Festivals

Special Reports Berlin Theatertreffen 1978 Gautam Dasgupta Bonnie Marranca Berlin played host (May 13-June 4) to the ten best German productions of the season during the Berlin Theatertreffen. Now in its fourteenth year, this festival is the resultof anarduous selection process by a jury comprised of Germany's eminent theatre critics and scholars dedicated to acknowledging the year's best in German playwriting, stagecraft, and directorial talent. Main festival events were housed at three of Berlin's most prestigious theatres-the Schiller Theater, the Freie Volksbtihne (originally designed for Erwin Piscator), and the Schaubilhne am Halleschen Ufer. In addition, there was a Rahmenprogramm, held at some of the smaller theatres, galleries, and museum spaces around town, which featured international theatre groups, dance performances, cabaret and music events, and play readings. While the festival proper was drawn from the generously subsidized state theatres, the Rahmenprogramm spotlighted what the Germans refer to as "free" theatres. Similar to off and off-off Broadway, this cluster of fringe activities offers an aesthetic and political alternative to establishment theatre. In recent years, the German theatre has recieved considerable praise for the ingenuity of its staging and the emergence of provocative young playwrights. The Theatertreffen, however, is a far more conservative affair, with many of the plays chosen from the classical repertoire-Goethe, Schiller and Kleist. Despite the attack on play selection by some theatre-goers in Berlin, the productions were unorthodox, to say the least. It is one of the curious facts about German theatre that directors deliberately seek out unconventional staging methods to suggest new political interpretations of classical texts and to create a dialectic with previous stagings of the same plays. It is this historic sense that creates controversy among Berliners; theatre is an important part of their lives, and all criticism is inevitably measured within a historical discourse. Thus, for an outsider , it may seem strange that director Claus Peymann's use of 108 Abisag TUlman ROTTER - EIN MARCHEN AUS DEUTSCHLAND Dir: Christof Nei; Sets: Karl-Ernest Herrmann Wurttembergische Staatstheater, Stuttgart prose (instead of verse) in Goethe's Iphigeniain Tauris was sufficient reason for an outcry. It was a first with this play (Goethe's first two drafts were in prose), but nonetheless, coming in 1978, this gesture hardly seems radical. Peymann's Iphigenia immediately set the tone for the didacticism so prevalent in German theatre. Iphegenia, decked in white overalls to resemble a teacher more than a princess, wandered in out of a makeshift temple that included a tape recorder and a typewriter. Her lines, spoken directly and in close proximity to the audience, added to her professorial air. Occasionally, she scribbled the more significant words of her text-"Fate," "Destiny"-on a blackboard which faced the auditorium. The irritable bank of flourescent lights (apparently a fad, judging from the other productions ) created a classroom atmosphere for a play that has barbarismn as one of its themes. According to Peymann, the psychological aspect of the story, which deals with Iphegenia's desire to escape from her benefactor, King Thoas, and her love for the king was made to correspond to the situation of a divided Germany . Despite this ambitious concern, the production-with one foot in ritual, the other in contemporary Realpolitik-lacked an 109 organic thrust. The four-hour long production (this was commonplace for festival entries) also reflected a tendency toward over-conceptualization which characterized all the productions in general. Schiller's Love and Intriguewas riddled with pedanticism, this time spilling out into the lobby where audiences were greeted with pointer-wielding members of the cast offering "lectures," through audio-visual means, on Schiller's life and times. Inside the auditorium, the proceedings were just as academic. Roland Schafer's production opened with loud, cacaphonic sounds that resembled radio static; this noise gradually gave way to discernible dialogue from the text. If this was a gesture to tune us in to Schillerian times, it hardly seemed worth the effort, especially after the scenes in the lobby. Luckily, Schiller's text escaped unharmed, and the acting at times attained a pleasant sincerity not often found in other productions. But the play's denunciation of feudalism was realized through grotesquely...