Deutsches Theater Berlin: Kurt Schwitters’ »Ursonate«: Wie zähmt man Dada?

The syllable “ur” invites you to take a mental journey to the beginning, to the original, from which everything else became possible. Here the archaic meets the beginning of a development that extends into the present day. “Ur” is the counterpart of “Post” and if we are stuck in postmodernism today, there could have been a primordial modernity at that time, and perhaps also a great-great-great-modern: an age in which reason stirred, the first divisions and names in the world, but on the whole it still appeared to be a tabula rasa.

The language was probably still a pre-language or even a proto-language, a collection of sounds that were certainly important, although their content remained unclear for the time being. Kurt Schwitters transports us to this place and time with his “Ursonata”. The Dada artist wrote several versions of the piece between 1923 and 1932, which work almost exclusively with linguistic material such as “Rrmmp”, “Lümpff”, “Pee” and “Graaaa”. It doesn’t make any sense, which on the one hand is the provocation and on the other hand the liberation. The audience either burst out laughing or was terribly angry.

In the early 20th century, Dadaism freed art from the need to mean something. Its representatives explored the aesthetic, intellectual and emotional resources of nonsense. Kurt Schwitters, who preferred the term “Merz” he invented instead of Dada, was a world builder. After the First World War, the Hanover native combined advertising advertisements, newspaper clippings and finds from the gutter in his collages and installations, thus reassembling the rubbish of a civilization that had sunk into the morass of the trenches. Schwitters later had to emigrate – his art was considered “degenerate” – and reached England via Norway, where he built two “Merz buildings”. Schwitters died there in 1948, not yet 60 years old.

On the one hand, one can understand his original sonata as a look back into a fictional original state in which people could not yet speak but could already sing. And at the same time as a prophecy, as a promise of a future in which a new beginning is possible, in a world in which the content does not hang on every symbol. Because that is exactly what is realized in the Ursonata. The sounds carefully arranged by Schwitters have no meaning. They make no sense in a way that is both cheerful and disturbing. Anyone who performs the Ursonata must face the resulting challenges.

Do you want to preserve this purity and innocence? Would that even be possible? If it is true that one “cannot not communicate” (Paul Watzlawick), then it is also true that no sound, no crooked tone, no linguistic garbage can remain as such, once it is presented in front of an audience, because an attitude inevitably develops into it sneaks in. Nonsense, he’s a shy deer.

At the Deutsches Theater Berlin, the nonsense must have disappeared right from the start of rehearsals. Here the eight-member ensemble works hard to recharge the sounds with meaning. The evening is called “Ursonata (We play until death takes us away)” and is classified as a Dadaist speech opera. The ensemble plays small scenes while they sing, bleat, grunt and sneeze their score – accompanied by Maria Schneider and Lih Qun Wong on percussion, vibraphone and cello. For example, they establish – which is obvious – the situation of a choir rehearsal, in which Anita Vulesica, to the suspicion of the others, plays the spotlight. Her singing becomes more and more exalted, the reactions of her colleagues more and more annoyed, until – now completely in a frenzy – they chase Vulescia off the stage and finally even assassinate her.

A lot can be told with linguistic phrases like “Ooka”, “Ennze” or “bimbimm” – or at least in spite of them. In another scene, Mareike Beykirch repeatedly protests against a command from conductor Yannick Wittmann by shouting “Eke!” and even incites an uprising among her fellow musicians until they are all crushed by drummer Schneider. These and many other scenes are really funny, you sometimes feel reminded of Herbert Fritsch’s great productions at the Volksbühne, of “Pfusch” and of course of the Dieter Roth play “Murmel Murmel”, in which only the title words fell – or actually there was only one.

As with Fritsch, director Claudia Bauer sends a series of strange-looking characters into the world and builds conflicts and small adventures for them on a largely empty stage (by Patricia Talacko) with changing light (by Cornelia Gloth). In keeping with the seriousness with which they surrender to the silliness, they first wear wedding dresses and later uniform suits (costume: Vanessa Rust). Their comedy arises less from the fact that there is no real text than from the possibilities that arise from this absence. Without any inhibiting meaning, it plays much more freely and imaginatively. Peer Baierlein has added a composition to Schwitters’ sonata that sometimes uses marches, waltzes, pop ballads or jazz, thus always offering the ensemble opportunities to develop new ideas, which can also be told during you say unintelligible things with great concentration.

At the end, during the applause, you see completely exhausted faces. What the ensemble delivers in a good 100 minutes is high-performance acting and very funny musical theater. Of course, this success has a price: ultimately there is nothing left of nonsense. He has been transformed into nonsense. This is a loss, but not a defect in the production, but rather its goal. The entire effort of this evening of theater, and it is a tremendous one, lies in creating meaning where none was apparent before. Claudia Bauer and her ensemble tame Schwitters, they make him consumable. The audience’s resounding laughter also shows a little gratitude for not being confronted with insignificance. In other words: What takes place on the big stage of the German Theater no longer has much to do with Dada or “Merz”. It’s intellectually disappointing, but it’s compensated with a lot of nonsense. And it should appear in every theater’s schedule.

Next performances: December 22nd, December 31st, January 3rd, January 9th, January 28th