We are now three weeks into rehearsals for The Story of the Soldier by Igor Stravinsky at the Meininger State Theater. It is described as a play with music, for three actors and a dancer, written in 1918 at the close of WWI. The story tells of a soldier that sells his violin to the devil in exchange for a book that will let him see the future, play the stock market, get rich quick. Newsflash: this does not go well for the soldier. He loses everything dear to him and is eventually claimed by the devil.

We are using this classic story to examine what it means to be a soldier, what armed conflict does to those who take part in it, and what are the contemporary equivalents for the archetypical characters that populate the play.

It is a great pleasure to be directing this piece at the Meininger State Theater, which has a rich history and tradition. It was founded in 1801 as the Meiningen Court Theater, and taken over in 1866 by Duke Georg II, the Duke of Sachs-Meiningen, later to be known the world over for professionalizing the role of the director and the set designer in the modern theatre. He traveled the world with his acting troupe, inspiring the likes of Stanislavski and Max Reinhardt. Having learned about the duke in our theatre history class in college, it is quite an honor to be invited to direct in Meiningen.

In an effort to better understand the world of the play and that of 21^st century soldiers, we decided to take an afternoon to go meet some: members of the Bundeswehr’s Cavalry Company 13 at the Friedenstein barracks near Gotha.

We had an excellent time getting to meet the commander, Oberstleutnant Weber, and his colleagues, who were kind enough to spend a few hours with us sharing their experiences in Afghanistan and Kosovo. It was a really eye-opening experience. One of the most fascinating aspects of our time with the Bundeswehr soldiers was their insight into the mental health of their soldiers. They talked at length about the need for each of their men to have their personal affairs in order before they left for the front. And that it was the commanders job to see to it that the men had the mental resources they needed (counseling, chaplaincy, contact with their family and loved ones) so that they could be the most effective soldiers possible.

We also saw an exhibition at the palace museum in Meiningen last week about the role of the theatre/live performance in wartime settings. One interesting aspect was that the Meiningen Court Theatre toured to the Western Front in WWI, entertaining the troops. It is fascinating then, in 2018, to be working on this show and to be meeting up with German soldiers and collaborating with them in a research capacity, one hundred years later, in a very different Germany.

The rehearsals are progressing well and the show is starting to take shape. We have an extremely dynamic, abstract set, in the shape of a giant wheel. The idea is to associate military forms (tanks, helicopters, APC’s) as well as other familiar wheels: wheel of fortune, roulette, the grinding of a mill.

*Bühne/Modell Daniel Unger

The three characters, Narrator, Soldier & Devil, and their lines have been split amongst three actors, so that each performer is playing aspects of each character. In this way we see how the potential to be an Observer, Victim or Perpetrator, lies innately in all of us.

Hey Friends! It’s been a while, but I am committed to posting here more regularly now. I have been busy writing in the meantime, posting articles on Howlround and for TCG and the Lark Theatre in NYC. Those articles will not be migrated here for copyright reasons but can be read on my website here.

And now . . . back to the Blog!

The Volksbühne Berlin. One of the most talked-about and influential performing arts spaces in the world. In 2017 it underwent and incredibly painful transition as the old artistic director, Frank Castorf, who had led the company for 26 years, was forced to resign in the midst of a cultural/political fiasco that electrified the international media and polarized the German theatre community, particularly the Berlin cultural scene. Lots of bad blood, including claims of betrayal and selling-out by the outgoing team, as well as claims of sabotage from the new team led by Chris Dercon, formerly of the Tate Modern. At the beginning of his tenure as artistic director, activists occupied the building for three months in protest. In the middle of a turbulent first season, Dercon resigned in the spring of 2018. Since then the theater is being run on an interim basis while the political leadership in Berlin desperately searches for an appropriate replacement to take over.

This is the background then for the current season at the Volksbühne, which is being largely held above water by guest performances from other theaters, in an effort to keep the lights on and the seats filled. One of the more successful of these guest productions is DAS ERSTE EVANGELIUM/THE FIRST GOSPEL, directed and devised by Kay Voges. The show was directed by Voges at the State Theater of Stuttgart last season, and the show was taken into the Volksbühne’s repertoire this year, when the new artistic director in Stuttgart decided not to extend the show. It is the rare example of a piece outliving the team that produced it and in this case being a perfect fit for the Berlin audience.

DAS ERSTE EVANGELIUM begins with a film sequence, projected onto the closed fire curtain. A close-up of an older woman speaking a text from the Gospel of Matthew. It is hyper-realistic and huge, taking up the full breadth of the stage portal, zooming ever closer onto the actress’ face. Once she has completed the monologue, a voice yells “Cut! Thank you. Next scene!” and the fire curtain raises: we see an enormous set, part sound stage, part scenic installation with projection screens and a film crew, creating the film we were just seeing. It is an overwhelming initial image and the audience is challenged just to take it all in.

The next two-and-a-half hours are an associative free-for-all, a combination of scenes from the Gospel of Matthew as well as smaller sub-plots and tableaux-vivants, all circling around the idea of religion as spectacle.

The director, Kay Voges, is famous for creating multi-media theatre experiences that are immersive and use technology to deepen the audience’s experience of the play. His 2016 piece, Borderline Procession, was groundbreaking in its use of live camera teams to simultaneously create a live film and make the audience part of the experience of making the film while also delvering an unforgettable evening of live theatre. Voges is interested in the way cameras affect our lived experience as well as the way we perceive a story and DAS 1. EVANGELIUM was no exception.

At any given time in the piece, there are three different projection screens showing different parts of the stage. The set is a series of sound stages, on a revolve which is in constant motion for the duration of the piece. There are also automobiles on the stage, left and right, creating further locations for actors to play out scenarios. Each audience member has the opportunity to watch the film sequences being created on the projection screens, as well as the film team itself, traveling through the sound stages and creating the film live, in addition to the other scenes playing out silently in other parts of the set

The visual spectacle of the piece is initially much-too-much to take in, but the audience is slowly able to adjust to the massive amount of input by picking and choosing their own way through the piece. If the film sequence being filmed is not interesting at the moment, one can always look elsewhere and in any case, the whole set is always slowly rotating so the visual scenery is ever-changing. In this way, the piece becomes a marathon of scenes, visual moments, and film spectacle that are all dealing with our relationship to the story of Christianity and religion in general.

In many ways the piece was reminiscent of the type of theatre that Frank Castorf made famous at the Volksbühne in years past: huge, associative-sets and live camera work, chaotic scenes being driven by an energetic cast; provocative images and philosophical questions coming at the audience a mile a minute. The striking difference in Voges’ work however, is the use of technology not just as a means of making the invisible visible (i.e. filming things off stage or in parts of the set blocked from view and transporting them to the audience via camera) but rather using cameras and digital technology as a storytelling device to enlarge moments on stage.

The eye of the camera often reveals only a fraction of the actual scene playing out and Voges reminds us of this by moving the film crew through a scene, enlarging part of it, and then moving on to another, while the audience remains with the previous scene. This creates a layering of stories and storytelling, stacking the perceived world on one part of the stage with the subjective reality magnified by the camera as well as the total-frame perspective of the audience member watching it all evolve. This asks a lot of the viewer, forcing them to sort out multiple narrative strains all happening simultaneously, all resonating in different ways. It makes for a challenging, but ultimately very satisfying theatre experience.
*All Photos by Julian Roeder

Terror, by Ferdinand von Schirach, is a piece about the limits of political power in civil society, the implications of terrorism on our way of life, and the lengths to which we will go to keep ourselves safe. The world premiere production took place on the 3^rd of October 2015 and was shared by Schauspiel Frankfurt and the Deutsches Theater Berlin, where I saw the piece in November.

The premise of the play is as follows: an airplane is hijacked by terrorists over German airspace and changes its course to fly towards the Allianz Arena in Munich, where a sold-out soccer match is taking place, and 70,000 people are in attendance. There are 164 civilians on board the aircraft. The German air force is mobilized and two Eurofighter jets are accompanying the hijacked plane; they fire warning shots and attempt to steer it off course to no avail. The ranking pilot, Lars Koch, asks the General Command if he has permission to shoot the plane down. The Generals give him the order to stand down, not to shoot. As the plane gets within a few minutes of the arena, Koch asks again for permission to shoot the plane down. Again, the General Command denies permission, orders him to stay his course. Koch then disobeys this order, firing a sidewinder at the plane, destroying it and killing all 164 passengers aboard.

Should Lars Koch be seen as a murderer? Or a hero?

The play itself is Koch’s trial, where he is being accused of 164 counts of murder. The audience is the jury, and there is a judge, a prosecutor, the defense attorney, Koch himself, and a number of witnesses. The judge begins by asking Koch if he is aware of the charges, and if he disputes them. He replies that he is aware of the charges and does not dispute them. He says clearly that he intentionally shot the plane down, in order to save the 70,000 civilians in the Arena, despite the fact that his superior officer ordered him not to. He explains that given the chance, he would do the same thing again, because according to his logic the 164 passengers would have died anyway.

Over the next two hours all manner of different scenarios are discussed: Why weren’t other options explored? Koch says that he was flying close enough to the plane to see into the cabin and cockpit. Can he be sure that the passengers would not have broken into the cockpit and overpowered the terrorist? The commanding general testifies that he ordered Koch not to shoot . . . but implies that if he were in Koch’s position he would have done the same thing. The general is also asked why the Stadium was not evacuated. He replies that the evacuation was not his responsibility, but that of the Bavarian police. The pregnant wife of one of the victims also arrives for an emotional appeal to have let the plane take its course, and to reinforce the personal tragedy inflicted on innocents. Each new argument serves to sew seeds of doubt in the minds of the audience, who will later decide Koch’s fate.

The final cross-examination is an extremely intense exchange between the prosecutor and Koch, in which she puts a fine point on the philosophical argument: that one life can never be weighed against another. The first article of the German Basic Law (constitution) reads: “Human dignity is inviolable.” This is the basic human right that comes before all others. According to this thinking, it should never be legal to weigh the life of one individual against that of another.

And this is a truly radical idea. Although this argument was made multiple times throughout the piece, I found myself reeling back and forth from one minute to the next: is Koch guilty? He did not seem like a murderer to me. I of course thought of 9/11 and of the possibility of having been able to shoot down those planes, or of the passengers that overcame the terrorists on flight 93. They sure seem like heroes to me.

On the other hand, the fact that one life is not more valuable than another is an important one. If it is possible to chose one life over another, that is a slippery slope: if 164 lives can be traded against 70,000, where does it stop? Can one life be traded for one hundred? Or one for three? It also begs other questions, such as who do these laws apply to? Do they apply to our enemies as well as to our citizens? If not, does that allow torture of our enemies? Assassination of our enemies? We do not have to look far, whether to the operation against Bin Laden in 2011 or the massive drone strikes happening daily around the world to see how blurry these lines have become.

The real strength of the piece is that each standpoint is so well portrayed that the audience finds itself constantly switching sides throughout the piece. The production at the Deutsches Theater was also brilliantly performed by their ensemble, and by the time it was over I was not sure what to think.

And then, of course, the audience was asked to decide. The doors to the theater lobby were opened, and the audience was invited to take five minutes outside the theater to discuss the case with one another, and then re-enter the theater through doorways marked either “guilty” or “innocent”. The ushers would tally the votes and then communicate the verdict to the actors, who would then play one of two endings, guilty or innocent.

Its an old trick in the theater, but one that was put to monstrously effective use.

I must admit I entered the lobby convinced I would vote for Koch’s innocence. I felt like the tough decision he made, was exactly the kind of decision that had to be made, to do the right thing, and preserve the most life. However my friend and colleague Diana Schumman with whom I was watching the play, was adamantly for a guilty verdict. And she managed to convince me to join her in that guilty verdict inside of five minutes. Her argument was that it was not a question at all of his innocence, he was guilty. He even admitted it. The only question is how he should be punished. And she reinforced her point by quoting the Basic Law and saying that it is too dangerous to allow the government to kill its citizens without a trial, that such behavior endangers the free and open society in which we live. I was also convinced by the fact that the pilot was ordered twice not to shoot, and yet he still did. There were too many factors outside of his control that he could not account for, and it would set a dangerous precedent to let him walk free after doing so.

We re-entered the theater and the votes were tallied: Koch was declared guilty by a margin of about twenty votes (there were over 500 people in attendance) . . . a skinny margin indeed. Interestingly enough, a number of audience members never left the theater, effectively abstaining, so that they would not have to vote.

In the talkback afterward, one of the moderators was a lawyer and raised the point that from a legal perspective there is nothing exciting about the case at all. Koch is definitely guilty. Again, the question of how he should be punished, is a different one. But what is so interesting about this piece, at this point in time, in a Europe that has been shaken by recent terrorist attacks and activity, is that almost every performance of the play votes for Koch’s innocence. The moderator implied that if the German people were more aware of what their own laws said, or perhaps were less scared, they might vote differently. Which of course speaks to how important and timely this piece is.

There are sixteen different productions of this piece happening this season in German-speaking Europe. In an exciting digital tie-in, the publisher of the play has created a website where you can see the tallies of guilty/innocent verdicts from each individual production and performance. A way of getting a feel for how audiences are reacting to the piece all over Europe. Interestingly enough, the ‘innocent’ verdicts are winning out by a significant margin. Check it out here:

http://terror.kiepenheuer-medien.de/

The first article of the basic law goes back to the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and his idea that every thinking individual should be regarded as a person, as a Subject, and not an Object. And anything that reduces a human being to the Object of state authority, rather than a Subject of that authority, is unconstitutional and violates human rights.

In closing then, the two quotes from each perspective of the play:

“Is it just, to set the principle of human dignity above the saving of human life?”

-Defense Attorney

“The state can never weigh one life against another. Nor one against one hundred, or a thousand. Every single human being possesses this dignity.”

-Prosecutor

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.”

-Stephen King

Ever have the impression that the rehearsals are killing you? Like, actually taking days off of your life?  Chris Rock’s description of love: “If you haven’t contemplated murder, you ain’t been in love” . . . could probably also apply to the rehearsal process. Then the show opens despite everything in a daze of revelry and champagne and backslapping, and before you know it you’re whisked off to another city hundreds of miles away and someone asks you over breakfast the next day:

  “How’d the show go?”

The quote from King above could also be a stand-in for how we talk about artistic processes. Somehow the scope of emotions, the cataclysm of words, egos, and tensions occurring in the rehearsal hall seem so overwhelming in real time, and attempting to describe that experience to someone on the outside always falls short.

And yet the magnitude of what transpires in those rooms, the electric charge that you get when you come out of a successful rehearsal, and the spiritual dismay you suffer when the play seems to go nowhere for days (or weeks) on end continues to defy compartmentalization.

So we muddle through and say “Oh it was terribly stressful” or “An unbelievably difficult process” and inevitably: “But it all turned out fine.” All said while nibbling croissants and slurping coffee and somehow in the act of speaking about it, the entire process sounds small. Whereas three weeks before nothing could have seemed more monumental.

There were times during March and April that I was quite sure KING was going to kill me. And at no point during the process was I sure what the final product would look like. With so many talented folks involved, I never doubted the potential of the piece, but I certainly doubted the result.

Having opened the show on April 18th to mixed reviews (the young people loved it, the critics did not) I learned a couple of things:

1. A younger public’s idea of what theatre can be is wonderfully accepting and elastic. They are looking for a great experience and have almost no expectations as to what theatre ‘should’ be. The vast majority of folks who came to the performances in Bern were in their twenties, and had not been to the theater in years. This is a big win by itself, and the fact that they enjoyed themselves even more so.

2. Making a horror piece is a game of averages. You aren’t gonna scare everybody every time, so you have to mix it up and try every different type of horror there is: psychological horror, physical unease, irritation, disgust, fright, terror, surprise, etc. There’s a way to get under everybody’s skin, but its never the same way.

3. Stephen King gets no respect. At least not from the Europeans. Or rather, from the literary elite. Most of the dramaturgs and artistic directors we talked to about the piece had no familiarity with his work at all, or did not consider him ‘serious literature’. I challenge anyone to read ‘IT’ or ‘The Shining’ and not see it as serious literature. Not to mention he’s the best-selling living author in the world. Gotta be some fire under all that smoke.

After all is said and done, I’m proud of the work and the result. And excited that the show will be touring every few months for the rest of the year, into February 2014. Here’s a glimpse of what its like:

 . . . and if you find yourself in central Europe this year, come check it out for yourself!

KING
Tour: June 20-23rd Lofft Leipzig
www.pengpalast.ch

Horror has arrived: in Bern! We are in the middle of our third week of rehearsals for KING, a new devised piece investigating horror in the 21st century through the lens of Stephen King’s work. The biggest challenge so far has been finding our way through the incredible amount of primary source material from King, as well as the enormous amount of film material we shot while filming in Maine last December. Our directing team has been hard at work, creating endless amounts of notecards for all the different film segments, text fragments, horror scenes, and improvs that we’ve been trying out on stage:

And then explaining all of that to the actors, and working as an ensemble to make it all make sense.

And as if that wasn’t complicated enough we added five tents, 50 pillows, 15 curtains to the space, microphones, three projectors and every disgustingly horrific sound our brilliant designer can come up with. We throw all of that in the rehearsal hall each morning and try our best to scare the hell out of each other.

So that’s where we’re at. Tune in for more soon . . .

Knapp zwei Wochen haben wir Zeit, um eine Performance zu entwickeln. Eine Performance, bei der wir vier auf der Bühne stehen werden und in der es um unsere Erlebnisse und Glücksmomente während des vergangenen Jahres und in unserer gemeinsamen Zeit in Japan gehen wird.

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Ehitos Premierengeschenk.

Nach der Vorstellung mit einer Kollegin aus Heidelberg

Das Projekt G-Team mit Gästen

Die Premierenfeier – auch ein Glücksmoment.

Whoah! This time in Marburg has gone incredibly quickly. What a pleasure it is to be working in such a beautiful part of the world. The city itself is situated in a valley, with half the buildings clinging to the hillside, stairways wrapping up and around, narrow streets darting throughout. The picturesque views of the hills and trees, gorgeous architecture framing everything and the castle perched atop the highest hill. It seems like almost every building is at least a five hundred years old, and there are an abundance of cafes hidden in the nooks, crannies and winding staircases.

We are performing our piece in an historic lecture hall in the physics department of the Phillip’s University. The room itself is not a theater, but is still extremely theatrical. There are two giant blackboards that span at least fifteen feet each. The best part is that they can be mechanically controlled to slide up or down the wall! We’re doing our best to incorporate them into the piece.

The work itself has been intense: we’ve re-conceptualized the piece almost every day this week, and it seems like nothing is sacred: scenes are created and destroyed faster than the students guzzle beer at night. But what we’ve ended up with is an incredible collage of our experiences in Japan and with each other over the last eighteen months. I’m really proud of the work we are doing and so excited to share it with an audience tomorrow night!

We will be recording the performance (have been recording the rehearsals for the last few days), so if you cannot make it all the way to Marburg, no worries; there will be documentation! And I’m glad of it, because the piece is so personal, such a rich exploration of the incredible highs and lows we’ve gone through together, that I’m desperate to share it with a wider (non-German speaking) audience in the weeks to come.

Until then, we are waiting with baited breath for tomorrow. And by waiting of course, I mean frantically rehearsing all day, night and tomorrow morning.

SO EXCITING the audience will stomp and cheer,
SO DELIGHTING it will  run for fifty years!

Woohoo!

Brian

In zwei Wochen startet die zweite Arbeitsphase unseres interkontinentalen Projektes am Hessischen Landestheater in Marburg. In den letzten Wochen haben wir per Skype viel über die unterschiedlichen Performancebegriffe in Japan, Deutschland und den USA gesprochen. Es ist sehr spannend, da sich der japanische Performancebegriff stark von dem europäischen und amereikanischen unterscheidet.

Hier werden wir arbeiten und proben.

Da es in Japan kein Ausbildungssystem, keine Förderung für die freie Szene oder Schauspielproduktionen gibt, keine Probenräume und Aufführungsorte zur Verfügung stehen und auch kein Publikum vorhanden ist, verlagert sich die Theaterarbeit der freien Künstler oftmals in den Alltag und ins Private. Das Werk kann, anders als es bei uns in Europa und den USA üblich ist, auch ein Prozess sein, nicht immer steht eine Aufführung auf einer Bühne am Ende. So wird der Aufenthalt des Projekt G-Teams in Tokio im japanischen Sinne zu einer Aufenthaltsperformance. Doch wer ist das Publikum fragen Brian und ich. Nao erklärt uns, dass wir zunächst die Zuschauer waren, die sie und Ehito beobachtet haben, ihr Leben, ihre Kultur, ihren Alltag. Nach und nach sind wir dann auch zu Performern geworden, die in Tokio und Minamisoma agiert haben und dabei wiederrum von Nao und Ehito beobachtet wurden. Ein wichtiger Definitionsaspekt von Theater ist auch die Anwesenheit eines Regisseurs. So fällt die von Nao moderierte Podiumsdiskussion, unser Symposium über die internationale Rezeption der Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Gebrüder Grimm oder das Format des “Open Rooms” bei dem man die Wohnung von Ehito uns Nao besuchen, dort einen Kaffee trinken, ihre Bücher lesen, schlafen, sich unterhalten kann,… auch unter den Performancebegriff, da all dies in Anwesenheit von Nao – der Regisseurin – geschieht. Für Brian und mich ist dies eine neue Sichtweise auf Theater – eine mutige und leidenschaftliche Art und Weise Theater innerhalb eines Systems und einer Kultur zu machen, in der Theater eigentlich nicht vorgesehen ist.

Aktuell tragen wir unsere Ideen, Materialien und Eindrücke zusammen, von denen ausgehend wir ab dem 03.09.2012 in Marburg die Performance “Projekt G -Marburg” entwickeln werden. Die Aufführung von “Projekt G – Marburg” findet nur einmal, am 14. September 2012 um 19.30 Uhr, in einem Hörsaal der Philipps-Universität Marburg Renthof 5, Fachbereich Physik statt.
Wir werden Geschichten und Erfahrungen aus Japan und Deutschland live, in Bild- und Videodokumenten präsentieren, werden unsere Theaterbegriffe ausloten und im Anschluss an die Performance den theatrale Raum für den Austausch öffnen.

Marburg an der Lahn ist mit 80.000 Einwohnern ein bisschen kleiner als Tokio und sieht auch ein bisschen anders aus. Zur Einstimmung schon mal ein paar Impressionen…

Marburg an der Lahn

Märchen in Marburg – Der Schuh von Aschenputtel vor dem Marburger Schloß

In diesem Haus haben die Gebrüder Grimm während ihrer Studienzeit gewohnt.

Das Märchen “Vom Fischer und seiner Frau” auf der Lahn.

Weitere Informationen zu unserer Performance gibt es auf diesem Blog und unter: http://theater-marburg.com/tm/Spielplan/Stuecke/213