I take this liberty...

Schiller-Days at Mannheim: Rimini Protokoll review “Wallenstein”, Thomas Langhoff 'operaises' “Willhelm Tell”

Süddeutsche Zeitung, Jürgen Berger, 09.06.2005, 6290 Chars

Good fortune must be forced upon some people. In the case of Schiller, it was Goethe who forced the hesitant one to take up the chair of history at Jena. This happened in 1789, Schiller was 30 and had not only written play such as ‘Fiesco’ and ‘Don Carlos’, but he had also acquired historical armour in painstaking detailed work. Together with the ‘History of the break-away of the United Neherlands’ (‘Geschichte des Abfalls der vereinigten Niederlande’) he published his studies on ‘Don Carlos’ at the end of the eighties, and with the ‘History of the Thirty-Years War’ (‘Geschichte des Dreissigjährigen Krieges’) his preliminary works on ‘Wallenstein’. These times hold special significance for this year’s Mannheimer Schiller-Days as they show the extend to which Schiller saw himself as a history-reflecting author. This should be kept in mind when considering the de-historised contemporary theatre productions.



Schiller asks about the relationship between despotic power abuse and individual freedom over and over in his plays. In view of that, the title the Mannheimer dramaturgy gave the Schiller-Days, “Mind the Freedom” (“Vorsicht Freiheit”), is rather clever – even though the question “Freedom – what for?” (Freiheit wozu?) could be asked. Rimini Protokoll, who is a master at constructing social structures in a theatrical space, went its own way for their Schiller-Days production of ‘Wallenstein’. Helgard Haug and Daniel Wetzel did their research in-situ while the temporary renegade-third of Rimini Protokoll, Stefan Kaegi, presented Switzerland en miniature in Basel (SZ, 30,06.). They pursued separate paths, documented according to their temperaments the characteristics of productions of public spaces and people, and placed the whole thing as what seems like amateur theatre on stage. For the first time, Haug/Wetzel went one step further and developed questions from a classical theatre text to re-apply their results onto it. It’s all about Wallenstein and his Pappenheimers, the astrologer Seni and the unhappy love of a Piccolomini for the daughter of a traitor. It’s mainly about the question whether the motifs of this dramatic poetry can be found in the concrete biographies. Haug/Weztel ask themselves how much contemporary executives make themselves dependent on astrology; what happens to office bearers who can no longer combine duty and love; whether the infamous Pappenheimers are really without loyalty and honour, whether war is unjust, and the commander a person who makes his carrier without scruples.

The Wallenstein in Mannheim is called Otto. He used to be a promising CDU delegate of the city parliament, one of those popular politicians who don’t avoid the ridicule. Sven-Joachim Otto was something like the Guido Westerwelle of Mannheim, who amongst other things voted against the continuity of the City Theatre (Schauspielhaus), and said that his voters would go to the opera instead anyway. Therefore, there is a certain comic element in having the major-candidate appear as an amateur actor in a project which has the theatre-goer who believes in his texts has his hairs stand on end. It’s even more so astonishing since the carrier-politician who is already torn apart by his own party and severely attacked in Mannheim appears very relaxed on stage with a soothing distance to the dramatic presentations during his campaign. He wants to be rehabilitated while the American ‘Pappenheimer’ Dave Blalock still appears quite shaken. He reports about his first Vietnam action in 1968, the massacre amongst the civilians and the hated commander, who became victim of a hand grenade himself which was place underneath his bed by his own soldiers in the end. There is also Ralf Kirsten. He wanted to become police detective in the Federal German Republic, but out of love remained loyal to his almost deserteur-wife, and finally became Chief of Police in Weimar after re-unification. Adding to Haug/Wetzel ‘s increasingly refined means to convey their real-to-life material verbally, and putting their amateur actors more offensive into scene, the Mannheimer ‘Wallenstein’ is one of the most exciting theatre events recently – not to mention that Protokoll Rimini seduces theatre onto paths which reflect recent history exactly in Schiller’s meaning.

The soundtrack to the Rütli-Schwur (Rütli-Plegde)



There was a climax for the managers of the festival, but they also demonstrated the Schiller-Days are good at highlighting unobserved texts. So this year it was the turn of “Die Polizey” (‘The Police’), which is a dramatic essay which Schiller wrote parallel to ‘Wallenstein’. This collection of material comprises more than ten pages and deals with the urban structure of Paris and the inner structure of the police. Schiller put this report aside, but it was taken up and adopted to Mannheim circumstances by the Lunatics in 2002 who employ similar paths to Protokoll Rimini. They turned the audience into police-interns who were chauffeured into the borderlines of the city so that they could undertake their forensic research. The Lunatics took up the idea of Schiller that “the officials and even the Chief of Police took the interns in official vehicles to the to urban fringes where they could undertake forensic research themselves” (“die Offizianten und selbst der Chef der Polizei-Praktikanten, die in Einfahrtsfahrzeugen der Polizei bis ins Rand der Stadt kutschiert wer denm wo alle kriminologische Spurensicherung betreiben dürfen”). This text exist on tape. Another of Schiller’s ideas, “the official and even the Chief of Police must be involved into the action also as private people and human beings” (“die Offiziaten und der Chef der Polizei müssen zum Teil auch als Privatperson und als Menschen in die Handlung verwickelt sein”) is translated by the Lunatics in that they set their audience onto the track of a detective who may be involved with a case of murder. Amongst others, the location is set at allotments as well as housing scheme areas in the Mannheim areas. Of course, this is all purely fiction, whereas the British production of ‘Tell Tell’ by Gary Winters and Gregg Whelan authentically trace Schiller’s paths. The ‘lonesome twins’ transferred the streetnoises of Mannheim and substituted them with the traditional sound of the cowbell from Switzerland. In doing so, the freedom–drama is laconically ‘cooled down’, -‘very British’-, whereas Thomas Langhoff approaches his ‘Wilhelm Tell ‘ in a very Brechtian manner.

For the opening of the Schiller-Days, the Mannheimer Schauspiel got itself big names. Langhoff didn’t disappoint their expectations for he manoeuvred the ensemble on a verbally very high niveau through the first two acts up into the ‘Rütli-Freedom’. The production uses Eisler’s soundtrack of ‘Tell’, and it could have developed into a speech-opera if Langhoff didn’t loose sight of Eisler’s intentions. It is Markus John who is guest-starring for the grumpy Tell and presents his uprising against the Habsburger as a rather tiresome event. Freedom comes upon the Swiss because nothing else happens, This may not seem so much out of the way to justify the Helvetic Union, but it does raise the question why Langhoff wanted to bring ‘Tell’ onto stage.



Jürgen Berger, Süddeutsche Zeitung Nr.130 / Seite 15, Feuilleton, Donnerstag 9.Juni 2005



- English by Sonja Müller

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