Theatres of Reality, Fiction, and Temporality: Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller’S Ibsen-Saga (2006 - 2015)

City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 6-2016 Theatres of Reality, Fiction, and Temporality: Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller’s Ibsen-Saga (2006 - 2015) Andrew L. Friedman Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1247 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] THEATRES OF REALITY, FICTION, AND TEMPORALITY: VEGARD VINGE AND IDA MÜLLER’S IBSEN-SAGA (2006-2015) by ANDREW FRIEDMAN A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2016 © 2016 ANDREW FRIEDMAN All Rights Reserved ii THEATRES OF REALITY, FICTION, AND TEMPORALITY: VEGARD VINGE AND IDA MÜLLER’S IBSEN-SAGA (2006-2015) by ANDREW FRIEDMAN This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Theatre in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________ _________________________ Date Marvin Carlson Chair of Examining Committee _______________ _________________________ Date Jean Graham-Jones Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Marvin Carlson Jean Graham-Jones David Savran THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Theatres of Reality, Fiction, and Temporality: Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller’s Ibsen-Saga (2006-2015) by ANDREW FRIEDMAN Advisor: Marvin Carlson This dissertation examines the influence of modernist aesthetics and ideologies on contemporary, European and U.S. experimental theatre. I argue that modernist and contemporary experimental theatres offer competing notions of reality, fiction, and temporality, which I interrogate through Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller’s Ibsen-Saga. I illuminate this tension by reading current modes of performance against the Saga’s productions and work practices, as well as their aesthetic and ideological foundation in three modernist sources: the artificiality of Ibsen’s realism, the utopianism and totality of Richard Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk, and the temporal provocations of the historical avant-gardes. I contend that the Saga reanimates Ibsen, Wagner, and the avant-gardes’ modernist forms and ideas to reject the conventions of twenty-first century practice. iv Table of Contents Introduction: The Total Radical Fiction 1 Chapter 1: The End of Ambiguity: The Ibsen-Saga’s Return to the Real As Such 59 Chapter 2: Return to the Ideal: The Ibsen-Saga’s Supertextual Interpretation of Henrik Ibsen 97 Chapter 3: The Gesamtkunstwerk and the Directorial Dialectic: The Ibsen-Saga as Wagnerian Theatre 142 Chapter 4: Avant-Gardism and Institutional Temporality: The Ibsen-Saga as Avant-Garde Time Bomb 183 Chapter 5: Cancellation and Conclusion: 12-Spartenhaus and the Limits of Provocation 233 Bibliography 268 v Introduction The Total Radical Fiction Overture Sometime in the sixth hour of Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller’s 2009 production of Henrik Ibsen’s Vildanden (The Wild Duck), the English rock band Muse’s “Undisclosed Desires” plays in the theatre. Driven by a triplet of pizzicato strings and a steadily whipped snare, the song gives way to slapped-bass, hissing hi-hats, and a wave of synths that swell to the chorus. The lead singer’s tenor voice rides just above the music—a hypnotic whisper atop pounding drums: I want to reconcile the violence in your heart I want to recognize your beauty is not just a mask I want to exorcise the demons from your past I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart1 Those who stay for the entire seventeen-and-a-half-hour performance will hear the song at least a dozen more times before the sun comes up. On one occasion the track follows a scene in which Hjalmar, the play’s surrogate father of Hedvig, places his penis on a table while his blind daughter wildly swings at it with a real hammer. The performers—hidden beneath full-cover rubber masks—betray neither fear nor malice, except when Hjalmar reflexively jerks away from the table, his naked legs visibly shaking. Sometimes the cast enters the auditorium to dance to the song. Taking to a platform alongside the spectators, Vegard Vinge, one of the production’s creators, plays his Director character. He wears a baby-faced mask of pale skin with blue and red raccoon-ringed eyes, a wig of jet black hair, and a Nazi Waffen-SS jacket emblazoned with the last name of the production’s hero: WERLE. His white track pants are smeared with fake blood and real shit. The 1 Muse, “Undisclosed Desires,” from The Resistance, Warner Brothers, 2009, compact 1 scent of urine hangs in the air. He dances passionately to the song, swinging his arms skyward with the clear instruction to get up and dance. And people do. By this time— ten-hours in—we have learned the song’s length and breaks, even the better part of the chorus. The repetition of the pop music is, as Vinge says, “a trigger for the DNA, something that goes into the body of the audience.”2 Like all of Muse’s music, the song combines ecstasy and end times; it is an anthem for grandiose emotions and ideals. Returning in hours eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and on, the propulsive music sustains the exhausted performers and audience. The Director’s abandoned dancing between scenes celebrates endurance in the face of fatigue and reminds us that we are doing something together in this one hundred-seat theatre on the edge of Oslo. The music stops. The curtain opens on another scene: Gregers—the show’s ideologue played by Ida Müller—is birthed from a massive Ibsen hell-mouth wearing a t-shirt on which Richard Wagner’s profile is emblazoned like a super-hero’s logo. Gregers wanders through the audience, blessing each spectator with a tiny miner’s hammer, the performer’s body dripping gore and green ooze. The other characters have mercilessly abused Gregers over the past dozen hours, punching, kicking, humiliating, and electrocuting the boy. As Gregers approaches, I look into the mask and see Müller’s eyes dart at me: a flash of grey life beneath a dead face streaked with blood. The curtain clangs closed and “Undisclosed Desires” pulses forth again. The audience laughs. Heads nod along. It is in our bodies. The song is a leitmotiv scoring the audience and performers. It is the anthem to this event called the Ibsen-Saga. The song’s blasting volume and first person address lands like a message, an instruction, an ideology. The 2 Vegard Vinge, interview with the author. Internet videophone call. Jersey City, NJ and Berlin, Germany, July 6, 2010. 2 chorus tells us that we have gathered to expose undisclosed desires: violence, beauty, and demons. This is the stuff of Greek tragedy, but the Saga conjures these antique themes through the modernist figures of Ibsen and Wagner before unleashing them on us with an avant-gardist brio. Sitting on the tarmac the following morning, I am trying to download the song before takeoff. The performance ended at 7:30 a.m., requiring me to take a cab from the theatre straight to the airport. We are airborne before the download completes. It does not matter; I can hum the song from memory. It is in my body. Introduction “The most perverse theatre piece in Berlin;” “The 9/11 of theatre;” “The most radical theatrical event;” “The production of the decade;” “A watershed in Norwegian performing arts.”3 The Ibsen-Saga (2006-2015) has incited critical derision, accolades, and dismissal for its unpredictable and limit-testing performances that, according to William F. Condee and Thomas Irmer, “opened a new chapter for what Ibsen means in Germany.”4 This “new chapter” begins with Ibsen, but, as I will argue, the Saga’s 3Ronja Brier and Til Biermann, “Das perverseste Theater-Stück Berlins” (“The Most Perverse Play in Berlin”), Bild, October 28, 2011, accessed April 6, 2014, www.bild.de/ regional/berlin/berlin-aktuell/perverses-theaterstueck-20695048.bild.html; Karl Wolfgang Flender, “#Borkman,” Theatertreffen blog, May 6, 2012, accessed April 4, 2014, http://www.theatertreffen-blog.de/tt12/john-gabriel-borkman/borkman/; Anne Peter, “Aus der Verdrängungshölle,” (Driven out of Hell) Taz, October 31, 2010, accessed June 5, 2014, http://www.taz.de/1/berlin/tazplan- kultur/artikel/?dig=2011/10/31/a0155&cHash=0935ac3ae5; Dirk Pilz, “Ich bin hier nur geschäftlich,” (I’m only here on business), Berliner Zeitung, May 6, 2013, accessed June 1, 2014, http://www.berliner-zeitung.de/kultur/-12-spartenhaus--im-prater-ich-bin-hier- nur-geschaeftlich,10809150,22684532.html; Eva Behrendt, “Der Exzess kommt aus dem Norden ... und sieht doch sehr verschieden aus,” (Excess comes from the North but looks very different) Theater Heute, no. 1 (2012), 18. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 4 William F. Condee and Thomas Irmer, “Theatertreffen (Review),” Theatre Journal 65, no. 2 (2013): 267. 3 importance lies in the animation of modernist figures and ideologies to reject the twenty- first century’s theatrical preoccupations with reality, fiction, and temporality. In this dissertation I historicize the artistic influences, aesthetics, and performance practices of the Ibsen-Saga that distinguish it from prominent modes of contemporary performance. I provide a critical analysis of the Saga’s production history and theorize the works through their four primary influences: postdramatic theatre, Henrik Ibsen, Richard Wagner, and the historical avant-gardes. These influences constitute the discreet lenses through which I will examine the Saga in the following four chapters.

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