Possibility and Form in Max Frisch's Biography: A Game

Possibility and Form in Max Frisch's Biography: A Game PETER RUPPERT • MAX FRISCH'S MOST RECENT PLAY, Biography: A Game (1967), has puzzled critics because it seems to contradict the dramaturgy according to which it was written. Frisch indicated the principles of his new dramaturgy, "Variation Theatre" or "Theatre of Possibility," as early as his Schiller Prize speech (1965) and established these principles clearly in his correspondence with Walter Hollerer (1969).1 The principles are I) that contemporary drama should reflect the contemporary consciousness of the open possibilities, or open-endedness, of existence; 2) that "Theatre of Imitation"2 - theatre that pretends to copy "reality," presenting a predigested interpretation of reality with an underlying persuasiveness that the events presented could have happened in no other way - falsifies experience and is inauthentic theatre; and 3) that what is needed is a theatre not of fate (peripetie), but of possibility. Frisch sought in Biography to present a drama based on this dramaturgy, a drama that would be like a rehearsal in that it presented no final form for the actions considered, but a series of variations of action, of variant possibilities all equally plausible. The view that life presents, not a fated course of events, but a series of possibilities, is basically an existential view. Thus, possibility signifies freedom, and the individual freely creates a large measure of his reality by the possibilities he actualizes. To recognize possibilities in human existence without this concomitant freedom is to recognize a kind of possibility that is void of human content or meaning - the possibilities of various kinds of cell division, perhaps, or something more fortuitous. 349 350 PETER RUPPERT Without recognizing the freedom to choose among possibilities, one recognizes in possibility a quantity as iron-clad as necessity, the opposite of existential freedom and responsibility for oneself. Professor Kiirmann (in German, "man of choice"), the protagonist of Biography, is concerned, both as a scientist and as a man, about the nature of possibility. His fame as a scientist is based on his discovery (through a purely chance event in an experiment with seagulls) of the "Kiirmann reflex," a discovery later proved untenable. Its effect is that Kiirmann becomes convinced that a life is shaped by random events, that chance plays the key role in the possibilities an individual realizes in his life. This is a worldview Kiirmann holds tenaciously, for it explains the unhappiness he has created for himself in perpetuating a bad marriage , and in other aspects and events of his life. The play provides him with an opportunity to revise his biography, to go back over occasions in his life and choose differently. But, although Kiirmann insists that he wants to change certain events in his life (particularly his meeting with Antoinette, his wife, in order to avoid their marriage), he repeats the same behavior over and over again. This apparent demonstration of necessity rather than freedom has generally led critics to the conclusion that the play is inconsistent with its dramaturgical premises. But the fact is that the play does present possibilities and freedom. As the Recorder, a Brechtian-type narrator, tells Kiirmann, "what you can choose is your own behavior."3 Indeed, as Frisch observes in the play's introductory "Note," the play presents even greater possibilities than life itself permits since it allows the protagonist "to repeat, to tryout, to change" events that are already past.4 This is the "game-like" quality of the play; it is "like a chess-game played backwards."5 Yet, at each moment, Kiirmann is allowed to choose again, and at the next moment to tryout still another choice in the same situation. Frisch intended to present a sense of the open-endedness of existence . He writes of Kiirmann, "no scene fits him in such a way that it might not also have been different. He alone cannot be different." (Author 's Note) The Recorder defines the limits of Kiirmann's "self' that cannot be altered: You have permission to choose again, but with the intelligence you have. That is a given fact. You can train it differently. You're free to do that. You can ask it for advice when you...