Berlin theater meeting – play it again

Present is always, known to be. And if someone believes that the social relevance of the theater, which is made by definition and difficult to preserve live, believes that theater, they like to speak of contemporary theater exuberantly. It is not uncommon for it soon to turn out that it was only meant that the stage offerings breathe a lot of zeitgeist. Pretty effects can then be admired, but there is not much substance.

The Berlin Theater Meeting, whose this year’s edition came to an end on Sunday, exudes the contemporary in all directions. As usual, an independent critic jury invited the ten “most remarkable” productions from Germany, Austria and Switzerland to Berlin. What was noted and recognized as remarkable is not necessary for those who do not want to love the theater alone for its own sake, but also want to learn something about the world and its constitution, preferably in a stimulating sensual nature. This year, too, most of the productions were well done, all meant well, but only in the rarely as aesthetic experience.

New old stitches

For example, there would be two theater meetings: Florentina Holzinger and Ersan Mondtag. Both have laid out each recipes for their productions, which are only mixed up for anew. Holzinger made Paul Hindemith’s avant -garde opera in the way “Sancta Susanna” and then sought her well -known program after a quarter of an hour after a quarter of an hour: many naked women, sex and blood, abysmal and silly. The somewhat from the time Hindemith’s attack on the Catholic sexual morality dissolves in her in a reconciliation kitsch. In pseudoradicity and critical gesture, the contemporaries are expressed in mass-compatible good mood numbers for the final.

Mondtag has brought a piece of Sam Max about abuse and trauma, sexuality and violence with “Double Serpent” (State Theater Wiesbaden). If you know your theater work, you can imagine what takes place on stage. In an artificial space, the oversubscribed characters, half human, half zombie, find each other. This director develops atmospheres like in a horror film; Only the scenic event is far into the background.

That I on stage

Hakan Savaş Mican has staged Dinçer Güçyeters “our Germany fairy tale” (Maxim-Gorki-Theater Berlin), Jan Friedrich, in turn, Kim de l’Horizons “Bloodbook” (Theater Magdeburg). Two novel adapations for the stage, two autofictional self -circumctions as counter -stories for a majority society. “Our fairy tale” spreads the story of a German-Turkish guest worker child, moving, moving, musically engaging. “Bloodbook” presents us with a nonbinarian person, the family trauma that she drives around with her, and her claim against it, but remains extremely conventional in the way a narrative material to the theater stage. Both staging drives from a literary trend, which, however, seemed quite in good hands between two book covers and which reflects the socio -political only in individual experience.

Lob des Experiments?

Anita Vulesica’s spectacle “The machine or: Above all the peaks is quiet ‘” (German Schauspielhaus Hamburg), a scenic appropriation of the Oulipotic writer Georges Perec, something is out of the frame. The humorous, wonderfully poetic text is worth rediscovering. However, it soon turns out that despite virtuoso ensemble, the director has no pictures to add to the radio play that would open another level for the viewer. According to the theater operating conventions, the short piece was made a 90-minute evening, where the exciting person soon flows into boredom.

Also the production »(EOL). End of Life «(Therefore/Brut Vienna) differs greatly from all other productions invited to the theater meeting. Armed with VR glasses, the viewer is discharged in a different world: this pathosatta is in computer game look for a digital life after death. VR – This is the new cost -intensive favorite game of theater makers. The question arises whether this type of experiment has so much to do with representative art or whether it is not much more about a counter -design to the basic deviations of theater. In any case, not everyone can make friends with a theater without a spectator that is only aimed at a spectator.

Grab the canon

The stronger stage evenings that have been in Berlin in the past two and a half weeks are all, sometimes surprising, conflicts with the canon of theater art. Katie Mitchell took on Federico García Lorcas “Bernarda Albas Haus” (Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg), but in a (gentle) overwriting by Alice Birch. A large parabola on a system that is hostile to the inside and at the same time protecting itself against the enemy world is shown here. Large pictures for the new fascism are created on stage. Similar to Ersan Mondtag, Mitchell is also known as a creator of haunting atmospheres. But she does not stay with it, but tells a scenic about our damaged present.

Brecht’s hardly ever played play “The rifles of Mrs. Carrar” (Residenztheater Munich) staged Luise Voigt about the Spanish Civil War. The substance that agitates against neutralism, also conjures up the – also armed – fight against the bigger evil, brings the viewer confronted with practiced attitudes in bourgeois society. Voigt has found a convincing form for this. With Björn SC Deigners, Brecht’s piece follows a update that does not act affirmatively for the first part, but is critically questioned without caricating it. A footnote has emerged on the prevailing warlike conditions, which does not go out with answers, but only asks the right questions.

Meryl Tankard’s »Contacthof-Echoes of ’78« (Tanztheater Wuppertal) is more than a reminiscence of one of Pina Bausch’s most famous work, a modern classic of the (dance) theater. Parts of the original cast from 1978 are once again on stage, almost half a century. By projections, the actors are put in relation to the stage. Bausch’s piece about the struggle of the sexes in a post -fascist, still loveless and standardized society, which has nothing to do with the lovely picture of the dance kone that is sometimes drawn today, can be asked again. There are also questions about the aftermeat of the theater and the transience of its actors.

After all, with “Yes, nothing is ok” (Volksbühne Berlin) was the last directorial work from the Volksbühnen director René Pollesch, who died two weeks after the premiere. A solo evening for Fabian Hinrichs, in which the great perplexity in society is negotiated in an open way. This staging may also be most likely to be understood as a classic conflict, as part of a canon that is always reorganized. Because the Pollesch Theater, which continues even after the sudden death of the author director, has long since proven to be style. Also because the zeitgeist kept doing a snap.