Fritz Bennewitz in India: Intercultural Theatre with Brecht and Shakespeare by Joerg Esleben (review)

As globalization has accelerated, so has the prevalence of intercultural theatre that seeks to foster equitable world communication. At first glance, one is perhaps surprised to find the East German director Fritz Bennewitz (1926–95) mentioned alongside Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Eugenio Barba, and other greats of intercultural theatre. Joerg Esleben’s book, however, firmly justifies Bennewitz’s central role in this discussion. From 1970 to 1994, Bennewitz both directed theatre productions by Brecht, Shakespeare, Goethe, Chekhov, and Volker Braun in India and staged numerous Indian works at the Berliner Festtage. His productions received critical acclaim, he worked closely with top Indian directors, he was frequently invited to Indian arts institutions to speak, and he is the only German to have won the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, the highest Indian award given to practising artists. Always ready to challenge conventional cultural assumptions, he would also become the first director to stage an American production of Faust with African-American and Latino actors in New York City. Postunification Western bias has tended to marginalize Bennewitz as an uncritical party member who reaped the rewards of his status and ignored socialist repression while travelling the world. The present volume overcomes this bias as it recognizes Bennewitz as a “seminal but neglected figure” (19) and presents his momentous contribution to intercultural theatre through a collection of essays that includes many of Bennewitz’s own published and unpublished writings alongside reflections by Bennewitz’s international collaborators and scholars of Bennewitz’s work.

The book’s first part is organized chronologically and structured around Bennewitz’s major theatre projects in India. Transcribing excerpts from materials from the Bennewitz Archiv in Leipzig, the main focus is on Bennewitz’s correspondence, none of which has appeared in print before. About half of the book consists of English translations of his letters to his confidante, Waltraut Mertes. Esleben also offers historical and conceptual frames for the letters throughout the book, moving smoothly from descriptions of central events in East German history, to excerpts from Bennewitz’s articles in the journal Theater der Zeit, to letters recounting the everyday details of rehearsals in Mumbai, Bhopal, and many other cities. The excerpts here represent about 5% of Bennewitz’s thousands of pages of correspondence; Esleben’s selections describe Bennewitz’s theatre work in India, contain interpretations of dramas, focus on Indian acting styles, reflect on intercultural theatre, and react to German reunification. Together, these letters portray Bennewitz’s practical achievements, which also include such feats as directing works in multiple languages (he directed in twelve languages over the course of his career), staging plays in as little as four weeks with unpaid actors, and balancing his roles as director with his role as a formal representative of the German Democratic Republic. Over twenty black-and-white photographs and sketches of Bennewitz in action accompany the letters, reflecting his full immersion in Indian culture and portraying his physical engagement in rehearsal.

As averse as he is to theory, Bennewitz makes significant theoretical and practical contributions to dialogues surrounding intercultural theatre. It should be noted that throughout the book Esleben retains the term intercultural despite its recent ambivalent connotations, in an effort to reclaim the word for “other, more equitable, theatrical exchanges” (14) as Bennewitz envisions them. Bennewitz calls most existing intercultural theatre “neo-colonialism in the mask of the friend of culture” (139). Instead of imposing European styles or striving for the unattainable conception of cosmopolitan “world culture” (188) that he sees in the work of Eugenio Barba, Bennewitz recognizes a humanity that “precisely lies in how we differ from each other” (110). His method, centred around the processes of “adaptation” and “integration,” places emphasis on culturally sensitive engagement and continued dialectical development in every aspect of production. The director arrives with what he calls a “first offering,” but the participants continue to adapt the...