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BELOW A LONG PIECE ON HANDKE'S DEVELOPING DRAMATURGY THAT I AM WRITING, ON THE WEB AS IT WERE, FINALLY, FOR T.D.R. & A LONG PIECE ON THEATER, SUCH AS IT IS, IN SEATTLE. Excerpts from Richard Gilman's piece will come here, A KLAUS PEYMANN INTERVIEW below
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HERE WILL COME THE LONG PIECE THAT I AM WRITING FOR T.D.R. ON THE CHANGE IN HANDKE'S DRAMATURGY SINCE WHAT I CALL HIS EARLY FORMALIST PERIOD [1965-75] - the 1972 "They Are Dying Out" evidently does not fit into my scheme; and the reason why I have the period end in 1975 has to do with the fact that Handke originally abandoned the 1992 play THE HOUR WE KNEW NOTHING OF EACH OTHER in 1975. ]
THIS CHANGE CAN BE TRACED IN HIS PREPARATIONS FOR "Walk about the Villages" - as we can glean them so well from his workbook notations in "Geschichte des Bleistifts" [which does not exist in English but in French]; the writing of W.A.T.V. in 1981; and as this dramaturgy of what Handke [following Goethe] calls "alternating discourse [ declamatory, self-revealing - of each character - speeches] has developed since with the 1987 play THE ART OF ASKING [OR THE JOURNEY TO THE SONOROUS LAND]; the 1997 PREPARATIONS FOR IMMORTALITY & 1999s RIDE IN THE DUGOUT CANOE: OR THE REHEARSAL OF THE PLAY FOR THE FILM ABOUT THE WAR [each of which has a page of its own at this site]
I want to note at once that the extraordinary TEXT that is HOUR WE KNEW NOTHING OF EACH OTHER [is at least in German] constitutes, compositionally speaking, a reprise, on both a higher and simpler level, of the intentions and formalist procedures of the entire first period, that is from "Prophecy" through "Kaspar" & "My Foot My Tutor" to "Ride Across Lake Constance." ]
The return to the methodology of the 66-70s period in HOUR had roused me to pay heed to what I also noticed in Handke's three ASSAYING [I mean the Three Essays on Tiredness, the Juke Box & ON THE DAY THAT WENT WELL] namely, that subsequent to the high points of his return to Austria -- WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES, DIE WIEDERHOLUNG [THE REPETIION] he was entering what, borrowing a useful concept from Margaret Mahler's psychoanalytic work, I call Handke's "rapprochement" phase in relationship to his once reaction-formation-determined break with his first ten year’s work, his once turning against his work within the varieties of modern traditions as is so evident in his prose, his dramatic and his poetic work from 1965 to the 70s.
I had sensed HOUR’S relationship to the early work when first reading it in the early 90s, as a matter of fact Carl Weber at one point asked me to translated it, and the translation of its grammatically interlocking gears appeared daunting – but then Gitta Honegger had already made her arrangements; and because of what I sensed Handke's revelation that he had stopped working on HOUR in the mid-70s happily confirmed this suspicion while yet rousing another: namely whether HOUR might not be the very play for which Handke was making the notations that then turned into his diary-novel, naked ego exhibition WEIGHT OF THE WORLD. For, if you look at opening of W.O.W., such a stoppage, transformation is noted there. Also, as far as Iwas concerned, there was a play missing, and so it turned out to be HOUR, which is both the conclusionary play to the first period as well as a highpoint of Handke's rapprochement phase of the late 80s-early 90s.
Handke has also mentioned that one reason he stopped working on HOUR in the mid-seventies had to do with the fact that at that time he was unable to envision that one communal optimistic stretch in the play, whereas when he then wrote that stretch, in the early 90s, writing himself out of that pleasantness proved to be the most difficult part of that enterprise. I am fairly certain that he must mean that section when those 12 performers that the play calls for [although at the University of Washington's School of Drama did it with a corps of twice that number] come together, are freed of their isolation in their individualities, or coupledness. It certainly is a funny comment and a funny thought that writing himself out of that stretch proved the most difficult, because, so Handke stated, he of course knew that matters were not like that. Well, there are those moments.
For all these reasons I regard HOUR, from the viewpoint of the development of Handke's dramaturgy, as belonging, as being the culmination, summa of the first systematic period; not that the later plays do not play on a perhaps even more grandiose canvas.
One feature, however, HOUR, shares with the plays since the 1981 WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES, and that is that, like all of them, an in exemplary fashion, it is a "LESE-DRAMA" - no matter whether performed or not, it is a text whose reading would prove an exemplary experience, although HOUR does not seize The Reader the way its grammar does so authoritatively, especially in German, so that if you have read the text several times and then experientially participate in its performance, you notice the difference of coming under the spell of the succession of images, of having your eye hypnotized and sensitized perhaps, but then needing to translate these images into words, sentences, if you are so disposed, instead of having sentences grasp you.
Taking the route toward alternating discourse and long declamatory speeches, Handke, who may have unrealistic moments in other respects, seems to have realized as of the writing of WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES that, as compared to his early plays, this later work, which went so much against the common grain, and which yet linked up so strongly with the most ancient of dramatic traditions, would be more frequently read than performed. And so it has turned out, with the exception of HOUR! - Though a pleasure it may be to read SELF-ACCUSATION & PUBLIC INSULT, or even stretches of MY FOOT MY TUTOR, or QUODLIBET, the other play texts really are simply the sufficient notations for the creation of a performance: little of the extraordinary, deliciously theatrically estranging effect that RIDE ACROSS LAKE CONSTANCE creates is produced just be reading it: if that is what you want, you are better off reading the PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS and whatever sharpening of your mental and verbal acumen that may produce, though my fundamental disagreement with Richard Gilman's view of RIDE consists of noting the extraordinary difference that exists, dramatically speaking, between using some Wittgensteinian questioning of language and its rules & their playful distribution among a set of inter-acting characters within the outline of a developing, allusive story line. KASPAR, too, is more profitably experienced than read.
Right now there follow only the roughest of notations, which will then be fleshed out.... a few of the things that I will note are repeats from my long postscript to WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES, which can be found on that page on this site; but I cannot say that at the time that I wrote that postscript, despite touching on ART OF ASKING and especially on HOUR I gave all that much thought to the over-all development. - When I was translating W.A.T.V. I felt it would be all right if he never wrote another word, and W.A.T.V., like the basically grounding fabric, lies behind not only all the subsequent dramatic work; it is possible to make out a good case that W.A.T.V. is the strongest of the fibers that holds MY YEAR IN NO-MAN'S-BAY together.
A] REPRISE AND SUMMARY DISCUSSION OF THE METHODOLOGY OF THE EARLY PLAYS
Of course you all have a perfect understanding of the principles involved in Handke's work from the mid-60s Prophecy via Public Insult, Self-Accusation, Cries for Help, Kaspar, My Foot My Tutor, Quodlibet, Kaspar [1968] to Ride Across Lake Constance [1970]. Of course you may not be able to articulate these principles at a moment's notice, because even then, though Handke worked with fairly perspicuous grammatical serial procedures, each work constituted not just a variation on the procedure but some fundamental change within those exploratory procedures themselves. Each of these plays stands nicely on its own, yet a comparison of them with each other is mutually revelatory. – For once it may be truly useful to step back behind PROPHECY
QUOTE>
to what lies behind it, to see whence it derived; not all the way to Handkes origins as a writer at age 12 the handkepsychobio.scriptmania.com site is reserved for that but to his first major work, the 1965 novel DIE HORNISSEN.
Handke has meanwhile mentioned, I think it was to Herbert Gamper in his 250 page interview, that the early plays were the exuberant product of his joy at the completion of that first book DIE HORNISSEN [THE HORNETS, once again there exists a French but no American translation] a novel, as it were in the subjunctive, or let us say: in the suppositional:
QUOTE
That is how Handke solves for himself the problem of the creation of an independent textual reality, through suggestiveness as it were. He goes about it somewhat awkwardly at moments, but, for my purposes what is interesting in tracing the origins of some of the procedures of the early plays is to note similar playful procedures being employed, though not with the same kind of formalist rigor, in that prose text, whose procedures, so Handke, were indebted, among many indebtedness as he was feeling his way, to the prose work of Peter Weiss: The Shadow of the Body of the Coachman, The Conversation of the Three Who Walk [extraordinarily important modern texts that demonstrate the suppleness of which language is capable as well as the mysteriousness that such an approach redeems, written in Sweden but in German, in exile, but within a modern tradition that linked up both with Kafka and with French Surrealism.]
HERE WILL COME TWO OR THREE QUOTES FROM Die Hornissen.
B] THE CHANGE-OVER, BACKWARD TURNING WITH 'A SLOW HOMECOMING' ALSO INVOLVED A RETURN TO SOME VERY ANCIENT DRAMATIC PROCEDURES. LOOKING BACK, one can of course maintain that the groundwork for this kind of archaism is prefigured in the early work...
QUOTES FROM 'Geschichte des Bleistifts"
DESCRIPTION OF WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES
AS I AM WRITING WHAT I HOPE WILL BE A POPULARLY FAIRLY ACCESSIBLE OVERVIEW, I CAN HOWEVER RECOMMEND A WORK OF VERY CONSIDERABLE SCHOLARLY SOPHISTICATION, Eleonora Pascu's UNTERWEGS ZUM UNGESAGTEN [Peter Lang, Frankfurt/Main; 1998] that addresses Handke's intentions in fine detail.
THE ART OF ASKING
One question that one might ask oneself is why what with ENDGAME having meanwhile become a hoary chestnut, no one so far in this country has performed Handke's THE ART OF ASKING. ??? IS THAT AN ANSWERABLE QUESTION WHOSE SATISFACTION WILL LEAD TO FURTHER QUESTIONS?
PREPARATIONS FOR IMMORTALITY [HAS A SEPARATE PAGE WITH A FAIR AMOUNT OF MATERIAL]
DUGOUT CANOE [HAS A SEPARATE PAGE WITH A FAIR AMOUNT OF MATERIAL ALREADY]
If you want, check in once a week & and ascertain my progress... weekly because i am working on a series of projects simultaneously....
<
Early January 2001
HERE IS AN ITALIAN REVIEW OF THE DRAMATIZATION OF SORROW BEYOND DREAMS/ WUNSCHLOSES UNGLUECK
MAL DI VOE
di Peter Handke
a cura di e con Fabiano Fantini e Rita Maffei
immagini e proiezioni di Alberto Capellani
in collaborazione con "Associazion Cultural Colonos" di Villacaccia
Progjet Colonos-Hicetnunc
si ringrazia per la collaborazione l'Istituto Austriaco di Cultura di Milano (Percorsi friulani)
IN PRIMA A MITTELFEST
In its "miscellaneous" column, the Sunday edition of the Carinthia newspaper "Volkszeitung" reported the following news: "On Friday night a 51-year old housewife in A. (near the town of G.) took her life with an overdose of sleeping pills". Faced with this news of his mother’s suicide, the young Austrian writer gives form to the need to recompose with the threads of memory that truncated existence, a vitality offended and reduced to a biological mechanism. Published in German in 1972 and dedicated to his mother, "Unhappiness Without Desire" was an immediate and unexpected best-seller and is perhaps still Handke’s best-loved book. It is a complex jigsaw of past and present. Beside his mother’s lifeless body, a man puts together the fragments of a tragically-concluded existential journey by means of the off-stage voice telling a story whose harshness and expressive force is fully rendered by the Friulan language.
HERE IS THE ACCOUNT OF A SLOVENIAN PRODUCTION OF 'KASPAR' THAT WENT A STEP FURTHER...
ANNA FURSE, about the performance:
When I was invited by Ursula Cetinski to direct a production for Cankarev Dom I was given every artistic freedom but one sine qua non: a company of three actors who would comprise two men and a woman. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a paucity of plays which reflect this particular triangle, and I spent many months mulling over this problem: a play in which there might be a central character who is a woman and two male characters either side of her. Evenutally, I hit on the idea of Handkes KASPAR, and the poetic licence I would take by making the protagonist female, by eliminating her doubles and by reducing her chorus of trainers to a male duet. The play - an anatomy of the relationship between language and thought, thought and society - provides a rich seam for investigating some of our broader concerns which we agreed as a company when we first met in June 1997: the role of women in society, what makes wars and how throughout history women have suffered war as a sexual aggression and how rape has so recently been used in Bosnia as an ethnic cleansing system. The word system is important here, for the horrifying statsitics from these rape camps testify not to random abuse but to a carefully planned and executed process of torture and elimination. In KASPAR the central character, who arrives on the scene with only one scentence to utter, is forced to speak not by direct violence but by the process of speech itself.
This SPEECH TORTURE as Handke calls it thus becomes a poetic metaphor for the way in which a society recreates itself through the individual, how the outsider is brought into the values of dominant culture, how we learn to conform, how power works.
Our KASPAR is not a feminist heroine, nor a mere vitctim. She is a survivor. She adapts - or would probably die. this is not a piece of theatre celebrating womens emancipation, nor her potential nor her struggle for power. It is a description of the (feminine) powerless being drawn into the (masculine) system of power which is unyielding, pitiless and cocksure. The male characters in this production are not pathological or psychotic. They too have learnt the system. And they must pass it on. In exploring this text through the lens of gender relationships, we also find the feminine as a metaphor for all that is relative. Thus our KASPAR might also be a nation.
Issues of territory and aggression are painfully fresh in the minds of former Yugoslavs. As are issues of language and identity. the forces of capitalism are rapidly impregnating culture with american ideology. The Self is in a process of reconstruction. But then we are all fast-learners when it comes to consumerism:
I saw something sparkle.
Because it sparkled , I wanted
to have it. I wanted to have
everything that sparkled.
Later I also wanted to have
what didnt sparkle (KASPAR)
What we eat we are. The Macdonalds logo is a flag across the globe.
In confronting this very structural, philosophical and verbose play with our own experiences we soon came to a decision not to create two productions, one Slovene and one English, but to find a para-logic in the play for KASPARs acquisition of language: the acquisition of Enlgish language, the lingua-franca of business. We necessarily pared the text down whilst remaining utterly faithful to the original structure. This process of reduction then became the theme tune of the production: less is more. Our via negativa has involved a lot of hard work and sometimes a very testing challenge for the trained actor-instincts. We have wrought an emotional narrative from a text which Handke insists is not a story but a theatrical event. We have done this by devising rituals and contexts for each phase of KASPARs development. In this version there is an imagined story, a before and a possible after. Our KASPAR transforms herself from an ethnic minority to a member of the majority. Or perhaps she has simply learned a camouflage, a survival strategy. Her journey is perilous and not without contradictions and errors. Her trainers are both anonymous and human. and through them we have endeavoured to explore facets of man to man and man to woman relationships.
The work on making this production has been intense and very personal. the actors have created much of the material from improvisation. Whilst never having worked together as a company before we soon found a process of trial and error to reach the point of having a piece of work which we could now all really call ours.
Anna Furse
Ljubljana, July 31st 1998
BACK
Some of media respond:
Delo daily
Bilingual Kaspar in Cankarjev dom
A VOICE IN RELATION TO SILENCE
One Kica is not enough for Slovenes! said Mitja Rotovnik, the director of Cankarjev dom, at the press conference, while presenting the new production of Cankarjev dom. What he had in mind is that Uršula Cetinski, the head of theatre programs in CD, had invited a British director Anne Furse, to direct the new premiere that we can see on Sunday as part of the City of Women Festival.
The project is ambitious and a little unusual for Slovenia: a performance of a very demanding text by Peter Handke from the end of the sixties (using the same text which was in the beginning of the seventies the first production of the experimental theatre Glej) in a bilingual version, English and Slovene, with a British director, for the first time involved with our cultural and theatre scene. The director who has a very rich theatre biography (she is the author of several awarded theatre texts, scripts, shes directed over forty different productions, co-worked with Peter Brook and Grotowskys group, she has headed several British theatre groups, among others Bloodgroup and Paines Plough, works also as a professor of theatre and writer), was faced, in Cankarjev dom with an already selected group of actors and co-workers but this did not represent a problem for her. To the contrary: in the five, six weeks of intensive rehearsals (from 10 am to 10 pm) she creatively used the differences she had experienced by coming in contact with our culture and our theatre. The fact of meeting or even confronting experience is in the centre of her directing concept of Kaspar: a voice in relation to silence, relations between sexes, opposites inside the same sex, the meeting of two ideological systems, capitalism which is her background and communism which our actors had been brought up in - all this being set in a frame of global cultural imperialism, symbolised by American culture.
At the same time the director kept Handkes text without additions and found inside of it her own story and structure. The performance is based on the improvisations through which the director and the actors got to know each other better and gave the director the emotional material which she than integrated into the performance. The topical starting point for the performance was, as stated by the director, the war in Bosnia, the tragic destinies of the raped women.
Also her Kaspar is a woman (performed by Polona Vetrih). Although the director is not interested in her feminine or heroic dimension, but simply in the destiny of a creature, who was somehow (linguistically) abused. (Speech torture is also the subtitle of the performance.)
I was always interested in a role of the individual within a certain cultural concept in which people still have to find themselves. I felt myself always in some kind of relation, distance to my culture. But I dont think that my relationship to the performance is anthropological. Its more about an emotional response to Handkes text which is a very male oriented drama, where emotions are somehow logical or systematically. We tried to make the text more human, with a help of tiny rituals. That is why the performance is very personal, said Anne Furse.
The pair of teachers of English in the performance is acted by Alojz Svete and Željko Hrs. Handkes Kaspar which is, as the director said, a very difficult text even for the English speaking actors, was translated to Slovene by Lado Kralj, language consultant was Mojca Kranjc, scene and costume design by Irena Pivka, composer Drago Ivanuša.
Blaž Lukan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TV Slovenia 1/18 October 1998
Kaspar Premiere
The director subtitled the famous Peter Handke work Speech Torture. Although, it was obvious, that the actors, Polona Vetrih as a lead role and Alojz Svete and ?eljko Hrs as trainers, speak English as if it was their mother language. What makes this performance unique is the fact that Kaspar is turned into Kasparina via Vetrihs role.
On the stage, designed by Irena Pivka, who also created the costumes and
listening to the music of Drago Ivanuša, we have witnessed, at the small theatre hall of Cankarjev dom, a new point of view of human torture that erases borders between sexes in the name of the festival itself. The director stated humbly that the majority of work was done by the actors themselves. They found a common thought, though, working in a quick tempo, that theatre is not there just for the large jests, supporting life styles and happy endings. Sometimes all were left with is a space of double-crossing, a ritual of being defeated and inexpressive emotions.
Knap Ã…Â embera Majda
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Radio Slovenia 1/19 October 1998
The English Premiere at the Cankarjev dom
Considering that the performance was created as part of the City of Women Festival which is just going on in Ljubljana, we can understand why the director, Anna Furse, decided to use a woman for the role of Kaspar.
The motif of Kaspar has been often used in art. Namely, it is about a person who had lived in total isolation and socialised only when he was almost a full grown person. The isolated space of Kaspar, at the beginning of the play, is, paradoxically, the space of total freedom that starts to narrow and shrink with the first move of a piece of chalk on the blackboard, which represents learning. Kaspar articulates his wish in a sentence - he wants to become what someone else once was, and he succeeds in it. But Kaspar, as seen through the eyes of Anna Furse, wants more than that. When she uses a woman as a central figure while the trainers are men, the relationship between the trainers and Kaspar gets sharper because of the gender difference. The woman Kaspar is the one that learns language from men. In the performance, these two are possibly a little too simple, too sharp and and look severe in their grey shirts. Uniformed antagonists who control the world with order and discipline, with words - pronounced or written and with their own fists if necessary. Kaspar adapts, accepts the language and conquers it, but she loses her nature, freedom and becomes what someone else once was.
All this on the stage; closed and black as a school blackboard or, moreover, as the darkness of ignorance itself. With the many walls that frame it and the doors that open and what is more important, close - in many layers. The set was designed by Irena Pivka.
The director Anna Furse with the actors Polona Vetrih as Kaspar and Željko Hrs and Alojz Svete as trainers, added one more contradiction to the performance. It is the contradiction between the womans primary and personal language, which is Slovene and the language of a huge colonising culture, which is possible to explain inside the concept, but is not very necessary for understanding the performance.
Urška Grahek
HERE IS THE ACCOUNT OF A SLOVENIAN PRODUCTION OF 'KASPAR' THAT WENT A STEP FURTHER...
ANNA FURSE, about the performance:
When I was invited by Ursula Cetinski to direct a production for Cankarev Dom I was given every artistic freedom but one sine qua non: a company of three actors who would comprise two men and a woman. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is a paucity of plays which reflect this particular triangle, and I spent many months mulling over this problem: a play in which there might be a central character who is a woman and two male characters either side of her. Evenutally, I hit on the idea of Handkes KASPAR, and the poetic licence I would take by making the protagonist female, by eliminating her doubles and by reducing her chorus of trainers to a male duet. The play - an anatomy of the relationship between language and thought, thought and society - provides a rich seam for investigating some of our broader concerns which we agreed as a company when we first met in June 1997: the role of women in society, what makes wars and how throughout history women have suffered war as a sexual aggression and how rape has so recently been used in Bosnia as an ethnic cleansing system. The word system is important here, for the horrifying statsitics from these rape camps testify not to random abuse but to a carefully planned and executed process of torture and elimination. In KASPAR the central character, who arrives on the scene with only one scentence to utter, is forced to speak not by direct violence but by the process of speech itself.
This SPEECH TORTURE as Handke calls it thus becomes a poetic metaphor for the way in which a society recreates itself through the individual, how the outsider is brought into the values of dominant culture, how we learn to conform, how power works.
Our KASPAR is not a feminist heroine, nor a mere vitctim. She is a survivor. She adapts - or would probably die. this is not a piece of theatre celebrating womens emancipation, nor her potential nor her struggle for power. It is a description of the (feminine) powerless being drawn into the (masculine) system of power which is unyielding, pitiless and cocksure. The male characters in this production are not pathological or psychotic. They too have learnt the system. And they must pass it on. In exploring this text through the lens of gender relationships, we also find the feminine as a metaphor for all that is relative. Thus our KASPAR might also be a nation.
Issues of territory and aggression are painfully fresh in the minds of former Yugoslavs. As are issues of language and identity. the forces of capitalism are rapidly impregnating culture with american ideology. The Self is in a process of reconstruction. But then we are all fast-learners when it comes to consumerism:
I saw something sparkle.
Because it sparkled , I wanted
to have it. I wanted to have
everything that sparkled.
Later I also wanted to have
what didnt sparkle (KASPAR)
What we eat we are. The Macdonalds logo is a flag across the globe.
In confronting this very structural, philosophical and verbose play with our own experiences we soon came to a decision not to create two productions, one Slovene and one English, but to find a para-logic in the play for KASPARs acquisition of language: the acquisition of Enlgish language, the lingua-franca of business. We necessarily pared the text down whilst remaining utterly faithful to the original structure. This process of reduction then became the theme tune of the production: less is more. Our via negativa has involved a lot of hard work and sometimes a very testing challenge for the trained actor-instincts. We have wrought an emotional narrative from a text which Handke insists is not a story but a theatrical event. We have done this by devising rituals and contexts for each phase of KASPARs development. In this version there is an imagined story, a before and a possible after. Our KASPAR transforms herself from an ethnic minority to a member of the majority. Or perhaps she has simply learned a camouflage, a survival strategy. Her journey is perilous and not without contradictions and errors. Her trainers are both anonymous and human. and through them we have endeavoured to explore facets of man to man and man to woman relationships.
The work on making this production has been intense and very personal. the actors have created much of the material from improvisation. Whilst never having worked together as a company before we soon found a process of trial and error to reach the point of having a piece of work which we could now all really call ours.
Anna Furse
Ljubljana, July 31st 1998
BACK
Some of media respond:
Delo daily
Bilingual Kaspar in Cankarjev dom
A VOICE IN RELATION TO SILENCE
One Kica is not enough for Slovenes! said Mitja Rotovnik, the director of Cankarjev dom, at the press conference, while presenting the new production of Cankarjev dom. What he had in mind is that Uršula Cetinski, the head of theatre programs in CD, had invited a British director Anne Furse, to direct the new premiere that we can see on Sunday as part of the City of Women Festival.
The project is ambitious and a little unusual for Slovenia: a performance of a very demanding text by Peter Handke from the end of the sixties (using the same text which was in the beginning of the seventies the first production of the experimental theatre Glej) in a bilingual version, English and Slovene, with a British director, for the first time involved with our cultural and theatre scene. The director who has a very rich theatre biography (she is the author of several awarded theatre texts, scripts, shes directed over forty different productions, co-worked with Peter Brook and Grotowskys group, she has headed several British theatre groups, among others Bloodgroup and Paines Plough, works also as a professor of theatre and writer), was faced, in Cankarjev dom with an already selected group of actors and co-workers but this did not represent a problem for her. To the contrary: in the five, six weeks of intensive rehearsals (from 10 am to 10 pm) she creatively used the differences she had experienced by coming in contact with our culture and our theatre. The fact of meeting or even confronting experience is in the centre of her directing concept of Kaspar: a voice in relation to silence, relations between sexes, opposites inside the same sex, the meeting of two ideological systems, capitalism which is her background and communism which our actors had been brought up in - all this being set in a frame of global cultural imperialism, symbolised by American culture.
At the same time the director kept Handkes text without additions and found inside of it her own story and structure. The performance is based on the improvisations through which the director and the actors got to know each other better and gave the director the emotional material which she than integrated into the performance. The topical starting point for the performance was, as stated by the director, the war in Bosnia, the tragic destinies of the raped women.
Also her Kaspar is a woman (performed by Polona Vetrih). Although the director is not interested in her feminine or heroic dimension, but simply in the destiny of a creature, who was somehow (linguistically) abused. (Speech torture is also the subtitle of the performance.)
I was always interested in a role of the individual within a certain cultural concept in which people still have to find themselves. I felt myself always in some kind of relation, distance to my culture. But I dont think that my relationship to the performance is anthropological. Its more about an emotional response to Handkes text which is a very male oriented drama, where emotions are somehow logical or systematically. We tried to make the text more human, with a help of tiny rituals. That is why the performance is very personal, said Anne Furse.
The pair of teachers of English in the performance is acted by Alojz Svete and Željko Hrs. Handkes Kaspar which is, as the director said, a very difficult text even for the English speaking actors, was translated to Slovene by Lado Kralj, language consultant was Mojca Kranjc, scene and costume design by Irena Pivka, composer Drago Ivanuša.
Blaž Lukan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TV Slovenia 1/18 October 1998
Kaspar Premiere
The director subtitled the famous Peter Handke work Speech Torture. Although, it was obvious, that the actors, Polona Vetrih as a lead role and Alojz Svete and ?eljko Hrs as trainers, speak English as if it was their mother language. What makes this performance unique is the fact that Kaspar is turned into Kasparina via Vetrihs role.
On the stage, designed by Irena Pivka, who also created the costumes and
listening to the music of Drago Ivanuša, we have witnessed, at the small theatre hall of Cankarjev dom, a new point of view of human torture that erases borders between sexes in the name of the festival itself. The director stated humbly that the majority of work was done by the actors themselves. They found a common thought, though, working in a quick tempo, that theatre is not there just for the large jests, supporting life styles and happy endings. Sometimes all were left with is a space of double-crossing, a ritual of being defeated and inexpressive emotions.
Knap Ã…Â embera Majda
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Radio Slovenia 1/19 October 1998
The English Premiere at the Cankarjev dom
Considering that the performance was created as part of the City of Women Festival which is just going on in Ljubljana, we can understand why the director, Anna Furse, decided to use a woman for the role of Kaspar.
The motif of Kaspar has been often used in art. Namely, it is about a person who had lived in total isolation and socialised only when he was almost a full grown person. The isolated space of Kaspar, at the beginning of the play, is, paradoxically, the space of total freedom that starts to narrow and shrink with the first move of a piece of chalk on the blackboard, which represents learning. Kaspar articulates his wish in a sentence - he wants to become what someone else once was, and he succeeds in it. But Kaspar, as seen through the eyes of Anna Furse, wants more than that. When she uses a woman as a central figure while the trainers are men, the relationship between the trainers and Kaspar gets sharper because of the gender difference. The woman Kaspar is the one that learns language from men. In the performance, these two are possibly a little too simple, too sharp and and look severe in their grey shirts. Uniformed antagonists who control the world with order and discipline, with words - pronounced or written and with their own fists if necessary. Kaspar adapts, accepts the language and conquers it, but she loses her nature, freedom and becomes what someone else once was.
All this on the stage; closed and black as a school blackboard or, moreover, as the darkness of ignorance itself. With the many walls that frame it and the doors that open and what is more important, close - in many layers. The set was designed by Irena Pivka.
The director Anna Furse with the actors Polona Vetrih as Kaspar and Željko Hrs and Alojz Svete as trainers, added one more contradiction to the performance. It is the contradiction between the womans primary and personal language, which is Slovene and the language of a huge colonising culture, which is possible to explain inside the concept, but is not very necessary for understanding the performance.
Urška Grahek
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TITEL
Interview Es gibt keinen in diesemJahrhundert, der mit dieserSchaerfe die Luege,die in der Sprache selbststeckt, aufdecken kann. Claus Peymann ueber seinen Wechsel ansBerliner Ensemble und das Werk von Peter Handke.FRAGE: Thomas Bernhard schilderte in seinem Dramolett Claus Peymann verlaesst Bochum und geht als Burgtheaterdirektor nach Wien das Umzugswirrwarr 1986. Demnaechst verlassen Sie das Burgtheater und gehen ans Berliner Ensemble. Ist es diesmal genauso?Claus Peymann: Ich bin noch gar nicht in der Wirrwarrphase angelangt. Im Moment verschlingt mich die Wiener Arbeit, so dass ich nur wenig fuer das Berliner Ensemble tun kann. Ich befinde mich eher noch in einer Phase des Traeumens. Das BE ist in einem verwahrlosten Zustand, und wahrscheinlich ist meine Direktion tatsaechlich die letzte Moeglichkeit zur Rettung dieses legendaeren Theaters. Wenn wir die letzten Premieren an der Burg absolviert haben, werden wir uns ausschliesslich aufs BE konzentrieren.FRAGE: Sie waren 13 Jahre am Burgtheater, als Theaterdirektor und als Regisseur. Auch in Berlin werden Sie wieder alle Zepter in der Hand haben. Geht das eine nicht ohne das andere?Claus Peymann: Ich bin der Meinung, dass man ein Theater aus der kuenstlerischen Position heraus definieren muss und sehe mich als Gegenbild zu den immer haeufiger auftretenden Managerintendanten. Diese sind gewissermassen Ebenbilder der Politiker und Journalisten - also der Figuren, mit denen sie ausserhalb des Theaters zu tun haben. Sie sind dadurch vertraeglicher. Ich bin ein Anachronismus, weil ich mich ganz eindeutig zum Direktor, der zugleich Kuenstler ist, bekenne. Wenn die Arbeit am BE nicht zustande kommen wuerde, koennte ich mich aber auch von dieser Position des Theaterdirektors trennen und nur noch inszenieren. Manchmal habe ich eine grosse Sehnsucht danach, von dieser Verantwortung fuer das Ganze befreit zu sein. Andererseits sehe ich die tragischen, manchmal Don Quijote-artigen Kaempfe von Regisseuren wie Peter Zadek, die ueberall von neuem versuchen muessen, ihr Lieblings-Ensemble zusammenzuengagieren - was oft nicht gelingt. Denn, das ist der grosse Vorteil, wenn Sie Direktor und Regisseur sind: Sie koennen Ihre Lieblingsschauspieler, Ihr Ensemble, immer ans eigene Haus binden. In Wien wurde die Luft fuer die kuenstlerische Arbeit manchmal sehr duenn. Die Burg ist, was die Groessenordnung angeht, ein im Grunde nicht mehr kommensurables Haus. An das BE zu gehen, auch in dieser Doppelrolle, ist daher eine Art Befreiung. Das BE ist erheblich kleiner und birgt weniger Gefahren fuer eine intensive und konzentrierte Arbeit.FRAGE: Wie wird die Arbeit in Berlin aussehen?Claus Peymann: Es geht noch ein Regisseur mit, Philip Tiedemann. Der junge, begabte Tiedemann und der erfahrene Peymann sollen das Berliner Ensemble praegen mit insgesamt drei bis vier Inszenierungen pro Jahr. Zusaetzlich werden wir zwei oder drei Gastregisseure dazuholen, die starke Gegenpositionen zu unserer Arbeit bilden sollen. Ich wuensche mir fuers BE eine Radikalitaet in der AEsthetik und den inhaltlichen Positionen, die ueber das hinausgeht, was in Wien moeglich war.FRAGE: Was ist Ihr Eindruck von Berlin?Claus Peymann: Die Stadt wird interessant. Sie ist jetzt im Aufbruch zu sich selbst. Es ist ein Phaenomen, dass in diesen beiden Haelften Berlins seit Kriegsende zwei getrennte Theaterwelten existierten - getrennt nur durch die Mauer. Es gab auf beiden Seiten, in diesen gegeneinander gerichteten Frontstaedten, eine sehr lebendige Kultur - eine Subventionskultur zwar, aber eine, die auch schoene Blueten trug. Und nach dem Wegfall der Mauer brach das Theaterleben auf beiden Seiten in sich zusammen. Offensichtlich hatten die Menschen in diesen ersten zehn Jahren nach der Wende keine Zeit oder keine Lust oder keine Musse, das Theater als einen Wert fuer sich in Anspruch zu nehmen. Oder aber die Theater waren nach diesem politischen Erdrutsch gar nicht imstande, darauf zu reagieren. Jedenfalls ist seitdem jeder zweite Berliner Theatersessel nicht verkauft worden. Das ist eine erstaunliche Tatsache: Jahrzehntelang kriegten Sie keine Karten, und auf einmal sind die Theater halbleer.FRAGE: Welche Rolle soll das BE in dieser Situation spielen?Claus Peymann: Im Theaterleben Berlins hat eine starke Erschoepfung und vielleicht auch eine Wirklichkeitsentfernung stattgefunden. Jetzt steht der Einzug der Bonner Regierung bevor. Sie moechte sich in dieser Berliner Republik neu definieren. Zugleich muss sich diese Stadt, die derzeit noch immer aus zwei Haelften und einer urbanen Wueste besteht, zu einer Metropole entwickeln. Da sehe ich fuer das Theater sehr interessante Aufgaben. Sicher auch ganz primitiver, aufklaererischer Natur, wie etwa: die Maechtigen kontrollieren und fuer die Schwachen sprechen. Eine Praeambel fuer ein neues Theater der Aufklaerung. Das BE war schon immer ein Theater fuer die neue Literatur. Das wird es auch bleiben. Auf diese Weise wird das Berliner Ensemble an der Gestaltung dieser neuen Metropole beteiligt sein. Die jetzige Umbruchsituation gibt uns die Chance, fuer ein Publikum ohne Scheuklappen zu spielen und vielleicht auch Kritiker zu finden, die das als Herausforderung und Chance begreifen. Andererseits haengt unsere Arbeit nicht von der Theaterkritik ab. Sie ist vielmehr abhaengig von uns. Bildlich: wir spielen das Spiel, machen die Fouls und schiessen die Tore (Eigentore inklusive!), und die Kritik schaut zu.FRAGE: Man sagt, in der Theaterwelt gaebe es eine Generationsluecke: Grosse Theatermacher kamen aus der Zeit der 68er - dazu gehoeren Sie. Dann kam lange nichts. Ist das so?Claus Peymann: Ich halte diese Theorie fuer nicht ganz zutreffend. Es koennte natuerlich sein, dass meine Generation, nachdem wir die Vaetergeneration vom Thron gestossen hatten, sehr lange, bis heute jugendlich wirkte, und dass jeder dachte, wir brauchen keine Neuen, diese Jungs sind ja noch jung. Aber die Begabungsdichte jeder Generation ist aehnlich. Alle zehn Jahre gibt es zwei, drei herausragende Figuren, und eine Handvoll Begabungen. Davon gehen einige verloren, verlieren den Mut, lassen sich einkaufen. Das verringert die Zahl. Nach meiner Generation kamen die heute 40- bis 50jaehrigen: Castorf, Schleef, Breth, Bondy, Steckel und andere. Was ist an denen schlecht? Die sind doch erste Sahne. Danach kam die Generation der heute 30- bis 40jaehrigen, unter ihnen eine Fuelle von ganz grossen Begabungen. Durch die falsche Theorie, es gaebe keinen Nachwuchs, hat man eine uebertriebene Fokussierung auf die ganz Jungen betrieben: Jeden zweiten Tag wird der neue Shooting Star entdeckt, die junge Sensation gefeiert, und nach der naechsten Inszenierung ist sie/er wieder weg... Dieses geile Herumwittern, wo ist das naechste Jung-Genie, ist Kennzeichen einer menschenmordenden Medienoeffentlichkeit.FRAGE: In OEsterreich kamen Angriffe gegen Sie vor allem aus dem rechten, konservativen Lager. In Deutschland weht ein anderer politischer Wind. Das Gesinnungsmonopol und Tabus erwachsen dort eher aus dem ex-linken Lager. Haben Sie diesen neuen Wind schon gespuert?Claus Peymann: Ich habe ihn noch nicht gespuert, aber ich bin ohnehin kein Blatt, dass sich durch irgendeinen Wind in Bewegung setzen laesst. Ich mache lieber meinen eigenen Wind. Ich glaube, dass das kuenftige BE durch die Qualitaet seiner Auffuehrungen eine eigene Bewegung erzeugen wird. An dieser Bewegung bin ich interessiert. Ob da Sympathien von buergerlicher Seite kommen, kann ich nicht sagen. Ich kann nur sagen, dass ich kein Wessi bin, der der ehemals repraesentativen Staatsbuehne der DDR zeigen will, wie Theater geht. Meine Wurzeln gehen selbst stark in die grosse Zeit des DDR-Theaters zurueck. Ich hatte immer eine deutliche linke Positionierung. In Stuttgart fuehrte das zu massiven politischen Auseinandersetzungen mit der Obrigkeit. Am Ende wurden wir dort rausgeschmissen, nachdem wir in unserem Theater fuer die RAF-Haeftlinge in Stammheim Geld fuer Zahnersatz gesammelt hatten. Vielleicht wirkt gerade meine Person integrativ fuer Linke und Konservative. Ich konnte immer mit Vertretern beider Seiten befreundet sein. Selbstverstaendlich wurden in Bochum neben den Stuecken Thomas Bernhards auch viele Stuecke von Heiner Mueller uraufgefuehrt... In ihrer jeweiligen Radikalitaet und Konsequenz sind sich beide Autoren nahe - wenn sie auch in ihrem Denken und in ihren Biographien Welten voneinander trennen.FRAGE: Kann Ihre Vorstellung von politischem Theater heute ueberhaupt noch funktionieren? Stichworte hierzu: Das Ende von Rechts und Links; die Austauschbarkeit der Parteien; das Ende der grossen Politik...Claus Peymann: Das ist ein komplexes Thema. Von politischem Theater in dem Sinne, dass es partei- oder tagespolitisch definiert wird, habe ich nie etwas gehalten. Politisch ist am Theater sein Grundcharakter: Menschen versammeln sich und reagieren gemeinsam auf das, was ihnen vorgespielt wird. Das ist ein politischer Prozess. Im Gegensatz dazu die Fensehglotze mit den vereinsamten Zuschauern. Gemeinsame Angst und Sehnsucht oder gemeinsames Erschrecken und Gelaechter koennen sie dabei nicht erleben - und schon gar keine Solidaritaet. Das Theater hat eine andere Kraft: Es fuehrt seine Zuschauer zu einem gemeinsamen Erlebnis. Unter Umstaenden zur gemeinsamen Erloesung, zur Katharsis, in der sich alle Beteiligten fuer eine utopische Sekunde in gute Menschen verwandeln. Das heisst natuerlich nicht, dass sie anschliessend nicht gleich wieder zu Spiessern, Alkoholikern, Verkehrsrowdys, Kinderschaendern, Nazis oder Massenmoerdern werden koennen. Diese heilige Sekunde, auf die alle hinfiebern und in der dann auch Totenstille im Theater entsteht, entspricht der Totenstille der katholischen Messe: Der Augenblick der Wandlung. Aber dieser Augenblick findet sich auch in einer unendlichen Heiterkeit, in grenzenlosem Gelaechter. Oder im Aufschrei, weil der Schmerz der Zuschauer nicht mehr zu ertragen ist. Das Theater spielt uns das bessere, das richtigere Leben vor, die Alternative. Es vermittelt uns immer wieder ein Menschenbild jenseits der Klischees.FRAGE: Sie haben bereits von Peter Turrini und Elfriede Jelinek Stuecke fuers BE bestellt. Auch Die Fahrt im Einbaum von Peter Handke werden Sie von der Burg nach Berlin mitnehmen. Gibt es nicht auch grosses zeitgenoessisches Theater in Deutschland?Claus Peymann: Ich wuerde mich freuen, wenn Botho Strauss, Christoph Hein, Thomas Brasch, Thomas Huerlimann und andere durch die Existenz eines dem Neuen sich vehement oeffnenden Theaterbetriebes animiert oder ermutigt wuerden, gezielt fuer das BE zu schreiben. Ich bin zuversichtlich, aber ich glaube, diese Phantasie muss man auch provozieren. In Stuttgart war damals das Zentrum der zeitgenoessischen Dramatik. Eine Art Nationaltheater im Lessingschen Sinne. Das wanderte mit uns erst nach Bochum, dann nach Wien. Dass sich kein anderes Theater in Deutschland oder OEsterreich so kontinuierlich und intensiv fuer die zeitgenoessische Dramatik interessiert, betont die Besonderheit unserer Theaterarbeit. Der richtige Umgang mit den Dichtern ist fuer mich eine Frage der Verfuehrung und Liebe. So habe ich Peter Handke angeregt, und Thomas Bernhard haette sicher nicht so kontinuierlich fuers Theater geschrieben, waere da nicht in Stuttgart, Bochum oder Wien eine Direktion gewesen, die von ihm etwas erhoffte.FRAGE: Warum war Ihnen gerade Peter Handke wichtig?Claus Peymann: Ich habe es einfach nicht ertragen, dass so eine wichtige Stimme und ein so hellsichtiges Traeumen, das Handke dem Theatervolk bieten kann, ueber viele Jahrzehnte verstummt war. Ich moechte mit Ihnen wetten, Peter Handke haette bis heute nicht wieder fuer die Buehne geschrieben, wenn ich ihm nicht so zugesetzt haette. Und jetzt, nach nur wenigen Jahren, besteht ein grandioses, beruehrendes Spaetwerk von ihm. Allein in den drei Stuecken Das Spiel vom Fragen (1990), Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wussten (1992) und Zuruestungen fuer die Unsterblichkeit (1997) ist ein wesentlicher dramatischer Kosmos entstanden, der aller Voraussicht nach noch komplexer ist als seine fruehen, schon Theatergeschichte gewordenen Dramen.FRAGE: Sie sagten anlaesslich der Urauffuehrung von Zuruestungen fuer die Unsterblichkeit vor zwei Jahren, Handke gelinge vom Ich der Rueckschluss auf das Allgemeine - auf das Politische, koennte man ergaenzen. Ist das der Grund, warum er heute eine solche Autoritaet hat beim Schreiben, dass er seine Insichgekehrtheit, die ihm frueher den Ruf des unpolitischen Dichters einbrachte, behalten hat, gleichzeitig aber die Rueckschluesse zum Allgemeinen staerker geworden sind?Claus Peymann: Handke versucht in der Tat, und das ist bewundernswert, einen wirklich poetisch-politischen Gegenkosmos aufzubauen, ihn herbeizutraeumen. Er schreibt aus einem halbwachen, seherischen Zustand der Inspiration heraus. Jenseits aller Denkklischees stellt er unserer heutigen Apokalypse eine friedliche, suchende Welt gegenueber. Die Krise und der schliessliche Zusammenbruch des Sozialismus bedeutet ja nicht den Sieg des Westens - oder des Kapitalismus. Unser System hier ist doch genauso morsch. Unerhoert ist es, was unsere Demokratien aushalten muessen: Korruptheit, Kaeuflichkeit und Morallosigkeit der herrschenden Schicht unterscheiden sich kaum mehr von der Mafia. Wir sind das luxurioese Fettauge in der Wassersuppe der Welt. Das kann nicht ewig so bleiben. Handke installiert konsequent eine Gegenwelt. Theater als Traum - Spiel der Utopien. Dafuer wirft man ihm Blauaeugigkeit vor. Der Lieblingsvorwurf der Zyniker. Handkes Hoffnung, sein Suchen und Warten steht gegen den sogenannten Pragmatismus einer in Wahrheit schauerlichen Realitaet. Ich bewundere ihn fuer seine Konsequenz, und insbesondere sein Verhalten in den letzten Tagen hat mich tief bewegt. Auch wenn er auf verlorenem Posten steht: venceremos!FRAGE: Sie haben gesagt, in Zuruestungen war Handke auf der Suche nach einer neuen entdeckerischen Ordnung, nach einem Modell fuer eine Zeit ohne Krieg. War Handkes Prosatext Gerechtigkeit fuer Serbien, sein Friedenstext, der Versuch einer Antwort auf seine Suche?Claus Peymann: Handke vertraut seinen Beobachtungen, und er setzt auf die Genauigkeit seiner Beobachtungen, aus denen er dann weitreichende Schluesse und Behauptungen ableitet. Diese Methode hat er von Anfang an verwendet. Auch ganz am Anfang gab es in seinem Werk schon die semantische Kritik. Kritik an der Denunziation und am Verrat, die sich allein in einem einzigen Satz aeussern kann. Das loest seine Empoerung aus. Es gibt keinen in diesem Jahrhundert, der mit dieser Schaerfe die Luege, die in der Sprache selbst steckt, aufdecken kann. Ob das in Kaspar war, dem Drama von der Umformung eines Menschen, in der Publikumsbeschimpfung mit ihrer grossen Reflexion ueber das Theater oder in den Sprachlitaneien der Selbstbezichtigung: Handke hat immer die Doppelgesichtigkeit von Sprache und Gebaerde vorgefuehrt, hat gezeigt, dass es auf die Perspektive ankommt: das Gleiche kann zwei voellig unterschiedliche Bedeutungen haben und damit manipulieren. Die Tarnung und Taeuschung der Sprache und Gebaerde im kleinsten Segment, das ist sein Thema. Im neuen Stueck Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder das Stueck zum Film vom Krieg gibt es eine Figur, die davon spricht, dass sie immer das nicht hat ertragen koennen, was alle richtig fanden. Das ist bezeichnend fuer Handke. Diese Art von geradezu manischem Nonkonformismus ermoeglicht ihm Blicke auf Aspekte und Vorgaenge, die man normalerweise gar nicht wahrnimmt. In diesem Aufmerksam-Machen ist eine bedeutende aufklaererische Dimension enthalten.FRAGE: An zentralen Punkten der Entwicklung Deutschlands hat das Gespann Handke/Peymann wichtige Impulse gesetzt: 1966 die Publikumsbeschimpfung, eine formale Revolution fuer das Theater - gegen den Muff der Adenauerzeit...Claus Peymann: ...und 1968 Kaspar, am Tag des Notstandsmarsches nach Bonn. Das war die erste grosse prinzipielle Verschaerfung des Rechtsgebildes der Bundesrepublik, am Abend war die Urauffuehrung. Kaspar ist ein Stueck ueber den manipulierten Menschen. Durch die scheinbaren Gesetzmaessigkeiten der Zivilisation wird er deformiert. Dagegen revoltiert er, und darueber dreht er durch. In Handkes Werk kann man - wie bei allen bedeutenden Dichtern - die grossen gesellschaftlichen Themen registrieren, auch wenn sie oberflaechlich nicht sichtbar sind. Darauf beruht mein grosses Vertrauen.FRAGE: In den 90er Jahren scheint wieder an so einem Punkt - der Fall der Mauer, der Einzug in die alte neue Hauptstadt Berlin, der Balkankrieg - das Gespann Handke/Peymann zur Stelle, um politisches Theater neu zu beleben. Sehen Sie das so?Claus Peymann: Es ist mir nicht so bewusst, aber es koennte sein, dass Sie recht haben. Man darf aber nicht vergessen, dass es in den letzten Jahren einen Aufbruch im Theater gab. Das hat die Theaterkritik gaenzlich verschlafen. Diesen Aufbruch wagte nicht nur Peter Handke allein. Aber er ragt heraus mit dem bewegendsten oder ungewoehnlichsten Versuch, eine neue Welt zu erfinden, einen neuen Moralkodex - eine Art Kosmos im Goetheschen Sinne. Auch Botho Strauss - in seinem Stueck Ithaka - sucht nach einer Methodik der politischen Praxis. Odysseus kehrt aus dem Krieg zurueck und reagiert mit eiserner Hand, um die Verkommenheit seiner Heimat wieder in die alte Ordnung zurueckzuversetzen. Ein Modell fuer Konsequenz und Brutalitaet. Heiner Mueller unternahm mit Germania 3 den Versuch, mit einem pessimistischen Blick in die Geschichte der deutschen Gegenwart eine Lektion zu erteilen. Nach der vorherrschenden Innensicht vieler Theaterautoren in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten - koennte das nicht ein neuer Aufbruch sein? Wahrscheinlich hat nur noch die Kunst die Kraft, neue Konzepte zu formulieren. Es entspricht meiner eigenen Sehnsucht, mit dem Theater daran teilzunehmen. Getreu nach Lessing sehe ich im Theater immer noch die Moeglichkeit der Kanzel, auch im religioesen Sinne. Die Moralisten und Utopisten duerfen und muessen hier, an dem vielleicht einzigen noch nicht zugrundemanipulierten Medienort, derartige Traeume und Wahrheiten verbreiten.FRAGE: Sie sind fuer die Inszenierung des neuen Handke-Stuecks eigens auf den Balkan gereist. Sie haben des Hotel besucht, wo Handke im Herbst 1998 uebernachtet hat, und den Speisesaal, der jetzt die Buehne hergibt. Wie war diese Reise fuer Sie?Claus Peymann: Das war eine Reise, die mich ganz und gar veraendert hat. Ich habe den Zweiten Weltkrieg ja noch wahrgenommen und bin durch ihn entscheidend gepraegt. Aber ich hatte doch vergessen, wie es aussieht, wenn Haeuser verbrannt sind, wenn Leute vertrieben werden. Ich habe dort eine grosse Solidaritaet mit den Opfern des Bosnien-Krieges empfunden. Die Wunden sind noch nicht geschlossen. Die Fahrt vom Flughafen nach Sarajewo hinein, dann hinaus ins Bergland der Republika Srpska und schliesslich nach Jugoslawien - das war fuer mich Anschauungsunterricht fuer die geplante Expedition mit Peter Handkes Stueck. Wir planten mit der Schauspielertruppe fuer Mitte April eine aehnliche Reise - jetzt wird der Krieg im Kosovo das ausschliessen. Handke hat ein grosses Theaterstueck ueber einen Bruder-Krieg im Herzen Europas geschrieben. Es ist aber zugleich auch ein Traumspiel ueber den Krieg, ueber die Entstehung von Aggressionen, die Menschen dazu faehig machen, den Bruder zu toeten. UEber die kriegstreibende Funktion der modernen Massenmedien. Vielleicht findet die Kunst noch jene Wahrheit, die wir ueberall sonst vergeblich suchen. Die Probenarbeit fuer Das Stueck zum Film vom Krieg steht jetzt im Schatten des Kosovo-Krieges. Mit Erschrecken und Entsetzen registrieren wir die Brutalitaet des Krieges und versuchen zugleich im szenischen Diskurs ueber Kunst, Theater, Krieg - und Politik zu reflektieren. Eine wahrlich bewegende Situation.FRAGE: Wie hat Ihnen eigentlich Novo gefallen?Claus Peymann: Ich habe es erst jetzt kennengelernt. Ich habe ein bisschen den Eindruck, dass Novo ein Rufer in der Wueste ist. Ich bin ein leidenschaftlicher Zeitungsleser. Aber es ist kaum moeglich, sich ein wahrhaftiges Bild ueber die politischen, sozialen und alle anderen Vorgaenge zu verschaffen. Alles koennte Propaganda sein. Novo sollte ein Blatt sein, dass einen speziellen Blick ermoeglicht auf das Ganze in seinen vielen Kleinigkeiten. Die Leseprobe von Novo hat mir gut gefallen. Ob ich allerdings die Geduld haette, ein derartiges Magazin regelmaessig zu lesen, oder ob ich schon durch das Fastfood von Spiegel, Focus und Profil ruiniert bin, wird sich erweisen.Das ist einen Versuch wert. Herzlichen Dank fuer das Gespraech. Claus Peymann ist Direktor und Regisseur am Wiener Burgtheater. Im Sommer 1999 uebernimmt er die Leitung des Berliner Ensembles.Das Gespraech fand am 18. Maerz 1999 in Wien statt.Die Fragen stellte Thomas Deichmann.
© Copyright 1999-2001, Alexander Horn Verlag
NOVO stellt sich ... gegen Zensur, Verbots- und Ausgrenzungsdenken, Overprotectionism und Verhaltensregulierung. Es steht fuer den Versuch, in Gesellschaft und Wissenschaft nicht auf die alten Sicherheiten zu setzen, sondern auf das evolutionaere Potential einer freiheitlichen und zivilen Gesellschaftsvision ... >>> Dafuer steht NOVO
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RICHARD GILMAN'S PIECE FROM "THE MAKING OF MODERN DRAMA" WILL COME HERE
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EXCERPTS FROM RICHARD GILMAN'S 1970S PIECE ON HANDKE'S EARLY WORK TO COME....
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here is professor reinhold grimm's piece on EINBAUM, grim indeed to be so obtuse and a professor, an early retirement is devoutly to be wished, for the sake of literature and the ergrimmten students....
Magazine: World Literature Today, Autumn 1999
Theater
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WORLD LITERATURE IN REVIEW: GERMAN
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Peter Handke. Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder Das Stuck zum Film vom Krieg. Frankfurt a.M. Suhrkamp. 1999. 126 pages. DM 32. ISBN 3-518-41029-6.
Peter Handkes faible for the Balkans, and for Serbia in particular, is well known. In his new book, Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder Das Stuck zum Film vom Krieg (The Voyage in the Dugout or The Piece About the Film on the War), this penchant comes to the fore again, in however veiled or masqueraded a manner.
Handkes piece (i.e., play, or alleged play) is equipped with no fewer than three mottoes--from Ivo Andric, Goethe, and the fourteenth-century laws of King Dusan--all of which are meant to justify his apologetic endeavors. The dramatic action, if indeed that is the proper term, takes place in the lobby of a hotel named Acapulco, a legendary building situated in a small provincial town right in the midst of the innermost gorges and mountains of the Balkan peninsula. It is there that two moviemakers, the American John OHara and the Spaniard Luis Machado, have met in order to hold tryouts for a film they plan jointly to shoot on the (civil) war that raged in this area--probably Bosnia--a decade ago. One after another, or sometimes together, the prospective actors and (noticeably fewer) actresses for this international film project appear, describing and explaining their respective views of the bloody, murderous, atrocious events they then experienced.
These would-be characters comprise, among others, a guide, a chronicler, a historian, a threesome of mountainbikers who are journalists from abroad, but likewise truly indigenous witnesses such as the Waldlaufer, an ex-convict and kind of wild man roaming the woods, or the fabulous beauty queen called Fellfrau or Fellmantelfrau (since she wears a fur coat). As might be expected, their various testimonies turn out to be highly subjective and conflicting, even plainly contradictory, whether regarding the descriptions they give of those events or the mutual verdicts of guilt they pronounce. In the end, the filmmakers realize that their ambitious project is doomed to founder. Machado states as curtly as explicitly, Wir werden den Film zum Krieg nicht machen. Then he adds: Hier, jetzt aber ist die Zeit aller Schuldigen. Es ist das Land, oder Europa, oder die Welt der Allerschuldigen [!]--nur daB die einen Schuldigen zu Gericht sitzen fiber die andern. Hence, not just the Serbs are guilty, according to Handke, but all other nations too, and the latter perhaps even more so, especially through their abuse of the media and because they have the effrontery to sit in judgment upon the former. The author thus arrives at Hobbess bleak insight, Homo homini lupus, Der Mensch ist dem Menschen Wolf. However, he continues: Das Volk ist dem Volke Wolf. Which is to say, in Handkes opinion, that either no one or everyone is to be exculpated.
Structurally speaking, Handke doubtless claims that his text forms a drama, or at least a play. It does neither. Die Fahrt im Einbaum lacks both a dramatic plot and convincing character portrayals and could at best be labeled, to vary a definition of Emile Zolas, as a series of monologues raisonnes, albeit by far not so lucid. And as for said dugout in the title, it only serves to produce a turbulent and rather ridiculous spectacle toward the end of the piece, though having been present and visible onstage from the outset. Supposedly, it is endowed with a mythical, indeed magical quality, for this Einbaum, the author assures us, kann uberall fahren, gleitet durchs Geroll, fibers Gebirge, schafft im Fahren selber die Tunnels, PaBhohen, Furten.
Handkes text, to repeat, is but a series or, more correctly, a conglomerate of statements, pronouncements, and vague proclamations. Furthermore, it is not even wholly original either; it unmistakably betrays certain borrowings from Bertolt Brecht as well as from Thornton Wilder. For instance, the Handkean reitender Bote (messenger on horseback) clearly stems from the Three-Penny Opera. More important yet, his Ansager (announcer), who occupies a central position throughout the text, bears a striking resemblance to the stage manager in Our Town. And what of Handkes liberal admixture of foreign words and phrases that sometimes amount to veritable macaronic sentences? Here, for example, is what he has to say about the defenders of a village and their ruthless aggressors: Die Dorfverteidigung... vastly outnumbered, bald outcounted. Nur noch Tote und Verwundete ..., und die Angreifer: hineingefired in die bodies, die Messer hineingeplunged, die Schadel smashed, and so on.
In short, Die Fahrt im Einbaum constitutes--barely--a lightweight effort within Handkes rich and variegated oeuvre. I seriously wonder if, for his own sake, it should have been published.
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By Reinhold Grimm, University of California, Riverside
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