Leipzig!

Is gorgeous and Medieval. I arrived early, off quite a fast ICE train. The ride was short, and showed me a bit of the green Germany countryside, though there really wasnt much to say really.

Leipzig can best be described as a big city (500,000+) with a small town atmosphere. The city center is made up of densely packed medieval blocks. Like most of East Germany it is still under heavy construction, most of it involving the tearing down of boring GDR architecture to better match the surroundings. Leipzig is also famously the home of Johann Sebastian Bach, and in the church where he composed all his famous pieces for stands his large looming countenance and figure, sculpted in black stone, which is also his tomb. My old friend Gareth, the drama counselor from my time in England doing the Experiment for International Living Program, picked me up and showed me around the city. He had a rehearsal to go to so I was given 2 hours to explore the city center on my lonesome. It was a lovely time, just seeing old buildings, walking into old churches (I lit a candle for my grandma in one of the cathedrals, just as she has for me so many times before), and trying to find the smallest alleyways possible. I was able to see most of the city center in about an hour, and then I walked into the large modern glass block that was the art museum to check out their collection and see hopefully some of the famous Leipzig School of modern art.

The people in the museum were crabby and they spoke a strange, Saxon german, kinda sounds like you have a bunch of cotton in your mouth. They weren't very nice, to me or anyone else, but no matter, cause their museum had a crap collection. Sure, there were some nice pieces. An exceptional Beckmann piece called "The battle" and a good, but small collection of the Leipzig school, but the older dutch and italian collections were heavily lacking. More boring than anything else. Even the Rubens left something to be desired.

I got through the museum pretty fast and met up with Gareth. We ate lunch in this underground sort of passageway that the students took over a long time ago and turned into a huge club. It was pretty impressive. Leipzig is primarily a student's city, with a large presence of young people it certainly has a great feeling, and I can see why someone like Gareth would call it his home.

We ate what could only be described as zucchini shepard's pie, and it was quite hearty and good as we had a long talk, mostly gareth speaking about his experiences in theatre here in Berlin. He had a lot to say, and it was great since he provided an interesting angle to my research here in Berlin.

- he noticed that as a director, the actors expect you to be more specific, than say in England where he worked. Here every moment was expected to be mapped out for a director, so it seemed, in a lot of ways that directors have more power here.

- On the other hand, your power as a director is a bit stilted, since if the actor does not agree with your direction, he doesnt necessarily have to keep it. For example, say if the actor does something that he finds great, and you dont necessarily like, if enough of the other members of the show like it, then it usually stays. Lighting designers and stage managers will also give direction sometimes. This was a sort of fascinating thing about German culture in general, they never let the person in charge have too much power. Even in government, Angela Merkel's word is not necessarily law in the way that Bush's is. She is constantly forced to compromise and work with other groups, take for example how the Green Party and the Christian Democrats teamed up to take on Global Warming for instance. We wondered if it was because of the sort of bad history of giving leaders and governments too much power in Germany that this sort of thing was the case. Just a bit of speculation.

- Actors here tend to be specialized on ONE thing, rather than UK actors which are more well rounded, here the actors tend to only do one thing but do it really really well.

- The way directing works in Germany is that unlike the UK and US where one builds and builds and doesnt find the character until the very end, right before the first night. In Germany one finds the character 3 months before and then lives with it, finding the ups and downs of progress. This results in having really different shows each night in the UK and US and almost exactly the same show every night in Germany.
He runs a theatre company here in Leipzig called Ubiquity theatre. Its goals are to have both a regularly performing theatre company (which I believe at least 10% has to be inexperienced actors) as well as holding acting workshops, specializing on people with problems (using theatre to cope with problems, sort of like psychodrama, very big in england, not so much in germany)

- Gareth's theatre (he is a writer and director like myself) has a clear goal, to give the people the tools to ask the right sort of questions. His shows therefore provide them with information a tabloid doesn't. Taking an issue and not attempting to take a stand, but, in a very Boal way, exploring all the options and opening up all the possibilities. He explained an interesting show he put up at the Schauspielhaus featuring a bunch of school students from the neighboring area. They were turkish, white, chinese and black, I believe. A complete mix. The piece was an exploration of articles that claim that most violent crime in Germany is committed by lower class immigrants. His play, which functioned also on improvisations, explored, all the different situations, and gave a voice to the statistics, showing us examples of why these things happen, and also providing examples of white violent crime as well. In doing so he attempted to give his audience a more 3 dimensional idea of the problem rather than the blatant declarations a tabloid would make.

The government is surprisingly receptive and willing to give money for these sorts of projects here, as long as they arent too far in advance and deal with a pressing issue.

I talked with him a little about my project, mostly centering on desensitization and the creation of "traumatic theatre" and he seemed interested - we both in many ways are dealing with the same problems, and though his theatre takes a very different strategy, the hoped-for outcomes, a rethinking of our problems in society, are very similar.

We threw around the idea of a play that is in many ways the opposite of my theatre - a play that aims to resensibilize us to the smallest amount of pain. The suffering of a pinch maybe, or the pain of a bit tongue...who knows maybe it'll provide inspiration for me to write something else - a show in Leipzig? Who knows.

That night I crashed a bit in Gareth's flat, he stayed over at his girlfriend's that night offering me the place, great of him. I did a bit of shopping in the supermarkt and settled on some schnitzel and a premade potato salad. The salad was horrible, to say the least and the schntzel ended up tasting good, but cooked really slowly and badly and ended up getting a bit burnt. Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt) was on the tv and it was great to see familiar locations in Berlin run right through.

At night we went to a small bar/club called Tonellis where it was open mic night. I feared the worst, knowing what sort of talent comes out on open mic night. But Leipzig is a city famous for its music school, and the music students populate the open mic night. The house band was kicking and the singers were incredible, each one boasting quite a powerful set of pipes. The music itself was either bad 90s rock or some choice soul and motown, but played life with a buzzing band it was quite great. We then headed over to a karaoke bar where me and G did quite an impressive version of happy together. Leipzig is a great city, and a place I'd definitely love to come back to. It is a quiet place in a lot of ways a lot more relaxed than Berlin, but still quite nice.

The next day, Dresden!

- J