Brecht, Parks, Volksbühne TURKIYEEEE

When last we left me, I was heading off to the beautiful Mauerpark in Prenzlauer Berg.

This park is the old site of the wall (the name literally means Wall Park). Not a pretty park by any stretch of the imagination, the grass is dry and ruddy, but it is a park with plenty and plenty of character, a bunch of swings line the top of the hill and the walls are coated with graffiti.

It was a nice relaxing hour or so in the park, something that I really needed, I feel sometimes I'm running from place to place, from play to play and this was a nice break, a much needed sigh of relief from what is already such an intense experience.

We relaxed, played on the swings, played frisbee with marie's boyfriend. I invented a version of monkey in the middle featuring frisbee that was quite awesome.

I wrote a sleepy entry to you all and then I went to get ready for my night at the Volksbühne.

Here's the thing about the Volksbühne:

all theatre, in the end is about experience. It is a slice of your life - as anything is - but in some ways you feel more in control in a museum, ti is a way of sharing your experience without fully losing yourself. But theatre is an experience that requires a sort of risk. I have been formulating a theory about this that I need to work on a bit more before I post. It'll show up here soon, it needs some mulling over, ja.

The Volksbühne though understands this I feel better than any other theatre ive been to. The second you enter the theate your experience begins. The second you enter the fucking theatre room your experience is thrust out in front of you. How, you say? Well for one the stage fucking penetrates into the audience. It looks like the cylone rollercoaster was fucking just built on top of a stage. People are seated in those same damn white plastic chairs (seriously, these chairs are everywhere. Chair stores in Berlin must really lack variety). I swear the next pla y I do will have tons of those chairs. A huge projection screen across the cyc, and then another projection screen on a plastered screen by the proscenium stage right. Anyway, heres another thing about the volksbühne. I feel I can write traditional reviews for these other shows, but for the Volksbühne, something different happens. For Castorf I just scribble down his theatrical ideas like a madman.

I feel like the theatre gods have been unnecessarily kind to me. Why, you ask? Because I have the ability to not only witness amazing german renditions of classic shows, but because these classic shows are the same shows I encoutnered in my independent study. It's as if someone in theaterheaven read my project proposal and managed to perfectly integrate this experience.

That being said, and having just seen Endgame, I ahd the privilege to see Frank Castorf do what may now be among my favorite plays and one of the best examples of fucking perfect political theatre: "The Measures Taken". However, the play was coupled with Müller's Mauser und had the collaboration of Meg Stuart...oh Meg, what hast thou done?? (I'll get to that in a moment).

For now, my notes on Castorf: this is a sample of what I scribbled in my notes (4 full pages of rants and laudations and anger)<.


first of all, the show begins. The characters are atop this bizarre platform. It seems to be qutie Brechtian, the characters are basically setting up the action.

Then, this shit happens and I become fucked with for the first time in a while.Or since, you know, last time I fuckin saw Castorf.

Firstly, you hear musicians warming up as you enter, maybe a couple of tubas, a trombone and you think, oh nice...live score. Second, the audience is sparsely seated, a group of foreign speaking people all around me - I believe they hailed from some scandinavian country. They were good accomplices to be around since their enjoyment mimicked mine. Wait, so the theatre is half empty right, oh except both the last rows are fucking full. Full of people dressed for a night of theatre, theyre fairly old, and the first thing I think is, "Wow, maybe these are the patrons of the theatre, they look like the same damn rich elite I see on Broadway,".

I forget about them, as the play has begun and castorfs characters in characterisitc fashion begin arguing. An older man, 3 young men and a woman who I recognize from Berlin Alexanderplatz, they are remarkable actors, for reasons I will go in soon.

So the show begins and the orchestra swellls and then WHAT THE FUCK, the entire back row BOOMS in fucking operatic fashion. OH NO HE DIDNT.

The fucking volksbühne became a brechtian weillian opera house full of these bizarre peoplei n the back row singing to us.

A man with a video camera is filming the actors, their faces become projected on the stage. Oh fuck that, more multimedia crap (sorry I was just my mother for a second) i think, but I dont seem to mind it all that much. Oh fuck but the orchestra and the fucking chorus is singing. And then I think - oh my god, castorf you sonofabitch, you didnt just make the CONTROL CHORUS an ACTUAL CHORUS.

I think I died right then and there. And then he had to go farther, the characters painted their faces different colors, different masks, dont you know? And of course he had to satirize the fact that they were in oriental mukden by having their characters speak in the loudest pitches, over orientalizing the situation. Kitschy bastard.

So, you think Brecht what do you think? Political theatre, check. Epic theatre? Fucking check (did you see the chorus?) what else...ah alienation...

well Castorf, in typical fashion, not one for sublety, uses the camera brilliantly. Firstly, the show is performed for both sides of the stage, since there is a whole other amoutn of seats on the other side, so half the time we see them performing for us, and half the time for them, thats when the video camera comes in, providing all these movie style closeups. Live television, of whats actually also happening. But unlike Hamlets rendition of the Wooster Group (see what i did there) I wasnt angry or bored to tears, Castorf fucking knows how to entertain. And that shit is crucial.

Sorry Im cursing so much, intense theatrical experiences do that to me, ah well.

So yeah, back to alienation. What does he do with the actors? Oh, they leave the theatre, but the camera follows them, as they go in the lobby, the fouyer, where we were just having drinks. Little by little I see Castorf grabbing the seams of my theatrical conventions and pulling them off me as if they were old umbilical chords I didn't even know I had. With each step Castorf comes closer to me either breaking into tears for happiness or angrily shouting the entire text of "an actor prepares" at the top of my lungs, in english of course.

So the camera then follows them as they come in and out of the theatre, and he pulls tighter and tighter on the chords. When does it snap? when they go outside. out. fucking. side. And go into a bar, and check the croatia turkiye game which is going on, scream at each other, run into people and do people give them the craziest stares..


thats it. alienation is done. Castorf has just killed alienation, by fulfilling these promises he kills them, he fulfills them by killing them. The chorus at this point also makes their way into the theatre, the house, the fouyer, the bathroom? Thank god, no. And then all the time they are singing.

The control chorus of course has its Koryphaios, a beautiful blonde singer who makes such terrifyingly expressive faces as she sings about arbeit und freiheit und revoluzionen.

The play is kind of kept intact. We have the rice, ´we have the merchant, who is enticed by the female character. But it is so ridiuclous so over the top. The seductive revolutionary jacks off the chopsticks and feeds the rice, which is popcorn to the older merchant which is merely the old man wearing a fatsuit. The man turns to speak, he is faraway onstage so we cant see him, only on video, the second he opens his mouth a female opera siger' voice comes on, what? What the fuck? Amazing. Amazing. Amazing.

Sigh, I'm nearly breaking out a sweat trying to describe it all, from now on bullet points:

- questioning the coolies -

- do you know the plight of the bourgeoisie
- no
- freedom
- no
- the rights of workers
- no
- bertolt brecht?
- no.


- throughout the play these maoist communist pictures done in stalin soviet realism are projected in the background (at other times we see the face of the conductor/composer conducting, Hans Eisler), interspersed amog their pictures ar the characters, who move every now and then.

- oh fucker made it snow. Like hardcore. So much snow.

- Is that weed i smell? WTF, were the actors just smoking weed in the lobby?

- the closeups are so hollywood, the actors know it and their faces freeze in these moments of agony. Also very passion of joan of arc.

- posting hunger on the walls
- the policeman questions the audience.

- the guns have no blanks, they just make a haunting clicking sound.

at different points: everyone becomes monkeys, everyone starts dancing, the female character starts doing a fake striptease (making as if shes taking off her clothes, but only miming it), the men line up behind her, doing the same, but poorly.

Orchestra rises up from the rafters. Part 1 ends and the maintenance men com ina and for about 10 minutes take it apart. One person leaves.



then mauser starts. mauser sucked.

the characters who were so damn moved before sit around a table and talk, maybe if i understood it it would be interesting, not as bad as the fucking TERRIBLE choreorgaphy of meg stuart and the fucking terrible music.

Bass plays. Again, and again, and fucking again. People look like theyre in pain, they are from all different parts of the globe. Spanish, American, German and two french. We know this because they speak into a microphone. I am angriest at the american, I have a sneaking suspicion she is meg stuart. I think this because this looks like the conceptual crap ive seen in new york avant garde before. I am BORED.

the dancing is basically people looking like theyre in pain, and acting very sad about it, and slowly and badly doing bad things to each other. It looks lazy, and everytime castorfs actors come back it is a happy moment.

I ate all my gummi bears. I was sad. Measures taken was quite possibly the best time ive had in a theatre, mauser ranks among the worst.

but thank you castorf, thank you volksbühne, I'll see you on Wednesday




later, Turkiye won on penalties. We were in Schönberg, I was simultaneously in the gayest neighborhood and one of the most turkish ones. It was madness. People shot fireworks out of guns only 10 feet away from us. Everyone was turkish it seemed, cars could not stop honking people jumped out of cars, it was a beautiful moment. And you could feel the space of the city enter into a dangerous liminality, it was absolute intensity.

We walked along the kudamm, the heart of berlins shopping distrcit. the street was closed, people walked on the street and the sidewalk, no cars. Just red shirts turkish flags, it was an intense moment. Berlin is 40% turkish and I feel all 100% of them were out.

Most surreal moment? The bombed out church that stays lit up on the kudamm surrounded by celebrating Berliners. Red everywhere. I dont know why but something about that moment really stuck with me.

Later on the way home I tried something ive never been able to do, roll my rs.

I succeeded, almost. I'm almost there.

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.



Tschüss!

- J