Berliner Theatertreffen | Play it again

The present is always present, as we all know. And when someone feels the need to emphasize the social relevance of theater, an art form that is, by definition, live and difficult to preserve, they tend to talk effusively about contemporary theater. It often soon turns out that what they meant was simply that the stage performances particularly reflect the zeitgeist. Pretty effects can be admired, but there's not much substance.

The Berlin Theatertreffen, which concluded this year's edition on Sunday, exudes zeitgeist in all directions. As usual, an independent jury of critics invited the ten "most remarkable" productions from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland to Berlin. What was noted and recognized as remarkable is not necessarily worth seeing for those who love theater not only for its own sake, but also want to learn something about the world and its constitution, ideally in a stimulating, sensual way. This year, too, most of the productions were well-crafted, all well-intentioned, but only rarely were they worth experiencing as an aesthetic experience.

New old tricks

Take, for example, two Theatertreffen veterans: Florentina Holzinger and Ersan Mondtag. Both have developed their own recipes for their productions, which they continually tweak anew. Holzinger took on Paul Hindemith's avant-garde one-act opera "Sancta Susanna" and, under the title "Sancta" (Mecklenburgisches Staatstheater Schwerin, among others), after a quarter of an hour of Hindemith, reeled off her familiar program: many naked female bodies, sex and blood, the profound and the silly. Hindemith's somewhat outdated attack on Catholic sexual morality dissolves into conciliatory kitsch. The zeitgeist is expressed in the pseudo-radicality and the critical gesture towards the mass-compatible, feel-good numbers at the finale.

Mondtag premiered "Double Serpent" (Wiesbaden State Theater), a play by Sam Max about abuse and trauma, sexuality, and violence. Those familiar with his theater work can imagine what takes place on stage. In an artificial space, the exaggerated characters, half human, half zombie, find each other. This director creates atmospheres reminiscent of a horror film; only the scenic action fades far into the background.

The self on stage

Hakan Savaş Mican has staged Dinçer Güçyeter's "Our Germany Fairytale" (Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin), while Jan Friedrich has staged Kim de l'Horizon's "Blood Book" (Theater Magdeburg). These are two novel adaptations for the stage, two autofictional self-circling narratives as counter-narratives to the experience of mainstream society. "Our Germany Fairytale" unfolds the story of a German-Turkish guest worker child, with scenes that are moving and musically captivating throughout. "Blood Book" presents us with a non-binary person, but the family traumas they carry with them, and their assertion against them, remain highly conventional in the way they translate narrative material to the stage. Both productions draw on a literary trend that, however, seemed quite at home between two book covers and that reflects sociopolitical issues only in individual experience.

Praise of the experiment?

Anita Vulesica's spectacle "The Machine or: There is Peace Above All Summits" (Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg), a staged adaptation of the Oulipot writer Georges Perec, is somewhat unusual. The humorous, wonderfully poetic text is worth rediscovering. However, it soon becomes apparent that, despite a virtuoso ensemble, the director has no images to add to the radio play that would open up another dimension for the audience. In keeping with theater conventions, the short piece was turned into a 90-minute evening, where the excitement soon fades into boredom.

The production "[EOL]. End of Life" (Darum/Brut Wien) also differs markedly from all the other productions invited to the Theatertreffen. Armed with VR headsets, the audience is occasionally transported into another world: This pathos-laden environment, reminiscent of a computer game, is about a digital life after death. VR – this is the new, cost-intensive favorite form of theater. The question arises whether this kind of experiment has much to do with performing arts at all, or whether it is more of a counter-proposal to the basic tenets of theater. In any case, not everyone can embrace a theater without an audience, aimed solely at one audience.

Reaching for the Canon

The more powerful stage productions that have appeared in Berlin over the past two and a half weeks are all, sometimes surprising, explorations of the canon of theater art. Katie Mitchell, for example, has taken on Federico García Lorca's "Bernarda Alba's House" (Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg), albeit in a (gentle) rewrite by Alice Birch. A grand parable of a system that is hostile internally while simultaneously protecting itself from the hostile external world is presented here. Grand images of the new fascism emerge on stage. Like Ersan Mondtag, Mitchell is known as a creator of haunting atmospheres. But she doesn't stop there; she narrates our damaged present through scenes.

Luise Voigt has directed Brecht's play "The Rifles of Mrs. Carrar" (Residenztheater Munich), about the Spanish Civil War, which is rarely performed today. The subject, which agitates against neutralism and invokes the struggle—even armed struggle—against the greater evil, brings the audience into confrontation with entrenched attitudes in bourgeois society. Voigt has found a convincing form for this. With Björn SC Deigners, Brecht's play is followed by a sequel that does not affirm the first part, but rather critically questions it without caricaturing it. The result is a footnote to the current warlike conditions that does not boast answers, but simply asks the right questions.

Meryl Tankard's "Kontakthof – Echoes of '78" (Tanztheater Wuppertal) is more than a reminiscence of one of Pina Bausch's most famous works, a modern classic of (dance) theater. Parts of the original cast from 1978 are back on stage, aged almost half a century. Projections place the performers in relation to the stage action of yesteryear. Bausch's play about the battle of the sexes in a post-fascist, still loveless and standardized society, which bears no resemblance to the dulcet image of the dance icon sometimes portrayed today, can thus be reexamined. Questions about the afterlife of theater and the transience of its performers are also raised.

Finally, "ja nichts ist ok" (Ja nichts ist ok, "Yes, Nothing Is OK"; Volksbühne Berlin) was the final directorial work of Volksbühne director René Pollesch, who died two weeks after the premiere. A solo evening for Fabian Hinrichs, in which the profound confusion in society is addressed in a stirring way. This production, too, is perhaps best understood as a reexamination of the classics, as part of a canon that is constantly being reformed. For the Pollesch Theater, which continues even after the sudden death of the author-director, has long since proven itself to be a style-defining force. Also because it has repeatedly outsmarted the zeitgeist.