Wild Nights and Doner Kebab

Hello all, time for another update. Its been awhile from Berlin, but so far so good. I have gotten pretty used to the metro system and I love walking the streets its quite an exhilarating, beautiful city. Alrighty, so lets begin.

Last you left me I was enjoying my first night in Berlin. Well, we picked right up, meeting my friends Samantha and Melanie for a bit more walking around the city. First stop was the Kunst Werke (or KW) where the biennial was showing. Similar to the Whitney Biennial it was boring, very unaesthetically appealing and this one was especially german. One memorable video (there was far too much video art, something that either i dont appreciate or isnt a good genre at all or not yet or all of the above) involved a bunch of people staying still with very intense expressions on their faces in front of a brick wall, and a black toy ship that they would take turns posing next to. The supe climax came when one of the actors, a tall thin blonde german with a scar in a turtleneck, whispers something to another one of the actors, a turkish man i believe in some more casual clothes. There is a moment of tension then the turk's eyes widen to a hilarious extent. I wont go into the other exhibits because they dont deserve mentioning really. One particularly enjoyable exhibit however was 30 years old, and it was a graphic novel called Soft-City, all hand drawn and very metropolis/corporate america/everyone is the same influenced, it was beautifully done though, the terrifying nature of a huge industrial super populated world becomes communicated when you see every goddamn window pane drawn by hand. We then visited this beautiful synagogue with a not so beautiful walk up the stairs to a not so interesting cupola with views that were certainly not even worth 1 euro. It was a beautiful piece of architecture though. The security was extremely heavy. The heaviest we've had in Berlin. After that we went to this more german hip restaurant where I ordered a delicious german potato and sausage soup and Melanie mistakenly ordered bread and lard (called 'drippings apparently'). Very good, heavy and filling.

We then walked a bit to a part of Berlin called Unter Den Linden, which is the center of the city, the reichstag, the museums, etc. etc. beautiful and unexpected you remember that Berlin is just as mythical as the best of Paris or Rome. More to come later since we merely gazed and such.

Then we went our separate ways, I to the Schaubühne and the Ku'damm, the shopping avenue at the heart of Berlin's commerical and shopping district Charlottenburg:

First on the Schaubühne (from my journal notes)

The Schaubühne exists as a brighter modern alternative to the Volksbühne. In the heart of the Ku#Damm, it reflect a more contemporary West-German aesthetic. Everything feels new, and very hip, you feel the turtleneck wearing sunglass crowd would be happy sipping a coffee and talking about Nietzsche - instead however I sat next to a couple young men in leather jackets who seemed to look artsy and a not at all artsy looking janitor huddled over a tiny television watching the Italy Roumania game. As we were waiting for Hedda Gabler to begin the crowd around us multiplied, different forms of the artistic elite watched rapt with attention, even an old man, in a very dignified suit, something you would find in the Met or Lincoln Center sat and talked and oohed and ahed as the game reached a climactic moment when Mutu missed a goal. People started making their way into the theatre but they were torn between watching the game and finding their seats. And this was not, as I feel in so much macho sport bonding, a purely male thing, very dignified old ladies and sophisticated women also sat next to us, rapt with attention, as if the importance of soccer rivaled the high art of Ibsen, and rightly so. Euro was on everyone's minds. I finally entered the theatre and found my seat on the last row. But I still had an excellent view.


Then Hedda Gabler (more from my notes)

Firstly the set wasd stunning, divided by glass walls a modern apartment through and through. The glass created the chance for brilliant reflection and Ibsen#s hidden rooms were amplified and magnified, no one was private in this set where a large mirror lay on top of it giving us voyeuristic glimpses to the back. Gorgeous subtle teal and silver furniture complemented the exquisite design. Costumes were for the most part subdued, Hedda in a loose fitting tracksuit and then a nice subtle dress and the male protagonists in modern casual suit-wear. Elvsted was more traditional in a flowing flower patterned dress.

- Ostermeier's Ibsen plays with unshockability by putting Hedda in a sitation where she is ignored and forgiven more much more than the sort of attention she craves. We see in Hedda a sort of subdued desperation, the actress thin and subtle, the characters unwilling to be too mad at her, moments of absolute passion are quickly put awaz. the volatile nature of Hedda appears however as she shoots vases, smashes up laptops wioth a hammer. There is also an undying vulnerability in each of those actions, and we see so much of the little teenage girl within her. She is younger in this version there is no menacing portrait of her father, if anything she seems more a victim of everyone around her than the shadow of a patriarch.

The last moment, that infamous suicide is expected of course, but Ostermeier does not let the audience complete the cathartic movement since the last lines of the play, whereby she is discovered and the mourning and apotheosis could be said to begin ( at least perhaps in Ibsen's reverse moralizing of victorian society) is cut from the script, instead Ostermeier lets the play move into a near surreal expressionistic moment where the characters are distractedly piecing together notes not noticine the trail of blood and the body on the floor in the back room. The characters then frozen in time as if having just read Levinas, move from their pure sterile naturalism to this poetic celebration of ignorance and materialiosm.

The best moments of the play for me however were in the act breaks. The stage rotates and as it does film of hedda is projected on stage while the beach boys play, rain appears in lines across the glass, and the moment is nothing short of thet aesthetic 'other' that makes an entire night worth it.

On the down side. Slow subtle direction leads to boring conversations when you have no idea what theyre saying, so I fell asleep about 20 minutes in, but i woke up pretty soon afterwards.

---- afterwards:
Show ended and I was to meet my friends at a club called 'West Germany' to see Dan Deacon. Problem was I did not have the address and my cell phone asked me for a pin that i did not have. I was determined however and made my way to the adjoining sketchy bowling arcade casino next door in neon lights that also said Internet. I made my way in and felt confused as I had entered what seemed to be an adult or teenage version of chuck e cheese, chips and arcades were around but so were casinos and alcohol, very strange and sort of surreal. I found a janitor and asked him where the internet was, he pointed me to another man and another room who looked like a bouncer. They all struggled with my english and I with their german. Finally I found the internet, as if it were a Cruisin USA arcade car place except with a computer. Strange. I put my money in, way too much, but I found the directions. Using my trusty time out guide i ended up in what looked to be a completely different part of Berlin. Dirty, gritty, but entirely alluring, like an entire area made up of that edge of the meat packing district, but full of artsy punks and turkish immigrants. I found the sign 133, the number of the place, nothing had the name of the club. But I knew I was on the right street and damned if I were going to go all this way. So I walked up. As I walked up the lights suddently went out and I thought I might have wanted to scream, except they turned right back on. As they do in Berlin ( a good way to save energy and also scare the shit out of you). I made my way finally to the club and asked glibly " Dan Deacon?" Ja, 8 euro. I did it, I saw Sam and a bunch of kids on the NYU summer program, including an old schoolmate of mine who i didnt know that well, but it didnt matter, here in Berlin it was all entirely cool and everyone was just in love with the city. I met a kid on the program named Sam - an ex Cap 21er who was now in Playwrights Horizons who was basically there just to see theatre. Great people, cheap beer, and everyone in the room seemed to be from New York. It's as if all of Williamsburg found itself in Berlin and lost any desire to just be pretentious an dhave a good time. We made our way into the main room which was the size of a small dorm after about 2 hours of waiting. Deacon comes on and the moment is indescribable, loud pounding electronic music with moog synths and something from childhood, everyone sweats everyone dances, the club looks as if someone ripped an entire apartment out of the sky and left it there, rooms that seemed to have had doors were left open and grit and graffiti and sheer decadence painted the walls. The lights went down and all that was there was deacons green glowing skull like a relic to his altar of electronics that we lsitened to as the music pounded loudly and all we could do is dance, and jump and scream and love the moment, Melanie later commented that it almost felt almost like a shaker gathering or some other church reference i forget the way everyone was under almost a trance and the music pounded deep into our skulls. After about an hour and a half we were all drenched in sweat, and the wind outside was a sweet kiss on the cheek.

After stopping in these soviet style residential dorms, we made our way across to Heinrich Heine Straße subway stop. In doing so we 'crossed' the wall (now just pavement and a park where we were) still one could feel the energy, as if the scabs of a wound had left this space that was held between two worlds. Berlin spills out of every corner, the east infected with a joyousness and a pure artistic desire that I quickly succumb to. We stop at someones house for a party, it is awkward, only 3 people are there and we are nearly 20. We stay for a bit, head out, and have the most delicious Doner Kebab. It is like a schawarma except with ciabatta like bread, and huge, and costs only 2 euro and it is the most delicious moment i have spent yet in Berlin. The salad is fresh the yogurt sauce is tender and the meat is oily and juicy, the matte salty meat a delicate covering to the nearly shiny cabbage and the ripe tomato and that ever so subtle chili sauce. Heaven.


More to come later, including my adventures at the Volsbühne,

Tschüss!