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Photos of »Idioten« after Lars von Trier, directed by Kirill Serebrennikov © Gianmarco Bresadola

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When Humour Is Corrosive: A Play That Won’t Change the World

by Joseph Pearson

With the final weekend of the F.I.N.D. festival ahead, I met the director, Marco Layera, of the Chilean La Re-sentida theatre group, to speak about his play »Tratando de hacer una obra que cambie el mundo« (Trying to Create a Play That Will Change the World). The work is about a group of idealistic actors, who go underground to work in splendid isolation. They believe they will create a theatrical masterwork that will change society. The problem is that, when they are cut off from the world, a transformative government comes to power that abolishes social injustice. What role is left then for their play? Layera’s work is a searing critique of political theatre.

Joseph Pearson: Why did you decide to produce a play on this topic?

Marco Layera: I was inspired by the play »The Just Assassins« (Les Justes) by Albert Camus. That play is about a subversive group that plans a terrorist act against a Prince. We started working on it, but as we rehearsed it, we found it was naïve to do the play too literally and historically. We started searching for a way to make the story more contemporary and concrete, in relation to our own times and our generation. So we brought it down to earth, changed it to a group of actors, who are also collaborating and working together almost like a group of terrorists. Instead of making a bomb, we are making a play. To do this, we needed to isolate ourselves from society. This is a metaphor and a critique of art: if we are isolated from society, enclosed in a basement, how can we change reality? We come from a tradition in Chile of socially engaged art and theatre, and here we question that tradition. We ask ourselves – and this is ongoing in the play – whether political theatre is useful. Are we useful? Or is this just for a group of snobs: the audience who comes and claps.

Why do you choose to approach the subject through comedy?

Because we are from a theatrical tradition that is very dense and serious. I think there are other tools that are more corrosive: like humour, sarcasm, absurdity. These tools are much more powerful and corrosive than seriousness or straightforwardness. It is a good thing to laugh, and especially when someone realizes he is laughing about something that he shouldn’t be laughing about. This play is actually the »nicest« play we have. The other plays are more insolent. It’s not a dichotomy to laugh and seriously reflect on something.

What role has political theatre played in Chile, in the years since Pinochet?

During the dictatorship, theatre had a very important role in Chile. It was a space of resistance – everything that was done in the theatre was done against the dictatorship. What happened with the return of democracy is that the enemy became more ambiguous. It doesn’t have the name: »Pinochet«. There is a huge sense of emptiness. The new generations realize that the left-wing political group that recuperated democracy is now officialised. They turned their backs on everything we were taught, what we were supposed to do. They only administrated the leftovers of Pinochet. There is lots of disappointment with those people who made this pact with democracy who said a lot of things but when they came to power they did nothing. Now, theatre in Chile is able to critique that generation which overthrew the dictatorship and assumed power. Because the time for thinking about and recuperating democracy is past. Now we have to demand a real and true democracy that does not exist. The government that assumed power after the dictatorship was untouchable because they had done a good thing. Now, it’s been more than 20 years, so we can demand what they haven’t fulfilled. We are considered a very disappointed generation.

In what ways does your theatre engage with the disappointment?

The play is pessimistic. It starts with a premise, that we are part of the generation that hasn’t had a lot happen to it. Our rights are pretty much safe, we are not in a lot of danger, we have access to wealth, the internet, drug democracy. Nothing suppresses us too much. So we are a comfortable generation. There’s a line in the play that they left us »orphans, satisfied and living in a country that does not belong to us«. So, yes, there is disappointment and critique in the play. Not only regarding the political generation we are talking about, but also regarding the arts. We self-critique: what are we doing? It is very easy to talk about human misery and bad conditions in Berlin drinking champagne after the performance. I feel I am a coward. We are all cowards. If we were truly brave, we would be at the front-line fighting. Instead, we are here on a stage made of cardboard, where the bullets are fake. So today, to do art is almost to turn one’s back on the world’s problems. I recognize myself as very bourgeois. I don’t have the strength of my convictions, to fight on the street, or go to the south of Chile to fight for the native people, or to work in a local school. That would be more effective than what we are doing here.

If you are disappointed with what theatre can do, why is the audience there?

First, I am not anti-social. Or else I wouldn’t do theatre. What I am is disappointed about theatre. But it is the only thing I know how to do, medium-well. And I love what I do. That doesn’t mean that I am not conscious that what I do is not very useful, and doesn’t change the world. What I do think is that theatre has a power on self-reflection, and a subversive power that can be recuperated. The effect of theatre is very narrow, but I think we can broaden it. But maybe I am demanding too much from theatre.

If theatre cannot change the world, what can it do to be less narrow?

I believe that theatre is a space where you can transfigure and question reality, to construct and pose new questions, and those are questions that are not asked elsewhere. Planting that seed is interesting. I believe very much in the tool of active provocation, and to defend what someone does not think. So people do not agree with what I am saying. This generates a motor, something that is more interesting than having others agree with you. In that sense, it would be interesting to produce a show that questions the democratic system, knowing that the democratic system has been the best friend of neo-liberalism. These are interesting questions that can be posed in theatre. Because if you question democracy, you are a fascist. Just not when you do it in the theatre.

Dr. Joseph Pearson is a Canadian writer, historian and local expert on Berlin. He lectures at New York University Berlin and is the editor of the blog, The Needle: www.needleberlin.com. For professional inquiries please contact: [email protected] or [email protected].

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Photos of »Derretiré con un cerillo la nieve de un volcán« © Gianmarco Bresadola

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F.I.N.D. Day 1,2,3 © Gianmarco Bresadola

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Photos »This Grave is too small for me« © Gianmarco Bresadola

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Photos MEAT © Gianmarco Bresadola

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How to Melt an Ice Cap with a Match Mexico’s Incendiary Politics on Stage

by Joseph Pearson

It started when the directors, Luisa Pardo and Gabino Rodríguez, discovered an obscure political tract. »La revolucíon institucional« (1998) is an analysis of Mexico’s historic ruling party, the PRI, written by Natalia Valdez Tejeda, a woman from the conservative province of Michoacán. Shortly after its publication, Natalia disappeared. She has been missing for fourteen years.

»We found the book in a library in Xalapa, Veracruz. It is not an edited volume produced by a commercial publishing house. It is handmade and very small. We found it and then we started our research. It’s absolutely unknown«, says Gabino. Luisa adds, »That’s why we decided to re-edit the book.« The couple has since produced 3000 copies, adding dates and images.

I ask them whether the book has anything to do with Natalia’s disappearance, and Luisa replies: »Her family does not want to talk about this … it is not clear why she disappeared. On stage, we try to leave that in doubt. Natalia was a problematic person. I can understand her because Mexico is a very macho country. It is not easy for women to be critical and to act freely, at least in the working classes. Natalia was very critical inside her family and in the places where she worked. That’s why the disappearance is not clear, because she was problematic in many different places.«

The re-enactment of Natalia’s story on-stage personalizes a greater struggle – the story of Mexico’s PRI, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, a national State-unity institution with liberal tendencies. If you want to understand Mexican politics, then, you must understand the PRI and its journey through the twentieth century to today. Founded in 1929, and born of the Mexican Revolution, the PRI ruled Mexican history until its historic Presidential electoral defeat in 2000 by Vicente Fox, leading the conservative Christian PAN party (National Action Party). The PAN then ruled until its defeat in 2012, bringing the PRI back to power under the helm of President Enrique Peña Nieto. The PAN’s defeat followed a period of disappointment with rising violence accompanying Mexico’s war on drugs. The PRI, say Luisa and Gabino, provided a concept of political unity for Mexico’s diverse electorate that the other parties lacked.

The title of Luisa and Gabino’s play, »Derretiré con un cerillo la nieve de un volcán/I Melt the Snow of a Volcano with a Match« is a quote from Jorge Meixuerio, a PRI politician from Oaxaca, who penned it immediately before his 1943 electoral defeat and suicide. His death, he argued, was »mi último argumento«/»his last argument« against his political opponent whom he accused of fraud. He claimed that his chances of reversing the electoral decision were no greater than trying to melt an ice cap with a match. The title is playful, the circumstances tragic, and the historical parallel a complex meditation on the PRI’s recent return to leadership.

How then do the directors feel about the PRI’s contemporary politics? Gabino says, »The PRI’s outward image – because we don’t have a military dictatorship in Mexico like in many other Latin American countries – is one of harboring dissidents from other places. But within Mexico, the PRI is killing in the same way that the military does. The PRI always has two faces: on one hand the PRI is very paternalistic, invests a lot in culture – during the 20th Century they invested more than any other country in Latin America – but on the other hand, they do not give the people the freedom to say what they want in the country. There is always the smiling face, and the other face.«

The return of the PRI, and the positions of the other parties, is a source of disappointment for the directors, and this play reflects on that disappointment. Yet, at the same time they are encouraged by one aspect of the 2012 electoral reversal.

»The Yo Soy 132 student movement politicised many young people who were not into politics before. Now the movement is over, but it changed the perspective of how young people think politically. The good result of the election … was this movement that maybe can start changing things. Not as a movement, but as a changing of individual perspectives of how to deal with politics«, says Gabino.

The goal of the directors is to represent the history of the PRI and to reconstruct its history, on stage, also through the individuated perspective of Natalia’s story. Their role too, says Gabino, is to educate, and to educate themselves. From their critical hypothesis about the evils of the PRI, they have come to a more nuanced position.

»We are trying to do more of a reconstruction of the history than to judge it«, says Luisa. »At the beginning of our research, we were only thinking that the PRI is bad … But we recognize that the PRI developed a free education system, the health care system. You have big museums of archaeology and Mexican ethnicities. Travelling and comparing in Latin America, we realize that it’s true. The PRI is not only the bad things. Maybe this is what we are trying to do: to recognize the complexity of the party, because the PRI is the biggest institution of politics in Mexico. It is the school of politics. The PRI is at all levels of society: farmers, unions. Everything is related to the PRI.«

»I think that we have been raised in a society that likes to think of politics like football«, adds Gabino, »This is my team. But let’s try to think about what is really happening. We are trying to think about politics, not to be loyal to one party or the other.«

The current production of »Derretiré con un cerillo la nieve de un volcán«, which will premiere at the Schaubühne in the FIND festival on 8 April, is a heavy rewriting of a version performed in 2013 in Madrid and Brussels, and 30+ university performances in Mexico City and elsewhere in Mexico (»We thought the play was too ambiguous« says Luisa. »We are much happier now«, adds Gabino). They bring it to the stage with their company, Lagartijas tiradas al sol (Lizards lying in the sun).

I ask about how they work together and with their troop, and Luisa admits that, »we have a lot of differences. And we fight a lot. But this is something that is important to us. When we started to work together, we thought that the idea of one director, one writer, one big image of power in the theatre, which is vertical, is not a good idea. It is not a good way to live and to work. We prefer to argue and to discuss and to create some kind of democracy inside the company, some collective thinking. We think the difference between the ideas could result in a more complex process.« They strike me as exactly the kind of people who should be speaking out critically against the top-down politics that the PRI represents. But why should this be done on the stage?

Luisa replies, »Theatre is a way to understand life in a lot of ways because you need your body, your emotions, your intelligence. You need to work together with many people. That is why I keep working in theatre.« Gabino adds, »The idea is that we need to produce reality. Nobody, or few people, like reality for what it is. It is good to produce reality and use reality. It is not about how we produce fictions, but how we produce realities and live inside those realities we produce.«

Dr. Joseph Pearson is a Canadian writer, historian and local expert on Berlin. He lectures at New York University Berlin and is the editor of the blog, The Needle: www.needleberlin.com. For professional inquiries please contact: [email protected] or [email protected].

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The »Black Paintings« of Rodrigo García

by Joseph Pearson

Rodrigo García’s name blazed across the international press in late 2011 with his production »Golgotha Picnic«. You assume correctly if you think a theatre piece with this title didn’t meet with the Catholic Church’s approval. You all know Mr. Wilde’s famous utterance: »There’s only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about at all.« With »Golgotha Picnic«, García’s reputation as a blaspheming agent provocateur of the international theatre scene was well established. A French bishop, amidst protests in Toulouse before the Gallic premiere, criticised García’s depiction (to quote the BBC) of Christ as a »madman, dog, pyromaniac, messiah of AIDS, devil-whore, no better than a terrorist.« The production of extreme theatre arrived in Berlin the following year, for the 2012 Foreign Affairs Festival.

Now the Spanish-Argentinean (born in the slums of Buenos Aires province in 1964) is back in the German capital with a new play he wrote, and directs, called »Daisy« (the appellation of a prominent animal in the production). There’s a delirious aspect to this work: frenetic dances with pets and machines, an asphyxiation by motorcycle fumes, representations of Christ grinding his pelvis, masses of cockroaches. I should not forget the appearance of the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), remembered not only for his contributions to a dizzying number of fields, from mathematics to ethics, but of course also for his remarkable optimism.

Optimism is not one of »Daisy’s« obvious qualities. It is a piece about our fragility and our loneliness. Not just a simple malaise about humanity, but a primal scream in god’s absence. It will be no surprise that Rodrigo García is strongly influenced by Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, and the soulful black period paintings of Francisco Goya. For there is poetry here, when hooded figures huddle to the aching strains of a late Beethoven String Quartet.

García says in an interview, »The theme that runs through the whole piece is loneliness.« It is a loneliness accompanied by »pets, cockroaches, snails and especially words«. The animals are everywhere in this production, it’s a veritable bestiary. For García: they are »full of mystery: snails with their slowness, the bunker they carry on their backs. Turtles who remember the beginning of the universe. Cockroaches which are almost indestructible, which have survived every disaster.«

The focus on animals, their detachment, and our relationship and affinity to them in an often cruel and indifferent world provides a philosophical perspective when we pursue the other matter at the heart of »Daisy«, which is its critique of internet technologies.

»Just how evil are they?« you might ask García. And he replies, »Facebook is a social network that encourages outrageously anti-social behaviour, a false, calming sedative to help one endure loneliness. But instead of alleviating loneliness, it heightens it.«

So here too, the vanity of our struggle against our own solitude is illustrated by the indifference of internet applications, by Google which is nonetheless ever-present. Our language is meanwhile impoverished by emoticons.

And yet, still, somewhere in the background, you can hear the slow movement of the Beethoven Op. 132, the »Heiliger Dankgesang« – in a play that questions whether this thanksgiving is at all sufficient.

Dr. Joseph Pearson is a Canadian writer, historian and local expert on Berlin. He lectures at New York University Berlin and is the editor of the blog, The Needle: www.needleberlin.com. For professional inquiries please contact: [email protected] or [email protected].

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Caught in the Act: The Franz Ferdinand Assassination on Stage

by Joseph Pearson

We are at the hundred-year anniversary of the 1914 outbreak of the First World War. An avalanche of new scholarship has come from the historians examining causes and responsibility. Christopher Clark’s study The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 is Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bedside reading, or so she revealed a few months ago at a European summit. It emphasises the level of caprice, human error and emotion that brought Europe’s powers into confrontation. Regius Professor Richard Evans meanwhile tweets: »Surely we need to have a grown-up debate on the origins of World War I. Few signs yet that we will have one. Start with Serbia and Austria.«

So why not take their cues: bring the discussion to the human element, and to the interstices between Serbia and Austria: the city of Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. The intimate relationships of the perpetrators is the subject of the theatre play, This grave is too small for me (original title: Mali mi je ovaj grob), the directorial début of young artist Mina Salehpour in a workshop production at the Schaubühne (6, 13 and 16 April).

But first, before we interview the director, a little well-known history …

Gavrilo Princip, a 20 year-old Bosnian Serb, had his birthday just a few days before he assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie. He did not act alone but was part of the »Black Hand« group of terrorists. Their acts provoked what Evans calls a »panicked over-reaction« by Austria, with its invasion of Serbia. Germany armed Austria with a »blank cheque« of support, a foolish »leap into the dark« (to quote then German Chancellor von Bethmann Hollweg). Serbia’s long-time ally Russia quickly mobilized its troops. A jittery Germany then made a pre-emptive strike on France, via Belgium, violating her neutrality guaranteed by Britain. This brought the remaining Great Powers into a conflict that would leave a generation of men dead in the trenches: 37 million casualties including the wounded. It would too sow the dragon’s teeth for the war which impinges even more strongly on public memory than World War One – that is, of course, World War Two.

Those are the barebones of the macro story, of the onset of a brutal slaughter. But it’s a standard of historical inquiry to ask whether individuals or collective movements affect more history’s turning points. To radicalise that inquiry, why not bring it down to a representation of the everyday lives of those young people who committed the assassination that was the pretext for everything that followed? We are proposing an Alltagsgeschichte, or history from below, of individuals known as terrorists who ignited an international conflagration.

This is the subject of Biljana Srbljanović’s play This grave is too small for me, which premiered in German last year in Vienna. Born in 1970, Srbljanović is Serbia’s most famous contemporary playwright. Her work has been translated into 25 languages and performed internationally. She is a controversial figure at home, a long-time and early critic of Serbian nationalism. Her Belgrade Trilogy (premiered 1997) explored how the recent Balkan Wars tore apart society. Another piece, Pad / The Fall was a scathing critique of the Serb leader implicated in those wars, Slobodan Milosević. She is not an individual whose political commentary remains on the stage. She has been active in the Liberal Democratic Party and was a candidate as Mayor of Belgrade as the party’s candidate.

Mina Salehpour is the other important character in bringing This grave is too small for me to the Berlin stage, as director. Born in Teheran, Iran, in 1985, she worked as a direction assistant at the Schauspiel Frankfurt (2007–09) and in Hannover (2010) before becoming a freelance director. In Berlin, she can be found working with the GRIPS theatre (David Gieselmanns’ play Über Jungs) for which she won recognition from »Theater Heute« as best young artist.

It is with her that I had an enlightening conversation about risk-taking and humour, when approaching a tough subject from the perspective of young people who will start a war.

Joseph Pearson: How important is it that this play is set in 1914?

Mina Salehpour: The anniversary is of course extremely important … but we try to put this play in a timeless space. We don’t have historical costumes or a historical setting. We only have people who are together performing the text. The decision was not to tell the story determined by a historical time period, but rather to show that, often, terrorist attacks by young people can lead to wars.

When looking for causes of these wars, to what extent does the private life of individuals matter?

I think it always matters even more than the political aspects. That is what so interesting about this play, because it is written – and please don’t laugh at me – a little bit like an American sit-com. You see young people hanging out together. One of them says I want to do something really big, I want to shoot at least one person …

How innocent are these young people then?

When I look back to my teenage years [in Germany], I can say that they were innocent. But if you look, for example, at Iran, and to my relatives there, if they talk about revolutionary activities it is a dangerous thing. The talking, behaviour, appears naïve, innocent and childish, but the consequences are not. And in this play, you can see that the idea to start a revolution is innocent, but the consequences are really difficult for our protagonists, because they all die.

How was your sensitivity to politics cultivated through an Iranian family experience?

It had a huge impact, we cannot sit at the table without talking about the revolution. My mother always says, if something goes wrong – if she’s making a cake, for example, and it burns – »Oh my god, the revolution!«

Is there an aesthetic vision in your work that you keep coming back to?

Yes, always. I am always talking about what you call in German the Fallhöhe [height from which you fall] – it’s a really important word in German theatre. I always try to begin with a burst of laughter, to have comic relief, and big acting. I really like a play to be fast, to start fast, funny and high. And then, in special moments, it falls deep into the emotional aspects. If this works out, my job is done. Some people say you cannot talk about serious topics like immigration and laugh about it, but I don’t think so. People who know my work know it’s comic ... The first part of this play is fast, and the second part is sad and serious, because they are in prison and they are going to die. So the Fallhöhe is written into the text.

So will this concept work in this play?

I think it’s going to be great. Every day I go to the rehearsal, I think, they only need to trust me. Because when I come to a new theatre, I explain myself, and there’s the big question mark among the actors, asking: are you really serious that we can do things like that, and it won’t be funny in a »bad way«. There’s a German word I love, it’s albern [silly]. Of course it is. It’s important it’s that way … People like Monty Python have shown that you can talk about serious topics in this way. It’s an experience to do it in one of the best theatres in Germany. So let’s see if it works.

How would you describe your sense of humour?

It’s a mixture: because I’m a mixture. I don’t have a real nationality, of course I have passports, but everything is mixed up. And the influence of British and American humour is huge because I watch television every day, which is not so common for theatre people. But I do watch TV and I love it.

What does TV give you? What do you like about it?

Inspiration of course. I like it because it always has the goal to entertain, and I don’t think entertainment is a bad thing. Sometimes I get the idea from German theatre that entertainment is not good, that there always has to be a real big message to change society. But I think that you can do this in different ways, and I like humour and entertainment. Which is not the same thing as saying it is stupid. There is of course stupid entertainment as well, but we are doing a great job.

So this is the challenge, how to take this emphasis on humour and entertainment as a means to explore a serious topic. That must be tough.

But I think it’s a good way to do it, because if you have an audience that is watching and listening, not thinking about when it’s over, or what they don’t understand, and – oh my god, that I’m shocked –, then it’s maybe more effective because someone is listening to you … But I’m not talking about a humour that’s sensitive. I like rude humour, like Monty Python. I think, for example, Hitler is funny.

They say when you can start to laugh at people, you have defeated them.

We had a piece, my second work ever, »Fatima«, for young people. We had one scene where an actor showed up on stage for a costume party dressed like Hitler. The stage design was like you have in sit-coms, with a garden, a backyard, the living room, the sofa, the stairs, and the kitchen. Above, you had this applause sign. It was very funny when people entered the stage for the costume party, because the sign would signal for people to applaud. The last person to come on stage was Hitler, and it signalled applause. Everyone clapped, then stopped immediately.

They were caught in the act. That was really good.

Dr. Joseph Pearson is a Canadian writer, historian and local expert on Berlin. He lectures at New York University Berlin and is the editor of the blog, The Needle: www.needleberlin.com. For professional inquiries please contact: [email protected] or [email protected].

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That Bastard, Peter Pan: The Theatre of Angélica Liddell in Berlin

by Joseph Pearson

Angélica Liddell (1966, Figueras, Spain) is a poet, director and actress. Some have called her the Spanish Marina Abramović, but I think this a disservice to the peculiarity of her vision. How peculiar, you might ask? Expect multimedia productions that are hard to classify. Expect rage, expect misanthropy, expect female power breaking from gender stereotypes. One of a trilogy of productions set in China, Todo el cielo sobre la tierra (El sindrome de Wendy) / All the Sky above the Earth (The Wendy Syndrome) , is a guest production of her Madrid Atra Bilis company performing in Berlin on 9 and 10 April. In it, she takes on the combined roles of actress, director, writer and set designer.

In our interview, she told me, »As always, I start with what obsesses me in a particular moment, that which distresses me, that thing which I cannot resolve ... To endure the anguish that accompanies the loss of youth, I need to take poetic revenge, to fight the death wish by creating something, anything that has to do with beauty. To propose the disappearance of the world is the only way to survive the pain – to indulge in this feeling, to build on this feeling.«

In the Schaubühne press conference, director Thomas Ostermeier made a special point of telling the assembled journalists just how terrifying her performances, and electrifying monologues, can be. Certainly, the press describes her as a »radical performer«. Le Monde speaks of the »L'onde de choc« (wave of shock) felt in Avignon years later after her 2010 productions, El año de Ricardo and La casa de la fuerza. Meanwhile, Libération deliberates about how »she fascinates as much as she revolts« her audience.

How else to describe a piece set in both the streets of Shanghai (complete with waltzing to the music of Cho Young Wuk) and the Norwegian island Utøya where the Breivik massacre occurred (with the abandoned body of Wendy washing up on its shores). And how uncompromising, hardgoing, is it to draw parallels between that island, where the Norwegian Labour Party youth wing held its annual camp – where the mass murder of almost a hundred, mostly under 18-year olds in July 2011, occurred – and the island of Neverland in Scottish children’s novelist J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up (1911). Yes, these Nordic children will never grow up.

These are the topoi for two interrelated and gender-specific syndromes inspired by the eponymous children’s book: the Peter Pan Syndrome, the immature and cavalier instincts of men who act like boys; and the Wendy Syndrome, the overprotective mothering instinct that results from fear of abandonment. They are intertwined because those coddling Wendy Darlings – who do anything, however degrading, to keep their men, especially as the onset of age saps their beauty – are the agents that keep those very little boys from growing up.

Liddell tells me, »Both syndromes are complementary. Peter abuses Wendy’s servitude and sense of terror. The defect of Wendy feeds back unconsciously and capriciously all the more to Peter’s. However, Wendy assumes a gender role that I hate, the role of the mother, absolutely feminine, which turns me into a completely misogynist. I believe that true women’s liberation passes through misogyny. You only need to enter a clothing shop, a fabric shop, or a Pilates studio, in order to abhor the common female. In the same way, the common male is also abhorrent.«

Liddell’s play takes place in a world of stark gender confrontations, exploring the hatred of mothers and the fear of abandonment, as beauty and youth ebb. But her argument strikes me, initially, to be dominated by a heterosexual dichotomy. I therefore find it necessary to ask her how different sexualities, gay/straight/bisexual/trans etc., and the blurring of lines between genders, complicate her paradigm.

Liddell replies adeptly, »I appeal to the individual to rise above these gender types. This requires misogyny. A call for freedom mediated by a gender confrontation is absurd. The shops are full of feminine complicity, not oppression, but rather will and vindication. I am against this will, these kinds of Miltonic gender confrontations: the good women and the bad men. Finally, one can add to this comfortable little political correct discourse a little dignity.« But, is not a pathological fear of abandonment shared by both men and women? Why call it a »Wendy« complex? Liddell tells me that women don’t have a monopoly on a fear of abandonment, and Peter himself blurs the categories, in that he is an »abandoned child«.

A heated exchange follows:

Liddell: But in this case, I am a women, and I rebel against that bastard Peter Pan. It’s simple, he doesn’t get older, and I grow older without knowing why, and all the time I’m in love with this pig. Clinically, this is diagnosed »The Wendy Syndrome«, a disorder related to the Barrie character who is willing to satisfy whatever desires of the other in order not to be abandoned. Wendy is left humiliated, lower … at times she appears idiotic, stupid. When we reach a particular age, we must learn to be humiliated, because we are increasingly distancing ourselves from the possibility of love. We are faced with a dichotomy, a choice between hope and humiliation. The stupidest choose hope, the realists try to survive this exchange of humiliations which is life, waiting perhaps for that day when you desire to cut your throat in a hotel somewhere. For as much as there is hope, we need to be loved.

Joseph Pearson: What relation is there then between ageing and violence? Was Breivik suffering from such a complex? Is death a »solution« to the complex?

The passing of time is pure violence, as Céline tells us. We are unclean containers of intestines that slowly rot, the body disintegrating until the most humiliating phase that we can imagine, the loss of control of our sphincters, you shit and you piss together. The passage of time is violence, because solitude is that which condemns you like a beheading at dawn. I use Breivik like a metaphor. At the same time that the boys [sic] of the island of Utøya are interrupted in their growth, Breivik is a symbol of the annihilation of youth and beauty, and Wendy uses this to perpetrate her own poetic vengeance. We are speaking of poetry here, not a news bulletin. Death is poetry’s great solution.

Having read some of your other interviews, I see there is an admittedly misanthropic vein to your work. Could you expand on how this affects your position/role as an artist and your relation to your audience?

My relation to the world is entirely antisocial. Because of my nature, genetics, an unhappy childhood, disappointment and realism. Misanthropy. This does not contradict a relationship with the public. The necessity for expression is always »against the other«. This relationship is an encounter and an epiphany of individual sensitivities regarding the opus. Moreover, the public forms a part of the sacrificial act, an act of faith. We all carry a lamb in our arms and a knife at the waist, as we climb the mountain, like Abraham. It is not a social act, but a sacred and spiritual one, a spiritual life that is opposing the disappointing outer life. The relationship with the public is spiritual, and this is compatible with misanthropy. We are alone – the work, and each one of us.

What is the experience of showing your work in different countries: reactions in Avignon compared to, say, Spain, or Berlin?

There does exist a universal! The reactions are very similar. But the public in Avignon is very special, the feeling of euphoria, passion, it’s really very special. It’s a pleasure to work in Avignon. I believe that the public and the creators enter into a state of unparalleled excitement. It wouldn’t matter if someone packed a gun in her pocket. I love working under pressure. I love it. I love going onto stage, and to be on the verge of fainting.

Dr. Joseph Pearson is a Canadian writer, historian and local expert on Berlin. He lectures at New York University Berlin and is the editor of the blog, The Needle: www.needleberlin.com. For professional inquiries please contact: [email protected] or [email protected].

[find-blog]

Art Starts When You Betray Yourself : 33 RPM and a Few Seconds

by Joseph Pearson

Can the death of an individual trigger a revolution? Are social media a force for positive change? What is the role of the artist in politics? These weighty questions of public concern are set in the challenging context of today’s Lebanon, in the production 33 RPM and a Few Seconds. The husband and wife director team, Rabih Mroué and Lina Saneh, are excellent interlocutors. While they are unlikely to provide you with answers (they like to ask questions), they might help you along with your own responses.

Having met as students, the couple is based in Beirut, but tour internationally, working between theatre, installation and visual art. They are often found in Berlin, for fellowships at the Freie Universität, and now for the upcoming FIND Festival at the Schaubühne in early April. At dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel, Mroué’s flipbooks about the war in Syria, superimposed over ink pads, literally got your hands dirty. 33 RPM will soon go to the PEN World Voices Festival in New York. Lebanon, however, remains the focus of their recent work: ripped apart by civil war and sewn back together, in a complicated manner, with delicate thread – an uneasy confrontation between confessions and militarized groups, increasingly destabilized by the war in Syria. To understand Lebanon, you might look at a young activist, »Diyaa Yamout«, whose 2012 suicide was a political earthquake.

A »Personal« Suicide that was Political

33 RPM examines Yamout’s death and the enormous repercussions for Lebanese political life. Rabih Mroué does not want me to give away the actual name of the activist leader who committed suicide (theatre after all is a mirror, not our reality): but this is based on a real story. Yamout created the conditions, to the worry of the Lebanese authorities, for an uprising that ultimately never occurred. What is most important is his role as a mentor for young militants. This made him a powerful influence, and his death a tremendous shock.

»He was a leader figure, militating for civil rights, citizen’s rights, women’s rights, gay rights«, says Lina Saneh. »His death was a shock not just for his friends, and everyone, but mainly for this group of activists and militants in Lebanon. In general, when someone is a militant, it means he believes in something, that we can do something. And if he commits suicide, it means it has no meaning and he has no hope.«

The suicide note left by Yamout perhaps anticipated the fallout among activist communities. He said his motives were »personal« and not at all political. Mroué recounts Yamout’s Sophoclean view, »He said: my suicide is something I prepared for a long time, because I think that ultimate freedom, and I am someone looking for freedom, is to escape from this big prison which is called life.« The production cultivates the ambiguity between the political and personal intentions of his act, and even questions just how political the content of the play itself might be.

This Play is not Politics

Saneh says, »Theatre is political and cannot help but be political.« And yet, Mroué says, »I always tell people: if you think that you will get any information about Lebanon or Beirut from this piece, you are wrong. No, it is about me, Rabih, it’s about Lina, and what we experienced, and about sharing that experience.« You may think they are talking at cross-purposes. Is this piece political or is it not? I want to know: »Why set this play then in Lebanon?« Mroué replies that it’s important that the themes they discuss are rooted in a particular milieu: »I don’t believe in generalising. This is a piece about love. When you talk about love in general, it doesn’t mean anything to me. But when you speak to me about a specific love that you experienced with a particular person, and the complications related to your love, and then you connect this to my love, then it makes sense.«

In this way, I see a certain synthesis: that the location needs to be highly specific in order to communicate the grit of content. In this case, that place is Lebanon. But I’m not quite satisfied yet, and want to know how a play, set in Lebanon, can avoid being about politics. I ask: »Should artists concern themselves with politics? Is there an obligation in Beirut? Or are you thinking that the entry of politics into art risks making art into propaganda?« Rabih Mroué is tall and has a shaggy mane of curly hair. He considers over his Fritz Cola, and replies as follows. What he says is involved, so it’s best to quote at length:

»Each artwork is political, whatever you do. On one side, we need to differentiate between politics and the political. On the other, we should be aware that every work could be appropriated and used by ideological discourses. So whatever you do, even if you do art for the sake of art, the artist should be aware on which ground he’s standing and who could use his work. No one is innocent if he or she is outside of politics, and we have to be aware of that whatever we do. I would also, however, like to differentiate between the artist’s life and the artist’s work. For me, when an artist is highly engaged with politics, that is fine. When he or she is an activist, fighter, whatever, it is his or her business. But… art for me, as I understand it, is sharing, is doubts, is where you put your uncertainty. You put questions in it. If you have answers, you are not doing art. You are doing ideology. You are teaching or leading, and you become a politician. If you are an artist, you add your doubt. Normally, if you are honest, these doubts start with yourself. Art starts when you betray yourself, your thoughts and beliefs. And when you want to be provocative, it is very easy to provoke people. But it is not easy to provoke yourself as an artist. This is what artists should do: to provoke themselves first-hand, not their audience. This is how I understand politics and art.«

Yamout was a politician, and 33 RPM might not be politics, but it is, no doubt, political. I appreciate his careful distinction. The suicide had, and this theatre piece will have I imagine (in a very different manner), an important actual political ripple effect both among political powers and in online media.

The Role of New Media

Many of us have had the experience of someone we know passing away, but his or her Facebook profile remaining. The constant reminder can be upsetting, but there is also the lease-on-life side, the »afterlife«, the way in which the force of the personality continues to exist in the world, and creates discussion and reactions.

Lina Saneh describes: »This suicide raised a lot of troubles in Lebanon, a lot of questions, not just for the young people involved, but also inside the very strong confessional and traditional powers existing in Lebanon, from extreme right to extreme left, extreme Christian to extreme Islamic. Everyone was afraid of this. It’s dangerous. How will a suicide of this kind create a new revolution in Lebanon? How to exorcise this possibility, this threat, in our country, while others wanted to use this death to make a revolution?« The suicide, a loss of hope, occurred during a moment of hope, as the Arab Spring was perceived then. It also precipitated a waterfall of internet discussion: much of it anonymous and characterized by a lack of restraint. As an agora for public discussion, the consequences of internet exchange, of social media, are still not entirely understood, and provide a virtual foil to the visceral body of the protestor, which, in the case of Yamout, has disappeared from the scene. »His suicide raised of lot of discussion«, says Saneh, »which is also the question of this performance – those political discussions … a lot was written on Facebook, on blogs, on internet sites, etc. People commit suicide, so why in this case such a problem? Because of the Arab revolutions, but also probably because of the new social networks opening new possibilities and nobody is sure about their advantages or disadvantages, the risks.«

The Afterlife on the Empty Stage

How then should the stage take up an absence that nonetheless makes its presence felt? Rabih Mroué tells me, »The stage choices indicate the concern with the afterlife of the protestor. We wanted to deal with the physical presence on stage, so we thought let’s try to do this piece without actors at all. This was not an easy decision for both of us, since both of us are actors. We thought at the beginning, let’s at least be present on stage as technicians. But then we thought, why, it is a compromise.« Indeed, there are no actors on stage for the entire performance, instead the audience begins to piece together the protagonist’s life through the media that have been left behind, and ghostlike, continue to operate. I tell Rabih that I understand much better now: the importance of this suicide, the relationship to the specificity of the Lebanese experience, why the piece is political, but not doing politics, and the uncanny unpredictable role of social media. But I don’t understand yet why a play with no actors should be on stage.

»Isn’t this an installation?« I press him.

Rabih is very charming, and laughs like he’s heard this question before. He says, »It is something we have had to defend and insist upon, that this is a theatre work, and not just an installation. If it’s an installation, then we can do it in a gallery or a museum or an art center. But it needs to be done in a theatre because it needs a theatre-going audience, and our questions are on the history of theatre. It is questioning theatre, not the visual arts – let’s say, the tableau, or the painting – but rather the theatre form. Although we had a lot of invitations to do it in arts centers and museums, we always refuse, because this is a theatre piece.«

For what is a greater challenge to the audience – or for the director – than to present a play without actors. Or, rather, a play where the only actor is a ghost, whose voice, through the uncanny afterlife of technology, we still hear.

Dr. Joseph Pearson is a Canadian writer, historian and local expert on Berlin. He lectures at New York University Berlin and is the editor of the blog, The Needle: www.needleberlin.com. For professional inquiries please contact: [email protected] or [email protected].

[find-blog]

Why Theatre, and its »Idiots«, Still Matter in Today’s Russia

by Joseph Pearson

In Moscow, the Gogol Centre has produced a loose adaptation of Lars von Trier’s 1998 film Idioterne (The Idiots, or Idioten in German) specifically designed to challenge social and political repression in today’s Russia. One might well wonder how such a production, which features homosexual scenes and the Kremlin burning, fares in a country now noted for its increasingly conservative attitudes towards human sexuality and public dissent (think: trampled gay rights, think: Pussy Riot). Even in Britain, an after-midnight showing of Lars von Trier’s film on Channel 4 prompted an official investigation due to scenes involving engorged human organs and penetration. One might imagine that in Moscow, the conflation of sex and politics could cause a riot, or at the very least an annexation. What you can do in Denmark, or in Berlin for that matter, you can’t do on the Eurasian steppe.

Or so you’d think.

There is an intensely performative core to The Idiots, which promises to work well for Kirill Serebrennikov’s production when it comes from Moscow to the stage in Berlin in early April. Its expressiveness is also the reason why Trier’s film was controversial and branded by some as discriminatory towards individuals with developmental problems. The protagonists mimic the mentally handicapped in the film (they »spaz«) as a method to challenge the oppression of social conventions, thereby releasing emotional interiors perhaps stunted by a conservative bourgeois society. As a technique, it leads at times to poignant and disarming emotional transparency. This »spazzing«, however, is not done in private, but often as a hoax on unsuspecting spectators or participants.

The film interrogates and criticises the cruelty of these provocations, such as when the idiots imitate »retards« (so the film provocatively calls them) at a fancy restaurant, or when they sell Christmas decorations door to door, presumably to unsuspecting real-life citizens unaware they will appear in a feature film. The group soon falls apart, not because of their open sexuality, but because of their inability to carry »authentically« their »idiot« personalities into ordinary life. Trier is smart enough not to leave the class critique unquestioned (the idiots act like spoiled rich children eating caviar) or to leave us feeling uncompassionate for the victims of the hoaxes (the central character, Karen, suggests that the others are simply ridiculing the unfortunate with their radicalised college-humour gags). But Trier does indicate convincingly how much crueller conventional suppressed emotion can be than the volatile, but generally, happy »madhouse« of the idiots. The drama of the film’s performances might look good on the stage, but it is rather more difficult to carry over the film’s uncompromisingly spare aesthetics. The Idiots, of course, was composed in line with the manifesto of Dogme 95, a »vow of chastity« prohibiting the use of special lighting and effects (even forbidding props not already found on location) and post-production manipulation. A further question is whether a film that criticises freedom of expression in a tolerant Western democracy, where »spoiled children« are offered the indulgence to »spaz« without a violent slap in the face from society, can translate meaningfully to the paternalism and conservatism of Russian life. And if it doesn’t translate, what might be the risks for its producers?

The interview I conducted with Kirill Serebrennikov, the director of the Gogol Centre’s Idiots, which will be shown at the Schaubühne in Berlin (11/12 April, with English and German subtitles), is really too topical, I think, not to excerpt at length. Here is part of our conversation, and I very much look forward to a production which The Moscow Times has called »breathtaking theatre«, commenting that it »pushes the art form in [Moscow] several steps ahead of everyone else«. I might add that his Idiots is part of a trilogy of plays produced by the centre, based on films (the others are of Visconti and Fassbinder).

Joseph Pearson: What are the differences between staging Idiots in Russia compared to, say, Denmark. Or in Berlin?

Kirill Serebrennikov: when we started to work on this story, because we took only the story from Lars von Trier, it was quite clear that it completely doesn’t work in Moscow, because Lars von Trier’s story is about tolerance, and his group of idiots tests the strength of tolerance in Western societies. In Russia there is no tolerance at all. So if you start to provoke people, you immediately get a certain kind of reply, and it could be dangerous. I understood that one of the main topics of our version will be not just the »idiots« but the »non-idiots«. And it could be interesting to understand their motivations and reasons for their actions.

What was the reaction of the audience in Moscow to the stage performance at the Gogol Centre?

The audience was at first shocked. For them the way the show was done looked completely unexpected. But now it’s always sold out; probably a new generation is looking for something important for them, because this show reflects different aspects of political and social life. We have no direct answers. But for a Russian audience it is probably important to ask the right questions on stage.

Do you find that your work is practically affected by the political content of this piece, for example? Do you find yourself running into problems with the law on homosexual propaganda?

The audience who usually comes to our performance is very good, very smart, very intellectual, very civil-rights values oriented. We are speaking the same language with the audience, and they are laughing and applauding. For example, during homosexual scenes, and other scenes where the Kremlin is burning, there is applause.

Don’t you find a certain amount of frustration in reaching an audience that mostly agrees with you? What would it be like – might it be dangerous – to perform the piece in your hometown of Rostov-on-Don?

Theatre is just a mirror, this mirror reflects the face of society. Of course, a show like Idiots is not very good for a place like Rostov-on-Don, because people will be shocked, and probably they will be strictly against it. In Moscow, I always noticed how the audience divides into two huge groups: some of them are against idiots, some of them are for them. Our Idiots is a good test of the state of society.

Who then in a Russian perspective are the idiots?

We are idiots. Theatre people are idiots, liberals are idiots, Pussy Riot are idiots, people with desire to live in freedom are idiots. Journalists who don’t want to work in propaganda are idiots. Idiots are minorities. All minorities are idiots.

How do you bring a film to the theatre?

Our show is very far from the original. We took the main idea of the film, but then started to improvise, and started to do our own scenes, to work with a dramaturge, and then created something far from Lars von Trier’s plot, because, as I told you before, it doesn’t work in Russia. It would be ridiculous. That’s why, in our show, the characters are different, they have different reasons to do what they do and there is real violence for instance.

Is that the change you needed to make, to change the level of violence?

It’s quiet clear that violence is part of Russia's mental climate nowadays. Our idiots are more tragic in this sense. In today’s Russia, to be idiot is very very very dangerous. And this danger is really deadly.

What Dogma methods do you use on stage? Can this manifesto be transferred to the theatre from film?

We tried to do it. Before the performance, the audience reads the principles of our theatre dogma on the screens. There are several which are rather important. We don’t use special artificial light. The actors wear what they wear. We don’t use special effects. We don't do what is not possible in reality »here and now«.

How will a Russian production work for a German audience?

We don’t adopt it to Germans, because it seems to me that the problems we are talking about are universal. We have no idea how it will work in Berlin; we'll see. Once we had a scandal in the Schaubühne at the FIND festival a couple years ago, at our performance of Otmorozki [Scumbags] by Prilepin, when the Soviet generation from Charlottenburg came to listen to the Russian language, and when they heard rude words, or street language of characters who fought with a regime, they were very upset and shocked. They exited saying »Fuck you, you are terrible, we want you to die«, and so on.

What is the future of the theatre climate in Russia? Is there a place for idiots in the future of Russia?

It seems to me that the theatre climate has become worse and worse. In previous years, the government didn’t pay much attention to theatre. It remained the only place for freedom and democracy. Now we see the attempts to mark what is right and what is wrong. For instance, in a recent political television show I was used as an example of how some new theatre directors »spoil the Russian classical tradition and make nasty, terrible theatre which makes people feel like animals«. It looked like a case of »degenerate art« in Nazi times. This crap was on air in prime time for the entire Russian public on a State TV broadcast. It hasn’t been like this since the Soviet period. For this reason, I think that they will definitely begin censoring contemporary theatre soon.

***********

I am left between respect for Serebrennikov’s courage, hopefulness about theatre’s continued role as a location for dissent, and despair about the downward spiral just a relatively short distance to the East from the German capital. James Meek in the London Review of Books (20 March 2014), reporting from the Ukraine, gives a generational explanation to the crisis in Russia: »If you were born after 1985 you have no remembered reality to measure against [the] false vision [of the Soviet Union] ... this is the context that has made it possible for Vladimir Putin and his government to sell Russia’s opportunistic invasion of Ukraine to his own people.« This older-knows-best attitude strikes me as dispiritingly wrong-footed, especially when Serebrennikov suggests that his audiences, of the new generation not the Soviet generation, are the most open to daring and dissent.

As the world looks to Crimea, remember what the Gogol Centre is doing in Moscow, and soon in Berlin.

Dr. Joseph Pearson is a Canadian writer, historian and local expert on Berlin. He lectures at New York University Berlin and is the editor of the blog, The Needle: www.needleberlin.com. For professional inquiries please contact: [email protected] or [email protected].

[find-blog]

Murders in the Desert: Roberto Bolaño in Berlin

by Joseph Pearson

A desert landscape scarred with pink crosses, and the academic investigators scour a Mexican border town. They are looking for the German novelist, Benno von Archimboldi, but find themselves instead where scores of women have been murdered on their way home from work. They stand before a void. Late Chilean author Roberto Bolaño investigates these femicides in his posthumous novel 2666, published ten years ago. The New York Times called his work »not only a supreme capstone to his own vaulting ambition, but a landmark in what’s possible for the novel as a form«.

2666 became an instant classic, a monument that’s a hard act to follow or expand on. So how to bring the complexity of this epic, remarkable, perplexing, 900-page, novel to the Berlin stage? Or is it precisely the fact that Bolaño’s novel, written in five parts and differing styles, was unfinished as he lay dying that leaves it open to expansion and experimentation?

Catalan director Àlex Rigola, who has directed the Lliure theatre in Barcelona and at the Venice Biennale, sits in the Schaubühne café, in Berlin for the F.I.N.D. Festival. He endeavours to find a theatrical language to deliver the novel visually and dramatically. »I love to put literature on the stage. You can read Bolaño, but here you can live Bolaño … At the end there is only Bolaño in the space. I am here to share his story with Berliners. When directing a normal play, there is more that I can share about myself. But here I have the pleasure to be behind Bolaño, and not to show myself. We are putting all our love into this production, as I have never done with another author.«

What entices him most about Bolaño’s writing is its density: the built-up literary tradition that provides layer on layer of storytelling. »He weaves together different stories, not just in the novel, but in the way he absorbs the tradition of Latin-American literature, starting with Borges … he has such a background that allows me more easily to transform his work for the stage, and for people who perhaps have not read those works but love to go to the theatre.« Dramaturge Florian Borchmeyer has provided a (»wise«, says Àlex) German translation of the script, and Rigola told me how much he is happy to be working within the Berlin theatre scene, so much strengthened by a culture of ensemble work.

The transformation from novel to theatre is made clearer when you look at the planned set design. Part One of the novel is set in a simple realistic space, an academic conference. This soon moves into a disorienting David Lynchian theatre, destabilizing the audience for Part Two. By Part Three, all the characters, nine of them, are stuffed into a tiny green box, 3x2x1 metres in dimension: a kind of hyper-Sartrean Huis Clos.

But it’s the fourth section of Bolaño’s novel, when he exhaustingly enumerates the women murders of Ciudad Juárez (or »Santa Teresa« in his novel), which is the biggest trial for stage adaptation. Rigola and the set designer, Max Glaenzel, respond to this challenge with an installation. They recreate a desert on stage and mark it with pink crosses (a commemoration initiative of the mothers of the murdered women). »This crime space is our translation of the fourth part of the book, which is crime after crime after crime after crime – it is really exhausting«, says Glaenzel. »We are translating this part into an infinite cemetery which is a desert.« Indeed, this desert landscape, in its infinity, suggests the incalculable losses with these crimes, the pink crosses the insufficiency of our efforts to memorialise that loss. The final part of the play leads us to a completely naked space, where the connections between the various characters and stories are finally drawn closer. »After the fourth part, with the desert, we go to nothing. It is a naked, empty space. With one character walking in continuous movement«, says Glaenzel.

There is a question of moral action tied to this movement, adds Rigola. »It is important for this one character to be in continual movement, taking decisions, hard decisions. Perhaps he does not like human beings, but he is in movement all of his life. When faced with evil, he takes a decision – maybe bad or good – but he takes one and continues walking. This idea of movement is important to us.« In this way, the play is not simply a formal experiment, it strikes me to be very much about political action. For Bolaño, our apathy and complicity in relation to this violence is the very definition of evil. For Àlex Rigola, the effort is largely to bring this message to a public.

The novel takes place mostly in a desperate and violent city, a borderland economy where capitalism benefits from the weakness of the third world abutting the first. The murder rate in Ciudad Juárez was the highest in the world in 2009, although it has since dropped to being the 37th most deadly city on the planet. The director himself visited northern Mexico before the Barcelona premiere of his 2666 adaptation. »When I was taking my flight to Ciudad Juárez in 2006«, says Rigola, »the other passengers asked me if I was a journalist, because no one else goes there … The real problem in Ciudad Juárez is that you don’t have a border like that elsewhere, where you can cross from the third world to the most capitalist place in the world. The first thing that happens here is that you can have slaves. People live very close to the United States, so they put the factory right there. The workers are there for 12 to 14 hours for nothing. Then you can take all these trousers or TVs that they are producing and then export them to the USA in two minutes. It’s right next to the Rio Bravo.«

There is also the business of human smuggling, and the drug violence and cartels, which also characterise the zone. »This takes the worst of the capitalist system and puts it in a lawless place, where you can do whatever you like … people come here from all over Latin America. They are some of the poorest people of the world, with little education. The value of human life in this zone is zero.« Women workers, often the most vulnerable, are subject to horrific violence partly as a result of this confrontation: picked up and attacked in the early and late hours, on the way to and from work. »The workers’ shifts change at 7am when plenty of men in the drug cartels finish partying, full of alcohol and drugs. Perhaps they haven’t found a girl. Then a girl misses her bus and has to walk home along the road. That is the most terrible moment of the day … The men stop along the road, pick up one of these girls, take her to the desert – no one sees you in the desert – rape her, and then it’s easier for these people to kill, no one will find out. And he does not think he is doing something very bad. Every day, a lot of people die in Ciudad Juárez.«

The director, the stage director, and I finish our whiskey, but I am feeling sobered and distressed. I understand a little better why Àlex is so adamant about bringing this novel to the stage.

»The main topic in the novel is what we are doing about this problem. Why are we always turning away from something that is happening elsewhere. Why are we not reacting or taking decisions? Why are we turning away each time we hear about what is happening in Libya, in Somalia, or, for that matter, in Ciudad Juárez?«

Dr. Joseph Pearson is a Canadian writer, historian and local expert on Berlin. He lectures at New York University Berlin and is the editor of the blog, The Needle: www.needleberlin.com. For professional inquiries please contact: [email protected] or [email protected].

[find-blog]

240 hours of MEAT

by Joseph Pearson

The installation »MEAT« promises to be the most ambitious and, frankly, disturbing, artistic investigation into suspected killer Luka Rocco Magnotta ever launched, all within a studio space at the Schaubühne.

I remember that after Magnotta was picked up by Berlin police in summer 2012, at an internet café in Neukölln, almost every local hipster I knew claimed a close brush with danger. I could’ve taken him home! I was dancing at Cocktail d’Amore last night, and so was he! I walk by that internet café every day! He stood 50 m from me on Grindr! I saw his profile on Gayromeo – what if I’d invited him over… then what? This is not just paranoia, but legitimate concern given his presence was multiplied by 70 Facebook profiles, hundreds of false online identities, and a myriad of self-promoting posts. All this augments the likelihood that you really did cross his path.

And what a virtual fiend to link, like or friend! The 29-year old porn star stands accused of killing – and eating and dismembering – a Chinese student; of necrophilia; of uploading the evidence to the internet (the now infamous video: »1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick«); of sending body parts by post to be opened by unsuspecting office staff, at a Canadian political party, at an elementary school; of suffocating kittens. These horrors might be just the beginning of our discoveries. Now permit me to use the inclusive pronoun – because only the lucky few escape a morbid fascination with death, or sex, intensified when the two find each other; fewer still are not haunted by the violent possibilities of human action, especially when enabled by the often anonymous and lonely medium of the internet. We have an alarming itch for proximity to the perpetrator, and it will soon be scratched in April when »MEAT« opens for business.

The title clues us to the installation’s concern with the visceral and the virtual, to the perpetrator’s bloody crimes and the airy complicity of new technologies. There will be an exact replica of the suspect’s apartment and scene of the alleged crime, and you can visit it either in person or virtually through the very social platforms Luka used – although additional hardcore material is accessible online only by password by those who have actually already visited. All this gets me thinking as to why it feels appropriate to have »MEAT« open here. It’s not just Berlin’s fame as a city that dispenses with prudishness regarding sexual matters. Perhaps Magnotta haunts the public imagination of cozy Berlin because it is Europe’s safest capital, a leafy web of benign villages and the kiez. Are we so insecure as a metropolis that we crave, perversely, the legitimization of big city danger? Didn’t we enjoy being part of the international manhunt, having it end just down the block? Don’t these gruesome, and some might lament puerile and voyeuristic, enquiries on stage happen precisely here because Berlin feels so harmlos? Or is there a more brutal truth lurking: that the story of Luka Magnotta threatens us with the actual dangers we might expose ourselves to daily. It shatters the presumed environment of trust of online dating and social networks – from Grindr to OK Cupid to match.com to Facebook, or when we pick up a stranger in the bar and take her home. Luka entered our comfort zone, and in doing so cued us to other, as of yet unrecognized, threats. And might not one additional risk be ourselves: our hyper-narcissistic self-projection enabled by often indifferent virtual media?

The Canadian authorities, refusing to promote a pathological hankering for fame, have given Magnotta very little airtime. After his extradition from Germany by military jet, he disappeared into a waiting van, and was caught up in an ongoing trial marked by publication-ban requests and political entreaties not to »celebrate his notoriety«. Certainly, publicizing Luka is, I’m well aware, an ethical Pandora’s Box. The creators of »MEAT«, however, have no such hesitations.

I met with the installation’s creator, Swedish architect and set designer, Thomas Bo Nilsson, formerly of Copenhagen’s SIGNA collective, and Borghildur Indridadóttir, an Icelandic actress and producer, at the Schaubühne last week. Another important voice behind the event is the set and costume designer, Julian Eicke.

»We are of course giving Luka attention, which is what he wanted«, says the director. But Thomas is unapologetic, explaining, »as an artist one of your obligations is to use your voice to discuss things. We also don’t feel it is our job to pass judgment.« Indeed, the accused has not yet been proven guilty, and will return to the courtroom this autumn. Borghildur adds, »There are many layers to Luka, and we also try to be compassionate.«

Nilsson was also at Cocktail d’Amore the night Luka apparently partied there, and lives around the corner from the famed internet café on Karl-Marx-Straße. He even uses the same dating platforms as Luka. But what inspired his interest in the case were the press and police pictures of Luka’s apartment, »the direct traces of the alleged killing, but also the stories the flat told about the lonely person who lived there.«

With his team, Thomas began to collect props and furniture for the installation by going to apartments in Berlin where the possessions of deceased individuals are being given away for free via eBay. Thomas explains, »We enter the home of someone living for 20 years without social contact or relatives, a time pocket, but also a space decorated and created for loneliness. It’s a little bit the same feeling I had when I first saw Luka’s apartment. In that way, we are re-experiencing that feeling over and over again as we collect things. Hygiene and cleanliness, the things we do to stay presentable, have stopped many years ago in these places. That point of departure, where these things stop, is a big part of the show … everything that society considers being part of a healthy lifestyle was absent in Luka’s apartment. It was made for one purpose … the camera and the filthy sofa. It was a set-up for his self-creation, that led to the point of no return when he allegedly killed.«

Thomas and I speak about the connection between space, loneliness, and the crimes in the presumably harmless environment of the Schaubühne café, to the sound of spoons rattling in cups. Fame was perhaps a substitute for immortality for Luka, whose twink porn career was halted by ageing, whose apartment suggests utter emptiness and solitude. Thomas thinks, »there is a connection between being lonely and the acts. One of the things we read between the lines is his quest for immortality, not to be someone who would fade away into obscurity.«

Recreating these interactive spaces, which will occupy the entire studio at the theatre, has not been easy. They have been preparing since the beginning of the year, 14 hours a day, and collected enough material to fill three enormous storage containers. The set contains a bar, a shopping mall, an internet café, and domestic spaces, including the famed apartment. It stretches over several hundred square metres and is full of enough tricks to make every visit unique. The show itself will last 240 hours over ten days, and provides live online streaming from all its rooms. The fact that you can visit the set at any time of the night rather scares me. I’d rather not think of Luka in the early hours. It might turn out to be even more unnerving for the actors, some of whom will not leave for the duration.

This team consists of 120 collaborators, including 60 actors and 60 in the production team. The directors received originally almost 1000 applications, which were narrowed to 300, before the final cut. Rehearsal has occurred in »real spaces« throughout Berlin. »We are practicing now in character, in costume, in actual places that echo the atmosphere that we want in the show. We go to Tabasco in Schöneberg (a bar famed for male prostitution), places that can help direct the actors to deliver the right atmosphere. Our rehearsal process is in different steps, one step is to create a realistic layer«, says Thomas. »This layer is later-on distorted and edited, as if it were a movie. But the first layer gives the actors such a profound feeling of reality that it permits the distortion in the second step. We are working with professional and non-professional actors, as well as so-called real people … such as go-go dancers who are also taking part in the show«.

You might wonder whether »MEAT« involves an age limit, and, unsurprisingly, it does: 16 years. Thomas tells me with a smile it is »not a family show«. »No shit!«, I reply. He’s already explained that they have some of the material from when Luka was a porn star. Thomas qualifies whimsically about its family content: »Although there are families in the show, it is not necessarily for families. We also include fragments from other people who surround him«. I ask whether they really do plan to include other people’s »fragments« in the installation – anything’s possible with this subject. Thomas is alarmingly coy, and laughs.

Thomas has already explained, using the metaphor of surfing the internet, that Luka Magnotta is simply the point of departure of the installation. One click leads to the next exploration, to the next, opening up rooms of discovery. You might be led from the rent boy scene of Berlin, to Grindr (a mobile phone app to link gay men by proximity), to a chat that ends with a stranger sleeping in your bed. But I am still hankering to nail this installation down, for a statement of the artist’s goals. It seems a barbarous question to ask about his »intentions«, but I go for it anyway. I’m already sharpening the blade of my »internet-narcissism is bad« thesis. He is too elegant to make me feel like a cad: »Our aims are unimportant and if we could state them in one sentence it would be a lot of work for nothing. I choose not to answer the question, because from my experience if you give a clear answer to your aim, you start directing your audience, give them a clue for what they will look for, and the audience pays the price for that. What you choose to focus on is individual, just as our observations about Luka are coloured by how we are ourselves. Using Grindr and Gay Romeo puts me in a different relationship to him than, say, my mother.«

With this, I am intrigued whether the experience of an installation on, admittedly, such a creepy subject has changed the director’s way of using dating platforms. Luka can’t be the only auto-publicized, celebrity-seeking, alleged killer out there. Isn’t this show, when it comes down to it, really about the self-promoting and indifferent anomy of internet culture? Thomas’ answer surprises me,

»It hasn’t stopped me. Because I’m curious.«

»Curiosity killed the cat«, I answer.

»It doesn’t scare me, the opposite I’m afraid. The more we research and work with Luka, the more we follow his line of thoughts, and start to understand him. That is what is scary.«

Dr. Joseph Pearson is a Canadian writer, historian and local expert on Berlin. He lectures at New York University Berlin and is the editor of the blog, The Needle: www.needleberlin.com. For professional inquiries please contact: [email protected] or [email protected].