Forgetting HistoryReport from Berlin/Theatertreffen 2018

Even as it re-emerges as the capital of reunited Germany and as an international hub of contemporary culture, Berlin has taken pains to preserve and commemorate its traumatic history. The ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche on the Kurfürstendamm display the devastation of war. In a project begun by Gunter Demnig in 1992, the Stolpersteine, small brass memorials with the names and ultimate fates of victims of the Holocaust and other Nazi violence, are inlaid in front of the homes in which the victims had lived in Berlin. The Jewish Museum, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Wall Museum, the City Museum Berlin, the DDR Museum, Christian Boltanski's Missing House, and countless other sites insist upon historical memory.

Having learned the hard way, the Germans are exceptionally aware of history. Still, in the middle of attending Theatertreffen 2018 (the fifty-fifth roundup of the ten best German-language theatre productions of the past year, which are restaged in Berlin for the festival), I was startled to see on German television a report about the Alternative für Deutschland, the neo-fascist political party that gained representation in the Bundestag in the 2017 election (a fact I had managed to forget). When I studied in Germany in the 1980s, the word "alternative" was most associated with the "alternative Szene," a term that I understood to encompass all kinds of experimental lifestyles and movements unleashed by the 1960s. The TV report on the AfD was respectful, though unafraid to specify the party's extreme views and to detail the dark histories of some of its members. The show concluded with the reassurance that the AfD was interested in using its new position to provoke, not to rule.

I could not help but view the work that I saw in a week of Theatertreffen 2018 against the foreboding background of today's treacherous politics. Each of the selections that I attended spoke, often nakedly, to the urgent issues of these times.

Elfriede Jelinek, Am Königsweg [On the King's Way], directed by Falk Richter, at Deutsches Hamburg. Actors: Idil Baydar, Anne Müller, Benny Claessens, Frank Willens. Photo: © Arno Declair.

Courtesy Theatertreffen 2018/Berliner Festspiele.

Didier Eribon, Rückkehr nach Reims [Return to Reims], adapted and directed by Thomas Ostermeier, at Schaubühne Berlin. Actor: Nina Hoss. Photo: © Arno Declair.

Courtesy Theatertreffen 2018/

Berliner Festspiele.

Elfriede Jelinek's Am Königsweg [On the King's Way] from the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg satirized Trump by way of Oedipus: blindness all around, the king and his clueless subjects. Frank Castorf's six-and-a-half-hour Faust adaptation transposed Goethe's rambling masterpiece to the French/Algerian conflict, offering anarchy in the face of the arrogance of colonialism, racism, and nationalism. Castorf's ouster from his post as Intendant of the Volksbühne, where Faust was his last production, reflected a different kind of political fault line. Thomas Ostermeier's adaptation of Didier Eribon's Rückkehr nach Reims [Return to Reims] at the Schaubühne quietly opened a window into the discontent among the working class in France, in which Eribon was raised and from which he fled; returning later in life, he finds that the Communist Party which dominated local politics among the workers in his youth has yielded to Marine Le Pen's National Front. The ever-ready reminder of the damage done by warfare, The Trojan Women in a headphones-only adaptation by Schauspielhaus Zürich called BEUTE FRAUEN KRIEG [SPOILS WOMEN WAR], sends the widowed women of Troy on the boats to Greece and folds in Iphigenia at Aulis to emphasize the sacrifices of women in war.

In much of her work, Elfriede Jelinek exposes the not-so-latent fascism of her fellow Austrians. In her Trump satire, Am Königsweg, though she never names him, the onstage video and many other clues in the production make no mystery of her target, transformed into an evil fairytale king (Benny Claessens), modeled somewhat...