Fuck off Castorf!

No, not really. I saw my 3rd castorf play yesterday and his newest one (premiered last feb.) I have to say that for its running time, and its relatively somber atmosphere it was almost like Frank's idea of a chamber play. Strindberg would be proud...

The play, Fuck off Amerika, is based off the Edouard Limonow novel of the same name. Limonow, unlike the literary masters that Castorf usually chooses to massacre, is a living Russian dissident. He is not that well known in Germany either, prompting many to go "who is Limonow" when the play was announced. This was also a sort of anticlimactic move when the Volksbühne claimed to be doing Fuck off Goethe! Which, in some ways I guess Castorfs entire career encompasses that sort of philosophy.

The play then, is very much a Castorf work, with a cast of characters (many actors whom I recognized from the other two plays) alternating between political monologues, feats of strength and disgusting acts, and of course the mandatory sex simulated orgy with clothes on being videotaped and projected on the set, you know, vintage castorf.

The set is a pretty fantastic elevated white cross from distinguished German artist Johnathan Meese. Some critics dismissed it as too simple, but I found it elegant and effective. The main character of the piece is the same actor as from Berlin Alexanderplatz, Max Hopp. All of Castorfs actors have a tremendous acting ability, but also the necessary charisma to hold an audience's attention. I remember just waiting in Mauser for the actors in Castorf's production to come back, since even their presence onstage was a welcome rescue from the boredom of Stuart's personalityless dancers.

The play, sigh, what can I say, people running back and forth for no reaosn, sex, a submachine antiaircraft gun bought onstage and fired (with caps, of course, I hope). A ten minute monologue delivered in absolute screams. And all this with text culled from Limonow, Walt Whitman, Marx, Marxist Theorists, and pop culture. Castorf filled this in with some expressionistic piano music, as well as cocktail ballads, and sympathy for the devil, bob dylan and all of the above.

There was also a blender, which was used in a very cute scene, where one of the characters proceeds to blend a delicious shake featuring anything he can get his hands on, including the cardboard top of his rotten cheese, a whole avocado, and a whole bunch of fruits including a melon he just karate chopped. He then gets offended when no one wants to drink it. In the end they do, standing in front of the audience and drinking.

Oh Castorf. Castorf Castorf Castorf. In some way, I already anticipated the play, it was like being invited into a wholly original theatrical space, where of course my deutsch was lacking, but I still felt comfortable. It was as if I was in a space where the only language was theatrical language, and the actors themselves conscious of it, at times struggle, and at times merely sit around trying to figure out what else to do, when there are no music., plots or cues to guide them.

I dont know how much Castorf will find himself into my work now. There are I guess many viewpoints (though god do I hate that word) that I may touch upon. Volume, speed, the necessity for structural integrity. Aristotles head would have exploded. Basically, it just showed me that theatre is something far more quietly funny and disgusting and sort of ennervinhg than one usually sees. Theres such elitism associated with it, even the great absurdist c,omedies,. theres a degree of sanctity for the statues and masterpieces that we vise and revise. But even when Artaud cried no more masterpieces it was to save the greatest masterpiece of all, the ming vase of theatre that castorf has unceremoniously used as a chamber pot, and thank goodness.



Afterwards I ran from palce to place catching the rest of Germany Turkey. Tension was high, Berlin is 40% turkish, its largest minority by far. But it was a nail biter till the very end. Germany beat Turkey at its own game.

I was having a good conversation with my friend Becky, who studied film theory in college and is an aspiring documentarian on the merits (and demerits of theatre). She brought up some interesting points that I will be sure to think about as I keep this project on.

a) of cours,e the amount of elitism...and the way that even though you can do the play for different people each time, you get different products. Unlike in film, one reproduces the experience exactly each time. I see how this comment can go both was, since in film you have a work rthat doesnt consciously reflect its structure, since it belongs to another one.

b) the way in which documentary film actually encompasses something real, real facts, real things, where in theatre it all seems so makebelieve. Theres no freedom in that (levinas might agree, though I'm not sure).

Basically what I've been thinking about theatre, the one thing that really makes it an art form that deserves paying attention to, is the amount of exposure of the audience. The elemnt of danger, of the audience members putting themselves up against, not merely the experience, but the art itself, since the art is the experience.

I will briefly give an example and then leave you.

If, god unwilling, theres a fire in the movie theatre, or the projector breaks, or you have a heart attack while watching the film, or a mosquito bites your hand, or a column collapses or brings the house down when youre in an art gallery, (or vice versa), that does not, in many ways affect the work itself. The locus of artistic experience of a painting or a film lies in the film itself, and therefore the experience of artistically experiencing said painting or film, does not itself contain the substantial quality of the art. That is to say, even though contingency and god help us, danger may factor into our experience, it does not effect the art itself. However, in theatre, art IS experience. So anything that happens during the performance itself, becomes the work, and is also the content of the art.

I was in ABC No Rio a few years ago with my mother and we were watching this very experiemental show which basically just involved a bunch of twenty somethings smoking cloves in an apartment and talking about life. Halfway through a drunk man came in and completely changed the show - what was the content of the art then? Was it the play that was written? Was it the time spent in rehearsal getting it perfect? No, the experience, albeit in perfect, albeit exposed to contingency, suspended between metaphysics and reality, comprised the artistic content. That is for me, what is so beautiful and so dangerous about theatre. It is fragile, not because it threatens not to become art, but because it threatens to become its own thing, to become not what you want, to come against your expectation. And in many ways, it has the capability of violating your experience, your privacy, it is confrontation, it is exposure, and for that reason it has, I believe the greatest promise of political praxis within it.

Whoa, started with a simple convo and ended up in revolution...ah well, Castorf wouldn't mind (nor would limonow for that matter). Rene Pollesch tonight.

Tschüss!

- J