Gerhart Hauptmann Theater: The ordinariness of the people and their representatives

Even before the premiere of “The Exemplary Life of Samuel W.” on January 20th, there was a lot of attention at the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater Görlitz-Zittau: Author Lukas Rietzschel is 29, but since his debut novel “Mit der Faust in die Beating the World” In 2018, his peers from the accession area and even more so the stunned original Germans from the West discovered him as an Ossi understander and explainer. Why do these ill-tempered people show themselves so ungrateful for the blessings of the West? Why did exhausted West Nazis discover new playgrounds here after reunification, and why are East Germans now infecting the West again with the AfD’s apocalyptic election polls?

Here, a young person with a talent for writing and even more observation is gripped by the same questions as many citizens about an anamnesis of evil phenomena in the unified East. But nothing is further from his mind than to stage consumerism and even present messianic answers. Not even if he was in Zittau the piece was expected for the upcoming elections. Rietzschel has been unintentionally stirring up such expectations for half a decade because the down-to-earth Lusatian is forced to feel the homeland material after a study trip to Kassel. But this “Samuel W.” is once again nothing more and nothing less than the description of a milieu – and in the Brechtian sense of the conditions from which the generally frustrated counter-everything complainers, those lost to constructive social reform, come from.

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On the stage in Zittau, this Samuel W. (Paul-Antoine Nörpel) is an example of the rise of a fairly ordinary police officer to become the AfD’s top candidate and also an example of the averageness of his clientele. The author lets them talk about him, as do some citizens. According to him, a hundred interviews in Görlitz and the surrounding area form the basis for the descriptions. Was he hiding behind it as a precaution after hostility? No, Rietzschel denies and refers to the artistic treatment and the choice of quotes.

This creates a biography and a picture of candidate W., who is running for a party that is not named in the local election campaign. Locals and political observers soon suspect: Samuel W.’s original name is Sebastian Wippel and he was leading after the first round of the Görlitz mayoral election in 2019 before he was intercepted by CDU opponent Octavian Ursu. He sat in the audience at the premiere and then praised the apt reflection.

W. does not appear as a role, only as a silent figure who practices slow-motion gestures and poses on a pedestal in the background. They could be reminiscent of Hitler’s rhetorical and body language lessons. There is only talk about him, and it is quite entertaining and by no means devoid of humor. Director and acting director Ingo Putz avoids dull reports by having a group of five simulate a garden party atmosphere. Nice stuffy, create, create houses, behind the fence, grill and pool with a somewhat silly white dolphin in it.

Because the entire furnishings are completely white, which can be interpreted as a satirizing ambush. Is it the citizens who always believe they are innocence, the “people” who are nevertheless capable of anything? Is it hospital white that represents the sterility of this petty-bourgeois society? The image that gradually emerges from candidate W. from anecdotes corresponds to this uninspired milieu. As a child or teenager, he never stood out as an alpha male or with any special gifts, but rather with his first long leather leader’s coat.

The author, director and the six-member ensemble aptly convey this normality, this corresponding ordinariness of the people and the AfD would-be representatives. In this respect, the historical constellation of 2019 is also paradigmatic for the directional election year that has begun. The mixed situation in the East, a result of GDR influence, worship of the West, and subsequent frustration with capitalism, is also sometimes rumored. Rietzschel is not an Ostalgist; he dismantles myths such as the emancipated role of women and freedom from exploitation in the GDR. His characters delight in mocking the brothers and sisters in the West, “who wanted us to become Wessis.” The unempathetic indignation of today’s people that they can “no longer heat their apartment because there is a war somewhere” speaks for itself. Waiting in vain for Godot, the Savior.

Everyone can figure out for themselves what Rietzschel is trying to achieve in the finale with W.’s ahistorical decision not to run again in the second round of voting. Instead, he would rather become interior minister. The people’s cries of “Long live the mayor, long live democracy” seem sarcastic. Whereupon it falls over and contorts on the ground.

Next performances: 1.2., 4.2., 9.3.
Gerhart Hauptmann Theater Görlitz-Zittau

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