Oppenheimer) or Peter Weiss (Die Ermittlung – The Investigation) enjoyed the reassuring feeling of their own moral superiority and that they always knew whom they were denouncing, a play such as Veiel's The Kick derives its power precisely from the helplessness with which it observes wretched worlds. This is what makes new documentary theatre both taxing and fascinating: it offers more questions than answers.
Peter Laudenbach This article was first published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper on 22nd May 2006, page 11. The interim headings and footnotes are from the online editorial office of the Goethe Institut. Copyright: Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper Translation: Guy Skuse Copyright: Goethe-Institut, Online-Redaktion
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