The halfway point?

Could it be?

Could my time in Berlin be nearing an end? - two weeks and a bit more and then Avignon.

I don't want to leave, I feel I've gotten to know this city so well.

My language lessons are over and I can happily say I'm nearly A2 level...and I plan on taking some German at Williams (5th course, pass/fail, you know how it is)

Alright, so...I haven't been writing for a bit because I've sort of been taking a break, not seeing as many plays, well, thats a lie. I only didnt go to the theatre once this week (and I think I'll take a break again today), so I do have two plays to go over. I'll do that then...

Okay, so Polleschfest continued at Volksbühne with Cappucetto Rosso. Now I thought I was going to see Little Red Riding Hood done castorf style, who knows - wolves, nudity, grandmothers, I'm sure he would have thought up something. But no, this title I guess was some reference I for the life of me could not understand, but thats all well and good, since Pollesch offers us what could only be deemed as intensely postmodern, self-aware, critic-theatre.

So what was the play? From what me and my friend Mark (who speaks German far better than I do) could gather, the play was about an actress, albeit a reluctant one, who is rehearsing this play - and I believe the actress, Maria Tura, taken from To be or Not to Be, is an actress in Nazi occupied poland.

This is the frame that Pollesch uses, however the play itself is more of an exploration of the themes of representation through the theatrical medium and the ability for theatre to disguise and play with history and a history of itself. Or something like that.

the set is once again by Bert Neumann and it reminded of me of Berlin Alexanderplatz, in the sense that it was a very similar sort of trailer type house. The outside just had a chair with a directors book. The texture of the walls were very much Pollesch style with the fake textures on flat surfaces. This man certainly has his aesthetic.

Adding to this aesthetic is the screen to the right, which, along with a camerawoman and a stage manager on book, finishes Pollesch's aesthetic.

Unlike Tod Eines Praktikanten which was more of a musing with 3 muses, this play has more rigidly defined characters. We have Maria Tura, and then another actress who has no problems with whats going on, because she's also a Nazi. Then the director and his assistant, a woman with red hair and and a very stylish suit emblazoned with the Swastika.

Not unlike Castorf do we have these characters in a quasi theoretical quasi theatrical always self conscious stew. They go back and forth from talking to the camera to talking to us. And all very humorously. Sort of like a strange absurdist slapstick.

This piece again has both microphones and video!! Hoorah (15-0, I believe?)

The microphones here give the character the ability to pull another layer of theatrical tapestry, we have the 3 dimensionality of the aside taken to a 4th dimension with the mic, the character rises above the scene almost as omniscent narrator, we get the ability for personal thoughts, but also for power over all other characters, at least for that moment.

One word that the Volksbühne I feel has never (and will hopefully) never understand is sublety. If the theme is representation we are going to be told that over and over again. if the actress is mad chances are she will scream and throw something. If the actress is sad she will cry, or she will whine, or she will cry and whine so much her voice is literally like a taut violin bow slowly being pulled apart, being played as it breaks. I cant really describe it any other way.

If she is upset she will take an entire bottle of pills and wash it down with Johnnie Walker Red as another one of the actresses talks at us.

The theoretical parts that comprise the beginning of the show, all taking place inside the house and nearly invisible because of the video, were a bit frustrating - a) because I like watching theatre not film. And b) because I couldnt really understand anything. Im only up to really simple concepts in german and though I can usually follow along, if the discussion is already above berliner's heads theres no way Ill grasp even a slice. The audience was laughing though, so I guess it was still funny.

My favorite aspect of Pollesch is when he breaks out of his theoretical muck, literally a muck where characters talk at each other or to the camera and seem to balance issues larger than themselves - however the moments that most seem to resonate with me are when the music starts and all of a sudden a purely theatrical aesthetic returns.

Example!

Rita Pavone (remember Nueve Reinas?) starts playing, and all of a sudden we are treated to the most bizarre candid camera game/mentos commercial ever. Where characters are being filmed being slightly disturbed. Maybe they get bumped into, or get something spilled, but nothing so as to be that big of a deal. The way the characters react though is priceless, since the camera freezes on them, and then everyone comes out to see the frozen silly picture and eventually a little sort of cursor draws a few lines over their head, perhaps suggesting shock or something of the sort. A very WTF moment indeed.

Pollesch also loves to use music to set moods. We get the sad movie music, almost without any water we can imagine rain. We have the character walk up to the door, having just left. She knocks and the doorbell rings. This sort of confused moment, where genre and expectation and all these formal units, sort of become disjointed from themselves and become (literally) bells and whistles.

I am quite certain pollesch has read his baudrillard, and probbaly his lyotard and jameson too, since his work is the epitome of postmodernism. Superflat, a pop soup, and nothing essential but the essential work of critique.

Slapstick is also perfect for these sort of shows. Every now and then, Maria Tura would come onstage and see the actress with the swastika and scream " AH! EIn Nazi!" and run away. As if replicating the the mix of forced amnesia and reawakening that must be played in such a historically confusing site that is Berlin.

This is what I feel has been essential in my stay here in Berlin - I dont feel as if I have never seen these theatrical questions attempt to be answered back home. You see it in the Wooster Group, Richard Foreman, and plenty of experimental and underground theatres in the states. What I feel more than anything here though, is the attempt to provide at once the theoretical and aesthetic intellectual parsing, but also to entertain, to let us have fun.

The spectacle has been intact in nearly every show, every show is aware that half of its purpose is merely showbusiness, and so even for someone with little command of the language, or little understanding of postmodern or postdramatic theory, the shows give so much more, these moments that are fun, hilarious even, or just plain bizarre.

I feel like sometimes in the states I get what the directors want us to get, I understand the sort of theoretical push and respect those intentions, but all that respect doesnt keep me from getting bored and at once falling asleep.

Pulling theatre apart shouldn't be boring, it is an exciting act. It replicates that excitement that we all get from thanatos, the urge of destruction.

here is an example - back in the day me and my friend Matt would get so much more out of destroying our toys figures than merely playing with them - we would behead our action figures or freeze them, and then run hot wheels cars together and crash them. There is something innately entertaining about taking things apart. A sort of rush, a glee. this is a dangerous desire within all of us - and I only advocate for that sort of violence only on an aesthetic level. Gestural violence - cruelty on the stage.

In that way, pollesch's theatre flirts with cruelty. It keeps the actors out of reach of the audience, stripping us of the sight of people onstage . it moves the actors at one point into the booth which is right next to us (we are, like in el Perro Cubano, seated on the stage). It romanticizes what should be strange and stupid gestures by not merely staging them but putting them onscreen. The scrubbing of hands, the eating of cake.

It makes an actress come onstage and renounce acting. Renounce Nora, Hedda, all the Ibsen actors. She eats the cake and she quits.

the director asks her to please go on, but he himself is asking for line from the woman who is on book. So does the actress, they are all, in the end actors.

In Pollesch we are doubled towards infinity, like two mirrors staring each other right in the face. But those mirrors, which are onstage, also project their infinity, flattened, onscreen. But which non-end is less essential? Silly question to ask, no? But silly, in many ways, is the point.


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The next day we went to Badeschiff. I had no play that day, I didnt want to think about plays, or talk about plays, I was having a one-day vacation, ja?

It is a great idea. Literally meaning Bath-ship, it is a pool which is on a barge which is sunken on the spree. So you are literally river level, but you are in clean, pool water. Apart from being a bit crowded it was perfect. Me and Mark had a bit of an escapade getting there however. We mistakenly took Berlin hospitality for local wisdom and ended up walking 20 more minutes. The problem with such a "cool" city is things arent easily labeled. Everything is almost like a hidden treasure, you have to keep discovering it. Thats what trendy is all about, hiding. Once something is shown, it loses its essence, then anyone, even fat americans can go, and thats what Potsdamer Platz is for...shhhhhh.

I have to say, after waiting for a delayed S-bahn for 30 minutes and then walking that much after the Subway, the cold water of the Badeschiff was a fucking gift! We will have to go to the lake soon, but all I can say is ich liebe das Badeschiff.


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So the next day, I had my next play experience. I was really excited since it was the only Kleist I was seeing the whole time I'm here. And having written a paper two semesters ago on Kleist and Caspar David Friedrich (who I will be seein in das Museum so soooon) I was hankering for some German Romantic theater!!! Penthislea was the play, and what a play to do.

Unlike Prince of Homburg, this play does not end with trumpets and confusing happiness, it ends, literally torn apart, the world fragmented, but both causes of disorder neutralized. We have the boyish and arrogant Achilles, who is sweeter than we are led to think, and the girly, but fierce, and by fierce I mean fucking awesomeley fierce Penthislea who takes Achilles's resigned offer of love and out of this anger just rips him, literally, to pieces.

Fuck Paris and his puny arrow dipped in poison, this is the real deal. Drama that rips its subjects apart. No moderation, no sublety, just an angry-ass queen black with blood (actual stage direction = glorious) .

Reading the play beforehand (in English, mind you, I can barely read my german workbook let alone Kleist!!!), I noticed that so much of the play is percieved offstage. That is to say, unlike the role of a messenger in Greek tragedies, where the action is recounted to us in past-tense from some horrible event that has either jus happened or happened ages ago, the world of Kleist happens in the now. However we can only see it from observers eyes. So much of the events, especially in the beginning dictate stuff that is happening as it is being seen that is an especially interesting theatrical device, because it allows the audience to imagine the worst, but even moreso, because it allows the site of the action to be within the world of the audience itself. That is done easily. Have the characters that are speaking what is happening look out into the audience, what is nothing other than the fabric of the abyss for the characters onstage.

My favorite line is Penthislea, which I was glad to have seen quoted (in german) in the postcard of the show afterwards goes like this:

"...Küse, Bisse,
Das reimt sich, und wer recht von Herzen liebt,
Kann schon das eine für das andre greifen"



Basically, one is liable to get both kissing and biting confused in the haze of love.

I personally love Kleist and his characters caught up in the haze of existence, lost by the very intensity of the world they create, unaware of their savagery, while calmly discovering it is only the means to their end. Penthislea soon kills herself after these lines.


So the play. Good old Luk Perceval, who gave us Death of a Salesman now takes on Kleist.

Remember the play? OK, now forget it. This is basically nothing like it, and by that I mean Perceval basically takes the idea of Penthislea, the rawness and savagery of it, the existential angst, and takes these ideas, puts them in some sort of german blender and cuts the nastiest grimiest most brutal wurst out of them you could imagine.

This is a sausage of sheer madness.

How do we begin? Take a large wooden structure, made up of identical wooden planks, about 3 stories high, thin, like large sticks and have them all stacked next to each other in a circle. They are being held up by a sort of gizmo that keeps them from falling and destroying everything (thats important dont forget it)

Other than that, the stage is bare. The actors are in the dark, shit is about to go down.

Two of the actors grab some large poles, stick them into the holding structure and twise the sticks creating what seems to be a stake. So fucking ceremonious, so fucking intense, the lights come on. The ritual has begun. Penthislea is here.

The actors? Every single one of them is doused from head to toe with clay, that is, nasty, grey clay, that makes their eyes and mouths look bright pink, as if they were the most disturbing clown masks you ever saw. The men only wear shorts. The set is just that structure and then, bam hanging mics in a circle around the structure. An eerie light follows the mics. (yep no video, but we have mics, 16-0 I believe?)

The play takes a while to begin, and BAM the actors scream mercilessly the events of horror that Penthislea onslaughts onto the Greek armies, one man and then another saying the words, repeating them, desperately, one of them standing up, one of them on the floor. Clawing. Where are they looking? Out, thank goodness. Odysseus, in the background merely mumbles, with nearly no voice, into the mic. Chilling.

Penthislea is fucking nuts. She comes in running and starts chucking mics. She chucks the mics at the audience, throwing them right at us, the mics swing unceremoniously back and forth, they could have easily hit an actor. It is very disturbing to have stuff thrown at you. Castorf has spawned a horrible tradition (and by horrible I mean wonderful).

Perceval has done away with most of the text, it is a lot, to his credit (100plus pages of blank verse), so it isnt necessarily missed. He basically condenses it so we have angry Penthislea, stern Odysseus, crazy High Priestess, arrogant Achilles, and pleading amazon sisters and country men. The fucking high priestess basically for the first 30 minutes of the play just walks around in a circle and says nothing. Terrifying.

Heres the other thing about this play. I have never thought about the directional thrust of plays, because nearly every single play Ive seen has had a linear thrust. I mean, the space that is being used, is envisioned in linear moves. This play is 100% circular. There is so much goddamn running. The actors must be so tired. Running literally laps, and faster and so fast, Penthislea running and throwing mics. Men running in unison, creating a beat for the music.+

Oh, you thought there wouldn't be music? You thought wrong...theres one dude in the corner with a guitar making the weirdest fucking abstract guitar noise you could imagine. The music rises so high and so distorted at times you want to tell him to shut up, but its an oncoming storm, the play just exists, its there, its verse and everything just happens to you and you have to sit and take it.

The actress who played Hedda Gabler, Katharina Schüttler is back as Penthi and then Rafael Stachowiak takes on Achilles. Like Hedda, Schüttler plays Penthislea sort of girl like. The ripe violence however makes no question as to how she feels, and it goes from tantrum like playing, to fierce, unwavering anger, coupled with sexuality. Achilles never reaches those heights, he prefers to be an arrogant clod, jogging and playing while the others march, riling against fatherly odysseus.

Perceval luckily eschews the tacky declarations of love for what is really behind all that devotion. ANNNNGST. The sheer recklessness of existence, the sheer disregard for each other and othrs is what binds the two warriors together. The masterslavedialectic taken as a photo and then merely kept in its negative form. There is no hope in their love, just waiting, and the only moment of sex, the only moment of togetherness is a back embrace. Achilles grabbing Penthisela from behind, her body against his. She catches the mic, whole, in her mouth. We gasp. The moment lasts not for about 2 minutes in a 1:45 minute play. And yet for us that is enough, we get it, we get how we can be slaves to each other - not out of some desire for lilies, but for a desire to stop running, to stop running in circles, to pause the music, to hold a moment in our grasp like a fluttering microphone.

But soon it all collapses. Forces of power intervene, separation occurs. the final confrontation is a haze, as most of the play. Achilles is led off without being torn apart. We are shown merely the violence of men marching then sprinting in circles and the priestess and odyseeus talking but nobody being heard. Finally everyone faces the front. Penthislea is indicted, along with all of us.

She speaks, whispers into the microphone (one of the plusses of having a microphone, really), for about 5 minutes. A sort of condensation of the last 20 pages.

WHERES THE VIOLENCE? I ask. WHERES ALL THE KLEISTIAN BLOOD???

Wondering were I to be gypped the last moment of the play, shows me the most violent act I have probably ever witnessed on a stage.

The actors, now nearly facing us, turn away. The holding machine, holding all those large trunks of wood rises. The structure collapses. And by collapse I mean just fall. Imagine a set of popsicle sticks stacked together. Now make those popsicle sticks the size of brownstones and you have the idea.

Percevla doesnt need to kill anyone, he just needs to sacrifice the theatrical structure, just needs to break apart the theatre itself, to shows us that there is no more to be seen, the characters have disappeared, even the set, under the weight of war, has vanished.

A berliner studying medicine next to me said it was unlike anything she's ever seen. She asked me if I liked it. I didn't know what to say, I'll have to wait until tomorrow and think about it.

See above for my answer.

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Enjoy finding new and creative ways to express your patriotism on this most gag-inducing of holidays!!

I'll be taking a brief holiday myself today and maybe write some more of my play. Tomorrow and Sunday, Pollesch-fest continues!


Tschüss!


- J