Theatre • European Cultural News

What a time!

by Michaela Preiner | Jun 6, 2022 | 2021, Theatre

People go to the action theatre ensemble for various reasons. Because you want to know what kind of theatre this troupe does, because you are taken by friends and have no idea what to expect, because you appreciate the kind of theatre you get to see or because you have the feeling of meeting old acquaintances again. But if you’ve been following Martin Gruber and his work for a while, there’s another reason to watch every new production. It is the fascination of gaining creative access to our current events and of looking at events, emotions and social structures from a different angle than the one we are confronted with every day.

It is precisely this approach that makes every visit a new experience. In the meantime, Gruber generates the respective cast from a large ensemble pool, which also has newcomers every now and then. Zeynep Alan, Babett Arens, Michaela Bilgeri, Luzian Hirzel, David Kopp and Tamara Stern are in action for “Lüg mich an und spiel mit mir”. The stage action is complemented by live music by Dominik Essletzbichler, Daniel Neuhauser, Gidon Oechsner, Daniel Schober. This time they have a strong part of their own and are not only responsible for an underlining soundtrack.

Without exception, they all enter the stage with black-rimmed eyes. An obvious message that what is to come will not be fun trallala. How could it be – in times like these! The pandemic has not yet disappeared, the environmental problem will never go away and the war in Eastern Europe has repercussions far beyond Ukraine. The zeitgeist that surrounds us is filled with fears, but also aggression, which we try to suppress as best we can.

“Lüg mich an und spiel mit mir” aktionstheater ensemble (Foto: Anja Köhler)

It is precisely on this wound that Gruber puts his finger. The longer the performance lasts, the more this wound is opened, from which a lot of blood eventually flows. That which many of us carry out within ourselves is allowed to act out its ensemble before us and for us. There is insulting and shouting, people puff on each other and irritate each other until rage bursts out of everyone and the law of the fist enters the stage.

Right from the start, Tamara Stern gives free rein to her negative emotions, and at times so violently that she resembles a wild animal. What initially manifests itself only in violent verbal injuria tips over into physical aggression, which leads to violent attacks and fights that gradually spread to everyone else.

The stage is bordered by a concave screen showing photos that slowly change. A map of Ukraine can be seen through small peepholes, later the theatre of Mariupol can be seen – shot up, bombed, with a partially collapsed roof. None of this is commented on, but is subliminally permanently in the room, underpinning the sentences with another layer. One not only begins to understand that the horror and the threat could just as well affect us, sitting in the protected theatre space. One also begins to understand, to realise what one always feels anyway. We can talk ourselves into a better reality, we can look positively into the future and try to push away what doesn’t suit us or simply overwhelms us. Nevertheless, “it” is there. It happens while we are trying to enjoy ourselves.

It doesn’t help to look enviously at the Swiss population. According to Babett Arens and Luzian Hirzel, there is a place in a shelter for every citizen there. Under the theatre in Mariupol, people also thought they were safe. But what use is any hiding place, no matter how fortified, if we ruin our environment with every wash? Even organic detergents end up in the drain and destroy our waters. How can we distinguish good from evil when beggars we have known for many years suddenly ask for help not as Roma but as Ukrainians? What about the Ukrainian refugee from the east of the country who found refuge here with us 8 years ago, fleeing Ukrainian repression? What message did we not hear, did we not want to hear? Is it permissible to attack Russians who attack us, but not Ukrainians? And what absurdity, or perhaps even monstrosity, is revealed in the fact that a president who has proven himself to be an outstanding dancing star is now bitterly fighting for villages and towns that are being reduced to rubble? What are facts, what are lies? How much do we participate in it and why? At one point a momentous sentence is uttered, albeit casually: “We say we live in a functioning democracy and lie back until it’s true!” But there is also the realisation that lying holds us together.

The hard beats contributed by the black-clad musicians, the droning of the sounds support anti-aggression exercises and at the same time push the idea of having to gear up for an upcoming fight. In parallel, the images on the big screen change to show shots of human skin surface. That which we want to push far away hits us relentlessly and threatens us physically very close. But images of people also flash through your mind. People who are fighting for naked survival. Perhaps one or the other of the audience associates this with other things.

This fact alone shows that the theatrical universe of the aktionstheater ensemble reflects exactly that which corresponds to our current world of experience and feeling. We are surrounded by uncertainty and have to deal with questions for which we have no clear answers. At the same time, however, we are all allowed to feel privileged, each and every one of us who attends a performance. For the duration of about one and a half hours, we are allowed to experience again something that we have been missing. We get to experience something again that we didn’t know before how much we would actually miss one day: We experience a community that makes us laugh and marvel at the same time. We experience a community that makes us laugh and marvel at the same time, that makes us feel anger and plunges us into helplessness, from which we then rise again thanks to a clever dramaturgy. We are allowed to experience that people want and need people. The idea that theatre can’t achieve anything turns out to be an illusion. Fortunately for everyone involved – whether on or in front of the stage.

This article was automatically translated with deepl.com

Not for the faint-hearted

by Michaela Preiner | Jun 2, 2022 | 2021, Theatre

Heiner Müller retranslated Shakespeare’s drama in the 1970s, but stayed very close to the story itself. The big difference is not only the language, which in Müller’s case – just as in Shakespeare’s – you first have to get used to. Müller shortens the story around the attainment of the royal crown of Scotland and thus creates a stronger focus on the horror of the events themselves. At the same time, however, he introduces another level of characters and refers to the serfdom of the peasants, their dependence on their masters, but also to their brutality, which is no different from that of the authorities.

Stephan Rottkamp proceeds similarly in his stage version. He also saves characters, which means a further condensation, and at the beginning he lets fog billow out of the cold storage of a slaughterhouse. Even the first character, a soldier who comes from the battle and reports on it, appears naked and bloody. The disturbance he causes, however, is only a small foretaste of what is to come.

Macbeth im Schauspiehaus Graz (Foto: © Lex Karelly)

Macbeth at the Schauspiehaus Graz (Photo: © Lex Karelly)
Although Scotland’s ruler, King Duncan, is dressed in fine cloth, one also recognises traces of blood on his legs and arms and begins to understand: He, who no longer has to take part in battles and only learns of the outcome from messengers, has built his power as much on murder and manslaughter as those who will follow after him. (Costumes Esther Geremus)

With an abstract but effective and very aesthetic stage set (Robert Schweer), it is possible to transfer the action from Duncan’s royal court to Macbeth’s castle in just a few moments. Large white cuboids stretching across the stage are raised and lowered to rhythmise the space.

The casting of Macbeth by Florian Köhler and Lady Macbeth, Sarah Sophia Meyer, visually creates a pair of opposites that nevertheless complement each other perfectly. Meyer manages to pull out many character stops without any great discernible emotion. She spans the spectrum from the power-obsessed whisperer of death to the frightened and retreating consort who begins to fear her own husband.

Florian Köhler’s Macbeth is neither a simple character nor a one-dimensional murderer. He vacillates between a hesitant, thoughtful man who is urged by his wife to murder the king and a character obsessed with power who does not shy away from having friends, as well as wives and children, murdered. The more the game progresses, the more he murders and has murders committed, the more unscrupulous he becomes. The permeability of Köhler’s play is particularly impressive. In a scene in which he treats his former friend Banquo as if he were far inferior to him, one senses a lot of humanity in Köhler alias Macbeth: pleasure and joy in the play on the one hand, but also pleasure and joy in a special kind of humiliation. That Macbeth is also capable of atrocities away from the battlefield becomes clear shortly after the play begins. There he tortures – with the active support of his wife – a peasant who cannot pay his taxes. It is one of the most brutal scenes of the production, for which one needs good nerves, or to keep one’s eyes closed until the screams of the tortured man fall silent. It is this realistic rendering, this bloodthirsty depiction of extreme brutality, that leaves one breathless. But there are also images like that of Macbeth, who as a stumbling king, wading in blood, loses his balance and falls to the ground again and again, slithering and swaying with his oversized ermine cape. Here, the emotion of the audience tips from disgust to pity, from hatred to empathy, which corresponds to an emotional roller coaster.

Macbeth im Schauspiehaus Graz (Foto: © Lex Karelly)

The action – except for the very last act – is accompanied throughout by sound and music. (Nikolas Neecke). Theatre has learned a lot from film in recent years and Rottkamp skilfully uses this additional layer to subtly intensify what is shown emotionally. With a classic of pop history – “Stuck in the middle with you” by the British pop band Stealers Wheel from the 1970s – the portrayal of Macbeth, his fear for the preservation of his unjustly acquired throne, is given a new drive. “I’m so scared in case I fall off my chair and I’m wondering how I’ll get down the stairs” is one of the lyrics from it. Not only do the lyrics seem like they were written for Macbeth, but the funny musical interlude is also well placed dramaturgically. For a short time, it relieves the audience of the heaviness of the blood-soaked story and allows a breather before the next murders are carried out by the two hired men, who are still dancing happily to the music with their king.

The fact that the end of Macbeth and his wife is shown without sound accompaniment causes a final, but all the more intense irritation. It gives the feeling that reality is now beginning to overtake the play. The death of Lady Macbeth is accompanied by a powerful image – she falls silently to the ground with her face covered in blood. But the spectacularly unspectacular exit of the king himself is just as unexpected as it is unconventional.

It is extremely painful that we find so many parallels in real political world events today. The theatre critic and dramaturge Martin Linzer described a similar experience in a 1983 issue of ‘Theater in der Zeit’. “Ten years after the writing of the text (note – the text by Heiner Müller is meant), the world is burning in many corners, the massacres in Beirut are happening before the eyes of the world, humanity is threatened by the madness of nuclear armament.” And a part of the very readable interview with Stephan Rottkamp, printed in the programme booklet, should also be quoted here: “We have enough despots who have seized power with a small clique and ruthlessly pursue their own goals. Of course, this will not be seen “one-to-one” on stage. But Assad, Orbán, Trump, such names naturally come up in the conversations during the rehearsal. The play is very topical in that it exposes these power mechanisms. They applied in Macbeth’s lifetime in the Middle Ages just as they did in Shakespeare’s time at the beginning of the 17th century. And they still apply today; it goes on and on. So it’s a noble duty to show that on stage today.”
While it is not a duty to see the play, if it is, it is imperative to talk about it and bring it to the attention of as many people as possible. You won’t see another Macbeth on a German-language stage any time soon that is more emotional and at the same time more intelligent, more contradictory and at the same time more coherent, more powerful in its imagery and more powerful in its sound.

The cast: DUNCAN, MACDUFF Alexej Lochmann, SOLDAT Oliver Chomik,LENNOX, 2nd MURDERER Henriette Blumenau MALCOLM, 1st MURDERER, HEXE Nanette Waidmann FLEANCE, LORD, HEXE Daria von Loewenich, ROSSE, SOLDAT, HEXE Frieder Langenberger

This text has been automatically translated with deepl.com

The horror does not only take place in the theatre

by Michaela Preiner | May 30, 2022 | 2021, 2021, Theatre, Wiener Festwochen, Wiener Festwochen

Motionless, they lie and sit on a bed, in front of it, but also next to it on the stage floor. The room is white and seems sterile, except for a mess of journals and scraps of paper under the sleeping area. There are a total of seven young people who do not exchange a word with each other. While the audience is still looking for their seats, the young people remain motionless – until you finally realise that they are not people but life-size puppets. These are a trademark of the French-Austrian choreographer, artist and theatre director Gisèle Vienne. She studied puppetry at the École supérieure nationale des arts de la marionnette in Charleville-Mézières from 1996 to 1999 and used puppets as well as choreographic elements in her scenic works from the very beginning.

L’ÉTANG / DER TEICH was first performed at the Ruhrtriennale last year and had its Austrian premiere this year at the Wiener Festwochen. The play, based on a text by Robert Walser, as well as text passages by Vienne herself, was realised by the theatre-maker in a very idiosyncratic formal language. The two actresses, Adèle Haenel and Henrietta Wallberg, walk towards or away from each other – except for a few moments – in slow motion. Individual movements, such as lighting a cigarette, take what feels like eternities and produce a sense of time that people often experience in exceptional situations in which they are threatened. What lasts a few seconds in measured time stretches out indefinitely, while you know that bad things are happening at precisely these moments that you can no longer run away from.

It is precisely such moments that Vienne retells through Robert Walser’s characters. She transposes the story of Fritz, a teenager who pretends to drown himself so that his parents will finally take notice of him, into our present. Adèle Haenel slips into this role, but also into the roles of his sister and his brother. She does this in the same outfit, but with different voices. The fact that this change takes some getting used to at the beginning is intentional. It happens in a matter of seconds, especially when it comes to dialogue. But as the action progresses, one begins to better distinguish between the different characters. From her first appearance, Henrietta Wallberg gives the impression of being an extremely dominant mother whose parenting style largely involves beatings and harshness. The fact that she herself is a victim of violence in her marriage only becomes clear shortly before the end of the play.

The contemporary reference is not only achieved through the costumes (Gisèle Vienne, Camille Queval, Guillaume Dumont). In one scene it becomes clear that Fritz is getting high on drugs just so that “it will finally stop”. “It” is the abuse and corporal punishment to which he is subjected and against which he cannot defend himself. In addition, there is the poisoned climate between the siblings, who do not help each other, but rather each has to fight for his or her own place in the family.

L’Etang – Der Teich Wiener Festwochen (Foto: © Jean Louis Fernandez)

A sophisticated lighting strategy (Yves Godin) constantly bathes the room in different colours. This – just like the slowing down of the movements and the background sound – has an almost hallucinogenic effect. This creates an illusion in which one is not sure whether what one sees is actually happening or whether it is rather traumatic memory fragments of Fritz. This is suggested by the last image, in which the mother – as at the beginning – enters the room in a threatening manner. The endless loop is opened, the horror to which Fritz is exposed seems to have no end.

The venue, the Jugendstiltheater am Steinhof, does the rest to further stimulate one’s own mental cinema. It is not only the memorial in front of the building that was erected for those children who were killed here in the area during the Nazi era. It is also the fact that one suddenly begins to suspect that only a few metres from the theatre there could be people who have to be treated here because of traumatic events in childhood and adolescence. The horror that is shown here on stage, it takes place in real life and spills out directly into the immediate environment. That it is not an individual fate that Fritz suffers is pointed out by the seven dolls, a fact that is only understood in retrospect. One after the other, they were carried from the stage to the offstage by a man in black leather gloves, completely emotionless. The lifting up of the lifeless bodies, as if they were heavy sacks, but also the black leather gloves, illustrate the power imbalance between the man and the young people.

Moments of disturbance, which repeatedly raise uncertainties in understanding what has just been shown, at the same time allow for highly empathetic moments of identification with Fritz. There is nothing in his world that he can hold on to, but much that deeply unbalances him. Adèle Haenel’s intense acting and the fact that the youth ultimately descends into madness also contribute enormously to this.

L’ étang / the pond can be experienced on several levels. One can get involved with the piece exclusively emotionally and trace what the images, texts, music and sound do in oneself. But you can also analyse the scenes afterwards and come to the conclusion that something is being shown here that is not being talked about because such a thing “should not be”. Giséle Vienne succeeded in creating a work that is at the height of contemporary theatre aesthetics and impresses with intelligent direction and outstanding acting performances.

The article was automatically translated with the help of deepl.com.

At the breaking point between the old and the new

by Michaela Preiner | May 28, 2022 | 2021, 2021, Theatre, Wiener Festwochen, Wiener Festwochen

Tubular steel chairs with plastic meshes are lined up in rows on the stage of Hall E in the MuseumsQuartier, as if waiting for an audience. On the right wall are massive, multi-armed lamp constructions, fitted with crystal chandeliers from the past 200 years. From the Biedermeier chandelier to a spherical design variant of our days, everything is represented. Like heavy fruit, they hang from artificial branches, but also draw attention to the fact that the rule on the Russian estate where Anton Chekhov’s “Cherry Orchard” takes place has lasted for several generations.

In the right background of the stage, a small group of people is gathered. It is the ensemble of director Tiago Rodrigues, who has gathered the actors and actresses from various European countries for his production of the Russian stage classic. “It’s the first time I’ve chosen the ensemble to play very specific roles,” the future director of the Avignon Festival explained at the audience discussion following the premiere. In 2021, the premiere took place in Avignon, and the Wiener Festwochen is one of a total of ten other cooperation partners that will still show the play. The photos shown here are from the Avignon setting. However, the stage in the Museumsquartier had a completely different effect, not only in terms of lighting, but primarily because of the modern ambience. In his previous works, three of which have been presented at the Vienna Festival in recent years, the Portuguese director had developed the roles together with the ensemble. Originally, he wanted to see how he could deal with Chekhov, but it soon became clear to him that not a single sentence should be different from the way the writer had formulated them. “Everything is perfect about the text, it would be presumptuous to add or omit anything” – was his further comment.

Starting with his desired cast, the lady of the manor Lioubov, for whom he was able to win Isabelle Huppert, he formed a diverse team around her with some People of Colour. However, according to Rodrigues, this was not connected with any dramaturgical idea. However, he and the ensemble only realised during rehearsals that this opened up a special window of interpretation at a certain point.

The stage set by Fernando Ribeiro remains the same throughout the play, but is rearranged and moved around as time goes on. Soon the chairs are arranged into a large pile of chairs – symbolic of the changes taking place in the manor house, around which the beautiful cherry orchard is situated. In this play, Chekhov described the downfall of the feudal era with its serfdom and the emergence of a new system in which those with luck and ability can free themselves from poverty. This upheaval, which completely shifted the social system, is effectively made visible by Ribeiro. In the end, the large lamp constructs will no longer be placed along the right side of the stage, but along the left side, and there will no longer be a chair in its centre. The power that shifted from the political right to the left after the tsarist rule in Russia and at the same time the emptiness of a social order that first had to be filled – all this resonates grandly in this stage design.

At the beginning of the evening, however, Adama Diop introduces Chekhov’s play with a few words and briefly tells us about its genesis. He then brilliantly embodies the role of Lopakhine, the man whose parents and grandparents were still serfs on the Lioubov estate. Having become wealthy, it is he who will finally buy it at auction. The breaking of the “fourth wall” is not only noticeable at the beginning of the performance. Many of the monologues are addressed by the actors and actresses not to their personal counterparts but directly to the audience. Before the beginning of the fourth act, Diop does this again to note that the play could actually have ended at this point – after the estate was auctioned off. In fact, Chekhov added the last act later, because he did not want “Cherry Orchard” to be understood as a drama, but as a tragicomedy. Thus, after the great financial, but also psychological, crash that hit all the people who had been connected with the estate, he pacified the events with a farewell scene. Although the future of all those involved is uncertain, everyone nevertheless sets off in hope and scatters to the winds. Lioubov, who has to realise that the carefree time of spending money is over for her once and for all and that her parental home is lost, and the old servant Firs, who has lost his purpose in life, serving, and is now left behind alone, are the only ones who no longer have a glimmer of hope.

“Der Kirschgarten” Wiener Festwocen (Foto: © Christophe Raynaud de Lage / Festival d’Avignon)

Tiago Rodrigues adds another monumental musical layer to the action, cleverly separating the individual scenes from each other and, in some cases, underscoring them. Manuela Azevedo and Hélder Gonçales rock not only the stage but the hall with a stage piano, drum sounds and an electric guitar, at the same time shifting the narrative into the present. The director places the characters sharply on the edge of a commedia dell’arte manner. When they are happy, they are out of control, jumping, leaping and cheering. Great gestures, but also strong, emotional moments, which Isabelle Huppert in particular knows how to contribute with bravura, characterise this play. It is fascinating to see how she manages to change in an instant from an overexcited, fun-loving woman to one deeply grieving for her son. This strongly felt emotion is immediately transmitted to the audience and at the same time makes it clear with what high acting skill Huppert is acting here.

She is matched by Marcel Bozonnet, who plays the old servant Firs. Dressed like Freddie Frinton as the servant in the world-famous dinner-for-one sketch and also acting with the latter’s clumsy habitus, he touches the audience from the first to the last performance. Adama Diop’s skin colour alone finally creates the turning point in the interpretation that allows the play to be seen from a completely new angle. Torn between rage and anger resulting from the history of his family and the new role as landowner, which he cannot yet really grasp, he experiences psychological ups and downs, which he is not really able to cope with. His furious justification of the purchase of the estate resonates enormously with the colonial brute force from whose after-effects most of the former European colonies are still suffering today.

This interpretive approach – even if it was not originally intended – cannot be disregarded in the critical examination of the production. It resonates strongly, brought about by our zeitgeist, in which art, above all, has an important contribution to make in coming to terms with these criminal, inhuman and exploitative events. It is well known that it is always the spectacles of the viewers themselves that contribute to judging events individually. However, the fact that diverse ensembles are still the exception in theatres in Austria strongly contributes to this view. If the way a play is viewed can be given a new twist simply by the colour of an actor’s skin, one may conclude how great the need is to catch up in terms of diversity on our stages.

Isabel Abreu, Tom Adjibi, Nadim Ahmed, Suzanne Aubert, Océane Caïraty, Alex Descas, David Geselson, Grégoire Monsaingeon as well as Alison Valence – without exception, they are all to be mentioned for the intense portrayal of their roles.

The adherence to Chekhov’s original text, the addition of a strong musical component, an ensemble in which each and every individual was more than convincing, and the fact that the social upheaval presented can easily be transferred to our times, distinguish this production as a very memorable one.

This text has been automatically translated by deepl.com

A lot of head, not much heart

by Michaela Preiner | May 25, 2022 | 2021, Theatre, Wiener Festwochen

“Una imagen interior” by the Spanish theatre duo El Conde de Torrefiel, shown as part of the Vienna Festival at the Museumsquartier, is one of those rare productions in contemporary off-mainstream theatre that makes critics ask, like Hans Moser as a servant, “How do I do this one? Because no matter how you look at it, it is not easy to really do justice to the play.

The content is quickly recounted. During a visit to the Natural History Museum, which is marked on the stage, the first-person narrator deals extensively with the reproduction of a prehistoric cave painting. The text that forms in the art-viewing head is made visible to the audience by means of illuminated writing in English and German. The actors on stage were partly recruited from the Viennese population. None of them, not even the ensemble itself, has to speak anything. Nor do they dance. Like dream figures, they walk across the stage in a total of three scenes – each with different lighting – occasionally moving their lips.

At the beginning, a large painting on plastic, painted in the best drip-painting manner à la Jackson Pollock, is pulled up from the floor so that it is clearly visible filling the stage. It is a symbolic substitute for the prehistoric artefact that becomes the starting point for the intrinsic reflections. It can be seen from the lines that the painting surface has been folded up after the paint has been applied to create a mirrored shape. Women and men walk past it or stop in front of it to take a closer look. The soundtrack indicates that it was recorded in a large, echoing room, like those in the big museums on the Ring.

After a long enumeration of contemporary philosophical contributions to the subject of reality, as well as their perception and questioning, there is a change to a supermarket ambience. There, the shoppers stroll along imaginary shelves and talk to each other at most when they apparently cannot find a product.

During this defile, the realisation develops that man can only be brought back to his original existence beyond technical civilisation by dropping a bomb. A realisation that will culminate in an idealised Rousseauian idea of happiness at the end of the play. For Tanya Beyeler and Pablo Gisbert, the masterminds of El Conde de Torrefiel, back to nature apparently means back to a humanity in which it is once again worthwhile to live in a happy community.

But until this promise of salvation becomes clear to the audience, loud sound recordings with such rhythmic bass vibrations are played in a dystopian scenic arrangement that these vibrations, which are transmitted to the tiers of seats, become physically palpable. The clanging and crashing, the roaring and pounding imitates an apocalyptic moment that precedes the restored happiness on earth. It is amplified with a bright spotlight that dazzles into the audience, so that no visual stimulus can disturb the auditory monster action during the sound collage.

Una Imagen interior (Foto: Nurith Wagner-Strauss)

Gone, however, are the days when consumerists indulged in the shopping frenzy on their own. If the supermarket trolley-pushing scene before seemed endless, the post-apocalyptic one after that is similar. The survivors of the GAU either come together in a small group to talk to each other or to indulge in minimal, dancing movements, or they camp around an artificial, electrified fireplace. All back to the beginning, so to speak. Only an implied “dance around a golden calf” – in the form of a large gold lump, points out that even after a process of near extinction, man’s desires will not change.

That the end of the production would end with a painting of a white plastic tarpaulin was clear from that moment when it was spread out on the floor. The coloured on-the-canvas dripping becomes a communal experience in which instructions are given by hand signals or approval is given by nodding one’s head. Even the folding up to create the mirror effect that the first picture presented had been, not to be missed.

So much for the retelling part of “And imagen interior” – the picture inside.

The production gave the impression that reaching into the magic box of post-dramatic theatre only worked to a limited extent in this play development with a regional reference. There was too much of an effort to try and cramp all the ingredients of success that make up such a format. The feeling arose that the approach was that of a tally list to be worked through, such as: Local audience participation – we have; involvement of a well-known local cultural institution – we have; embedding our ideas in a pseudo-scientific framework – we have; borderline between theatrical events and musical performance – we have; audience irritation (note: supposed audience irritation) through backlighting – we have. But in all this, we simply forgot what really makes good theatre: to convey a story or ideas to the audience in such a way that they are emotionally touched. Conclusion: More heart and less head would have done the performance just as much good as the omission of a clichéd, childish idea of a happy life together in this world, in a supposed state of nature.

The fact that there is no text printed in the audience flyer under the motto ‘paperless read on!’ but only a QR code from which one can find a text, a portrait of the group, as well as a short video interview, is hopefully the exception and not the rule for future programme notes.

The article was translated automatically with deepl.com

Everything has already been there and yet much that is new

by Elisabeth Ritonja | May 24, 2022 | 2021, Theatre

Michael Köhlmeier became known in the German-speaking world not only for his novels, but mainly for his personally coloured stories about Greek mythology. The Schauspielhaus in Graz invited him to give a reading on this very topic. The author and multi-creative, even song lyrics and compositions come from his pen, told about the origin of the Greek gods and their world in Olympus up to the creation of mankind and the beginning of the Trojan War.

Those who know his CDs on the subject, which he recorded more than 20 years ago, may have been a little surprised. Köhlmeier presented the Greek mythology in a highly amusing conversational tone with many finesses that make a good narrator. In just a few words, he achieved very lively characterisations of the gods and humans, which he sometimes also endowed with a habitus typical of them. That he described Zeuss as a particularly good lover, constantly on the lookout for new adventures, was obvious and handed down over thousands of years. Peleus, the later husband of the sea nymph Thetis, however, he characterised with the remark that the latter was very fond of saying “yes!”. While the audience smiled at this, they did not yet know that they would later be grateful to the narrator for this “yes! At that point, namely, when after countless enumerations of the gods his name came up again and the great pondering began as to who this Peleus had been after all. “You remember, that’s the one who always said ‘yes’,” Köhlmeier skilfully jogged many a memory. This is just one of many examples of how well he knows his narrative craft.

Along the genesis of the gods, one also learned all kinds of interesting cultural-historical facts, such as the invention of the guitar by Hermes, who achieved this feat as an infant on his first day of life. Or also that the artists simply “lied” in their depiction of Leda and the swan. Leda had taken the form of a goose during her union with Zeuss, but this is not visible in the paintings. One could marvel at the preservative power of divine armpit sweat just as much as at an original action by Odysseus, who hoped that he would not have to go to war with it. The statement that this made him the first conscientious objector in history was, like so many humorous comparisons, very well received by the audience.

In addition to all the sometimes meandering life stories and incidents, the author also shared his personal thoughts on how this mythology came to be. He pointed out that this storytelling, which took place from generation to generation, began when there was no rule-of-law structure. Also interesting was his idea that these narratives could also relieve people of a burden. To learn that one’s fate is not unique in this world, that acts such as murder and manslaughter, adultery and betrayal or character traits such as cowardice and arrogance, exuberant anger and vanity and all the resulting suffering have always existed, meant a relieving realisation for many people.

The idea of taking Michael Köhlmeier on stage in Graz, someone whose name has charisma beyond the theatre scene, was rewarded with a very well sold house. A clever move at a time when some audiences are still hesitant to accept live cultural offerings.

Michael Köhlmeier filled the Graz Schauspielhaus with his “Evening of Greek Mythology”. A good idea to get still hesitant audiences back into the house after the pandemic-related break.