POST-MEMORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST IN CONTEMPORARY AUSTRIAN

THEATRE: PROJECTS AGAINST FORGETTING

Submitted by Bernadette Joan Cronin, to the University of Exeter as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Drama, October 2009.

This dissertation is available for Library use on the understanding that it is a copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement.

I certify that all material in this dissertation which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University.

(Signature) …………………………………………………………..

1 ABSTRACT

This dissertation examines contemporary responses by Austrian theatre makers from the free theatre sector, that is, those working outside of the state theatre establishment, to the outcome of what came to be known as ‘the big lie’ on which Austrian national identity was built following liberation from German rule by the Allied forces in 1945.

The ensuing problem for the post-war generations of having to claim a past that was buried under the carefully constructed official version of history but mediated through the silence of their parents and grandparents – shaping their (inner) lives – and possibilities for representing such experience through the medium of theatre are core issues explored in this study. The main focus of the dissertation is analysis of a selection of three pieces of theatre produced by two free theatre companies in Austria,

Auf der Suche nach Jakob / Searching for Jacob / Szukajac Jakuba, and Pola, both by the Projekttheater Studio based in Vienna, and Speaking Stones: images, voices, fragments… from that which comes after by Theater Asou in Graz, Styria. Apart from contextualization of the central thematic concerns of the selected pieces of theatre within the historical events of 20th century Austria, and discussion of the theoretical framework within which the pieces are analysed, this study also offers a consideration of the phenomenon of the free theatre sector in contemporary Austria as a complement and an alternative to the state theatre sector, its roots and development since the post WWII period through to the early 21st century. Interviews with theatre artists, arts administrators and a Holocaust eye witness are also drawn upon to investigate how free theatre can provide a medium though which memory-work, the subtleties of damage and the inexpressible, and the difficult task of claiming the past can be explored.

2 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my supervisor Professor Phillip Zarrilli for his unfailing encouragement and support throughout this project. My sincere thanks also to my panel of assessors, Dr David Roesner and Professor Martin Swales. Other colleagues at Exeter I would like to thank are Gayatri Simons, Christopher McCullough, Peter

Hulton and Jon Primrose.

A special thanks to all the theatre practitioners and arts administrators in

Austria and elsewhere who supported my work: Uschi Litschauer, Klaus Seewald,

Eva Brenner, Hagnot Elischka, Maren Rahmann, Sabine Wiesenbauer, Clemens

Matzka, Gernot Rieger, Monika Zöhrer, Andrea Dörres, Christian Heuegger, Barbara

Stüwe-Eßl, Kaite O’Reilly, Axel Bagatsch, Agnieska Salamon, Hermann and Jakob

Schweighofer, Lissa Gärtler, Carolin Vikoler, Anita Raidl. My sincere thanks also to

Walter Gluschitsch and Franz Trampusch of Wagna.

I would like to thank those who offered valuable advice and assistance: Roy

Sellers, Keith Crook, Kerstin Fest and Adam Ledger. I would also like to thank my colleagues at UCC for their support: Franc Chamberlain, Roisin O’Gorman, Ger

Fitzgibbon, Manfred Schewe, Deborah Fitzgibbon and Veronica Forde.

And finally, my special thanks to those who offered me personal support and encouragement: Graham Allen, Maurice Cronin Jnr., Emily Murphy and Brendan

O’Connor. Most of all, I wish to thank my daughters Daniela and Christiane Reicke and my parents Maurice and Ita Cronin for being with me throughout. I dedicate this dissertation to them in deepest love and gratitude.

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction………………………………………………………………………...7

Chapter One:

Part One: Thematic Context ……………………………………………………….13

Part Two: The Other Theatre……………………………………………………….33

Chapter Two:

Theoretical Context…………………………………………………………………79

Chapter Three:

A ‘Ghost Building’ within a ‘Host Building’ – Speaking Stones: images, voices, fragments “from that which comes after”…...... 111

Chapter Four:

‘Traces of the story-teller’ – Auf der Suche nach Jakob, In search of Jacob, Szukajac

Jakuba...... 161

Chapter Five:

Performing the Literary Text / the Literary Text as Performer – Pola...... 190

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….206

Appendices - a selection of interviews .……………………………………………215

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………..253

4 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (IMAGES) AND ACCOMPANYING MATERIAL

Images:

Fig. 3.1. Entrance to the Roman caves, die Römer Höhlen, of Aflenz…………...127

Fig. 3.2. Bank of the river Sulm, Aflenz………….………………………...... …128

Fig. 3.3 Inside the Roman caves …………………………………………….…129

Fig. 3.4. Concentration Camp prisoners before transportation to their deaths…...130

Fig. 3.5. A prisoner beaten to death in the Roman caves ………………………...131

Fig. 3.6. Colour coding for the various categories of prisoner……………….…..133

Fig. 3.7. The Nazis’ death cart – der Totenkarren……………………………...... 134

Fig.3.8. Image of anonymous woman carved on the wall of the cave…………..135

Fig. 3.9. Photograph of the photograph of the death cart………………………...137

Fig. 3.10. Passageway leading to the performance space in the Roman quarry…..140

Fig. 3.11. The performance space…………………………………………………141

DVDs:

Speaking Stones: images, voices, fragments … “ from that which comes after” (Theater Asou, Graz)

Auf der Suche nach Jakob / Searching for Jacob / Szukajac Jacuba (Projekt Theater Studio, Vienna)

Pola (Projekt Theater Studio, Vienna)

5 INCLUSION OF PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED PAPER:

Chapter Four of this dissertation includes material that has been adapted from a previously published article in the journal Contemporary Theatre Review, Volume 18,

Issue 2, May 2008, entitled:

‘Post-Memory and the Holocaust: Auf der Suche nach Jakob / Searching for Jacob /

Szukajac Jakuba – A Project against Forgetting’

6 INTRODUCTION

Voi che vivete sicuri Nelle vostre tiepide case, Voi che trovate tornando a sera Il cibo caldo e visi amici: Considerate se questo è un uomo Che lavora nel fango Che non conosce pace Che lotta per mezzo pane Che muore per un sí o per un no. Considerate se questa è una donna, Senza capelli e senza nome Senza piú forza di ricordare Vuoti gli occhi e freddo il grembo Come una rana d’inverno. Meditate che questo è stato: Vi commando queste parole. Scolpitele nel vostro cuore Stando in casa andando per via, Coricandovi alzandovi; Ripetetele ai vostri figli. O vi si sfaccia la casa, La malattia vi impedisca, I vostri nati torcano il viso da voi.

(Primo Levi, 2005a: 7)

The idea for this project grew out of a long-standing interest in post-WWII Austrian

Literature, in particular the Todesartenzyklus by Ingeborg Bachmann, which thematises what has come to be known as ‘the big lie’ on which Austrian national and cultural identity was built during the immediate post-war period and then from 1955 following the establishment of the 2nd Austrian Republic. The ‘big lie’ refers, of course, to the idea that Austria was Hitler’s first victim when he marched on Vienna on the 15th of March 1938 and proclaimed the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany to an ecstatic crowd of an estimated 200,000 on Heldenplatz. The after-effects of the victimization myth – a major factor in the suppression of Austria’s war guilt and thus to the inheritance of a confusing silence by the subsequent generations – are still to be

7 felt today in the lives of Austrians, more than six decades since the end of WWII. As the last of the wartime generation die, it becomes ever more urgent to find ways of addressing these matters. In many cases, however, the dead have taken their personal histories with them and the question remains, how, particularly in the absence of the narratives, can the past be reclaimed and problematic identity issues addressed? In

2002, two years after EU sanctions were imposed on Vienna following the formation of a coalition between the ÖVP, the Austrian Peoples Party and the FPÖ, the extreme right-wing Freedom Party, known for its xenophobia, anti-immigration policies, and

German nationalist orientation, I witnessed a piece of theatre performed by a free theatre company from Graz, Theater Asou, Speaking Stones – images, fragments from that which comes after (dir. Phillip Zarrilli), the central concern of which was the alienating effects of war and displacement. The sites of signification in the piece were less the language of narratives and stories than that of gesture and silence.

Company members explained to me that a key motivation in the making of this piece was to respond through the medium of theatre to the recent alarming political developments in their country, that is the rise in popularity of the Freedom Party.

Following this encounter, I conceived of the idea to focus my research project on contemporary theatre made by Austrian free theatre ensembles that seeks to explore theatrically – either obliquely or overtly – what it means to have inherited the perplexing silence of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations surrounding their experience of WWII. This would allow me to explore crucial questions such as how, in the absence of actual personal his- and her-tories, do the heirs of the silence engage with and claim the past, and how can performance and performativity be instrumental in this process?

8 Theater Asou, a company strongly intercultural in its orientation in terms of its engagement with collaborators and practical and theoretical research on modes of theatre making, expressed their concern at the lack of material that has been published to date on the work of free theatre companies as part of an experimental sub-culture in

Austria, and their willingness to support my research project. Soon after encountering

Theater Asou and their work, I became acquainted with the work of another free theatre company in Vienna, the Projekttheater Studio Wien, led by director Eva

Brenner, who was likewise open to supporting such an enquiry. At the time the

Projekttheater Studio was planning a collaboration with Lee Breuer, director of

Mabou Mines in New York, to devise a piece of theatre drawing on material scripted by Brenner. This material related to her personal experience of having inherited silence in the context of her own family’s history with National Socialism.

Furthermore, one year previously, the company had produced a piece of theatre based on a true story by the Polish author Hanna Krall, the central figure of which was executed by the Nazis for concealing 25 Jews under her floorboards during the period of the so-called ‘Final Solution’ in Poland. Here was another free theatre company concerned with issues of identity and Austria’s history with National Socialism, intercultural in its orientation and continually seeking new impulses and theatrical modes to express its artistic and intellectual concerns. There seemed to be sufficient evidence to suggest that something significant was happening at the time in the free theatre scene of Austria to address through its performance work problematic issues of identity emerging from a false configuration of a critical period in Austria’s recent history, triggered by new developments in the political arena that seemed all too familiar. Initially, I envisaged extending the study to further free theatre ensembles making work with similar thematic concerns but in the course of my investigations I

9 came to the conclusion that a closer study of the work of two paradigmatic free theatre ensembles, one in the larger urban setting of Vienna and the other in the smaller urban setting of Graz, would allow for a deeper engagement both with the work and with the life of the companies and hopefully produce more satisfactory results than a broader and therefore less detailed study.1 The decision to foreground close analysis of key pieces of theatre made by the two companies would furthermore better serve the central research question as to how performance and performativity can be instrumental in claiming a problematic past. My intention, therefore, is in no way to disregard the work of the many other artists and writers concerned with and engaging with these issues, but rather to acknowledge and explain the choice of a narrow focus for the purposes of project. Material garnered from artists, directors and administrators from other theatre companies and arts organisations in the form of interviews will be drawn upon, however, to help contextualise the work of the two companies that forms the main focus of my study. The three pieces of theatre I have selected to analyse as the main foci of this dissertation are: Speaking Stones: images, voices, fragments … “from that which comes after” (dir. Phillip Zarrilli) by Theater

Asou, Auf der Suche nach Jakob, In search of Jacob, Szukajac Jakuba (dirs. Lee

Breuer / Eva Brenner) and Pola (dir. Eva Brenner), both by the Projekttheater Studio

Wien. In the case of the first two of these pieces I had the opportunity to attend a number of performances; in the case of the third, however, I had to work with video documentation, as the piece was created and performed the year before I first met the company.

1 Interest groups such as ‘Das andere Theater in Graz’ and ‘IG Freie Theater’ in Vienna, EON (European Off Network) provide information on and video clips of the work of the full range of extant free theatre ensembles in Austria, which is relatively easy to access provided the researcher has adequate German-language skills. Also, some broad-ranging academic studies have been carried out that profile the landscape of non-state theatre production in Austria. (I will discuss this material in greater detail in the following section entitled The Other Theatre). Nothing that I could find, on the other hand, has been published in terms of detailed performance analysis of the work of such companies.

10 Chapter one is sub-divided into two sections: I will first contextualise the broader thematic focus of the three pieces of theatre in question. This will entail a sketch of the historical origins of the factors that combined to collude in a largely collective tacit agreement on the part of post WWII Austria to suppress its identity as part of Nazi Germany, its involvement in the crimes perpetrated under Hitler’s

National Socialist regime, and the cultivation of the victim myth and also the so- called Ostarrîchi myth. I will outline the political developments in the decades following 1945 which led to the gradual dismantling of the victim myth and the beginnings of Austria’s delayed confrontation with its past. Secondly, I will trace the development of the free theatre sector in the Austrian context, particularly in Styria and Vienna, the alternative it offers to mainstream theatre, the challenges it faces in terms of visibility and funding, and situate the two companies I have chosen to foreground in this study within the free theatre landscape. A literature review will establish what has been published to date on Austrian theatre beyond the state sector.

I will trace the roots and development of experimental theatre as a sub-culture in

Austrian theatre and the economics and politics of funding in the context of the historical events, political developments and movements within the theatre in the last fifty years or so in Austria, from the time of the State Treaty of 1955 and subsequent developments, through to the period of the social-democratic government under

Bruno Kreisky in the 70s and early 80s. In view of more recent developments, I will examine, for example, the implications of the OFF-Theater Reform in Vienna. This discussion will be informed by material taken from interviews and informal communications that I have carried out in the course of my research with theatre artists operating within the free theatre scene. Chapter two, then, entails a discussion of the overarching critical, interpretative discourses engaged as a basis for the

11 analyses. Chapters three, four and five offer analyses of the three pieces of theatre identified above. Special emphasis will be given to Speaking Stones, as a substantial section of the chapter is dedicated to the site-sensitive space in which the piece was performed. Finally, in my conclusion, I will discuss the significance of these theatrical explorations within the free theatre sector that sought to promote reflection on

Austria’s history with National Socialism, to disrupt and unsettle the sedimented silence, the repressed memories, the withholding of histories and the attitude of looking away that still seem to characterise the lives of so many families in Austria today.

12 CHAPTER ONE

Part One: Thematic Contextualisation

An intricate web of factors prevailed in post WWII Austria to give rise to the nation’s deflection away from the immediate past, the failure to acknowledge its war guilt, its collusion with the German Nazi apparatus, and to facilitate an understanding of the events which had taken place among the generations who did not directly experience them. Questions remained and to a significant extent remain unanswered to the present day, as the silence or misrepresentation regarding the past continues to be perpetuated in families and communities throughout Austria. This has ongoing implications for issues relating to personal, cultural and national identity. As the last of the wartime generation die, in many cases taking their personal histories with them to remain forever undisclosed, it becomes increasingly urgent to find ways of addressing the question of how to deal with the past. In order to gain a better understanding of the task that faces Austrian theatre makers today, who seek to explore these issues in their work, it is necessary to consider some of the complexity of the historical factors surrounding the lead-up to the Anschluss of 1938 and the post-war restoration years. Furthermore, when discussing the success of Hitler’s expansionist project in Austria and Central Europe, the silence surrounding the fate of the victims in the post-war restoration years, along with the motives of some of the many groups comprising the differentiated spectrum of Austrian society for failing to

13 engage with this period of annexation to Nazi Germany, we also need to consider the role of the international community.

Pronounced the first victim of Hitler’s annexation plan by the Moscow

Declaration on 1 November 1943, Austria emerged from the Second World War freed from any obligation to confront the issue of its allegiances to the German Nazi regime during the period of annexation, which lasted from 12 March 1938 to 11 April 1945.

This conferral of victim status gave rise to what has been described as ‘the big lie’ or

‘die österreichische Lebenslüge’, which Hermann Langbein (in Bourke, 2000: 271) sums up as follows, ‘Wir sind 1938 besetzt worden, wir sind 1945 befreit worden, was dazwischen geschehen ist, dafür können wir nichts’. As Jacqueline Vansant writes (1991: 271), ‘[t]he stage was set for the consequent repression of Austria’s immediate past and the establishment of a problematic Austrian identity.’ In his introduction to a collection of essays, which attempts to help establish ‘a solidly documented more accurate view of Austria’s role in the Anschluss, Donald Daviau

(1991: iv) writes that the past will never be overcome, ‘insofar as the past can ever be overcome – until it has been presented truthfully and understood accurately.’ Eoin

Bourke’s monograph, which traces the period leading up to the Anschluss in Austria through to the post-war restoration period in history and literature, drawing frequently on eye-witness accounts, likewise seeks to create more transparency around these events. These and other sources drawing on eye-witness accounts, such as that of

American foreign correspondent William Shirer or of the Austrian writer Gerhard

Amanshauser, all yield a similar picture of the scenes and events which took place during this period.

Bourke relates how the Nazis had cleverly orchestrated the prelude to Hitler’s appearance at Heldenplatz in Vienna by, for example, bussing crowds of young

14 people into the city equipped with swastika armbands and flags on the days leading up to Tuesday the 15 March 1938 (2000:12) and by paying beggars and down-and-outs to invade the elegant inner city. Carl Zuckmayer (in Bourke, 2000: 13) describes the scene from the 11 to 12 March following this flooding of the city ‘in terms of a medieval vision of Hell’:

An diesem Abend brach die Hölle los. Die Unterwelt hatte ihre Pforten aufgetan und ihre niedrigsten, scheußlichsten, unreinsten Geister losgelassen. Die Stadt verwandelte sich in ein Alptraumgemälde des Hieronymus Bosch: Lemuren und Halbdämonen schienen aus Schmutzeiern gekrochen und aus versumpften Erdlöchern gestiegen. Die Luft war von einem unablässig gellenden, wüsten, husterischen Gekreische erfüllt, aus Männer- und Weiberkehlen, das tage- und nächtelang weiterschrillte.

Clearly, it was not just the sub-proletariat that was joining in the mass hysteria. Many writers wrote of the general transformation of the people of Vienna, the mixture of elation and cravenness that characterized their behaviour and physiognomies. Bourke

(2000: 31) cites some of the sexual metaphors that were frequently employed by writers to characterize Austria’s response to Hitler’s takeover, for example, George

Clare, who – with flagrant misogyny, one must note – ‘used the same coital metaphor to describe the frenetic abandon of the Viennese of both sexes’:

The whole city behaved like an aroused woman, vibrating, writhing, moaning and sighing lustfully for orgasm and release. This is not purple writing. It is an exact description of what Vienna was and felt like on Monday, 14 March 1938, as Hitler entered her.

Bourke also cites many examples of what he describes ‘the rhetorical flatulence’ of the style in which right-wing writers – some still celebrated in Austria today – wrote paens to the ‘Führer’. The homo-erotic verse of Herbert Strutz is quoted, for instance, which characterizes Hitler as a messianic figure that the writer wishes to cleave to:

Schöner und stolzer, als wir dich jemals geglaubt, Nimmst du uns an, unser Kämpfen und innerstes Sein Segnest uns Herzen und Seelen, uns Hände und Haupt, und wir sind dein.

15 These representations are reinforced by Shirer’s accounts (2001: 296) of the Nazi demonstrations he witnessed at around 6pm on Friday 11 March 1938 at the ‘tourist bureau’ in the Kärntnerstrasse, which had been set up by the Nazi party as a kind of shrine to Hitler:

[…] in the streetlights I noted the faces of some of the individuals who made up this churning herd: a familiar sight it was to an old veteran of Nazi Germany. I had seen those faces at the party rallies in Nuremberg: the fanatical popping eyes, the gaping mouths, the contorted expressions of hysteria and paranoia. And now they were screaming: “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler! Hang Schuschnigg! Hang Schuschnigg! Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!” The Brownshirts at Nuremberg had never bellowed the Nazi slogans with such mania.

Accounts of preceding events in the provinces are no different. With bitter irony Gerhard Amanshauser (in Roebling, 1993, 173) conjectures that Salzburg was liberated twice in the space of seven years, once in 1938 by Hitler and again in 1945 by the Allies and – likewise with misogynistic overtones – characterizes the

Anschluss as a rape allegation that was experienced quite differently during the event:

Salzburg wurde innerhalb von 7 Jahren zweimal befreit und die zweite Befreiung war der Gegensatz zur ersten: sie bezeichnete die erste als eine Vergewaltigung. Gerade die Vergewaltigung aber – der Einmarsch der Truppen im Jahr 1938 – löste den größten Jubel aus, den Salzburg je erlebt hat. Sie gehörte offenbar zu jenen Vergewaltigungen, die im Augenblick der Tat ganz anders beurteilt werden als später vor Gericht.

Accounts of Hitler’s reception in Braunau and Linz, the region of his birth, present a similar picture, ‘Hitler’s approach to Linz was staged so as to resemble Advent, the coming of the Saviour’ (Bourke, 2000: 16), as candles were lit in the windows of the houses and boys from the Hitler youth and girls from the BDM lined the streets together with thousands of cheering onlookers. Again, Shirer’s (2001: 314) account reinforces this as he describes how Hitler ‘was carried away by the delirious reception he got from the huge crowds’ in Linz.

16 Notwithstanding the rapid infiltration of state bodies and the media by the

Nazis in the days leading up to the Anschluss and the singularity of their brutality in taking what they wanted, the question remains as to what had led to such a rapturous response among a significant sector of the Austrian population to Hitler’s takeover of

Austria. Austrian unification with Germany has of course a very old history with a number of precedents in former eras. United under the ‘Holy Roman Empire of the

German Nation’ Germany and Austria continued to remain united even after the

Napoleonic wars led to the end of the Empire in 1806. After expulsion by Germany, then, from the union in 1867 following the battle of Königgrätz in which Germany defeated Austria:

[a]n immediate clamor for reunification began and grew into a crescendo within Austria in the 1880s with the formation of George Ritter von Schönerer’s German National Party, which advocated the overthrow of the Austrian monarchy, demanded annexation with Bismarck’s Germany, and introduced racial anti-Semitism to gain its ends. (Daviau, 1991: vii)

This clamour was echoed following the post-WWI dissolution of the Austro-

Hungarian Monarchy in accordance with the treaties of St Germain and Versailles.

The tiny German-speaking remnant of the former illustrious multi-nation state of

Austria-Hungary – ‘“L’Autriche, c’est ce qui reste”, as proclaimed at the deliberations for the Treaty of St. Germain’ (Lamb-Faffelberger, 2003: 291-292) – defined itself as the Austrian state of German-speaking Austria and Western Hungary. Chancellor Karl

Renner called for immediate annexation with Germany. As Lamb-Faffelberger (2003:

291-292) writes, ‘Austria’s Selbstverständnis was essentially German, just as Czechs,

Poles, Ruthenians, Slovenians, Croats, and Italians had identified themselves by their languages.’ Annexation of Austria to Germany, however, was prohibited by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles (Binder & Bruckmüller, 2005: 103).

17 In spite of the humiliation at the loss of its former monarchical status, a new sense of Austrian national identity developed during a period of relative economic stability. In Vienna, for instance, the social reform policies of the socialist government led to the period known as ‘Red Vienna’ (1919 – 1929), when emphasis, for example, was placed on adequate and affordable housing with natural light and a supply of clean running water for the Viennese working class (Lewis, 1983).

Following the Great Depression in 1929, however, and the contingent collapse in

1931 of the internal credit institution, which led to stringent measures felt most by civil servants and the unemployed, the desire for annexation to Germany began to re- emerge in the ensuing years in Austria.2 Meanwhile Hitler had, of course, come to power in Germany and with his plans for expansion had set his sights on Austria, or

‘Ostmark’ (Eastern March) as he insisted on calling it, as his first port of call. A proposal for annexation was rejected by Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss’ Austro-fascist conservative party, the Fatherland Front and the Social Democratic Opposition in

1933. This resulted in the Austrian Nazi Party mutating into the sole annexation-party, enabling them to monopolise the pro-Anschluss electorate (Binder & Bruckmüller,

2005: 103). After the murder of Dollfuss in 1934 by Austrian members of the German

Nazi party, the NSDAP, an attempted German coup to annex Austria was thwarted when Italian troops were sent to the border by Mussolini as a warning to Hitler to stay out of Austria. The ground, however, was laid for the Anschluss in 1938. Although the Nazi party was banned following the aborted putsch, ‘Austrian Nazis, supported by Germany, were still actively preparing the way for the Anschluss’ (Michaels,

1991: 257). Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg of the Fatherland Front, successor to 2 Shirer (1984: 287) returning to Vienna after having spent the previous three years in Hitler Germany notices how Vienna has deteriorated in his absence: ‘Beautiful, stately, civilized, gemütlich, Vienna had become a sad place in the years we had been away. The great baroque and neoclassical buildings were becoming dilapidated, the paint scaling from their walls. The city and the people, as I noted in my diary on Christmas Day of 1937, looked “terribly poor…. The workers are sullen, even those who have jobs, and one sees beggars on every street corner.”’

18 Chancellor Dollfuss, did not receive the support he looked for to Italy, as Mussolini had meanwhile become Hitler’s ally. Furthermore, Great Britain and France increasingly gave in to Hitler’s demands to grant power to the Austrian Nazi Party.

By 10 March 1938 Hitler had mobilized German troops on the German-Austrian border and Austrian Nazis began rioting in Vienna, Linz, Graz and Klagenfurt (Shirer,

1984: 293). Giving way to increasing pressure from Hitler, Schuschnigg cancelled a plebiscite proposed for the 13 of March3, which was still at that point expected to yield a vote against annexation, and was forced to resign on 11 March to be succeeded by Nazi Party member Dr Arthur Seyss-Inquart. Hitler had issued an ultimatum to

President Miklas to appoint a chancellor and cabinet members on the orders of the

German government; otherwise Germany would invade Austria (Shirer, 1984: 297).

Seyss-Inquart immediately called for German troops to be sent into Austria to quell the arming of the Socialists under the guise of maintaining law and order, which meant that Hitler had immediately broken the terms of his own ultimatum (Shirer,

1984: 297). Hitler’s troops swept across Austria and Hitler himself was greeted by an adoring crowd on Heldenplatz in Vienna on Tuesday, 15 March. When Hitler held his own popular vote on 10 April, ‘the rigged balloting forced an almost unanimous endorsement of the Anschluss’ (Daviau, 1999: viii). Voices of opposition had by then already fled Austria or were imprisoned, and the ballot boxes, constructed with large gaps, enabled the Nazi guards to see which way people were voting (Shirer, 1984:

317).

3 Shirer (1984: 296) recounts how he received this news: ‘I had often seen the Vienna police break up Nazi demonstrations in this spot (by this is meant the above-mentioned ‘tourist bureau’ in the Kärntnerstrasse). But now they were standing with folded arms. And most of them were grinning. Some of the young women in the crowd began to take off their hooked-cross armbands and tie them on the sleeves of the police. More grins. Obviously, the Vienna police were going over to the Nazis. I wondered what the hell had happened so suddenly. I turned to some of those nearest to me. They were too excited to answer. Finally a middle-aged woman responded. “The plebiscite,” she yelled in my ear. “Called off! We think Hitler comes tomorrow. Isn’t it wonderful!”

19 By 20 May 1938 the Nuremberg racial laws, which expelled Jews from society and marked the beginning of the Nazis ‘final solution’, had come into effect in

Austria, and construction of the Mauthausen concentration camp already began in that summer. Even before the Nuremberg laws had been introduced the Jews were already being subjected to gross acts of humiliation by the Nazis and their fellow Austrian citizens. Just one month after the Anschluss Shirer records the scenes he encountered in the streets of Vienna (1984: 314):

What one now saw in Vienna was almost unbelievable. The Viennese, usually so soft and sentimental, were behaving worse than the Germans especially towards the Jews. Every time you went out you saw gangs of Jewish men and women, with jeering storm troopers standing over them and taunting crowds shouting insults, on their hands and knees, scrubbing Schuschnigg slogans off the sidewalks and curbs. I had never seen quite such humiliating scenes in Berlin or Nuremberg. Or such Nazi sadism. The S.A. and S.S. were picking hundreds of Jews off the streets or hauling them out of their homes to clean the latrines in the barracks and other buildings seized by them. Foreign Jews or foreigners whom the Nazi thugs fancied looked like Jews also were seized and put to work at menial tasks.

Following the anti-Jewish pogrom known as ‘Kristallnacht’ in November 1938, during which the homes, businesses, places of worship etc. of Jews throughout

Germany and Austria were subjected to acts of vandalism, Jewish children were excluded from the school system and the dispossession of Jewish properties and businesses began. Inferring from her reading of the autobiographies of four Austrian writers forced to flee Austria around 1938, Jennifer E. Michaels (1991: 268) ascribes the success of the Anschluss to:

[…] the unwillingness of many to see the danger prior to the Anschluss; the sense of shock when it came; the joy of part of the population and the despair of others; and the breathtaking speed and brutality of the take-over.

Finally, on the international front it must be noted that France and Great

Britain completely failed to come to the aid of the Austrian government in its efforts to keep Austria independent of Germany. The two pillars of democracy in the West –

20 as historian Helmut Andics points out – seemed to be at pains, in fact, to keep Hitler happy. They exchanged ambassadors and contracts with Hitler and had clearly accepted his leadership and his methods. Shirer, in London after the Anschluss to report on CBS on what was taking place in Austria, records his shock at prime minister Chamberlain’s deceit in his statement addressed to the House of Commons on 2 March in which he had announced that ‘[w]hat happened [at Berchtesgaden] was merely that two statesmen – Hitler and Schuschnigg – had agreed upon certain measures for the improvement of relations between the two countries’ (Shirer,1984:

309). He adds, ‘I knew that the British legation in Vienna had provided Chamberlain with the details of Hitler’s Berchtesgaden ultimatum to Schuschnigg. The prime minister’s deceit shocked me’. Britain, like France and other countries, was unwilling to intervene, as this would have meant using force. Churchill seemed to Shirer to be the only voice in British parliament who was acknowledging the significance of what was happening. He quotes from Churchill’s address to the House of Commons following the Anschluss (1984: 310):

The gravity of the event of March 12 cannot be exaggerated. Europe is confronted with aggression,… and there is only one choice open…either to submit, like Austria, or else to take effective measures while time remains…4

Nobody seemed to be listening to Churchill’s very realistic perspective on the situation, however, as Shirer records (1984: 310), ‘[…] few in Parliament were paying much attention to Churchill. His own Tory party was solidly behind Chamberlain’s policy of appeasing the Fascist dictators.’ Moreover, although Hitler’s take-over of

Austria was in contravention of the Treaties of Saint-Germain and Versailles, as

4 On a more sobering note, although Shirer managed to get his superior at CBS to agree to invite Churchill to make a fifteen-minute broadcast on CBS, preferably repeating verbatim what he had expressed so cogently in the House of Commons, Churchill refused because they would not pay him the $500 dollars he insisted on instead of the $50 they were offering (1984: 311).

21 Bourke highlights (2000: 15), ‘the only country in the world to lodge a formal veto with the League of Nations was Mexico’.

It would be easy to conclude that the sole motive for the deflection away from the immediate past and the perpetuation of the victim myth in post-war Austria was opportunism, a desire to be neatly dissociated from the country that had invented

National Socialism, annexed Austria ‘against its will’, committed endless atrocities and, in addition to all of this, had lost the war. This paints too simple a picture, however. As Binder and Bruckmüller (2005: 103) highlight, the Austrian nationalist orientation of 1945 did not come primarily from opportunists but from genuine victims of National Socialism such as Leopold Figl, Austrian chancellor from 1945 to

1953, who had spent the years from 1938 to 1945 in the Dachau concentration camp, and Felix Hurdes, subsequently minister for education, who left prison with Figl in

April 1945. Even twice president Karl Renner (30 October 1918 – 7 July 1920 and 27

April 1945 – December 1945), who had been an enthusiastic advocate of annexation both in 1918 and in 1938, declared in the aftermath of WWII that the Austrians had every right to define themselves as an autonomous nation (Binder & Bruckmüller,

2005: 103). Many returning in 1945 from prison and the front looked to become reinstated in their former positions of employment and take up where they had left off in 1938. Even the Austrian Nazis who had fought alongside the Germans had always had a sense of distance from the ‘Reichsdeutschen’, having had a sense of being

‘Beutedeutsche’. According to Binder and Bruckmüller, however, the primary cause of the deflection away from the immediate past was an inevitable return to the emotional home of 1919 when the 1st Austrian Republic was founded.

22 There were many Austrians whose instinct was to re-create a sense of Austrian identity from the former glory days of the Habsburg Monarchy. Austria’s intellectual and cultural elite, in particular, looked to the more distant past to forge the nation’s identity during the immediate post-war period, evoking nostalgia for the Habsburg

Empire with its rich cultural and artistic tradition, and what Margarete Lamb-

Faffelberger (2003: 290) identifies as the ‘Ostarrîchi myth’. The middle-high German word Ostarrîchi, from which Österreich is derived, was ‘first mentioned in A.D. 996 documenting Leopold of Babenberg’s lands along the Danube in today’s Lower

Austria’, and allowed for the claim that Austria was ‘a one-thousand-year-old country with a rich history, a wealth of cultural traditions and blessed with splendid natural beauty’. As Binder and Bruckmüller record (2005:105-106), the 950th anniversary of

Ostarrîchi was stylised as the first national memorial day of the Republic. Nostalgia and mourning for the Habsburg Monarchy continued to characterize the lives of many

– including Jewish – Austrian intellectuals after the establishment of the 1st Austrian

Republic. In the multination state the Jews, furthermore, had been just one minority among many others, and as Dagmar Lorenz (1994: 7) writes, ‘many Jews considered themselves first and foremost citizens of the Habsburg monarchy’. Lorenz cites

Joseph Roth5 writing in exile of his pained yearning for his old home that was the

Habsburg Monarchy and his hatred for the idea of nations and nation states:

Meine alte Heimat, die Monarchie allein war ein großes Haus mit vielen Türen und vielen Zimmern, für viele Arten von Menschen. Man hat das Haus verteilt, gespalten, zertrümmert. Ich habe dort nichts mehr zu suchen. Ich bin gewohnt in einem Haus zu leben, nicht in Kabinen. 6

5 Roth, unfortunately, did not survive the war but had already died as a result of alcohol abuse by 1938. (Daviau: 1991, xviii)

6 From: Roth, J. (1979) “Die Büste des Kaisers,” in Der Leviathan, München: dtv.

23 Even after the Anschluss, ‘some Jewish authors held onto the ideal of the supranational monarchy as the cornerstone of their existence’ (Lorenz, 1994: 6).

Authors living in exile during the seven-year Anschluss period also actively contributed to the idea of Austria as Hitler’s first victim as they insisted in their writings and public pronouncements that ‘Austrians were different from Germans’, and that ‘Austria should be judged differently than Germany’ (Daviau 1994: xxvi).

Lorenz also points to the fact that many pre-war Austrian Jews ‘wanted to be considered Austrian Germans first and foremost’ and ‘de-emphasized their

Jewishness as much as possible’ (1994: 6). The most notable example of this is Hans

Weigel, who returned to Vienna from his exile in Switzerland after WWII and became a highly influential literary critic and mentor. Weigel played quite a significant role in the deflection away from the immediate past, as he ‘denied his support to social critical literature, works dealing with the Holocaust, Austrofascism, or Jewish topics’

(Daviau, 1994: 6). Along with a handful of like-minded critics, Weigel determined the success or failure of writers in post-war Austria.7 Austrian authors who sought to engage with the recent past in their work, such as Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan,

Ilse Aichinger and Peter Handke, had to publish abroad. Much to the horror of many

Jews around the World, Weigel’s statement in an article he wrote for the Wiener

Kurier (published by the Americans) in 1945, effectively seeks to draw a line under the extermination of the millions of Jews among others in the Holocaust by calling it all quits, ‘Wir haben einander nichts vorzuwerfen. Seine Toten kann keiner lebendig machen – bei euch sind viele tot und bei uns – wir Überlebenden aber sind quitt’

(Adunka, 1994: 218). Weigel adds an afterthought to this that perhaps sums up the post-war willful amnesia of many Austrians, ‘Wir denken gar nicht allzuviel an

7 Weigel succeeded, for instance – a clear measure of the extent of his influence – in having Brecht banned from Austrian state theatres until 1966 (Daviau 1994, p.xxxi). Weigel and his colleagues also ensured that the experimental authors of the Wiener Gruppe remained unpublished for decades.

24 gestern’ (Adunka, 1994: 218). The curt response of Wilhelm Weinberg, subsequently head rabbi of Frankfurt/Main, is recorded by Adunka (1994: 218), ‘[v]ielleicht ist

Herr Weigel quitt – wir, der größte Teil der Juden in der ganzen Welt und auch hier, nicht.’ In her discussion of Jewish Austrian writer Viki Baum’s novel Schicksalsflug

(1947), Dagmar Lorenz identifies the thematization in the novel of ‘the tacit complicity on the part of the international public, and the world-wide refusal to acknowledge the destruction of Central Europe by the Nazis’, and also in the interaction between her character Libussa, a former Czech partisan and Holocaust survivor, and other international travelers the world’s expectation of the victims of the

Nazis ‘to keep silent about their experiences’ (1994: 8). Hans Weigel’s approach, as discussed above, was clearly symptomatic of this trend.

Developments in the political arena in post-WWll Austria need consideration in order to understand how Kurt Waldheim, former member of Hitler’s SA, came to be elected president of Austria in 1986, an event which led – finally – to the breaking of Austria’s taboo around the Anschluss. In the post-war period a spirit of mutual protectionism among the major anti-fascist political parties – the Communists (KPÖ), the People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Socialists (SPÖ)8 – led to the swift re-instatement to power of many ex-Nazis due to an unspoken rule expressed by Lamb-Faffelberger

(2003: 91) as follows, ‘if you ‘de-nazify’ my Nazi, I will ‘de-Nazify’your Nazi’. This prevailing atmosphere of protectionism allowed for the development of a fourth political camp, a melting pot of former Nazis, the ‘Verein der Unabhängigen’, founded by ex-members of the Nazi party, which became the full-fledged Freedom

Party in 1956. The conferral of neutral status upon Austria on the foundation of the

8 On 27 April 1945 representatives from the three parties formed a provisional government with Dr Karl Renner (SPÖ) as chancellor. On 25 November 1945 the first free elections took place and a coalition was formed with the three parties. SPÖ and ÖVP carried the majority of the mandates, 85 and 76 respectively with the KPÖ carrying just 4. In 1974 the KPÖ leaves the coalition and SPÖ and ÖVP continue to govern in coalition until 1966.

25 Second Republic in 1955 served to further inure Austria from reflection on its part in the Anschluss and its war-time activities. In May 1955 Leopold Figl, Austria’s foreign minister at the time, proclaimed: ‘Österreich ist frei’. Austria was ‘liberated’ by the guaranteed withdrawal of the occupying powers – the same powers that had been greeted as liberators by the new government on 27 April 27 1945.9 In accordance with the terms of the international agreement legitimising the Second Republic, Austria was furthermore freed from any obligation to pay reparation to the victims of Nazism.

The Western Allies’ motive for this exoneration from its responsibilities, as Bourke writes (2000: 108), was ‘to secure the loyalty of the new Austrian State to the western political system rather than to that of the other occupier, the Soviet Union’. Once again, Austria is encouraged by the international community to turn its back on its recent past.

After 1955, when the fear of the occupying allied forces disappeared, signs of

German nationalist tendencies began to gain increased profile. In those parts of

Carinthia, for example, where both German and Slovenian were native languages, classes in Slovenian were dropped from the curriculum. Gerhard Amanshauser writes sarcastically of the kind of rehabilitation some ex-Nazis underwent once the occupying forces had withdrawn from Austria (in Bourke 2000: 8):

Nachdem die Besatzungsmacht abgezogen war, kamen sie aus ihren Löchern hervor, schüttelten sich die Steifheit aus ihren Gliedern, wurden weltläufig und salonfähig, trugen ihre Trachten zu den Empfängen, rückten in Ehrenstellen und politische Posten nach. Auch das war eine Form von Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

As Binder and Bruckmüller remind us (2005: 10), German nationalist tendencies had never disappeared but had merely been periodically suppressed. Generations of young

Austrians had been inoculated with a German nationalist, racist, antisemitc and

9 One could perhaps qualify Amanshauser’s ironic statement quoted above and argue that Austria was liberated three times within 17 years, once in 1938 by the Nazis, in 1945 from the Nazis by the Allied forces and in 1955 liberated from the Allies.

26 antislavic mentality through schools, sports clubs, student societies and other organisations even before the Anschluss, and this mentality continued to exist. Also, what Viktor Klemperer termed the ‘Lingua Tertii Imperii’ continued to be part of everyday usage for many sectors of the population.10 Even the two anti-fascist governing parties had representatives that were German nationalist in their orientation, and this clash between the older anti-fascist intellectual elite, the younger generations and the former Nazis, those who had returned from the front, not only remained a central political problem but also impacted on the public debate surrounding the question of Austrian national identity.

One of the Austrian government’s reactions to these tendencies was to elevate the ‘Tag der Fahne’, 25 October 1955, to a national holiday11 (Binder and

Bruckmüller, 2005: 107). In spite of such efforts on the part of the anti-fascist government, however, by 1960 parts of Austria seemed to be well on the way to a collective German Nationalism with Nazi elements. The actual victims of the Nazi regime, who could have continued to remind Austria of its guilt, were marginalized and ignored. In addition, the virulent anti-Semitism that had prevailed in Austria since

10 Writing about the term ‘Entnazifizierung’ (denazification) in 1946 and his prognosis for how long the term would continue to exist, the philologist Viktor Klemperer draws attention to the power of language as he predicts – prophetically – that it will take a while, as not only will Nazi conduct have to disappear and a Nazi cast of mind, but also its seedbed, namely, the language of Nazism: ‘Und so wird es auch mit dem schwerstwiegenden Entscheidungswort unserer Übergangsepoche gehen: eines Tages wird das Wort Entnazifizierung versunken sein, weil der Zustand, den es beenden sollte, nicht mehr vorhanden ist. Aber eine ganze Weile wird es bis dahin noch dauern, denn zu verschwinden hat ja nicht nur das nazistische Tun, sondern auch die nazistische Gesinnung, die Nazistische Denkgewöhnung und ihr Nährboden: die Sprache des Nazismus’ (Klemperer, 2001: 10). On the same subject, Hilde Spiel (1983: 130) writes of her sense of alienation at the altered linguistic usage she encounters in January 1946 on her return to Vienna from exile in Great Britain, and people’s astonished reactions to her ‘wienerisch gefärbtes Hochdeutsch’, as though she were a character from a lost play by Schnitzler or Bahr. 11 This decision has been repeatedly criticised by politicians who are German nationalist in their orientation, such as the notorious Jörg Haider, formerly of the Freedom Party, who on 18.8.1988 most famously claimed that the Austrian nation was an ‘ideologische Missgeburt’ (Binder and Bruckmüller, 2005: 108).

27 the 19th century thwarted the success of Jewish demands for reparation and resettlement.12

In the early 1980s when the Social Democrats failed to get an overall majority,

Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, a Jewish exile during the war years, formed a coalition with the Freedom Party led by Friedrich Peter, a former SS soldier. Similarly in 1986, this spirit of repression of Austria’s fascist past led to the election of Kurt Waldheim, former member of the SA, to the presidency because, as Lamb-Faffelberger argues,

(2003: 291) many could identify with him, ‘Waldheim was not a Nazi just as they had not been Nazis’. However, the controversy, which arose out of Waldheim’s appointment to the presidency, both nationally and internationally, finally broke the taboo surrounding Austria’s support of and involvement in the Nazi regime. Doubt was cast on Waldheim’s insistence that he was ignorant of atrocities committed during his time in the Wehrmacht, and in the course of his presidency he became increasingly isolated internationally. Slowly – almost half a century after the events –

Austria was compelled to re-visit its past. Bourke (2000: 108) cites a member of the

Austrian resistance movement during WWII, Fritz Molden, on Austria’s awakening to the task it was facing:

When we returned from the concentration camps in 1945, we thought that, cleared of all co-responsibility by the allies, we could serve our country best by

12 Bourke (2000: 105-6) cites a contention made by Gerhard Botz for Austria’s widespread unwillingness up to the present day to engage with Austria’s National Socialist past: ‘[m]ost of the “aryanisers” or their descendents are still in possession of the “Jews’ houses”, “aryanised” flats, shops, pianos, jewellery and works of art. For years they have viewed with apprehension the possible return of the previous owners, whose property they took at a price certainly far below its true value. This is why there is a reluctance in Austria – especially in Vienna, but also in Salzburg, Graz and other places – to talk about National Socialism, and why the economic aspect of the persecution of the Jews and the specifically Austrian contribution to it are the real “great taboo”. This is why the Jews are still feared here’. (The property in Bärental, for instance, which Jörg Haider inherited from Wilhelm Webhofer and originally belonged to a Jewish-Italian family, was ‘aryanised’ after the Anschluss and purchased for a pittance. It was, in fact, to this particular property that Jörg Haider was driving – over the alcohol limit, at a speed of 140km per hour and sending a text message on his mobile telephone – when he crashed his car and sustained fatal injuries. [Online], Available: http://projects.brg- schoren.ac.at/nationalsozialismus/arisierungen.html#jörg [ 17 April 2009]. )

28 re-creating a beautiful Austria, a buffer between nations in Central Europe, an island of the blessed in a sea of controversy. Now at last – forty-two years later – the trauma has reached us. We have to face it that our country is not, as President Reagan tried – so kindly – to paint us, made of music, Sachertorte, Lippizaner and Sängerknaben […]. We have to realize that we are not loved any more and perhaps will not be loved until we face ourselves.13

The international community, as we have seen, had very specific motives for supporting and promoting the Austrian victim myth. However, it was inevitable that as the circumstances disappeared out of which those motives grew – by 1986 any fear of a Austro-Soviet alliance was very much a thing of the past, and Austria had, furthermore, been negotiating its entry in various stages into the EEC since 1963 – a more critical gaze would be cast on ‘the Island of the Blessed’, as Pope Paul Vl famously described Austria during his visit in 1971 (Brook-Shepherd, 418).

Particularly challenging for Austrians and for members of the international community, who seek to understand and come to terms with the history of National

Socialism in Austria, has been the rise of the extreme right-wing Freedom Party

(FPÖ) under the leadership of Jörg Haider from the mid-eighties until he left the party to found the BZÖ in 2005. (He led the latter until his death in October 2008.) Born of staunch members of the Nazi Party – his father had been a member of the illegal

NSDAP before the Anschluss and was involved in the attempted putsch of 1934 and his mother a leader in the BMD14 – Haider was best known for his xenophobia, anti-

Semitic statements and anti-immigration slogans.15 By the time of the next elections of the National Assembly the FPÖ succeeded – thanks to Haider – in doubling its mandate. In 1999, after talks had broken down with the moderate Social Democrats,

13 Molden quoted in Eoin Bourke, The Austrian Anschluss in History and Literature (Galway: Arlen House, 2000), p.108. 14 Both were granted a reprieve by the laws introduced in 1947, which led in most cases to ‘outrageously lenient sentences’ (Bourke, 2000: 102) being meted out to ex-Nazis. 15 See http://stressfaktor.squat.net/2000/haider/html for a collection of Haider-quotes that demonstrate his extreme right-wing attitudes, such as, for example, “Der Hitler war kein nationaler Mensch. Einer, der national ist, schenkt doch nicht Südtirol her” (taz, 11. Januar 1989), or “Jeder Asylant holt sofort seine Familie nach und lässt sie gesundheitlich sanieren. Auf Kosten der tüchtigen und fleissigen Österreicher” (Kleine Zeitung Graz, 12. Januar 1998).

29 the ÖVP formed a coalition with the FPÖ, which had been voted second strongest party in the national elections: 27.22% of Austrians had voted for Haider’s party.

International protest came swiftly: ‘Austria’s new political merger was immediately denounced by the EU and the US’ (Lamb-Faffelberger, 2003: 289). EU sanctions were put in place and demonstrations against the coalition were staged abroad and in

Vienna, the so-called Thursday demonstrations, which continued until the middle of

2003. Haider subsequently withdrew from the leadership of the party but continued to exert influence on his party leaders in government. Internal tensions in the FPÖ led to

Haider founding a new right-wing party in 2005, the BZÖ (Bündnis Zukunft

Österreich), and by October 2006 the BZÖ had managed to get a mandate in the

National Assembly on the basis of its success in Haider’s native Carinthia. By

September 2008 Haider’s new party had managed to double its share of the votes to

10.7%, which was attributed to its leader’s candidature. Haider also served several terms as governor of his native Carinthia, attaining his first term of office in 1990 on the basis of his anti-Slovenian slogans, and was still holding this office at the time of his death on 11 October 2008. Lamb-Faffelberger (2003: 289) attributes Haider’s success to ‘the failure in establishing a sound cultural identity in Modern Austria’ and is of the opinion that his simplistic, highly provocative slogans and statements that reinforce the victim myth ‘engender tremendous danger’, in that the position he adopted was always one of fundamental opposition. Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that the sympathy among a certain sector of the population for his views will have disappeared simply because Haider is no longer around to galvanise it. On the occasion of Haider’s funeral, his government representative in the BZÖ, Stefan

Petzner, described Haider as a politician who had moved Austria, whose traces would

30 remain visible, and that the important issue now was to carry on Haider’s legacy. 16

This calls to mind Primo Levi’s pronouncement that there is always a buffoon, such as Adolf Hitler, waiting in the wings, if people are susceptible to being led.

As signs of hope for a brighter future in Austria, apart from the Thursday demonstrations staged in Vienna from early 2000 to the middle of 2003 against the coalition government with the Freedom Party, Lamb-Faffelberger (2003: 298) also points to the liberation commemoration of Mauthausen concentration camp on 7 May

2000, and the apology issued in March and April 2000 by Alfred Gusenbauer

(chairman at the time of the Social Democrats and subsequently chancellor from

January 2007 until December 200817) for his party’s anti-Semitism and the wooing of former Nazis between 1945 and 1985. Lamb-Faffelberger (2003: 298) also cites the

European Monitoring Centre against Racism and Xenophobia, which is based in

Vienna18 and believes ‘there is reason to hope that Austria’s young people will step out of the shadows of the past and work for a society where there is no longer room for racism, anti-Semitism, and intolerance’.

In a country, then, where in the past six decades contradictions have abounded: perpetrators of Nazi fascist acts claiming victim-status, anti-fascist political parties led by casualties or descendents of casualties of Nazi fascism engaging with

16 Quoted in: http://www.news.at/articles/0841/13/221949/tragischer-tod-joerg-haiders-kaerntner- landeshauptmann-autounfall, (accessed, 12.10.2009: 16.08), ‘“Wir müssen jetzt alle zusammenstehen”, appellierte Stefan Petzner, geschäftsführender Landesobmann des BZÖ und Haiders Stellvertreter in der Bundespartei, bei einer Pressekonferenz an Politiker, Bevölkerung und die eigene Partei. “Ich kann nicht begreifen, was geschehen ist”, sagte er mit tränenerstickter Stimme. Haider sei ein Politiker gewesen, der Österreich bewegt habe und dessen Spuren sichtbar bleiben würden. Und er sei der beste Freund gewesen, den er je gehabt habe, so Petzner. “Er war mein Lebensmensch.” Es gelte nun, sein politisches Erbe weiterzutragen, betonte Petzner.’ 17 See http://www.austria.gv.at/site/3355/default.aspx for a list of the Austria chancellors and governments since 1945 to the present day.

18 http://www.justiceinitiative.org/db/resource2?res_id=103297

31 fascists and welcoming ‘former’ Nazi fascists among their ranks, influential Jews who deny their own Jewishness and silence the voices of Jewish victims of Nazi fascism, monarchists without a monarchy, an ‘island of the blessed’ sitting resolutely on the screams of the victims – and the list could go on – some of the complexity of the task facing Austrian theatre makers today, who seek to engage with this chapter of their history, will hopefully have been made a little clearer to the reader by the brief account offered above. Also, the importance of their endeavours to penetrate the

‘shadows of the past’ and thereby to transform present reality in Austria will, I hope, have been made apparent.

32 Part Two: ‘The Other Theatre’

The theatre work I will be discussing in chapters 3, 4 and 5 of this dissertation was made by professional free theatre companies, of which it is estimated there are between 300 and 400 in operation throughout Austria today (Stüwe-Eßl, 2006: 17).19

Consideration of the work of free theatre companies and artists requires contextualization within the socio-culturally, historically and politically determined structures and concomitant practical circumstances under which this kind of company makes work in Austria, as, to speak with Florian Malzacher (2008: 13), directing dramaturge for the Styrian Autumn arts festival (Steierischer Herbst), structures shape the artistic outcome, ‘[m]ehr als viele Häuser wahrhaben wollen, prägen die

Strukturen das künstlerische Ergebnis’ (Malzacher, 2008: 13). This section, therefore, aims to afford the reader an insight into the so-called ‘Freie Theaterszene’ or ‘Off-

Theaterszene’ – ‘free’, ‘OFF’, ‘fringe’ or ‘independent’ theatre scene – of Austria, with a particular focus on the Federal States of Vienna and Styria. After a general introduction, it will offer an overview of publications to date which examine the activities and working conditions of non-institutionalized theatre practitioners in

Styria and Vienna, and the subsidized interest groups that facilitate cooperative efforts to improve the working conditions of free theatre artists by providing support structures and promoting the professionalisation of their work.20 It will go on to examine the roots and development of this alternative to the state theatre establishment from the immediate post-war era, through the time of the State Treaty of 1955 and beyond, and, the current challenges faced by theatre artists working within this category, the motives that drive their endeavours, and the relevance of free

19 This figure includes independent dance companies. 20 I will discuss the literature overview together with the interest groups, as much of the literature has arisen by virtue of and is published by the interest groups.

33 theatre in Austria today.21 Finally it will offer introductions to the two companies whose work is analysed in the following chapters.

1.1. The ‘Free’, ‘Fringe’, ‘OFF’ or ‘Independent’ Theatre Scene

Professional free theatre – Freies Berufstheater – is a sub-category of non- institutionalised professional theatre, other sub-categories including ‘Kabarett’, comedy, and entertainment shows, as Hauswirth and Schweighofer write (1999: 40).

For the members of a free theatre ensemble, the theatre is the work-place, and the goal

– which in many cases is not realizable – is to earn one’s living working in and for the theatre.22 Broadly speaking, the motivation for working as a free theater practitioner, as Hauswirth and Schweighofer identify it (1999: 40), is the possibility of a satisfying and ongoing developmental process in order to maximize one’s artistic potential.

Many free theatre practitioners do not envisage a possibility for this in institutionalized theatre, and consequently those who choose to work in the significantly more precarious free sector include many who have left the security of the establishment. Free theatre practitioners come from a wide range of backgrounds: some have formal conservatory training, others field-related academic qualifications, for example Theatre Studies, Theatre Pedagogy, and Applied Theater; others again

21 The areas I have identified here each merit separate studies in their own right, and the following, therefore, claims to give no more than a brief overview as context for the subsequent discussion of the pieces of theatre in question. 22 AndreaThere is what could be roughly described as a pyramid structure in operation in Austria, whereby at the top of the pyramid is a small number of larger, state-run theatres – Stadttheater – which receive the bulk of the culture budget dedicated to theatre by central government and – to varying degrees – by the regional federal governments. Practitioners (directors, actors, musicians, set and sound design artists, technicians, support and administrative staff) are employed as civil servants and are entitled to all the customary social security benefits of this category. In the middle of the pyramid are so-called ‘Mittelbühnen’ – mid-size free theatres – which receive state subsidies but are formed by independent or free companies. These are regarded as independent employers by the state and are bound therefore by employment regulations such as the obligation to make social security payments for all of their employees. Forming the broad base at the bottom of the pyramid is a wide range of independent or free theatre artists operating either as solo artists or in ensembles. They receive the smallest slice of the culture budget, are bound also, however, by strict employment regulations and the majority contend with an on-going struggle for survival.

34 have acquired their qualification through long years of practical experience. A study on the activities of free theatre practitioners in Styria, which is currently in preparation for publication23, reveals that a majority of independent artists engage in ongoing professional development, many taking the ‘paritätische Schauspielprüfung’, the ‘ÖBV Theater-Spielleiter-Ausbildung’ or further qualifications in the field of theatre pedagogy. Many also engage in administration-related training, for example, bookkeeping, computer graphics, and employment law.

According to Schweighofer & Hauswirth (1999: 20), the central concern of free theatre – as an alternative to institutionalized theatre production – lies in the aesthetic and social experiment, research work for the theatre as a whole.24 A closer examination reveals, however, that the descriptor ‘free’ is not easy to define, either aesthetically or structurally. As regards aesthetics, as Florian Malzacher25 writes

(2008: 10), free theatre could mean, for instance, postdramatic, non-dramatic, experimental, or avant-garde theatre; it could also mean performative art, devised theatre or live art. Above all, as Malzacher argues, theatre is essentially a meta-art form that can integrate all art forms, and the idea that it should be at the service of the literary text is a relatively recent one. If the term ‘free’ means a theatre that does not allow itself to be constrained by specific dramaturgies, the domination of the written text and narration, a well-tempered ensemble, and acting and audience conventions then it is appropriately named, Malzacher concludes (2008:10).

23 I extend my thanks to the interest group, Das Andere Theater, Graz, for making available to me in advance of publication the report emerging from a survey carried out with free theatre companies in the Federal state of Styria, which will form part of the study in preparation. 24 Not all free theatre companies are interested in aesthetic and social experimentation or engaging with intercultural and international debates and developments: the so-called Kellertheater model from the 1950s, for example, presents a conventional style of theatre in a small, exclusive, club-like atmosphere for an audience capacity of not more than 100. The oldest of these, and the oldest free theatre in Europe in fact is the Theater im Keller in Graz (Götz, 2005: 10). For the purposes of this study I am interested only in the kinds of free theatre that break with conventional modes of theatre practice. 25 In this article published in the German theatre journal Theater Heute, Malzacher is referring to free theatre in a geographically wider context – in the first instance the three German-speaking countries but also the wider European context – than specifically in relation to Austria.

35 As regards structures, there are many different models in operation from the poorly subsidized ensembles with little or no administrative support making work ‘on a shoe-string’ and showing it in low-budget theatre or non-dedicated spaces, to the better subsidized companies that have their own dedicated theatre space and can afford to employ members on a contractual basis including administrative staff.

Furthermore, the barriers between free theatre and the establishment have become more permeable in recent times as artists and directors from the independent sector develop relationships with international festivals and state-run theatres. Malzacher

(2008: 10) dispels any illusion that might prevail, however, of the confident, self- determined and autonomously decision-making free artist, arguing that this idea remains in most cases a neo-liberal delusion of freedom. The model he presents is of a much more sobering nature:

Künstler verändern die Gesellschaft eben leider nicht unbedingt so, wie sie es gerne täten. Sondern vor allem als Modell für unbedingte Flexibilität, angewandte Kreativität, Selbstausbeutung und Billiglohn.

Although it is often more difficult as an Austrian free theatre artist to penetrate the boundary between the free theatre scene and the establishment in Austria than for non-nationals, who have perhaps gained recognition in the field on an international scale, there is evidence of increased activity in recent years, which is not without its dangers, however. What is being developed in experimentation in the ‘laboratory’ of the ‘Szene’ can get appropriated by the establishment and transformed with the help of large budgets, technical and administrative support. This presents a very real threat to the independent sector, which can get consumed and obscured in the process and its relevance rendered invisible, having neither the financial, structural nor media backing of the state sector to guarantee its survival, to quote Malzacher (2008: 11),

‘[z]ugleich droht es die freie Szene zu erdrücken, die daneben nicht nur finanziell

36 kaum eine Chance hat’. Uschi Litschauer from Theater Asou, Graz, who uses the term

‘Nährboden’ to describe the resource the free theatre scene offers for developing work, gives voice to this fear in interview (2002 / 2009):

Was so im Anfang im Wildwuchs ist, wird dann auch ein bisschen transformiert und offiziell gespielt. Und mit einem viel besserem Budget und mit weit größeren Mitteln, da muss man immer aufpassen, das ist auch immer unsere Überlegung, wieviel dann wird eigentlich abgezogen an Resourcen von der Szene, wenn wir beginnen halt im Schauspielhaus zu spielen oder [...] Produktionen dort anzubieten.

A crucial factor in overcoming such threats is critical mass, and there is a general consensus that networking within the scene – both in an international and a regional context – is the single most significant determining factor for the life and survival of the free theatre scene. Schweighofer and Hauswirth (1999: 20) assert that the research work taking place in the free theatre scene happens in the context of international relationships and developments. Malzacher reinforces this with his contention that the free theatre scene is, in fact, inconceivable outside of an international context (2008: 11):

Doch die avancierte freie Theaterszene ist ohnehin nur international zu denken. Sie trifft sich auf Festivals in aller Welt, wird in Europa finanziell ermöglicht von Produzentennetzwerken zwischen Portugal und Finnland und arbeitet dort, wo sich gerade die besten Möglichkeiten bieten.

While international frameworks and influences are indispensable to the free theatre scene in the German-speaking countries, he also points to the fact that certain prominent international influences were supported at an early stage of their development by, for instance, German subsidies: internationally renowned experimental theatre groups such as the Wooster Group from New York and the

British groups Forced Entertainment and Lone Twin were supported at an early stage in their development by German co-production theatres and festivals. However, cooperative efforts among groups in a given region are likewise crucial for the

37 survival of this sector of theatre production. Schweighofer and Hauswirth (1999: 42) refer to companies which may create a stir at international festivals but remain unknown in their home region, and stress the importance for the life of free theatre of the cultivation of a ‘scene’, which as the sum of its parts can lend prominent cultural and artistic colour and variety to a city. Lots of small isolated entities, on the other hand, cannot offer a credible alternative to mainstream theatre:

Viele dezentrale kleine Einheiten können als Gegenkonzept (nicht als Ersatz) zu einer zentralen Theaterinstitution bürgerlichen Zuschnitts gesehen werden (Schweighofer & Hauswirth, 1999: 42).

1.2. Vienna

The first study of its kind to appear in relation to Vienna (and in Austria) entitled Zur soziologen Lage der freien Theaterschaffenden by Robert Harauer was published in 1989. On the basis of Harauer’s study (1989), ‘which provided evidence of the lack of adequate social welfare and poor economic situation of Austrian independent performing artists’ (Stüwe-Eßl, 2006), free theatre artists in Vienna managed to persuade the Ministry for Cultural Affairs to approve finance for the founding of the IGFT (Interessengemeinschaft Freie Theaterarbeit) in 1989, the national Austrian association of independent theatre, and ‘to initiate the project IG-

NET, which provides financial aid26 to independent performing artists to cover the costs of social security contributions’ (Stüwe-Eßl, 2006: 17). The stated aim of the

IGFT is as follows:

Die IGFT arbeitet an der nachhaltigen Verbesserung der Rahmenbedingungen für freie Theaterarbeit, der Ermöglichung eines vielfältigen Dialogs und Diskurses unter den Theaterschaffenden sowie an deren regionaler, nationaler und internationaler Vernetzung (www.freietheater.at).

26 Financial aid amounts to an annual total of approximately €280,000 (Stüwe-Eßl, 2006:17).

38 Apart from providing a broad range of services, including a bi-monthly newsletter with, for example, up-dates on field-related culturally political developments, a

‘schwarzes Brett’ for opportunities for independent artists such as job and workshop advertisements, the IGFT is actively engaged in lobbying on behalf of independent artists in Austria. Among its successes was the acquisition of two dedicated theatre spaces for free theater companies – Dietheater – one in the Künstlerhaus and one in the Konzerthaus.27 The association, furthermore, has an in-house library and has published a comprehensive catalogue of independent dance and theatre companies in

Austria.28

The freie theater newsletter also provides a link to EON (European Off

Network). The IGFT was instrumental in the founding of this international network by hosting a meeting in June 2005 at the Festspielhaus in St. Pölten, during which

‘more than 250 participants from over thirty countries discussed the general conditions, goals and visions of independent theatre companies in Europe in the scope of lectures, workshops and working groups’ (Kock, 2006: 1 ). A publication emerging from this event entitled European Off Network. Visions and Conditions in the Field of independent / Fringe / Off Theatre Work in Europe, which includes four keynote papers29 and national reports on 19 European countries, can be downloaded from the website www.freietheater.at. The starting point for EON was the fact that:

27 In the course of the Vienna theatre reform discussed below, when companies’ subsidies were either halved or completely withdrawn resulting in the disappearance of many companies, one of these spaces was closed down due to under-use. The remaining space is called ‘brut’ (Elischka, 2008). 28 It has not, however, been financially viable to up-date the catalogue since 2004. 29 These key-note addresses are entitled as follows: ‘Strategies of (Self-)Empowerment and Spaces of Resistance’ by Therese Kaufmann, ‘Contradictions and Chances of Theatre Systems in Europe’ by Dragan Klaic, ‘An Ecology of Networking IETM (Informal European Theatre Meeting) in a Landscape’ by Mary Ann DeVlieg, and ‘Foundation and Growth of the Network for Contemporary Performing Arts in the Balkans (Balkan Express)’ by Jadranka Andjelic.

39 small, but also mid-size30 theatre groups often lack the means and structures to communicate with one another, or even to form a lobby to deal with issues concerning labor rights and social rights in their own country and even more so at a European level to attain visibility within a larger public realm (Kock, ed., 2006: 2),

The stated goals of EON are as follows:

-engaged cultural policies and content-related networks of performing artists; -strengthening the national and international visibility of fringe theatre and its discourse; -the forming of an international political lobby for independent performing arts focused on Brussels (the EU) and on national governments; (Van Hamersveld, I., Smithuijsen, C., 2008: 29)

These latter data were taken from a publication which appeared in 2008 entitled State of Stage. Government support for the Performing Arts in EU member states.

Experiences, perspectives, best practices, which offers not just a pan-European overview of the working circumstances of independent artists and companies in

Europe but also individual national portraits of fifteen EU member states including

Austria. International networking has also led to the institution of ‘euromayday’ in

Vienna. As a member of the Kulturrat Österreich, IGFT created a videograph,

‘Precariat’, for the occasion of ‘euromayday’ 2009 to raise consciousness about the plight of artists working in the independent sector. This is available for viewing at http://kulturrat.at/precarityvideo. As part of this consciousness-raising initiative, a document was also prepared by Sabine Kock (2009) entitled Prekäre Freiheiten –

Arbeit im freien Theaterbereich in Österreich.31 This publication offers an overview of the precarious circumstances – in terms of social security and all the related practical and legal ramifications – under which artists in the free theatre scene in

Austria work today.

30 So-called ‘Mittelbühnen’ (see footnote 23) are companies who may have formed out of a merger between free theatre companies and acquired a dedicated theatre space and a fixed annual subsidy, which allows them to employ an ensemble including making the required social security payments. These companies, however, have also been included in the Vienna theatre reform (Elischka, 2008). 31 This study can be downloaded as a pdf file under: http://culturbase.org/home/igft- ftp/Prekaere_Freiheiten_IGFT.pdf.

40 A further recent study, commissioned by the bm:ukk (Bundesministerium für

Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur – Federal Ministry for Education, Art and Culture), was published in October 2008 entitled Zur Sozialen Lage der Künstler und Künstlerinnen in Österreich32, the purpose of which was to get an up-to-date and detailed overview of the social situation of artists across all the artistic disciplines and in both the state theatres and the independent sector. A total of 1,850 artists across a range of disciplines responded out of which a data base was created as the basis for an analysis. In June 2009, then, a conference entitled ‘Prekäre Perspektiven – zur sozialen Lage von Kreativen’ took place in Vienna, at which the authors, the Minister for Culture and a team of international experts engaged in group discussions to discuss in detail the issues raised in the study.

Part 1 of a document – Über das Österreichische Schauspielgesetz – was published by Erwin Leder, actor, director and chair- and spokesperson for the free theatre sector of the Kulturgewerkschaft (Austrian culture union) in the first

September 2009 issue of the freie theater newsletter. Part 2 is due to appear in the second September edition. In this document Leder highlights the importance of this law, first introduced in 1922 and re-introduced in 1946, which was designed to protect actors from self- and social exploitation, and poverty. This law is considered to be unique in the world. Discussed, furthermore, are the implications for artists in the free sector arising out of a combination of subsidy cuts that were introduced in the mid

1990s and changes in the employment laws introduced in 2001 in terms of social security payments. These circumstances have led to a two-tier system between actors employed as civil servants in the state theatres and those working in smaller independent theatres on mainly project-based contracts.

1.3. Styria

32 This study can be downloaded at www.bmukk.gv.at/kunst/bm/studi.

41 A ground-breaking study for Styria entitled Theaterland Steiermark and commissioned by the Styrian regional government, was published in 1999 by

Hermann Schweighofer and Eduard Hauswirth, both founder members of the long- standing and nationally renowned free theatre company Theater im Bahnhof (TIB),

Graz. The aim of this study was to profile and document the formal structures in operation and characteristic behavioural patterns of free theatre ensembles in Styria

(Schweighofer and Hauswirth, 1999: 8). In order to achieve this aim, information was gathered by means of questionnaires from 100 extant ensembles in three identified categories: amateur theatre companies, free theatre ensembles, and so-called

Theaterklubs – amateurs and professionals working together to realise theatre productions33. The authors hoped that this study would begin to make up for the lack of documentation of the free theatre scene in contrast to the well documented institutionalized theatre in Styria, die Vereinigten Bühnen, made up of the Theatre

Holding Graz34, das Steierische Landestheater and das Steierische Schultheater. Other contributions to the body of literature available on non-institutionalised theatre in

Styria have been made by Andrea Dörres (1996) in her doctoral dissertation, entitled

“Ja! – Is do dö Welt a Narrnhaus” – Eine Bestandsaufnahme der steirischen

Amateurtheaterszene von 1945 bis heute. In this study, apart from the historical overview afforded, three categories of contemporary amateur theatre groups in the province of Styria are identified with exemplary profiles of individual groups given in each case: traditional groups, traditional groups with a high supra-regional profile, and semiprofessional groups. In 1998, Sandra Wehowar submitted a Diplomarbeit to the Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz entitled “Theater ist Magie”, eine theoretische

33 For the purposes of this study I am interested solely in the category of professional free theatre ensemble. 34 In 2004 Styria and its capital city Graz united Opernhaus Graz, Schauspielhaus Graz, the theatre service and Next Liberty (youth theatre) to form the Theatre Holding Graz (Stüwe-Eßl in Van Hamersveld, I., Smithuijsen, C. (eds.), 2008: 26).

42 und empirisiche Auseinandersetzung mit der Frage nach der Motivation

Jugendlicher, in ihrer Freizeit Theater zu spielen with a specific focus on Youth

Theatre, and in 2004 Jakob Schweighofer likewise submitted a Diplomarbeit to the

Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Theater als Freizeitbeschäftigung, which is a sociological investigation of the lifestyles and motives of amateur theatre practitioners in Styria. While these are important and valuable studies they are of limited relevance to the category of theatre makers with which this study concerns itself. I will, therefore, make reference solely to Theaterland Steiermark in this discussion.

A structural development that has had significant implications – also in terms of documentation and publications – for the free theatre scene in Styria was the founding in 1999 of the subsidized regional interest group Das Andere Theatre, IG

Freie Theater Steiermark. Its stated remit is expressed as follows: ‘Das Ziel des

Vereines ist die Förderung der Verberuflichung und Verbetrieblichung des nichtinstitutionalisierten Theaters in der Steiermark’ (www.dasanderetheater.at). The interest group administers on behalf of the city of Graz a building that houses three large rehearsal spaces, which can be booked by its members free of charge, and publishes twice monthly a programme of performance events taking place in the region. In addition, those members who do not have sufficient income to rent their own performance space have access via Das Andere Theatre to a dedicated theatre space, das Kristallwerk, latterly known as TTZ (Tanz- & Theaterzentrum), in Graz.

Das Andere Theater currently has 60 members, made up of individuals and groups of independent artists practicing across a range of performing arts disciplines. The website provides further important facilities and services, such as a platform for exchange among the artists, advertisement of workshops, and a pool for technological requirements. The ten-year anniversary of Das Andere Theater was celebrated this

43 year, and the occasion was used to host a public debate on the relevance of free theatre in Austrian society, the underlying concerns of which were expressed under

‘Aktuelles’ on the website (www.dasanderetheater.at) as follows:

In wirtschaftlichen und politisch unübersichtlichen Zeiten wird es immer wichtiger, die soziale, gesellschaftliche und politische Relevanz freier Theater sichtbar und für die Öffentlichkeit zugänglich zu machen. Das freie Theater bietet auf unterschiedlichsten Ebenen Möglichkeiten zur Kommunikation und Partizipation – nicht nur für die am Produktionsprozess Beteiligten, sondern auch für das Publikum bzw. am gesellschaftlichen Prozess interessierte Personen. Daher ladet „Das Andere Theater“ alle am System Beteiligten ein, dieses Jubiläumsjahr für eine breite Diskussion zum Thema zu nutzen, um gemeinsam aufzuzeigen, in wie fern das freie Theater zu einer demokratischen Gesellschaft beiträgt.

In the context of this event, the website provided a link to the downloadable pdf file of the document mentioned above prepared by Sabine Kock (2009) entitled Prekäre

Freiheiten – Arbeit im freien Theaterbereich in Österreich, which was used as a basis for the discussions. Furthermore, currently in preparation and due to appear in

November 2009 is a publication to mark the 10th anniversary, which will include a review of the work of Das Andere Theater during the last ten years, contributions from local politicians and member theatre companies, and also an up-to-date inventory of the structures and activities of free theatre companies in the region. Its overall objective is to highlight the relevance of the free theatre scene in Styria today.

As regards festivals in Styria that offer independent artists and ensembles an opportunity to show their work in an international context is the Styrian Autumn

Festival, a multi-disciplinary international festival of the arts that has been in existence for over 40 years. Having grown out of local initiatives, it also claims to have engaged in a productive relationship with the neighbouring Slovenia, Croatia and Eastern European countries long before the borders opened and to have engaged in dialogue and integration across a broad range of disciplines – the visual arts, music,

44 performance, dance, theatre, architecture, film, new media, theory and literature – before ever interdisciplinarity became a common concept. It also stresses its equal commitment to research, process and development on the one hand, and to showcasing high quality productions on the other (www.steirischerherbst.at). A more recent development that has heightened specifically the profile of the free theatre scene in the region is the ‘bestOFFstyria Festival’, taking place September in 2009 for the sixth time. An international jury, comprised of practitioners from the most prominent independent theatres of Europe, invite what they consider to be the six best

Styrian free theatre productions from the year’s programme and award the

‘theaterlandPREIS’ to the best of those six. For the occasion a selection of international productions are invited to premiere in Styria. This festival is organized under the umbrella festival network ‘Theaterland Steiermark’, named after

Schweighofer and Hauswirth’s study, the remit of which is to bring theatre to smaller venues throughout the region in a festival-style format.

1.4. Historical Overview

There has always been a clear dichotomy in Austria between the theatre establishment, that is, the Federal, state-run theatres in Austria, and the independent theatre sector. In order to gain a perspective on the distinctions, made not just by funding bodies, central and federal, but also – crucially – by the press and society in general, between the two sectors and the implications this has for artists producing independently, it is helpful to trace historical developments, particularly since the immediate post-war years and then from the time of the State Treaty in 1955.

Theatre has traditionally been of foremost importance in Austrian cultural life, which is reflected in such simple facts as that the Republic of Austria is the owner of

45 the world's largest theatre trust, the Bundestheaterverband (Association of Federal

Theatres), that subsidies to the national theatres make up a significant share of the public culture budget, and theatre reviews in Austrian journalism are given a sizeable portion of the culture pages (Gruber, Köppl, 1994: 57). Traditionally, however,

Austria’s cultural establishments were always elitist, from the grand tradition of the

(imperial) theatres of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the more modern theatres established in the 19th century, with most regular theatre goers coming from the more privileged sectors of society. In spite of the economic hardship following the collapse of the Empire Deutsch-Schreiner writes (1994: 54), ‘six of the eight provincial capitals at that time also had well-established theatres with permanent ensembles and a high quality three-sector repertory (opera, operetta and theatre)’. During the Nazi

German occupation, then, Austria’s theatre establishment was put at the service of

Third Reich propaganda, ‘[a]ll theatres were “aryanized” and more often than not they were also nationalized’ (Deutsch-Schreiner, 1994: 54). Developments in post-war

Austria, as discussed in section one above, the exoneration of Austria by the allied forces from its war-guilt, lenient measures for former Nazi party members, a conservative orientation in the literary establishment and a tendency to deflect away from recent events and look to the more distant past to define Austria’s new identity –

‘[b]eing Austrian meant, first of all, not being German’, an attitude which ‘made it possible to regard the period of Austro-fascism (1933-8) and the Nazi regime as a mere interruption in a continuous period of democracy and republicanism’ (Deutsch-

Schreiner, 1994: 56) – left little scope in the theatre for taboo-breaking or any kind of exploration of new, innovative or experimental forms. According to Deutsch-

Schreiner (1994; 56), the immediate re-opening of the theatres by the Soviets at the end of WWII ‘led to the revivals of productions from the Nazi period, pre-empting

46 serious discussion on the role of art during the Nazi regime and preventing any new definition of Austrian art after 1945’. Since then and still today in Austria, theatre audiences have been comprised largely of the educated upper-middle class, which is

‘traditionally less interested in content or experiment than in the actor’s performance’ and ‘have affectionate relationships with their favourite actors’ (Deutsch-Schreiner,

1994: 57).

Writing in 1994, Deutsch-Schreiner (57) states that only ‘a tiny section of the public is open to experimental theater and the avant-garde’ and this is the audience that usually fills the alternative theatres. It has to be said that a break with this tradition has taken place in Vienna’s Burgtheater since the directorship of Claus

Peymann (1986 – 1999). Prior to his advent, Carlson writes (2008: 201), ‘of all the major German-speaking theatres, the Burg was noted for the conservatism of its style, repertoire, and audiences’. Peymann’s arrival in 1986 was viewed by the 140-strong ensemble, ‘who were accustomed to directors that allowed the actors a comparatively free hand’, with apprehension. According to Viennese professional actor, director and dramaturge, Hagnot Elischka (2008), authors such as Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede

Jelinek, who break with traditional forms of dramatic literature, and others in translation such as Neil Labute, Sarah Kane and Reneé Pollesh, would never have been performed at the Burg had Peymann not come to Vienna. Elischka notes, however, that Peymann, who first gained his standing as a director outside of the West

German theatre establishment, was never as daring at the Burg as he had been, for example, at the state theatres in Stuttgart or Bochum, ‘Peymann hat ohnedies hier in

Wien plötzlich auf Sicherheit gearbeitet, also es war nicht mehr so kühn wie in

Stuttgart oder Bochum, […] aber für viele Leute hier (in Wien) war es immer noch ganz schlimm’. Elischka (2008) charts also the shift in the Burg clientele during the

47 Peymann directorship, ‘[a]uch hier ist das stamm-Publikum weggeblieben, das

Abonnement halt gekündigt, aber es sind ganz andere Leute gekommen und so ist es

(im Vergleich zu früher) kühn geblieben’. The tradition of conservatism continues, however, in other prominent Viennese theatres. Elischka (2008) profiles the behavioural characteristics of the clientele of the Theater in der Josefstadt, for example, and their expectations regarding the programme of productions and modes of performance as follows:

[M]an muss als Mitglied der Gesellschaft, ein Abonnement in der Josefstadt haben, und diese Leute wollen natürlich die Stücke sehen, so wie die Stücke inszeniert waren, als sie mit 16 Jahren erschüttert worden sind von diesen Stücken. Also werden hier Inszenierungen gezeigt, die wie 20, 25 Jahre alt wirken. Und die Leute sind auch nicht begeistert, sind nur zufrieden, dass es so ist, und geblieben ist wie damals und klatschen da ganz müde. Das heißt, die Schauspieler sind völlig sauer, aber das Theater ist voll, weil es eine gesellschaftliche Pflicht ist, in dieses Theater zu gehen, um einer gewissen Schicht anzugehören.

Elischka’s remarks from 2008 would indicate that little has changed since the mid-90s when Ulf Birbaumer (1994: 63) wrote:

The theatrical institutions run by the state and the provinces, […], have stayed mostly with the traditional, for example, the slightly outdated bourgeois style of the Theater in der Josefstadt’s seasons or the combination of popular classics and contemporary Austrian drama at the Volkstheater.

Although much has shifted in Austria in the last six decades or so, the resistance in Austrian society to experiment and the avant-garde, which can still be observed today, and the sense of many independent contemporary artists that they must first attain recognition internationally before they will be taken seriously at home35, can be linked to the post World War II era, the spirit of conservatism and restoration, the cultivation of the victim and the Ostarrîchi myths, and the hostility

35 Uschi Litschauer (2002/2009) of Theater Asou, for example, states in interview, ‘Ja aber Österreich, in Österreich, habe ich das Gefühl, muss man sich wirklich erstmal einen Namen außerhalb gemacht haben, bevor man dort hineinkommt’.

48 towards any kind of art that might threaten the laboriously constructed official version of Austrian identity. The beginnings of the avant-garde as a reaction against this spirit of conservatism can be traced back to the to the Vienna group, or the Wiener

Dichtergruppe, who first came together in Vienna’s Art Club, founded in 1946, described by Gerhard Rühm (in Scott, 2001: 7) as ‘Sammelbecken aller – damals noch spärlichen – fortschrittlichen künsterlischen Tendenzen’. This group of writers, comprised first of H.C. Artmann, Konrad Bayer and Gerhard Rühm, and later joined by Oswald Wiener and Friedrich Achleitner, were inspired by the late 19th century, early 20th century avant-garde movements Dadaism, Futurism, Surrealism,

Constructivism and Expressionism. Apart from radical writing experiments these artists worked towards abandoning strict borders between art forms and established close links to painters and musicians, their work anticipating happenings and performance art ‘independent of the well-known American avant-garde tendencies’

(Birbaumer, 1994: 60). The kind of public events listed by Birbaumer (1994: 60-63) include marathon literary readings and happenings, processions and demonstrations, and from 1958-9 a series of literary cabarets. Their last joint event, staged in 1964, was ‘the first performance of a multimedia children’s opera’ (Birbaumer, 61).

Another important group that resisted the spirit of conservatism and that was closely linked to the Vienna Group were the Wiener Aktionisten, or Viennese Actionists, a group of visual artists, characterised by Birbaumer as a ‘performance-oriented, anti- art movement’ led by the French Tachist painter Georges Mathieu. Other names recorded by Birbaumer are Hermann Nitsch, Otto Mühl, Rudolf Schwarz-Kogler,

Günther Brus and Valie Export, who ‘elevated gesture into a movement-oriented, theatrical act’. Birbaumer describes the events they staged:

In various performances – Pouring with Food and Blood, The Body as a Canvas, Self-Mutilations, Walling In and Walling Out and Trespassing of the

49 Public Space – they violated taboos of religion, sex and often good taste, aiming at a kind of therapeutic effect.

Nitsch developed his own theatrical theory of Orgy Mystery Theatre (Orgien-

Mysterien-Theater), video clips of which can be viewed on youtube.

These manifestations of resistance to the conservative cultural policy in this period, however, remained largely a sub-cultural phenomenon up until the socialist one-party government under Bruno Kreisky in the 1970s. In spite of the success of the literary cabarets of the Vienna Group, for example, a combination of the failure to secure any financial support from the state, the constant mockery of their work by the press and internal conflicts left the group members feeling isolated and rejected and forced to seek contacts and recognition outside of Austria, in particular in West

Germany and Zurich,36 which provided a more receptive environment. Austria’s post- war cultural and funding policies focused consistently on ‘high culture’ as a strategy for heightening Austria’s international reputation37, and the subsidizing of expensive, high-profile festivals such as the Salzburg Festival, which has ever since been characterized by ‘famous actors and internationally renowned singers and musicians’38 (Deutsch-Schreiner, 1994: 56). It was not until Bruno Kreisky’s one- party socialist government in the 1970s that a significant departure in the cultural climate could take place borne out of a new spirit of open-mindedness. Although ‘the

36 Scott (2001: 18) expresses the difference in the literary climate between Austria on the one hand and Germany and Switzerland on the other: ‘[w]hile in West Germany and Switzerland authors were trying to come to terms with the horrors of world War 2, official Austrian cultural policy was trying to ensure that writers and the reading public would forget it ever happened and concentrate on adhering to the official version of Austrian identity which offered a much more pleasant alternative.’ 37 As Scott (2001:16) writes, ‘in the midst of a housing crisis, the Stephansdom and the Burgtheater, symbols of an older Austria, were rebuilt’. 38 Klaus Drastowitsch (1998: 21) identifies the financing policy of the Salzburg Festival as one of ‘unrestricted deficit coverage’, which means that regardless of the scale of deficits arising in any given year, by law they have to be covered by public institutions. He uncovers the inefficiency of this system, ‘[t]hese insufficient constraints on the operation of the Salzburg Festival lead to below-equilibrium prices for tickets, above-equilibrium wages paid to artists, technical and administrative employees and to inefficiency and waste in the production of the whole festival’.

50 upheavals of 1968 had reached Austria with delay and in a very dissipated form […]’,

[t]he new open-minded and multicultural atmosphere, however, did induce some changes in the institutionalized temples of art’ (Birbaumer: 1994: 61). International directors were invited to the Burgtheater such as Peter Wood, Jean-Louis Barrault and

Giorgio Strehler, and the commissioner of the Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen),

Ulrich Baumgartner had already begun in 1968 to invite world theatres to Vienna such as the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, the Vakhtangov Theatre from Moscow and the avant-garde café-théâtres from Paris. Other important influences from the international arena emerging beyond – and which would have been inconceivable within – the constraints of institutionalized theatre39 that Schweighofer and Hauswirth

(1999: 7) refer to include Living Theatre, Theatre du Soleil, Forced Entertainment,

Gob Squad, Theatre de Complicite, and the live art movment. It was during this period that the free theatre scene in Austria began to flourish, and a whole range of artistically important companies began to emerge, such as the Ensembletheater, the

Gruppe 80, the Schauspielhaus (later known as the Theater der Kreis in the late 1980s under the direction of George Tabori), and the mobile Fo-Theatre, ‘which performed critical socio-political drama in Vienna’s municipal housing complexes’ (Birbaumer,

1994: 62). Also symptomatic of this spirit of change was, for example, the occupation by artists and intellectuals of the Arena St. Marx in 1976, a dilapidated slaughterhouse where the fringe events of the Wiener Festwochen had taken place. The protesters

‘wanted to prevent the proposed demolition of the slaughterhouse area and to establish an autonomous civic and cultural centre under a self-administration scheme’

(Deutsch-Schreiner, 1994: 57). Although the conflict ended with the arrival of the municipal demolition machinery, the impact made by these events on local and

39 To speak with Florian Malzacher (2008: 11), ‘Theater, das grundsätzlich andere Wege geht oder zumindest sucht, ensteht kaum je auf städtischen Bühnen’.

51 central policy-makers was such that they began to support the establishment of cultural centres and free theatre companies.

By the end of the 1970s, however, a general austerity policy placed restrictions on the freedom of production, and, according to Deutsch-Schreiner, in the 1980s many free companies, who had meanwhile become recipients of state subsidies, ‘sank into undistinguished production modes and socially irrelevant aesthetics’ (1994: 57).

It was not until the publication of Robert Harauer’s study mentioned above in the late

80s and the institution of IGFT that new life was injected into the free sector, and in the 1990s a number of companies managed to acquire and run their own venues, set up company working structures, ‘and the scene as a whole expanded with a very broad diversity of artistic approaches’ (Stüwe-Eßl, 2006: 17).40

In more recent times the free theater scene in Vienna has been shaken by a theatre reform, ‘Reform der Theaterförderung in Wien’, which began in 2001 and has been applied to all theatres and theatre companies apart from the five larger federal theatres – Burgtheater, Theater in der Josefstadt, Volksoper, Staatsoper, and

Volkstheater – the intention of which was to fund fewer free companies with more substantial grants to produce higher quality41 in a financially and structurally improved environment.42 These and other issues arising out of the reform were 40 Stüwe-Eßl (email, 17 Sep 2009) identifies, among others, the following independent groups and artists, who have continued to produce independent theatre since the 70s and 80s in Austria: Editta Braun www.editta-braun.com, Hagnot Elischka www.einmaligesgastspiel.at, homunculus http://www.homunculus.co.at/, Aktionstheater Ensemble www.aktionstheater.at/, Moki-Theater www.theater-moki.at/, Mezzanin Theater www.mezzanintheater.at/, Elio Gervasi www.eliogervasi.com/DEU/kritiker.htm, and Pico Kellner www.theatropiccolo.at/ . 41 Alexander Götz from Theater in der Josefstadt explicates the difficulty of determining criteria for and measuring ‘quality’ (Enquête 2002: 4): ‘Zum Teilziel der Qualität und der Messbarkeit anhand von Kriterien bieten sich das Zusammenwirken von dramturgischer Qualität, inszenatorischer Qualität, auditiver und visueller Qualität, sowie schauspielerischer Qualität an. Im Bereich der Vielfalt ist das künstlerische Profil, ableitbar aus Spielplan und Programmplanung, als Kriterium für die Messbarkeit vorstellbar. Eines muss uns allen bei diesen Kriterien klar sein, nämlich die Objektivität bei der kulturellen Qualität und Vielfalt gibt es nicht und wird auch in Zukunft unerreichbar bleiben. 42 Many artists such as Hagnot Elischka would assert that this procedure was not clearly thought through and that the main underlying motive was to simplify and rationalize on an administrative level: ‘Diese Theaterreform ist von Anfang an von uns bekämpft worden, weil das war ein wirres Ding, es war keine Theaterreform, es war lediglich eine Vereinfachung für die Verwaltung im Rathaus. Also eine Verwaltungsreform’ (Elischka, 2008).

52 discussed at a conference held in Vienna in March 2002: ‘IG Freie Theaterarbeit:

Enquête zur Reform der Theaterförderung in Wien’43, which built on the previous conference held in 2000.44 One significant setback relating to the manner in which the reform policies were carried out and which led to the dissolution of several long- standing and highly productive companies identified by Hagnot Elischka (2008: 4) can be summarized as follows: after the curators appointed to make a selection of companies to promote and distribute subsidies (2003 - 2007) had made their selection and communicated to the companies in question the extent of their respective subsidies, the city council of Vienna subsequently reduced the subsidies by half without warning or giving any reasons for their decision. Since then this action was repeated for each two-yearly cycle. This meant that the companies involved, who had booked performance spaces and employed their teams on the basis of the approved budget, suddenly had to regroup and change their concept for the project according to the revised figures. This situation was exacerbated by a change in the time lapse between funding application and approval or otherwise. It had formerly been approximately 3 months and subsequently jumped to between 6 and 7 months

(followed by the revision by the city council one month or so later). These developments have led to the dissolution of many of the companies in question.

The general situation in Styria, on the other hand, seems to have improved significantly in recent years, with the result that although ‘Vienna is […] the most generous supporter of independent performing arts in Austria’ (Kock in van

Hamersveld, I., Smithuijsen (eds.), 2008: 27), the Viennese look to the developments in the last decade in Styria with some admiration and envy. Unlike in Vienna, the free theatre scene in Styria has not felt threatened by the political theatre reform rhetoric of

43 Documentation on this conference is available under the publications sections of the IGFT website. This publication will be referred to henceforth as ‘Enquête 2002: page no.’ 44 The outcome of this conference can be accessed under http://www.freietheater.at/publikationen.htm.

53 the past 8 years. On the contrary, a lot of political goodwill has been demonstrated towards the free sector of Styria in the past decade, even to the extent of it being held up as a positive example to the Federal theatres, as Götz (2005: 10):

Das Bekenntnis der politischen Machthaber zur Förderung der Off-Theater fällt in der Steiermark besonders deutlich aus, nicht erst seit der einstige Kulturlandesrat Gerhard Hischmann den städtischen Bühnen auf diesem Weg die Rute ins Fenster gestellt hat.

The main contributing factors, however, to the more recent success of the independent sector in Stryia are ascribed by Andrea Dörres, administrator for Das Andere Theater, to the founding of this regional interest group and the acquisition of the theatre space

Kristallwerk (TTZ) for free theatre companies:

[Z]u den größten Erfolgen [zählen] ohne Zweifel der Zusammenschluss des Anderen Theaters, das Netzkristallwerk als Spielstätte für die zahlreichen heimatlosen OFF-Theater (in Götz, 2005: 11).

Gernot Rieger (in Götz, 2005: 11) emphasises, furthermore, how the activities of the association have made transparent – also to politicians – the professionalism of the scene, ‘[s]eit es einen gemeinschaftlichen Auftritt des Anderen Theaters gibt, ist die

Professionalität der Szene sichtbar geworden – auch für die Politik’.

1.5 Current Challenges facing the Free Theater Sector

1.5. a. Funding Structures and Income

Grants for independent theatres, which continued to increase until 1997, have since decreased or stagnated, which means, as Stüwe-Eßl asserts (in Götz, 2005: 24) that ‘because of the lack of inflationary adjustments there is a decrease of 6.6% of funds for this sector during the period 1996-2004. The level of productivity in the sector appears to be in inverse proportion to the percentage of the culture budget made

54 available to them. At a conference held in Vienna in March 2002 to discuss the implications for independent artists and companies of the theatre reform in Vienna,

Peter Hauptmann of the IGFT reveals the statistics:

Aus einer 2001 herausgegebenen Erhebung‚Theater in Wien und Graz. Aufführungen und Produktionen’ von Raimund Minichbauer geht hervor, dass die freien Theater- und Tanzschaffenenden in Wien mit 4,4% der Fördermittel 38% der Aufführungen im darstellenden Bereich bestreiten.

An overview of the distribution of the national theatre culture budget from 2007 clearly reveals the priority given to the mainstream theatre establishment and high profile festivals such as the Salzburger and the Bregenz Festivals over the independent sector (Kock, 2009: 11):

Die Bundestheaterholding (Burg Theater GmbH, die Wiener Staatsoper GmbH, die Volksoper Wien GmbH und die Theaterservice GmbH) erhält für drei Spielstätten 75% des Gesamtbudgets im Bereich der darstellenden Kunst; die Landes- und Stadttheater bekommen mit weiteren 14 Millionen Euro den daneben größten Betrag. Ebenso werden Großereignisse wie Festspiele mit mehr als 11 Millionen Euro hoch subventioniert. Dagegen teilten sich 2007 sämtliche kleine Institutionen und diverse freie Gruppen (insgesamt 87 FördernehmerInnen) einen Gesamtbetrag von insgesamt 2.301.639,00 Euro – eine Summe nicht einmal 2% des Gesamtbudgets.

It follows from this that a broad range of groups and single artists struggling to secure their piece of a small cake cannot make an adequate living from their theatre work.

Gernot Rieger of Theater Asou, former artists’ representative of Das Andere Theater, explains how the company members – having existed as a company for 10 years – can finally pay themselves an artist’s fee for their productions:

Nach zehn Jahren sind wir jetzt an einem Punkt, wo wir uns für unsere Arbeit auch ein Gehalt auszahlen können – wenn auch kein großes. Und das ist nicht selbstverständlich (in Götz, 2005: 10).

55 The vast majority of independent artists earn a sizeable portion of their living from part-time jobs, ideally ones related to their artistic work45. Hagnot Elischka (2008:

26), for example, discusses the kinds of field-related paid employment he engages in, which include acting as a double for psychiatric patients in the context of training programmes for medical students:

Man muss sich wieder mal persönliche Extra-Einkommen organisieren, die die Theaterarbeit nicht allzu empfindlich stören. Ich habe noch zu meiner Psychiatriearbeit ein Training für Intensivmediziner dazubekommen (Angehörigengespräche bei Organtransplantation), das 3-4 mal pro Jahr stattfindet und viel Geld bringt, und ein Kommunikations-Training für Ingenieure bei Siemens. Alle diese Jobs haben mit meinen Fähigkeiten als Schauspieler zu tun.

A number of companies, such as Theater Asou, Graz, successfully produce alongside their principal theatre work a children’s theatre repertory as a means of boosting their income, or work as theatre pedagogues in children’s or youth theatre. Schweighofer and Hauswirth (1999: 40) point to the fact that it is very difficult for independent artists to get work in the more lucrative areas of advertising, radio, television and film, and where it does occur the ensuing absenteeism has a negative impact on the work of the ensemble.

These complications compound the customary multi-tasking required of the members of an independent production team: in contrast to actors in the employment of the big state-run theatres, who have a clearly defined place in the rigid hierarchy, often perhaps only discovering what their next role is from the theatre notice board, the tasks required of a professional actor in the independent sector can include, over and above the performance work, a number of management and production roles –

45 Many free theatre artists have of course no choice other than to boost their income from their theatre work by taking part-time jobs that are not specifically related to the field.

56 depending on individual competencies – such as negotiating with funding bodies and managers of theatre spaces, public relations, stage management, artistic direction, costume, set and sound design. For most free theatre artists there is no dividing line between personal and professional life and there is no question of a 40-hour working week. Hauswirth and Schweighofer (1999: 41-2) discuss the disadvantages for a company whose priorities lie foremost in their artistic practice but has to distribute the management-related tasks among its members. The results can be positive, on the one hand, if creative and original solutions can be found; on the other hand, it can be the case that the PR-wheel, for instance, gets continuously reinvented, and either way it means an enormous drain on the company members’ personal resources.46 At a round- table discussion as part of the programme to mark the 10-year anniversary of Das

Andere Theater in May 2009, Monika Klengel of Theater im Bahnhof, Graz, conjured up an image of the latter-day poor poet, which also brought a gender-political note into the discussion:

Würde man ‘den armen Poeten’ neu malen, wäre er eine alleinerziehende Frau mit Kindern, das Manuskript ein Laptop, die Möbel aus Angebotskäufen, das Zuhause ist der Arbeitsplatz ist das Zuhause ist der Arbeitsplatz.

1.5. b. Social security payments

The Austrian actor’s law from 1922 – reintroduced in 1946 but unmodified47 – applies in theory to the working relations of all professionals engaged in theatre

46 Uschi Litschauer expresses in interview (2002/2009) the customary difficulites of multi-tasking, how it can lead to conflict in the ensemble and how it can affect the artistic work, and by contrast how satisfying it was as an ensemble, for instance, to focus solely on the artistic work in rehearsal for Speaking Stones with Phillip Zarrilli at his studio in Wales once away from the normal working situation: ‘Es gibt für mich Momente, wo ich denke, […] also ich bin 35, was habe ich für eine Absicherung, wie lange kann ich es noch machen, mit so wenig Geld zu leben, mit so wenig Perspektive, dass sich das ändert letztlich, und das ist auch körperlich / seelisch anstrengend. Wir haben auch manchmal sehr viele Konflikte, wohingegen neulich in Wales, wo alle weg sind, gibt’s die Konflikte einfach nicht, weil wir nicht tausend Sachen gleichzeitig im Kopf haben, die entschieden werden müssen und wie eintscheidet man das mit so wenig Geld, all die Sachen. Manchmal ist es sehr schwer’. 47 The law still contains, for example, a clause stipulating that married female actors have to seek the permission of their husbands in order to accept a contract.

57 across the state and the independent sectors, its purpose being to protect theatre professionals from exploitation. In reality, however, the necessary financial means are rarely available in the free sector for adequate employment relations:

Das seit 1922 gültige Schauspierlergesetz schreibt ihre Anstellung vor, selten erlauben die finanziellen Rahmenbedingungen jedoch überhaupt oder adäquate Anstellungsverhältnisse, zumindest nicht im Bereich freier Theaterarbeit (Kock, 2009: 6).

It is not just the inadequate fee – ‘der Hungerlohn’ – they can pay themselves or others for their work, independent artists have to contend with the critical issue of social security payments. With living and production expenses rising in recent years and the necessary financial means still missing to market fringe theatre work, many artists who have been producing for 15 years or more now find themselves with inadequate social security provision. While professionals with long-term contracts in the heavily subsidized state theatres enjoy a satisfactory social security status (pay, health and pension insurance), professionals working in the independent sector enjoy no such security. In her address to the ‘Enquête zur Reform der Theaterförderung in

Wien’ in March 2002 Hanna Tomek from Theater mbH expressed the essential difference between employment in the state theatres and in the independent sector:

Ans “große Haus” verpflichtet sich der/die Einzelne in einem meist längerfristigen Arbeitsverhältnis. Er/sie stellt sein/ihre spezifische Fähigkeit als Künstlerin, Technikerin, Managerin zu fixen ökonomischen und arbeitsrechtlichen Bedingungen dem Betrieb zur Verfügung. In der freien Szene – weil projektorientiert – werden die Strukturen nach Bedarf entwickelt.

The significance of this circumstance becomes more apparent in the light of a further difficulty created for independent companies throughout the republic in the form of a new regulation introduced on 1 August 2001 stipulating that social security payments

58 have to be made for all members of a production team (Stüwe-Eßl, 2006: 17).48 This has significant financial, administrative and legal implications for free theatre companies who are already struggling to survive financially. Furthermore, no legal certainty has yet been created around working practices for independent artists49 and many find themselves in a vulnerable and precarious position, because, as Stüwe-Eßl writes (in Van Hamersveld, I., Smithuijsen, C. (eds.), 2008: 28), ‘[w]hile theoretically all theatres are legally obliged to employ their artistic, technical and administrative staff on standard contracts, only the established, bigger theatres can afford to meet this obligation fully’. Most free theatre companies can only afford to pay fees on a project basis to employees, but since 2001 it is no longer legal to employ artists as so- called ‘freie Dienstnehmer/Innen’. It is not only the additional costs that undermine the life of such companies but also the additional administrative workload, and the above-mentioned IG-NET does not have the necessary resources to carry the extra costs or concomitant administrative workloads. Kock (2009:24) emphasizes the acuteness of the threat this issue poses for independent artists and in particular core company members who are liable in cases of irregularity:

Die Situation ist akut und hier muss endlich eine rechtsverbindliche Klärung sowie eine Rechtssicherheit in der Arbeitspraxis für die Theaterschaffenden geschaffen werden; das gesamte Segment der freien Theaterarbeit ist betroffen und droht kriminalisiert zu werden (Kock, 2009: 24).

48 Prior to the instatement of this regulation, representatives for the artists, the Arts division of the Federal Chancellery and cultural policy makers together compiled a catalogue of necessary elements in order for the regulation to function, the outcome of which was a fund – the ‘Künstlersozialversicherungs Fond’ (KSVF) – which would support independent artists with a percentage of their social security premiums. This subsidy now funds a percentage of artists’ pension contributions only, health insurance and accident insurance payments are not included. A further drawback came in 2006, when 600 artists were charged with the repayment of pension subsidies received during the year 2002 on the grounds that their income was too low to meet the KSVF funding criteria. In other words, those who would be most in need of this support have no access to it. These charges are currently under review (Van Hamersveld and Smithuijsen, 2008: 29). 49 See Kock (2009:24), ‘Anders als in anderen Sparten fehlen im Bereich des freien Theaters in der Folge auch Klauseln, die die Einhaltung der sozial- und arbeitsrechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen voraussetzen – eben weil diese nach wie vor nicht geklärt sind’.

59 Such a precarious situation can arise for independent companies, for example, in relation to accessing central government project grants: the company has to demonstrate evidence of prior approval of subsidies from one of the federal states in order to get approval for central government funding, and the projected percentage they hope to acquire from government funding has to be integrated into the grant application to the federal state. However, approval of the application from the individual state does not guarantee approval from the central government funding, but the company is already obligated to the federal state. It can find itself, then, with a substantial deficit in its budget and unable to meet its payments (Stüwe-Eßl in Van

Hamersveld, I., Smithuijsen, C., 2008: 24). In relation to these pressing social security issues, calls were expressed at a panel discussion as part of 10th anniversary programme of Das Andere Theater in May 2009 to adapt the Austrian actor’s law for the free sector (www.dasanderetheater.at).

1.5.c. The Press

A further significant influencing factor in the relative success of independent companies in Austria is the press. Although, as mentioned above, theatre reviews occupy a sizable portion of the culture pages, these are largely reserved for the state sector and this tendency is increasing, according to Peter Hauptmann (Enquête 2002:

7), ‘[D]er Platz auf den Kulturseiten wird knapper, der wenige Platz wird auch vom

Mainstream der Kunst- und Kulturproduction umkämpft’. Helmut Wiesner from the long-established Gruppe 80 spoke at the Enquête on the Vienna theatre reform (2002:

4) of the glass ceiling blocking opportunities for directors from the independent sector, which is further promoted by the press:

60 Bekommen Regisseure freier Gruppen Gelegenheit in großen Häusern zu inszenieren, stoßen sie auf zwei Schwierigkeiten: sie bekommen oft schlechtere Bedingungen (vor allem Stücke) und die Theaterkritiker wissen zunächst nicht, wie sie mit ihnen umgehen sollen. Das rächt sich gleich in schlechten und verständnislosen Kritiken. Viele Kritiker signalisieren: wer aus der OFF-Szene kommt, soll dort auch bleiben. So zementieren auch die Medien die Undurchlässigkeit. Da stehen wir nicht besser da als jede junge freie Gruppe.

Hagnot Elishka (2008) traces this conservative attitude of the press back to the fact that no real de-nazification process took place in Austria, ‘die Deutungen der

Reichskultur kamen von Adolf Hitler, dass “Künstler” nur der sein kann, der in der staatlichen Reichskulturkammer als Mitglied aufgenommen ist’. Elischka asserts that in his personal experience even when he and his company, Einmaliges Gastspiel, have had significant successes abroad and won awards, it is difficult to be considered as anything other than incompetent or a dilettante by Austrian politicians and the theatre critics if one operates within the independent sector in Austria. Interestingly, as he adds and as thematized above, this prejudice does not necessarily apply to independent companies from other countries or cultures:

Beim Festival, bei der Wiener Festwoche da sind ganz viele freie Gruppen aus Argentinien und Mongolei eingeladen, die auch sogar zum Teil experimentell arbeiten, aber aus der Stadt selbst oder aus Österreich wird niemand eingeladen.

It seems clear then that in the Viennese ‘Theaterlandschaft’ (and elsewhere in

Austria), the traditional spirit of conservatism and elitism continues to undermine the possibilities of avant-garde artists to gain a high profile in their home territory. While funds seem to get lavished and to some extent squandered on the Federal theatres and festivals – the inefficient deficit coverage policy mentioned above in relation to the

Salzburg Festival clearly also applies across the federal theatres with varying cost-

61 coverage ratios, deficits being covered entirely by public subsidies50 – independent companies and professionals, on the other hand, not only have to fight a bitter struggle to survive materially, almost inevitably continually exploiting their own resources, they are frequently regarded with suspicion and skepticism by the press, which can have serious implications for the possibilities of promoting their work, for securing funding or invitations to festivals. A case in point, thematised in the 3rd January 2009 edition of the freie theater newsletter, was the treatment by the press, described by

Sabine Prokop (IGFT) as a smear-campaign, of Nestroy-prize winner Hubsi Kramar’s most recent production ‘Pension Fritzl’. The production is based on media coverage by the boulevard press of the highly sensitive, high profile case which emerged in

April 2008 of Josef Fritzl’s 24-year imprisonment of his daughter Elisabeth Fritzl and three of her children in the cellar of his house in Amstetten, Austria. Calls were published in the gratis Vienna circular HEUTE by right-wing conservative politicians, for example, culture spokesman Gerald Eblinger for the Vienna branch of the FPÖ, media representatives and readers for the withdrawal of Kramer’s annual subsidy, a ban on the performances, closure of the theatre and even a prison sentence for the artist. This came ahead of the premiere of the production or any knowledge of its actual content. As in the case of all of his Anatomietheater productions, the content of Kramar’s production, was not due to be fixed until the day of the premiere.

Eblinger cited the production costs in the press as €150,000, which was in fact the company’s total annual subsidy, interpreted by Prokop as FPÖ- election campaign

50 This system seems to remain unquestioned by the general public as Gruber and Köppl assert (1994: 58),‘[t]he fact that even permanently sold-out performances cannot pay for more than a fraction of production and operating costs is characteristic of this form of organization and is more or less accepted by the general public.’

62 rhetoric against unpopular voices and the free theatre scene in general.51 Kramer asserted that the production budget was €5000 and that the content of the piece does not treat of the members of the Fritzl family themselves, but is a media satire thematising the coverage of the case by the boulevard press. The IGFT called for a halt to the constitutionally illegal pre-emptive censorship of the production and for the protection of artistic freedom. It furthermore called upon politicians to make a clear statement regarding this incitement in the media against art and artists (freie theater newsletter 03/ Jänner 2009).

The significance of the role played by theatre journalists in the visibility of a theatre culture outside of the establishment is highlighted by Florian Malzacher

(2008: 12-13) in his assessment of the shifts that have taken place in Germany in recent years:

In Deutschland hat in the den letzten Jahren vor allem das HAU wegen eines engen Budgets zwar weniger zur infrastrukturellen Stärkung, aber dafür zu einer deutlich größeren Sichtbarkeit nichtdramatischen Theaters und eher konzeptuell orientierten Tanzes beigetragen – mit immensem Engagement und Gespür, aber schlicht auch deshalb, weil plötzlich viele Theaterjournalisten erstmals bermerkten, dass es eine relevante Kunst jenseits der Stadttheater gibt, die freilich durchaus schon früher hätte entdeckt werden können.

1.6 Motivation and Relevance

Finally, in the face of on-going material difficulty, open-ended working days, and precarious perspectives, we might ask what is it that induces individuals to choose to work in the field of free theatre, in some cases leaving the security of the state sector in order to do so, and of what significance or relevance is the free theatre scene in

51 In the federal state of Carinthia, home to the right-wing conservative Freedom Party (FPÖ), the cultural policy in the last decade has increasingly favoured the state theatre (Stadttheater Klagenfurt) and withdrawn support for independent artists: ‘Since 1999, the budget for independent artists decreased continually, from €230,000 in 1998 to €77,000 in 2005’ (Stüwe-Eßl in Van Hamersveld, I., Smithuijsen, C., 2008: 25). As a result of this shift, most of the independent artists and ensembles have left and gone to work in Vienna, some returning only in the summer season to do productions in Carinthia.

63 Austria today? Broadly speaking ‘free’ means free to determine on the levels of content, working methods and methodologies, and collegial structures (Kock, 2009:

14), none of which is possible for the majority of artists working within the hierarchy of institutionalized theatre. Helmut Wiesner of Theater Gruppe 80, one of the longest standing free theatre companies in Austria, explains why he is against institutionalizing theatre and what motivated him and others in the 1980s to create theatres outside of the institution:

Theater sind aus Kämpfen entstanden, aus einer Notwendigkeit heraus. Wir und andere, die Anfang der 80er Jahre gekommen sind, sind nicht angetreten um Institutionen zu schaffen. Wir wollten Theater machen – nach unseren Spielregeln, nicht in den Häusern, wo wir uns mit unseren künsterlischen Konzepten nicht hätten bewegen können.

What the majority of free theatre artists have in common is the desire to work innovatively, explore new forms, to commit themselves to life-long professional development in order to realize their artistic potential, and many cannot envisage or find the opportunity to do this within the theatre establishment, as Schweighofer and

Hauswirth write (1999:40):

Die Weiterentwicklung der persönlichen künsterlischen Kompetenz ist ein Prozess, der nie aufhört. Viele Mitglieder Freier Gruppen schätzen die Chancen für einen zufriedenstellenden Entwicklungsprozess, der es ihnen ermöglicht ihr künsterlisches Potential maximal zu entfalten, im institutionalisierten Theater als zu gering ein und suchen gerade deshalb ihre künsterlische Verwirklichung in der Freien Szene.

Independent artists have to be prepared to pay the price for their precarious freedom and the satisfaction they can derive from their work, which is frequently compromised, however, by the exigencies of multi-tasking. Uschi Litschauer

(2002/2009) expresses in interview what for her are the essential advantages of

64 working in a free theatre ensemble over being employed by the establishment, but also the tension between the ideal and the reality of free theatre production:

[D]er wichtigste Unterschied ist, dass wir als Gruppe existieren und nicht als Schauspielerin oder Schauspieler, die für eine Produktion gekauft wird und dann wieder weg ist, sondern, dass wir wirklich gemeinsam als Ensemble quasi wie Leiter arbeiten, trainieren und produzieren und forschen auch letzlich, wobei das ist auch ein Ideal, nicht wahr, es gibt die Realität, die anders ausschaut, und das Spielen und die eigene Produktion halt zu machen, und diese Produktion heißt eben Kostüme, organisieren usw, es bleibt dann wenig Zeit dafür.

Hagnot Elischka, who began his career – having completed conventional conservatory training in Vienna in the late 1960s – working in state theatres, became frustrated after two years and left the establishment to work in free theatres. He explains in interview (2008) the source of his frustration and what attracted him to the free theatre scene:

Ich habe eigentlich angefangen ganz normal im Stadttheater und in Tourneen und dann habe ich freie Produktionen kennen gelernt und meine Frustration, die die zwei Jahre am normalen Theater gebracht haben, hat sich in große Begeisterung verwandelt. Weil an diesen freien Theatern wirklich in Richtung heutige Zeit gearbeitet, und nicht lediglich Traditionen und Konventionen gepflegt wurden. Das hatte plötzlich mit meinem Leben zu tun, was dort gespielt, und wie an die Texte und an die Themen herangegangen wird – und so bin ich ziemlich lange Zeit nur im freien Theater als Schauspieler unterwegs gewesen.

Elischka (2008) also tells of when he first went to work as assistant dramaturg with internationally renowned German director Peter Stein in 1973 at the Schaubühne am

Halleschen Ufer in Berlin, what a revelation the working practices there were to him after the conservatism of the Viennese theatre establishment and how he profited from this experience:

Das war 1973. Da hat er – Peter Stein – den Homburg von Kleist gemacht, und da wurde ich als Dramaturgieassistent angenommen und habe enorm profitiert. Was ich geahnt, gehofft, aber nicht gewagt hatte, war dort täglicher Standard. Habe aber weiter dann in Wien als Schauspieler gearbeitet, weiter in

65 der freien Szene, aber mein Hirn hatte einen Vorwärtssprung von drei Jahren gemacht in diesem halben Jahr Berlin.

He expresses his frustrations in the past at the lack of enthusiasm and disillusionment he experienced among his colleagues while working as an actor in state theatres:

Es ist so ein Angestelltenleben, also ich muss wirklich so sagen, ankedotisch, es geht mehr darum, was nach den Proben gegessen werden wird, als was während der Probe passiert, daselbe gilt für die Abendvorstellung, also es ist obszön, über die Abendvorstellung zu sprechen aber wo man hinterher trinken gehen wird, das wird schon eine Stunde vor der Vorstellung ausgemacht. Die Proben sind dementsprechend, also die Leute sind zumeist frustriert, denken immer in jeder Stadt wo sie sind – ob Berlin oder in irgendeiner Kleinstadt – ‘wär ich woanders, hätt ich tolle Regisseure und würde toll arbeiten.’ Es ist ein richtiges Angestellten Leben, eine entfremdete Arbeit (Interview, 2008).

Others who have left the establishment to work or found companies in the free sector also confirm that this was a step in the right direction, such as Martin Horn on the occasion of the panel discussion to mark the 10th anniversary of Das Andere

Theater in Graz in March 2009, who left the employment of the Schauspielhaus Graz to found Theater Mundwerk with his colleague Nadja Brachvogel. There are many others who voice their dissatisfaction over the constant struggle for survival and many again who give up this struggle. In recent times, also, the new employment regulations, according to Hanna Tomek speaking in relation to the working climate in

Vienna, (Enquête, 2002: 1-2), have divided free theatre artists in Vienna into employers and employees. In a climate, whereby the competition to secure funding and protect it is already mounting, this only serves to promote envy, aggression and a spirit of single combat. These developments have even led to the annual selection of a

‘Theaterarsch’! Unfortunately, as Tomek concludes, people are forgetting that it is more important to focus on what one is fighting for and why rather than against whom.

66 Arguments for the relevance and importance of the survival of a free theatre sector in Austria can be defined in opposition and as complementary to the state theatre sector. Factors, which have been identified by Schweighofer and Hauswirth, centre on its remit of social and aesthetic experimentation and its contingent role as cultural mediator. Due to its more flexible structures free theatre is better positioned and equipped to take cognizance of, and process artistically, philosophical, aesthetic and social developments in society52. This is indispensable, in particular for a university city, according to Schweighofer and Hauswirth (1999: 39). Furthermore, by virtue of its greater mobility the free theatre sector fulfils its role as cultural mediator beyond the bounds of the university city by taking professional theatre to smaller venues throughout the region, and many artists and companies also tour on a national scale.53 A broad range of tastes and interests can furthermore be met due to the diversity of profiles among the many free theatre groups. This emerged from the report recently carried out by Das Andere Theatre as part of the study referred to above:

Durch die freie Theaterszene bietet die Steiermark eine überaus reiche, vielfältige Kulturlandschaft, die den unterschiedlichsten Wünschen und Bedürfnissen der Menschen nachkommt.

Other factors identified by this study are the creative utilization for theatre events of non-dedicated public spaces, the possibility of a more intimate relationship with audiences (including audience participation), reaching audiences that would not traditionally go to the theatre, provision for theatre pedagogical work within the youth

52 Florian Malzacher (2008: 13) discusses how the inflexible structures in institutionalized theatre determine the artistic outcome more than the large state-run theaters would like to admit: ‘Die Frage der Institution ist für das Theater nun mal grundlegend: Nur wenige Künstler können in den Stadttheatern halbwegs die Bedingungen bestimmen, unter denen ihre Arbeiten entstehen. Mehr als viele Häuser wahrhaben wollen, prägen die Strukturen das künsterlische Ergebnis. Nicht nur Verwaltung und Technik mit ihren rigorosen Abläufen, Arbeitszeiten und Gewohnheiten, auch die künstlerische Vision wird in großem Maße von Notwendigkeiten bestimmt. 53 Free theatre companies in Austria increase their chances of securing subsidies considerably if they tour their productions regionally and nationally.

67 and children’s theatre sectors, and making connections between regional and global concerns. Finally, as addressed briefly above, the free theatre sector provides important stimuli and inspiration for the establishment. Hagnot Elischka uses the term

‘Impfung’ to describe this function that directors and their ensembles from the free theatre scene are sometimes engaged to fulfil for the establishment. They take with them innovative forms from the ‘laboratory’ of the free scene to the establishment, which awaken the interest of state theatre audiences or inject new life into the established ensemble of a theatre. While what Malzacher (2008: 11) describes as ‘die großen Theatertanker’ are seldom sufficiently flexible to facilitate or even permit experimentation at an early stage, once it has become relevant or sufficiently simplified to reach a broader audience, they are in a position to integrate the artists concerned or at least the aesthetic developments.

1.7 The Companies

1.7.a. Theater Asou, Graz

Theater Asou was formed in Graz in 1994 by Abel Solares, an Argentinian refugee, emerging from a workshop on street theatre that Solares had led in the context of a summer workshop series funded by the city of Graz. Initially the group consisted to a large extent of people for whom theatre was a hobby; many were in full-time employment, all but one of whom left when the theatre work became full-time. A core of five members ultimately formed the company in the first phase of its evolution:

Uschi Litschauer, Klaus Seewald, Gernot Rieger, Monika Zöhrer and Christian

Heuegger. In 2006 Christian Heuegger left the company and in August 2009 Gernot

Rieger died tragically in a road accident while driving from Graz to Klagenfurt where

68 he was to perform his ‘Liederabend’ at a regional venue. In the late 1990s the company engaged via a social services scheme an administrative support to free the company members up for the artistic work. Due to the chaos arising out of the employee’s lack of experience and training, however, three company members took over the administration of the company, distributing the various areas of responsibility among them depending on individual skills, such as funding and sponsorship

(Rieger), homepage design and up-dating (Seewald). Three company members, therefore, became regular employees of the company. In 2004 the company acquired another subsidized administrative support with greater expertise, Lissa Gärtler, and in

2006 when Heuegger left the company, it became possible for Theater Asou to employ Gärtler on an on-going basis. This has brought professionalism and continuity into the company management and freed up the other three company members for their artistic work (Litschauer, 2002/2009). Currently, therefore, there are just three remaining core company members, of whom one, Monika Zöhrer, has continued to work full-time in an unrelated profession alongside her performance work for the company, and one administrative support. The company regularly engages two other performers on a project-basis, and, likewise, a team of sound, lighting, set and costume designers. Theatre Asou does not have its own dedicated theatre space, but has access to subsidized rehearsal spaces and the TTZ performance space as a member of Das Andere Theater. They also work on a regular basis with set events managers, touring to regular venues throughout Steiermark and the other federal states: Burgenland, Vienna, Salzburg, Carinthia, Upper Austria, Lower Austria,

Vorarlberg and Tirol. On an international scale the company has toured to South

America, Japan, Canada, USA, Russia, UK, Germany, Rumania, Poland and Albania.

69 All company members do not always work together on projects produced under the company name.

Physical theatre has defined the company’s orientation since they first began to train with their founder and first director, Abel Solares, whose performer training methods encompass Asian theatre and dance practices – Noh, Nihon Buyo and Shibu

– and Asian martial arts forms Tai Chi and Kung Fu. He worked with the group in its early years on developing their own movement sequences based on these practices.

Solares also has a special interest in theatre anthropology and development aid politics and this influenced the work of the group in its earlier phase. One of the pieces directed by Solares, for example, which Litschauer (2002/2009) and Seewald

(2002) both refer to in interview, entitled ‘Tuxa’, tells the story of an indigenous

South American people that are displaced due to the construction of a dam. The audience was integrated into the set in that it was seated on mattresses between two stages interlinked via wooden bridges on which the actors performed, inducing the audience to look up to see the performance taking place around them. When the dam was flooded, the cast came from behind the audience covering them with a large swathe of blue silk, leaving the audience with the choice of listening to the text

‘submerged’ or freeing themselves of their covering. By virtue of these staging choices the act of spectating also required physical engagement. Text played a subsidiary role in the theatre work led by Solares, the emphasis being on body-work and stylized forms as tools for expression. Litschauer expresses her enthusiasm for this early work:

Es war faszinierend, dieses Zusammenführen von der Körperarbeit, von Stilarbeit und es war wenig Text, einfach zu lernen, sich mit dem Körper auszudrücken, zu spielen, ja es hat sehr viel Spass, Enthusiasmus geweckt [..]

70 After two years, Solares left for Japan, returning at intervals for a further two years or so to fine-hone pieces of theatre that the group devised in his absence, different members taking turns at directing. They began to create their children’s theatre repertory, adapting the physical and stylistic forms they had developed with Solares and drawing on popular children’s stories. It was a clear commercial choice to develop this strand alongside their adult theatre strand, and it has become the financial basis for their work. They use live music in all of their children’s theatre pieces, and simple costumes. Instead of sets, they use mundane objects, which can be transformed into a range of props. This guarantees maximum mobility and flexibility, and apart from touring to many of the federal states and playing in conventional theatre spaces, they perform in unconventional spaces with a view to reaching audiences who would not normally go to the theatre, playgrounds, for instance, in housing estates occupied by disadvantaged sectors of society. They call this ‘Theater im Hof’ (Litschauer,

2002/2009). Seewald (2002) discusses this area of their work in answer to my question whether he considers that theatre can alter the consciousness of it audiences:

Wir haben auf Spielplätzen gespielt in Siedlungen, wo einfach Menschen wohnen, die normalerweise nicht ins Theater gehen, zum Teil Ausländer, Menschen aus Arbeiterklassen. Das ist schon interessant, insofern kann ich mir vorstellen, dass man da etwas bewegen kann, weil diese Kinder normalerweise nicht ins Theater kommen und auch die Erwachsenen gern zuschauen und es irrsinnig gut finden.

When Solares left Graz, the company decided before long to continue and diversify their training as a group by seeking further contacts with international practitioners and directors, who specialize in body-centered theatre forms. Through

Eva Brenner, director of the Projekttheater Studio Wien/New York, they made contacts and trained with theatre practitioners from the University of New York:

Sharon Fogarty and Steve Wangh, whose practices draw on the work of Jerzy

Grotowski and Eugenio Barba, and Catherine Coray, who draws on Sanford

71 Meisner’s style of improvisation. Two other formative influences have been the work with Phillip Zarrilli (USA / Wales), first experienced by the group at a workshop in

Utrecht in 1998. Zarrilli’s actor training methods adapt Asian martial art and meditation forms Kalarippayattu, yoga and tai chi. The other important encounter was with Japanese Butoh practitioner Moe Yamamoto, with whom the company has also trained intensively and devised work. While the company members engage in these intensive training processes as a group, individuals have specific interests that they have gone on to develop to a more specialized level, these specialities generating extra sources of income as well as leading to smaller individual projects getting produced under the company name: Klaus Seewald, for example has continued to train intensively in kalarippayattu with Phillip Zarrilli, but also in Kerala in India, where the practice originates. He is qualified to teach this martial art form, providing him with a subsidiary income that is conducive to and can be organized flexibly around his theatre work. Likewise, Monika Zöhrer is currently completing a teacher- training programme in Hatha yoga, and Uschi Litschauer is completing a Feldenkrais training programme in Vienna. Gernot Rieger led the musical component of the company’s work and earned further income through his Liederabende. Apart from physical theatre and devised theatre, the company also engages with classical dramatic literature and contemporary playwrights, productions including The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare (dir. Steve Wangh), various plays by Samuel

Beckett (dir. Phillip Zarrilli), and The Maids by Jean Genet (dir. Phillip Zarrilli).

Between 2005 and 2008 Theater Asou has produced an annual number of performances ranging between 69 and 118, and their total annual audience numbers have ranged between 4,179 and 10,797. These statistics, prepared by the company administrator, which include the number of regional, national and international guest

72 performances, are criteria that determine the company’s ability to secure funding – from the city of Graz, from the federal state of Styria and from central government funding. The company’s funding was significantly increased from 2003 onwards on account of their high level of productivity and mobility, particularly in their children’s theatre strand. They have secured funding from the city of Graz and Styria that is guaranteed over a period of years: the annual federal subsidy was increased from

€10,000 in 2005 to €25,000 in 2008, while the annual subsidy from the city of Graz has stayed constant around €25,000 since 2005. They have also secured once-off sums in funding for individual projects. Between 2005 and 2008 their total annual subsides have amounted to between €47,910 and €59,400. There have been periods, however, where they could not afford their employment contracts and had to apply for social welfare benefit. When I asked Uschi Litschauer in 2002 what her aspirations regarding the company were, she listed them as follows: to increase their funding, to establish more fully their adult theatre strand, to get invited to festivals – national and international – to build on their international links and exchanges, to tour internationally and give workshops, for example, in Argentina, to increase their income generated from workshops and performances, to hand over the administration to a competent employee, and to open the group up more to newcomers. When I asked her this year to review the answers she had given me 7 years earlier, on this latter point she replied that a lot of her aspirations had been realized in the intervening years. Following the recent loss of their long-standing and much valued colleague

Gernot Rieger, the company is currently taking stock regarding its future.

73 1.7.b. Projekt Theater Studio Wien – New York

The Projekt Theater Studio was co-founded in 1998 by Eva Brenner and Axel

Bagatsch, with Eva Brenner as artistic director. Born in Vienna in 1953, Brenner studied Theatre Studies, History of Art, Philosophy and set and costume design in

Vienna, followed by a period of working in theatres in Austria, Germany and

Switzerland. In 1980 she moved to New York and worked in the Off- and Off-off-

Broadway theatre scene (Public Theatre, Theatre for the New City, the Labor theatre,

Castillo Theater) as a director and set designer. She completed her PhD under the supervision of Richard Schechner at the University of New York on the theatres of

Bertolt Brecht and Jerzy Grotowski. In addition to her work in New York as a theatre practitioner and university lecturer she was involved as a peace activist in the

American movement Grassroots. From 1990 onwards she began to direct various productions in the free theatre scene in Austria and established a theatre laboratory

Experimentaltheater Wien-New York in 1991, ‘in which to work on creative impulses for the development of experimental theatre’ (Projekttheater Studio documentation)54.

In 1994 Brenner decided to return to Vienna on a permanent basis because, as she explained in interview (2002), the cultural and political battles she was involved in in

America, while they were most worthy ones, were not her battles. There were other battles to be fought at home that were hers. After four years of building links with funding bodies and sponsors, the Projekt Theater Studio was established in 1998 at the Burggasse 38 in a ‘Hinterhof’ apartment consisting of a large rectangular room and an ante-room divided by sliding doors. The main performing space had a pole in the centre which could not be removed for structural reasons and therefore had to be integrated into performances. The company defined itself as ‘an international,

54 Henceforth material relating to this company and its working processes accessed from company documentation will be referenced as ‘PTS documentation’. (Some the material I was given access to was in German and more in English, hence the inconsistency in the language.)

74 interdisciplinary ensemble for theatre research and performance work’ (PTS documentation).

At the time I first encountered the company in 2002 it described itself as a theatre laboratory modelled on the work of Bertolt Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble and Grotowski’s Teatr Laboratorium in Poland. The was work process-oriented with the emphasis more on exploring textual and formal working processes, in short, theatre research and development, than on presenting performances and events. The audience is always seated or positioned in the performing area, that is, there is no divide between ‘stage’ and audience. Brenner speaks about this in interview (2005):

Wir versuchen immer, das Publikum hineinzusetzen in den Event. Auch wenn die Leute quasi mit dem Rücken an der Wand entlang in einer Reihe sitzen, sind sie in einem offenen, weißen Raum, jeder sieht jeden. Also da gibt’s keinen Abtritt, da gibt’s keinen Auftritt in dem Sinn, es ist möglich als Zuschauer aufzustehen und sich umzusetzen, und in dem Moment wird man gewisserweise Teil der Performance, was in einem klassischen Theater nicht ist und ich glaube, dass man anders arbeiten muss, also experimenteller oder kollektiver.

Emphases in the work of the Projekttheater Studio are on ensemble work and the exchange with practitioners from other cultures. In the earlier period there were on- going collaborations with practitioners from the American experimental scene, where

Brenner had built up contacts during 15 years in residence there. When I first met the company, however, the orientation was more towards Eastern Europe. In interview

Brenner (2002) told me that the Studio was intensifying the exchange with practitioners in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Bratislava. In view of EU extension to Eastern European countries that was in process at the time she considered this dialogue to be of paramount importance.

In 2003 the company’s state funding was significantly reduced as a result of the Vienna theatre reform and the company relocated to a smaller premises in the

75 same locality – die Fleischerei, Kirchengasse 44, a former commercial outlet with large windows facing onto the street. Over the years the company has managed to secure sponsorship from industry, private sources and also EU subsidies, and continues to survive in spite of the funding cuts.

The Projekt Theater Studio creates cycles of work under umbrella headings, which are conceived in response to current sociocultural and political developments: the series of work from 1998-1999 was entitled: ‘ENDGAME in Process’ 1-3 and 4-

5, drawing on texts by Samuel Beckett, and the cycle from 2000 – 2003, which included Auf der Suche nach Jakob / Searching for Jacob / Szukajac Jakuba and Pola, was entitled ‘PHANTOM: LOVE’. Other pieces included in this cycle were devised around writings by the Austrian authors Ingeborg Bachmann and Elisabeth Reichart.

The following project cycle (2004-2007) was entitled ‘COVER UP: ANGST’, which explored the impact of globalization and neo-liberalism on interpersonal relationships, drawing on the work of writers such as Else Lasker-Schüler, Heiner Müller and

Marlene Streeruwitz. The current 4-year series comes under the heading ‘ART OF

SURVIVAL’. The work is conceived in response both to the precarious predicament in which the free theatre scene finds itself as well as current difficulties many groups in society experience in everyday life. Andreas Pamperl, set designer with the company, speaks in interview (in Ehardt, 2008: 2) of the connection between the relocation to a much more publicly visible premises and the current work of the company:

Wir sind vom Hinterhof raus in ein Gassenlokal mit großen Schaufenstern, um damit ein Signal zu setzen, im Sinne eines neuen Theaters, das in Richtung eines Miteinanders mit dem Publikum geht.

The emphases in the current cycle of work are on migration, assylum and ‘Prekariat’, and there has been a decisive swing towards political theatre during this phase, to

76 quote Brenner (in Ehardt, 2008: 2), ‘Ich sehe die Sache der Fleischerei […] als einen ziemlich radikalen Schwenk zurück zu einer Suche nach dem ‘politischen Theater’.

This series included ‘MIGRATION MONDAYS’, whereby assylum seekers came and cooked in the studio and told their stories, and ASYLCAFÉ, described as a sociocultural project for and with asylum seekers in Vienna. The company’s most recent event (Summer 2009) was a guest performance of Heiner Müller’s Hamlet

Machine at the Castillo Theatre in New York. As part of its research for each cycle of work, the company regularly hosts interdisciplinary round table discussions with invited guest speakers and post-performance discussions with it audiences. The company also generates opportunities for other theatre artists by organizing workshops with international practitioners – the workshop series ACT NOW / theaterarbeit was founded in 1995 – and each year it hosts the Schiele Festival in

Neulengbach, where Egon Schiele was once imprisoned, presenting a piece of theatre devised around one of the artist’s paintings.

No statistics are currently available on funding, performances, guest performances, etc., as the company cannot afford to employ an administrative support to take on the task of archivation. Only the director herself is employed on a contract by the company and she occasionally has to apply for social welfare benefit when this contract is unaffordable. All other members of the team are employed on a project basis. The core team currently consists of Eva Brenner, Andreas Pamperl and

Alexander Emanuely. Actors Brenner worked with intensively during the period the pieces analysed in this dissertation was created include Maren Rahmann, Clemens

Matzka, and Anne Wiederhold.

We can conclude that the two companies in question present quite different profiles, and due to their locations – the larger urban setting of the capital city and the

77 smaller urban setting in the capital of Styria – have been shaped by somewhat different conditions. Theater Asou is clearly ensemble-led, hiring international directors on a project-basis, whereas the work of The Projekt Theater Studio has clearly been largely defined by its artistic director and founder Eva Brenner. Another significant difference between the two companies is that the work of the Projekt

Theater Studio is structured very much around its dedicated theatre space – both pieces of theatre I will be considering in Chapters 4 and 5 were created in and for the space in the Burggasse 38. Theater Asou’s position as a company without its own performance space means that it rehearses and creates its work in spaces other than where it performs. Its tradition of pursuing a children’s theatre strand alongside its

‘Erwachsenentheater’ and touring throughout Austria, on the other hand, has given it a more secure financial basis in terms of state subsidies than the Projekt Theater

Studio. In terms of experimentation and international orientation, however, the two companies have much in common. Also, via the Projekt Theater Studio Theater Asou has established many of its links with US practitioners and directors, which illustrates the mutual benefits of networking among companies and practitioners in the free theatre sector.

Following the above consideration of the historical, socio-cultural and structural conditions that inform the work of the companies I have chosen to foreground in this study, in the following chapter I will establish a theoretical framework as a basis for discussion of the theatre work.

78 CHAPTER TWO

Theoretical Context

In the history of modern Europe, the Holocaust continues to represent for the

Western world the outcome of a kind of ‘uncontrolled madness that is unique in history’ (Levi, 2005a: 395), a madness that led to what has been described as ‘the administrative murder of millions of innocent people’ (Adorno, 2003: xi). For Adorno it implied not only ‘the collapse of an existing civilization that had been built up so laboriously’ but it also meant that Western philosophy with its ‘legacy of positivity’,

‘that unwaveringly assigns “meaning”’ had failed abysmally ‘to comprehend the rupture that civilization has experienced’ (Adorno, 2003: xiii). The only philosophy that was possible after Auschwitz, in Adorno’s view, was one that enabled suffering – the screams of the victims – to speak; this, he argued, was ‘the precondition of all truth’ (Adorno, 2003: xviii). Not only had Western philosophy failed for Adorno and many others but also culture: writing poetry – as synechdochic for making art as a whole – had become ‘barbaric’ after Auschwitz. Adorno, however, returned to and redefined this statement in a later essay, as Felman (in Caruth, 1995: 40) writes:

[…] to emphasize the fact (less known and more complex) that, paradoxically enough, it is only art that can henceforth be equal to its own historical impossibility, that art alone can live up to the task of contemporary thinking and of meeting the incredible demands of suffering, of politics and of contemporary consciousness, and yet escape the subtly omnipresent and the almost unavoidable cultural betrayal both of history and of the victims.

This study focuses on contemporary artistic responses in Austria employing the medium-specific tools of theatre to consequences of the events, which for many implied a rupture, an unbridgeable gulf in the history of the Western world.

79 To mark the centennial of Vienna’s illustrious Burgtheater in 1988, which also marked the 50th anniversary of Hitler’s annexation of Austria and followed not long in the wake of Kurt Waldheim’s highly controversial appointment to the Austrian presidency, newly appointed German artistic director and notorious provocateur,

Claus Peymann, presented the premiere of Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard’s play Heldenplatz. At the centre of Bernhard’s play – which Peymann persuaded him to write – is a Jewish professor who having returned from exile to Vienna after WWII commits suicide in despair at the city’s continuing anti-Semitism. The production created uproar in Austria’s conservative cultural and political scene55, with Waldheim himself publicly commenting that while he fully supported freedom of artistic expression, ‘he considered Heldenplatz an abuse of this freedom and “a crude insult to the Austrian people”’(Carlson, 2008: 202). Other Austrian playwrights such as Peter

Handke, Peter Turrini, Elfriede Jelinek and George Tabori – repeatedly branded by

Austrian rightwing politicians as ‘Nestbeschmutzer’ – have written plays denouncing

Austria’s complicity in the Anschluss and German National Socialism, which have been widely produced in German-speaking state theatres. While this dissertation focuses on theatre created in the Austrian context, which engages varyingly with

Austria’s role in the Nazi fascist project, it does not, however, focus on the work of

Austrian playwrights or theatre in general that serves the literary text. Modes of theatre making such as those that come under the headings of conceptual theatre, postdramatic theatre or devised performance provide a more meaningful context within which to discuss the theatre that I am investigating.

55 Peymann (Schütt, 2008: 268) recounts in interview the reactions of the public and the original cast members at the Burgtheater: ‘Es kamen Bombendrohungen, Morddrohungen. Merkwürdige Autos warteten nachts vor meiner Tür. Wie die Stasi früher bei Wolf Biermann in der Chausseestraße in Ost- Berlin. Zeitweilig habe ich nicht mehr in meiner Wohnung gewohnt. Es waren für die Rollen von „Heldenplatz“ zunächst andere Schauspieler vorgesehen. Diese haben – zur selben Zeit erschien ja auch mein umstrittenes „Zeit“-Interview – unter dem Vorwand, das Interview sei unmoralisch, ihre Rollen zurückgegeben. Wahrscheinlich waren sie froh, einen Grund gefunden zu haben.’

80 James Thomas (2008: 236) defines conceptual theatre as one, which ‘takes for granted that theatre is a completely self-reliant art’. Texts employed by conceptual theatre may be dramatic texts but equally also non-dramatic, improvised and non- artistic texts. It furthermore opposes established artistic conventions and ‘is associated with avant-garde movements such as Expressionism, Theatre of Cruelty, Symbolism,

Epic Theatre, Happenings, Theatre of the Absurd, and Theatre of Images.’ It depends on ensemble performance, by which is meant ‘emphasizing the collective creativity of a like-minded group of performers’ rather than simply an avoidance of the star system, and, finally, it ‘is guided by a multi-talented artist-leader, who considers him/herself a first among equals, and not by a conventional director’. Many of these categories could also be applied to postdramatic theatre, as discussed by Hans-Thies

Lehmann in his seminal work by the same title. For Lehmann (2006: 12) theatre that is postdramatic does not attempt to make the world ‘manageable’ or ‘surveyable’ for the spectator, and by world here is not meant a fictional totality, but rather one ‘open to its audience’, ‘pregnant with potentiality’. The post in postdramatic should be understood not as an epochal category but rather as ‘a rupture and a beyond that continue to entertain relationships with drama and are in many ways an analysis and

“anamnesis” of drama’ (Lehmann, 2006: 2). Devised performance, likewise references dramatic theatre but there is no hierarchy which privileges the dramatic literary text. Pearson and Shanks (2001: 24-25) define the dramatic structure of devised performance:

as constituting a kind of stratigraphy of layers: of text, physical action, music and/or soundtrack, scenography and/or architecture (and their subordinate moments). Dramatic material can be conceived and manipulated in each of these strata which may carry different themes or orders of material in parallel. […] Any one of these layers may be the starting point in the devising process and any one may from time to time bear principal responsibility for carrying the prime narrative meaning whilst the others are turned down in the composition.

81 Furthermore, and as discussed above in the introduction, the theatre I am foregrounding in this study is made by so-called free or independent theatre companies – as opposed to state theatres – whose agenda is driven by their collective artistic, social and political concerns rather than by that of an artistic director appointed by the establishment, who is motivated by a personal agenda and is, broadly speaking, given free hand to choose his/her material, cast, and approaches to theatre making. In the wake of the furore sparked by Peymann’s production of

Heldenplatz at Vienna’s Burgtheater in 1988, many of the veteran members of the theatre called not just for his dismissal from his post but for his expulsion from

Austria and many of the cast members resigned in protest. Peymann explained to the company that his comments in an incendiary interview, for instance, that the

Burgtheater was ‘so full of shit that it should be wrapped by the artist Christo and torn down’56, should be understood more as a kind of theatrical performance itself and

‘part of his (my italics) mission to bring about a fundamental change in the Austrian theatre’ (Carlson, 2008: 202). This serves to highlight one of the essential differences between state theatre and free theatre: while free theatre companies have to contend with a constant struggle for survival, all the members drive a shared agenda and choose their own directors as opposed to the reverse. This is in direct contrast to the above-mentioned instance in a heavily subsidized state theatre whereby an artistic director is driving a personal agenda in opposition to the – in this case highly conservative – concerns of his cast and company members.

Additionally, the subject matter of the kind of theatre I am discussing is less tangible than that of realist portrayals often to be found in the plays of dramatists who

56 See the original German version of this quotation in the infamous Zeit-Interview from 26 May 1988 (Hans-Dieter Schütt, 2008: 240), ‘Wenn Sie wüssten, was für eine Scheiße ich hier erlebe! Man müsste dieses Theater von Christo verhüllen und abreiβen lassen’.

82 engage with related issues57. The focus here is more on how to represent that which is less representable in language, for instance, an attitude of avoidance or of looking away, the experience of inheriting the silence of parents and grandparents who did not, for one reason or another, share their experiences in language with their families, or that of trauma, dislocation and alienation as a result of war. All of the theatre I am writing about could furthermore be described as testimonial in one sense or another, in that it bears witness to injury inflicted by human beings on other human beings. In the following I will discuss the thematic concerns in question in the context of the discourses I will draw upon to analyze the individual pieces of theatre in chapters 3, 4 and 5.

2.1. Silence, Looking Away and Post-Memory

In the opening passages of A Chorus of Stones, Susan Griffin (1994: 4) asks the question, ‘[h]ow old is the habit of denial?’ In this book Griffin explores the impact of the habit of denial, the keeping of secrets, and withholding of information on her and her extended family – the private life of war – against the background of the nature of war in a global context. For Griffin (1994: 4) there is no separation between the private life and suffering of the individual and the public tragedy of war,

‘I do not see my life as separate from history. In my mind my family secrets mingle with the secrets of statesmen and bombers’. The kind of silence that cloaks the withholding of the truth, she writes, is abusive to a child, in that ‘in the paucity of explanation for a mood, a look, a gesture, the child takes on the blame, and carries thus a guilt for circumstances beyond childish influence’ (1994: 33). This is one

57 Although Efriede Jelinek is mentioned above, her texts for theatre are not dramatic in any conventional sense; Lehmann draws on Poschmann to elucidate Jelinek’s idea of juxtaposed ‘language surfaces (Sprachflächen)’ as a form that ‘is directed against the “depth” of speaking figures, which would suggest a mimetic illusion’ (Lehmann, 2006: 18).

83 aspect of the experiences in the context of the children and grandchildren of Nazis and the survivors of Nazi oppression, which James Young (2000: 1-2) characterizes as

‘the memory of the witness’s memory, a vicarious past’, or to use Marianne Hirsch’s term, ‘post-memory’, and its representation through the medium of theatre, with which this dissertation concerns itself.

Exonerated first by the Moscow Declaration in 1943 and subsequently in the wake of its liberation by the Allies in 1945 from all responsibility for the Nazi fascist project, silence and the repression or withholding of truth, or what could be characterized as the act of looking away, has been particularly pronounced in Austrian families, as discussed in the introduction above. Remaining silent about the past, does not, however, make it disappear. It continues to exist and shape lives until such time as it is claimed. This falls to the lot of subsequent generations who inherit the silence, as Griffin writes (1994: 179):

What is buried in the past of one generation falls to the next to claim. The children of Nazis and survivors alike have inherited a struggle between silence and speech.

Shoshana Felman expresses a similar concern, specifically in relation to the experience of survivors and their descendents, about those who inherit this kind of struggle between silence and speech referred to by Griffin:

The thing that troubles me right now is the following: If we don’t deal with our feelings, if we don’t understand our experience, what are we doing to our children? […] Are we transferring our anxieties, our fears, our problems to the generations to come? And this is why I feel that we are talking here not only of the lost generation – like the term they coined after World War 1 – this time we are dealing with lost generations. It’s not only us. It’s the generations to come. And I think this is the biggest tragedy of those who survived (in Caruth, 1995: 48-49).

In many cases, the witnesses have died taking their secrets with them and the heirs are left with nothing but the effects of a silence that has continued to shape their inner lives. The question inevitably arises as to who exactly the heirs are and whose lives

84 are shaped by the withholding of truths and the avoidance of engagement with a troubled history. This question cannot be easily answered. In the first instance we can point of course to the immediate relatives of the witnesses. It becomes more complicated when we speak of a whole community, for instance, such as the community living in the environs of Aflenz, in southern Styria, where Speaking

Stones, the piece of theatre I discuss in Chapter 3, was staged. How far-reaching, we might ask, are the effects of individual choices not to engage with a troubled past?

Susan Griffin (1994: 8) posits a kind of ripple-effect that encompasses not just whole nations but, in fact, all of humanity:

I am beginning to believe that we know everything, that all history, including the history of each family, is part of us, such that, when we hear any secret revealed, a secret about a grandfather, or an uncle, or a secret about the battle of Dresden in 1945, our lives are made suddenly clearer to us, as the unnatural heaviness of unspoken truth is dispersed. For perhaps we are like stones; our own history and the history of the world embedded in us, we hold a sorrow deep within and cannot weep until that history is sung.

However, when the his- and her-stories are no longer available, and therefore can never be sung, what, we must ask, can be done with what Griffin describes as the unnatural heaviness of unspoken truth? In his study, Young examines the work of a post-war generation of visual artists and architects in the context of Germany’s

Holocaust Memorial project and how these artists give expression to their vicarious experience of the Holocaust. As Young writes (2000: 2):

[…] by calling attention to their vicarious relationship to events, the next generation ensures that their ‘post-memory’ of events remains an unfinished, ephemeral process, not a means toward definitive answers to impossible questions.

In relation to the Holocaust, we could argue, the only valid modes of enquiry are those that recognize that there can be no definitive answers and therefore the process of remembering and responding creatively must necessarily remain unfinished and ephemeral.

85 2.2 Testimony and the Ethical Imperative of Remembrance

Each of the three pieces of theatre I have chosen to focus on in this dissertation testify varyingly to the experience of the Holocaust, that of the victims, the perpetrators, the implicated, but more centrally to that of the heirs of the on-going effects of this experience, the generations of post-war Austrians whose worlds were shaped by the experience of growing up with parents, grandparents, and so on, who were victims of or party to or somehow implicated in the ‘unmaking of the world’

(Horowitz, 1992: 52). To testify according to the Chambers English Dictionary means

‘to bear witness to’, ‘to be evidence of’ (2003: 1568) and stems from the Latin noun

‘testis’ meaning ‘a witness’ and the verb ‘facere’ to make. The use of the indefinite article is an interesting detail here. Without the article – as in ‘to bear witness’ – witness signifies an abstract noun, whereas with the article it signifies a person. Both meanings are relevant to this discussion: the theatre work bears witness, and the spectator is made into a witness of the witnessing, as it were.

Theatre, like bearing witness in a court of law, can only happen in the presence of a spectator, as Peter Brook (1984: 11) has pointed out in his seminal work

The Empty Space:

I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged.

In theatre that is in some sense testimonial the spectator is made into a witness, provided of course, the spectator is willing to become the ‘enabler of the testimony’, the one who ‘triggers its initiation’ (Felman and Laub, 1992: 58) by her/his presence and acquiescence. Such a spectator contributes to what playwright and arts educator,

Julie Salverson (1996: 183) describes as ‘an environment in which witnessing is possible’, that is, one that ‘takes seriously what Walter Benjamin called the

86 “permanent emergency” in which we live’. Griffin’s message to her reader is unmistakably that human beings are all implicated in each other’s tragedies, or as

Salverson (1996: 182) expresses it, ‘[p]ersonal narratives of crisis are never merely personal’. There is an ethical imperative to own our accountability, to be willing listeners or recipients of difficult histories, whether they be expressed through language, through images or other means.

Many other voices call us to accountability: Primo Levi, Auschwitz survivor, prefaces his testimonial work If this is a Man with a pastiche of the biblical verses beginning ‘Listen Israel’ from the Book of Deuteronomy (Jones, 1966: 228), and the voice is just as wrathful as that of the God of the Old Testament, ‘Meditate that this came about’, ‘Meditate che questo è stato’. If we do not, curses will be called down upon us, ‘[…] may your house fall apart, / May illness impede you, / May your children turn their faces from you’ (Levi, 2005a: 17). ‘For the survivors’, as Levi tells us (2005a: 390), ‘remembering is a duty. They do not want to forget, and above all they do not want the world to forget’. The imperative to make sure the world does not forget was born out of the need to become reabsorbed into the community. This desperate need is expressed by one of the few survivors of the ‘special squad’, the

‘crematorium ravens’ – ‘i corvi del crematorio’, as Levi refers to them (2008: xv) – , the slaves, ‘bearers of a horrendous secret’, who managed the crematoria in

Auschwitz, ‘[y]ou mustn’t think we are monsters; we are the same as you, only much more unhappy’ (Levi, 2008: xv). This need to become reintegrated into society, for the experience of the victims to be validated by their fellow human beings, was as strong as the most basic needs, as Levi writes (2005a: 15), ‘[t]he need to tell our story to “the rest”, to make “the rest” participate in it, had taken on for us, before our liberation and after, the character of an immediate and violent impulse, to the point of

87 competing with our other elementary needs.’ Salverson (1996: 182) discusses the significance of this ancient dilemma of the messenger and the audience in the context of a character in one of Elie Wiesel’s stories ‘Night’: ‘Mosche the Beadle has been taken from his home by the Nazis, survived the murder of his convoy of foreign Jews and returns to warn the others.’ The significance of the sharing of his experience publicly with the community, is expressed by Ora Avni (quoted in Salverson,

1996:182) as follows:

Only by having a community integrate his dehumanizing experience into the narratives of self-representation that it shares and infer a new code of behaviour based on the information he is imparting, only by becoming part of this community’s history can Moshe hope to reclaim his lost humanity.

We can draw on many models of such messengers in literary texts that give expression to this deep-seated need in human beings, for instance in Coleridge’s poem

‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, a figure Levi came to identify with as he got older.

Paul Bailey tells the reader in his introduction to the English translation of The

Drowned and the Saved , that ‘Levi came to see himself as an ancient mariner of sorts, fixing people with his glittering eye and insisting that they listen’ (Levi, 2008: xv), and hence his epigraph to that work:

Since then, at an uncertain hour, That agony returns, And till my ghastly tale is told This heart within me burns.

Levi (2008: 121) also refers to the figure of Ulysses yielding to the urgent need to tell his tale to the king of the Phaeacians. We could likewise invoke here Mouth in

Beckett’s play Not I, for example, who spews her story in the third person with a terrible urgency.

Participation in difficult histories, however, does not necessitate psychological understanding; in fact the true witnesses – as Levi refers to those who did not survive

88 – told us before they went to their death that we will never understand. Maurice

Blanchot (in Horowitz, 1992: 45) conveys to us the last wish of some of these witnesses: ‘Know what has happened, do not forget, and at the same time never will you know’. This invokes the idea of different ways of knowing, something like, acknowledging that events have taken place versus understanding how these events could have come about. Understanding the rupture in Western civilization that took place during Hitler’s Nazi fascist regime is, in fact, for many a secondary consideration in relation to dealing with the past. In answer to a question posed by his readers regarding the Nazis’ hatred of the Jews, Levi (2005a: 396) also uses the word

‘knowing’ in the sense of ‘in opposition to understanding’, ‘If understanding is impossible, knowing is imperative because what happened could happen again.

Conscience can be seduced and obscured again – even our consciences’58. In the context of theatre-making that seeks to bears witness to difficult histories, Amanda

Stuart Fischer (2009: 114) likewise contends that the willingness to respond to the ethical demand of opening oneself to testimonies is more important than the need to understand:

As custodian and listener to th[e] testimony, the playwright (and subsequently the audience) is called upon to open themselves to the testimony of the other. This ‘call’ has less to do with empathy, understanding and comprehension; rather, it has the character of an ethical demand, which in being listened to, is also acknowledged. In other words, the correlate of bearing witness (the act of testimony) is the requirement that we – the listener – should open ourselves up to the unknowable and radical difference, the ‘alterity’, as Levinas puts it, of the other.

Other voices positively warn against a project of comprehension. In the making of his film Shoah, Claude Lanzmann worked resolutely with ‘a refusal of

58 The Italian original ‘[s]e comprendere è impossibile, conoscere è necessario, perche ciò che è accaduto può ritornare, le coscienze possono nuovamente essere sedotte ed oscurate: anche le nostre’ (Levi, 2005b: 175), corresponds to this interpretation of the English translation. The verb conoscere in Italian can also have the connotations of both knowing in the sense of acknowledging what has taken place and understanding.

89 psychological understanding’, a ‘blind gaze’ which he sees as ‘the only possible ethical and at the same time the only possible operative attitude’:

It is enough to formulate the question in simplistic terms – why have the Jews been killed? – for the question to reveal right away its obscenity. There is an absolute obscenity in the very project of understanding. Not to understand was my iron law during all the eleven years of the production of Shoah (in Caruth, 1995:154).

Adorno also (2003: 3) warns against the project of understanding in the context of the concept of ‘Vergangenheitsbewältigung’ – working through the past – which he argues:

[…] does not mean seriously working upon the past, that is, through a lucid consciousness breaking its power to fascinate. On the contrary, its intention is to close the books on the past and, if possible, even remove it from memory.

Levi also expresses concern regarding the project of understanding (2005a: 395),

‘Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand is almost to justify’. These voices resonate with Walter Benjamin’s

(1982: 259) notion of ‘a real state of emergency’, which we need to bring about in order to ‘improve our position in the struggle against Fascism’, as ‘the “state of emergency” in which we live is not the exception but the rule’. In the 1930s, several years before the full horror of the Nazi death camps was realized, Benjamin cautions his reader against an untenable view of history, one that gives rise to the kind of amazement he was experiencing among his contemporaries ‘that the things we are experiencing are “still” possible in the twentieth century’ (1982: 259). History teaches us again and again that there is a heavy toll to pay for forgetfulness, drawing a line under ‘the past’. Levi (2008: 50) asks, for example, in The Drowned and the Saved, the last book he wrote on his Auschwitz experience before his death in 1989, ‘[h]ow strong is the moral armature of the European citizens of today?’ We could ask exactly this question today, twenty years later in the year 2009, as Europe is suffering the

90 effects of an uncannily similar version of the Great Depression of the 1920s / 30s, which provided such a rich seed bed for the xenophobia out of which Nazi Fascism grew. The elections for the European Parliament of June 2009 have clearly demonstrated, yet again, that in times of economic crisis, extreme right-wing political parties increasingly gain the ear of the people. Remembering for the survivors, Levi writes, ‘is a duty’, because they understood that ‘the camps were not an accident, an unforeseen historical happening’ but rather simply ‘the most monstrous manifestation’ of Fascism in Europe. Fascism, he reminds us, existed before Hitler and Mussolini and survived until the end of World War II. We must add that Fascism continues and will continue to survive on various scales and in various manifestations and places, and that remembering, therefore, continues to be a duty, for, as Levi writes (2005a: 390):

In every part of the world, wherever you begin by denying the fundamental liberties of mankind, and equality among people, you move toward the concentration camp system, and it is a road on which it is difficult to halt.

This particular pronouncement came in response to a question from his readers regarding the idea of returning, revisiting, the death camps, like many survivors have chosen to do, leading younger people through them, educating them about the past.

As Levi cautions us, it is forgetting and not remembering that comes most naturally to human beings, that the most painful episodes ‘with time tend to mist over, lose their contours.’ (Levi, 2008: 19).

Simple explanations for the Holocaust can also obfuscate and allow us to draw

a line under the past, such as Daniel Goldhagen’s central thesis – which he laboriously explores in his study Hitler’s Willing Executioners (2003) – that the

Holocaust is only understandable by virtue of the fact that it was specifically

Germans with their longstanding hatred of the Jews who for the most part carried it

91 out. Christopher Browning (2001) presents a contrasting thesis in his study of the so- called Reserve Police Battalion 101, ordinary policemen from Hamburg, too old to go to the front, who were conscripted to slaughter hundreds of thousands of Jews in

Poland in the context of Himmler’s so-called ‘final solution’ in Poland. Browning argues that it was possible to induce these particular men, for instance, to do what they did because they were ordinary human beings and it is possible, in given circumstances, to turn any man into a murderer. In his discussion of the reactions of those men when given the chance to refrain from taking part in the first shootings, he writes, ‘I must recognize that in the same situation I could have been either a killer or an evader – both were human – if I want to explain the behaviour of both as best I can’ (Browning, 2001: xviii). Levi, himself a victim, and even though he did not in his lifetime forgive the Germans (2008: x) and rejected the project of psychological understanding, offers the same explanation:

We must remember that these faithful followers, among them the diligent executors of inhuman orders, were not born torturers, were not (with a few exceptions) monsters: they were ordinary men (Levi, 2005a: 396).

The problem with Goldhagen’s theory – the Holocaust is explicable by virtue of the perpetrators’ nationality and specific kind of Anti-Semitism – is that it exonerates every other nation from accountability and responsibility towards the victims’ ethical demand: ‘know what has happened, do not forget, and at the same time never will you know’ (Horowitz, 1992: 45) and is, I would argue, an unproductive and unphilosophical line of enquiry. The central flaw in Goldhagen’s argument, Browning writes, is that he ‘mistakes the part for the whole’ (2001: 222), pointing out that it would, in fact, be very comforting if Goldhagen were correct in arguing (2001: 222-

223) ‘that very few societies have the long-term, cultural-cognitive prerequisites to commit genocide, and that regimes can only do so when the population is

92 overwhelmingly of one mind about its priority, justice, and necessity’. The amount of genocidal activity that has taken place in the world since Goldhagen’s book was first published in 1996 suggests that this standpoint is naïve. Browning’s perspective is, I would argue, infinitely more astute and helpful for our on-going engagement with the

Holocaust, the project of remembrance, and answering Benjamin’s (1982: 259) call to

‘a real state of emergency’, as he writes in his afterword (2001: 222):

[…] the fundamental problem is not to explain why ordinary Germans, as members of a people utterly different from us and shaped by a culture that permitted them to think and act in no other way than to want to be genocidal executioners, eagerly killed Jews when [offered] the opportunity. The fundamental problem is to explain why ordinary men – shaped by a culture that had its own peculiarities but was nonetheless within the mainstream of western, Christian, and Enlightenment traditions – under specific circumstances willingly carried out the most extreme genocide in human history. 59

Freud’s disussion of the nexus between ‘heimlich’ and its antonym

‘unheimlich’ provides a model towards understanding that it is unhelpful for the project of remembrance to posit the Nazi perpetrator as that which is strange or uncanny, der ‘Unheimliche’, or ‘utterly different to us’ (Browning, 1982: 222). The opposite of ‘unheimlich’, ‘heimlich’ – familiar, ‘belonging to the house or the family’

(Freud, 1990: 342) – as Freud elucidates, is a word the meaning of which develops in the direction of ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its opposite, ‘unheimlich’, for ‘heimlich’ also means ‘secretly’ or ‘covertly’, eluding apprehension. The ordinary

Nazi perpetrator is both strange and familiar and whether or not I can or seek to understand how s/he could implement the Nazi project, I am called upon to respond to

Levi’s imperative: ‘Consider if this is a man / Consider if this is a woman’, which as in the case of the title of his testimonial work, If This is a Man, must be applied both

59 Browning, does not, incidentally, reject the project of understanding, as he states in his study of the Reserve Police Batallion 101 (2001: xviii), ‘[w]hat I do not accept, however, are the old clichés that to explain is to excuse, to understand is to forgive.’

93 to the victims, tortured, abused, stripped of their human dignity, and to the perpetrators.

I would argue that the projects of understanding and refusal of understanding of the Holocaust are secondary to the more crucial project of remembrance. Levi’s dictum – ‘[m]editate che questo è stato’, ‘meditate that this came about’ (Levi, 2005a:

17) – is clearly not just addressed to the Germans; it calls to accountability all ‘who live safe / In your warm houses’. Deborah Eisenberg (2008, xxii) evokes a similar image of the passive bystander, inured against the tragedies unfolding close-by, in her introduction to the English translation of Gregor von Rezzori’s Memoirs of an Anti-

Semite: if, as it seems, it takes only a handful of evil people to carry out a genocide, that handful ‘requires the passive assistance of many, many other people who glance out of the windows of their secure homes and see a cloudless sky.’ Each of the three pieces of theatre I am analyzing is primarily concerned with the project of memory- work and remembrance and thus, I will be arguing, makes a contribution towards enabling silences to be ruptured, traces of testimonies and ‘screams of the victims’ to be heard and consequently towards restoring lost humanity. As so many of the victims and the witnesses are among the (nameless) dead, I will be arguing that the theatre actor can function as a conduit through which the past – not just through linguistic means – can be claimed on the basis that we are all implicated in each others traumas and that traumas can and must be claimed by subsequent generations. In the context of her work with the victims of South African apartheid, playwright Yael Farber

(2008:22) refers to the actor’s role as channel for a community’s catharsis, ‘I do believe in the ancient concept that the actor has a calling to channel the needed catharsis of their community’. While catharsis may well be possible in the case of more recent difficult histories, this becomes complicated, however, in the case of

94 histories that were not communicated in words by a generation that has since died but continue to mark the lives of individuals, families and communities. I will nevertheless be arguing for the actor’s role in facilitating the process of remembrance and claiming the past.

1.3. Trauma and Returning

What at one time one refuses to see never vanishes but returns, again and again, in many forms (Griffin, 1992: 17)

In order to discuss theatrical representations that bear witness to trauma and the inheritance of silence surrounding the inexpressible, it is necessary to first establish what gives rise to the inexpressibility and the silence. For those who have inflicted injury on others or were party to it, it is less difficult to understand the process of suppression or manipulation of the facts. As Levi writes (2008: 12), ‘the person who has inflicted the wound pushes the memory deep down, to be rid of it, to alleviate the feeling of guilt’. Levi also speaks about those who ‘fabricate for themselves a convenient reality’ where the truth about their past actions is too uncomfortable for them, undergoing a ‘silent transition from falsehood to self-deception’, so that they end up believing the fabrication. At this point bad faith becomes good faith (Levi,

2008: 14). Bearing witness in the case of the victims is a much more complex issue.

One factor undermining the possibility of testimony was the fear of the victims, on the one hand, and the cynical confidence of the Nazi perpetrators, on the other, that accounts of the death camps and the sheer scale of the atrocity and the massacre would not be believed by those who had not experienced it. Levi (2008: 1) refers to

95 survivors’ memories of how the SS militiamen cynically enjoyed taunting the prisoners:

However this war may end, we have won the war against you; none of you will be left to bear witness, but even if someone were to survive, the world would not believe him.

Not surprisingly, many survivors shared the experience of a recurring dream while still in imprisonment: they had returned home, were trying to tell their story to a loved one but the interlocutor just turned away in silence (Levi, 2008: 2). Hitler’s brief

‘millennial Reich’, can be reread, Levi tells us (2008: 18), ‘as a war against memory’,

‘a negation of reality’, or as Shoshana Felman (2008: 108) writes in her response to

Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah, the Holocaust was an historical assault on seeing: where possible the Nazis destroyed evidence of their crimes, for example, each team of the so-called ‘crematorium ravens’, referred to above, were initiated into their terrible task by being forced to burn the corpses of their predecessors (Levi, 2008:

34). All of those whom Levi describes as the true witnesses did not survive to tell their stories and for this reason the Holocaust can be described as ‘an event without witness’ (Horowitz, 1992: 51). Dori Laub (in Caruth, 1995: 65) also argues that the nature of the event, in fact, precluded the possibility of witnessing to it:

The event produced no witness. Not only, in effect did the Nazis try to exterminate the physical witnesses of their crime; but the inherently incomprehensible and deceptive psychological structure of the event precluded its own witnessing, even by its very victims.

A further definition of ‘to testify’ offered by the Chambers Dictionary is ‘to make a solemn declaration’. This implies a recounting of memories of events which took place, as required in the context of a court of law. Testifying in this sense in the context of traumatized victims of atrocity has an inherent difficulty built into it, in that, as survivor Jean Améry tells us:

96 Atrocity unmakes the self, unmakes the world, and thus undoes the very possibility of coherent testimony….. “Whoever was tortured, stays tortured”. Impossibly, the self unmade by atrocity is called upon to narrate its own unmaking, its own inability to narrate. To articulate one’s own unmaking from first-hand experience gives it the lie, presenting a coherent self not unmade, and thereby mitigating the radical negativity of the Holocaust. In other words, the unmaking of the self works against the making of the witness that constitutes testifying (in Horowitz, 1992: 52).

The inherent difficulty for the trauma victim of creating a narrative around the traumatic event, the mechanism whereby traumatic events preclude registration, is explained by Babette Rothschild in her study of trauma The Body Remembers: The

Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment (2000, 12). The process that takes place in the hippocampus that ‘gives events a beginning, a middle and an end’ can get suppressed during traumatic threat and:

When this occurs, the traumatic event is prevented from occupying its proper position in the individual’s history and continues to invade the present. The perception of the event and the victim as having survived is missing. This is the likely mechanism at the core of the quintessential PTSD symptom of “flashback”- episodes of reliving the trauma in mind and or body.

The organization of such experience is described by Van der Kolk and Van der Hart

(in Caruth, 1995: 172) as follows:

The experience cannot be organized on a linguistic level, and this failure to arrange the memory in words and symbols leaves it to be organized on a somatosensory or iconic level: as somatic sensations, behavioural reenactments, nightmares, and flashbacks.

The experience of being possessed by the events as opposed to having integrated them into one’s narrative memory causes the victim, furthermore, to doubt their truth, as

Caruth (1995: 6) explains:

Yet the fact that this scene or thought is not a possessed knowledge, but itself possesses, at will, the one it inhabits, often produces a deep uncertainty as to its very truth.

A further complication to which survivors and theorists alike draw our attention is that survival itself or revisiting the trauma can be traumatic. Caruth (1995:

97 9) elucidates Freud’s discovery surrounding the problematic relation between trauma and survival:

Freud’s difficult thought provides a deeply disturbing insight into the enigmatic relation between trauma and survival: the fact that, for those who undergo trauma, it is not only the moment of the event, but the passing out of it that is traumatic; that survival itself, in other words, can be a crisis.

Since its emergence at the turn of the 20th century in the work of Freud and Pierre

Janet, as Caruth writes (1996: 91), ‘the notion of trauma has confronted us not only with pathology but also with a fundamental enigma concerning the psyche’s relation to reality’. Caruth refers to Freud’s interpretation of dreams and to one dream in particular which Freud deemed to be an exemplary explanation for why we sleep and for ‘how we don’t adequately face the death outside of us’ (1996, 92). This is the dream of the father who watched over his ill child until his death, and then went to sleep in the next room leaving an elderly man to sit by the laid out body. The elderly man nods off, however, and a lighting candle falls over and burns the sleeve and arm of the body. The glare of the flames do not cause the father to awaken in the next room, rather he dreams that his son, who had died of fever, is standing by his side tugging his sleeve and asking him, ‘Father, don’t you see I’m burning?’ (Caruth,

1996: 93). The dream causes the man to awaken to the – even worse – horror of reality, that is, that his son is already dead and his dead body is burning. In answer to his question, why dream rather than wake up, Freud comes to the conclusion that the dream is not the disturber, but the guardian of sleep, the wish to sleep comes not just from the body, but from consciousness itself ‘which desires somehow its own suspension’ (Caruth,1996: 96). A further question, as identified by Lacan, is not what does it mean to sleep, but what does it mean to awaken, as Caruth writes (1996: 100),

‘awakening represents a paradox about the necessity and impossibility of confronting

98 death, and ‘awakening is itself the site of a trauma, the trauma of the necessity and impossibility of responding to another’s death’.

The crisis of awakening is clearly linked to the crisis of survival, but I would also like to posit the call to awakening – Father, don’t you see I’m burning? – as the call to accountability of the spectator, the call to accept our implication in the trauma of others, the ethical imperative to engage with the fate of those less fortunate than us.

Felman (2000:146) refers of the Czech women who, before being gassed in the gas chambers to be then burnt in the crematorium, tell eye witness Phillip Müller (who wants to die with them), ‘you must get out of here alive, you must bear witness to the injustice done to us’. Through Phillip Müller the voices of these women continue to convey the question – don’t you see I am burning? The question is whether we, who have the good fortune not to be subjected to atrocity, are willing to lend our ear to the victims and integrate their dehumanizing experience into our narratives of self- representation. Deborah Eisenberg (in von Rezzori, 2008: xxii) asks the question,

‘what does it take to be a “decent person?”’, which most of us perhaps consider ourselves to be, and answers it as follows:

Maybe the most significant component is luck – the good luck to be born into a place and moment that inflicts minimal cruelty and thus does not require from us the courage to discern and to resist its tides.

The idea of returning to or being re-visited by that which has not been understood at the time of its occurrence, or as Valéry expresses it (in Felmann, 2000:

144), ‘[r]epetition is addressed to incomprehension’, is central to discussions of trauma. Freud turns to literature, Caruth (1996: 3) tells us, to describe traumatic experience, because ‘literature, like psychoanalysis, is interested in the complex relation between knowing and not knowing’. An example in literature that Freud

(1991: 293) cites to illustrate this complex relationship is Tasso’s romantic epic

99 Gerusalemme Liberata in which Tancred unwittingly kills his beloved Chlorinda in a duel when she is disguised in the armour of an enemy knight. In a magic forest that frighten’s his army he strikes a tree which bears Chlorinda’s spirit, and blood gushes forth from the tree, the voice of Chlorinda crying out that he has wounded his beloved for the second time. Tancred returns to the event – the killing of his beloved – which he missed at the time of its occurrence, because it ‘is experienced too soon, too unexpectedly to be fully known’ (Caruth, 1996: 3). Caruth elucidates Freud’s theory of trauma and how the parable illustrates the complex relationship between knowing and not knowing:

What the parable of the wound and the voice thus tells us, and what is at the heart of Freud’s writing on trauma, both in what it says and in the stories it unwittingly tells, is that trauma seems to be much more than a pathology, or the simple illness of a wounded psyche: it is always the story of a wound that cries out, that addresses us in the attempt to tell us of a reality or truth that is not otherwise available. This truth, in its delayed appearance and its belated address, cannot be linked only to what is known, but also to what remains unknown in our very actions and our language.

In the context of this study, we could argue that because the Holocaust, by virtue of the very scale of the atrocity, challenges our comprehension, we are required to address repetition to it, to re-visit, to re-engage, to return, and in this case through the medium of theatre.

1.4. Theatre and Witnessing

What then, we must ask, is the relationship between witnessing and art, and, more specifically for this project, how does the medium of theatre lend itself to testifying, to bearing witness to events and attitudes that because they perhaps cannot be concretized and framed in a narrative, do not lend themselves to literalistic representation? We might first turn to the medium of film and the example of Claude

Lanzmann’s groundbreaking film Shoah, referred to above, as an example of an

100 exploration of the relationship between art and witnessing, and witnessing and history in order to identify its emphases. Described at the time of appearance in 1985 as ‘the film event of the century’ (Caruth, 1995: 201) and ‘a truly revolutionary artistic and cultural event’, all of the film takes place in the time of its production. The filmmaker asks questions but never comments; instead he allows the images and testimonies of the disparate groups of witnesses bearing witness in the now of the making of the film

– the survivors that had been victimized, the Poles who witnessed from the outside, and the perpetrators – to speak for themselves. The film, therefore, is not an historical film or a documentary but rather a film about witnessing, and the relation between history and witnessing. Shoah, as Felman writes (2000: 104), ‘refuses systematically to use any historical, archival footage. It conducts its interviews, and takes its pictures, in the present.’ It is also, I would argue, a film about measuring the after- effects of the past in the present, in accordance with Benjamin’s idea of

Eingedenken.60 As Felman writes:

The film offers a disorienting vision of the present, a compellingly profound and surprising insight into the complexity of the relation between history and witnessing. […] It constantly unsettles and puts into question the very limits of reality (Felman: 2000: 104).

For Felman (2000: 112) the film is more philosophical than historical, and she uses the concepts of ‘incarnation’ and ‘resurrection’ to express what the film achieves or to establish the status of the film. The key witness, Srebnik, 13 years old at the time of his captivity in the ghetto, whom the narrator finds in Israel and persuades to return with him to Chelmno, the site of burial of thousands of corpses, in himself represents a resurrection: he managed to postpone his death in the first instance until the

60 Karen Remmler (1996: 6) differentiates between a historiography that ‘separates the present from the past’, one that ‘petrifies the past into static images’ and a materialist historiography that demonstrates ‘how the past not only affects the present, but how its image reemerges in personal memories’ and invokes in this context Benjamin’s concept of Eingedenken in order to ‘instill history with redemptive power’. Remmler (1996: 6) elucidates the concept of Eingedenken as follows: ‘A materialist historiography that incorporates insightful remembrance, searches out the forgotten remnants of the past, not to restore them, but to measure their after-effect in the present’.

101 dissolution of the Treblinka Concentration Camp on 18 January 1945 by virtue of his talent as a singer and his extreme physical agility, ‘which made him the winner of jumping contests and speed races that the SS organized for their chained prisoners’

(Felman, 2000: 124). Then, in the second instance, when shot in the back of the head on the night of 18 January 1945 like all the other remaining prisoners, the bullet miraculously bypassed his vital brain centres and he survived, making him one of two survivors of the 400,000 victims at Treblinka. He subsequently went to live in Israel.

As Srebnik looks again – forty years later – at the fields of burial in Chelmno, a peaceful, quasi pastoral scene, he expresses his inability to believe what happened there, ‘[y]es, this is the place, no one ever left here again…It was terrible. No one can describe it… And no one can understand it. Even I, here, now…’. Although he witnessed the scene himself, it passed from the outside to the inside unmediated because when he first came to Treblinka at the age of 13 he was already ‘deadened’ by all the deaths he had witnessed in the ghetto. It is only at the age of 47 when he returns with Lanzmann that he:

in effect is returning from the dead (from his own deadness) and can become, for the first time, a witness to himself, as well as an articulate and for the first time fully conscious witness of what he had been witnessing during the War (Felman, 2000: 127).

By persuading the reluctant Srebnik to return to the scene, as Felman argues (2000:

116), the narrator therefore is the one who ‘opens, or re-opens, the story of the past in the present of the telling’. Srebnik, who worked in the crematoria and once saw what were supposed to be dead bodies falling from the gas vans coming back to life, then being burned alive, as Felman writes (2000:126):

Srebnik’s witness dramatizes both a burning consciousness of death, and a crossing (and recrossing) of the boundary line which separates the living from the dead, and death from life.

102 While Lanzmann does not comment – we hear only his questions – he is the enabler of the testimony, the addressable other, and through this mode of enabling, which amounts to an act of getting out of the way of the testimony, he becomes a conduit through which the acts of witnessing can speak for themselves. His is ‘a narrative of listening’ (Felman, 2000: 131). Furthermore, by juxtaposing, again without commentary, the acts of witnessing of the three groups – the victims, the perpetrators and the bystanders (the Poles) – other texts emerge, which add further insights into the relation between history and witnessing. These texts do not necessarily involve language: the most powerful moment of witnessing in the film, in my view, is when the camera focuses on the face of the silent Srebnik surrounded by the Poles in front of the Catholic church in which a group of Jews had been held prisoner before being gassed. One of the Poles pushes through the crowd to tell the interviewer of a story they claim is true about a rabbi who asked SS officers if he could address a group of Jews held captive in Myndjewyce, near Warsaw. This Rabbi apparently tells the group of Jews that the innocent Christ was murdered by Jews

2000 years previously, whereupon they cry, ‘[l]et his blood fall on our heads and on our sons’ heads’. The rabbi then says to the prisoners, ‘[p]erhaps the time has come for that, so let us do nothing, let us go, let us do as we’re asked’ (Felman, 2000: 132).

The group of Poles endow the Holocaust with facile comprehensibility: when

Lanzman asks whether they think that the Jews expiated the death of Christ, the man answers, ‘[i]t was God’s will, that’s all …That’s all. Now you know’ (Felman, 2000:

133). The Poles, as Felman writes, begin to dream reality and to hallucinate their memory; they are false witnesses. A searing text emerges on the screen from the juxtaposition of the close-up shots of the faces of the ‘false witnesses’, evidently all comfortably in agreement with this explanation for the Holocaust, with those of the

103 silent Srebnik, the true witness, whose personal tragedy is lost on the complacent

Poles in these moments, and whose silent witnessing speaks volumes about their self- deception and the falseness of their testimony. Taking, then, these ideas of the art work as an ‘incarnation’ and a ‘resurrection’ (Felmann, 2000:115), as being about witnessing rather than presenting an account of the past, of the film maker as an enabler of the testimony, and silence and the expressivity of the body as part of the testimony, we could ask how such elements might translate in the medium of theatre and what happens in the shift from the medium of film to the medium of theatre?

Felman uses the term ‘event’ to characterize the status of Lanzmann’s film

Shoah, in the sense of incision or watershed in the history of filmmaking; Shoah is the first film of its kind. There is no doubt that the collective viewing of a film in an auditorium can also signify an event in the sense of a unique, momentous occasion for a particular group of viewers. It could of course also constitute an event or a series of events for each individual viewer of the film in his or her own private viewing space.

Unlike theatre, however, it is always a one-way relationship and not fixed in time and space and therefore there is an essential difference in the mode of engagement. This is described by Hutcheon (2006: 27) as follows:

And when we sit in the dark, quiet and still, being shown real live bodies speaking or singing on stage, our level and kind of engagement are different than when we sit in front of a screen and technology mediates […] for us.

Furthermore, the film, fixed in its medium, impacts on the viewer but the reverse is not the case; s/he can view it in whatever setting that provides the necessary technology, when s/he pleases, can pause the film, rewind, fast forward, take breaks and un-pause where it was stopped, and watch the same film all over again as many times as s/he pleases. Live theatre, on the other hand, is always only experienced in the moment, and the spectator has a material and immediate impact on the

104 performance. Even if there is no actual audience interaction, there is a joining in the performative moment of the energetic bodies of the performers and spectators. Jürs-

Munby’s (in Lehmann, 2006: 17) definition of theatre gives expression to the shared experience of the event in the now:

Theatre means the collectively spent and used up lifetime in the collectively breathed air of that space in the which the performing and the spectating take place……The theatre performance turns the behaviour onstage and in the auditorium into a joint text, a ‘text’ even if there is no spoken dialogue on stage or between actors and audience.

We can look also to Peter Brook (1993: 83) to provide us with a definition of what he considers to be the essence of theatre, which he locates within ‘a mystery called “the present moment”’:

[I]n the millisecond-long instant when actor and audience interrelate, as in a physical embrace, it is the density, the thickness, the multi-layeredness, the richness – in other words the quality of the moment that counts.

The term ‘event’, furthermore, takes on a different significance in the context of theatre that we might characterize as postdramatic theatre, a theatre, which has shifted from being ‘spectatorial’ to being instead ‘a social situation’ (Lehman, 2006:

106). The aesthetic distance that characterizes dramatic theatre, in which the world presented is ‘surveyable’ disappears in postdramatic theatre, as Jürs-Munby (in

Lehmann, 2006:12) writes, ‘here, “World” does not mean the walled-off (by a fourth wall) fictional totality, but a world open to its audience, an essentially possible world, pregnant with potentiality’. The role of the spectator as a meaning-maker is, therefore, heightened: The world presented ‘does not add up to an Aristotelian dramatic fictional whole but instead is full of holes. The onus is on the spectator/witness to help ‘repair’

[…]’ (Lehmann: 2006, 12). In this dissertation I am arguing that modes of performance that relate to but break with classically dramatic principles such as unity,

105 wholeness and sense provide a more appropriate ‘container’ within which to give theatrical expression to experiences relating to the Holocaust. In relation to his work with victims of the Hiroshima bombing, psychoanalyst Robert J. Lifton speaks of the shattering of prior forms as a necessity for new insight. Where existing forms or systems do not allow for the re-creation of unprecedented experience, new forms are required, as he says in interview (in Caruth 1995: 135), ‘we never receive anything nakedly, we must recreate it in our own minds, and that is what the cortex is for’.

Likewise, Shoshana Felman writing about the poetry of Holocaust survivor Paul

Celan, expresses a similar idea (in Caruth, 1995: 32), ‘The breakage of the verse enacts the breakage of the world’. In relation to theatre which seeks to explore events that represent the collapse of Western civilization, we could assert that the breakage of the forms enact the breakage of the world. This thesis argues that such modes of theatre offer a real possibility for representing something of the experience of being undone, the self being unmade by atrocity, one’s childhood development being shaped by vicarious memories, or the effects of the suppression of the truth and substitution with a lie that an intact container could not. It does not argue against the relevance and possibilities of forms of dramatic theatre but rather for the importance and relevance for this study of its Other or binary opposite, which, as Lehmann writes

(2006: 44), asserts ‘the right of the disparate, partial, absurd and ugly against the postulates of unity, wholeness, reconciliation and sense’. Drawing on Menke’s reading of Hegel, Lehmann shows that we cannot in fact have one without the other

(2006: 43), that, ‘[i]t is that dialectical abstraction that makes drama possible as a form in the first place’ and,

In the shape of an insolubly contradictory experience of the ethical problem and abjected materiality, there already slumber in the depths of dramatic theatre those tensions that open up its crisis, dissolution and finally the possibility of a non-dramatic paradigm.

106 Western philosophy having taught us to be positivist, we tend to eschew that which threatens the sense of unity we strive for, including the aspects of ourselves that disrupt our sense of who we are as subjects. This tendency was taken to a horrific extreme by the Nazis in their creation of Auschwitz, which Levi (2008: 47) refers to as ‘anus mundi, ultimate drainage site of the German universe’. The concept of the

‘abject’, as discussed by Julia Kristeva and Judith Butler, which posits an insoluble, dialectical relationship between the bounded subject and its eschewed disparate counterpart, provides a model for interrogating this mechanism. Butler defines the abject as follows (1999: 169):

The ‘abject’ designates that which has been expelled by the body, discharged as excrement, literally rendered ‘Other’. This appears as an expulsion of alien elements, but the alien is effectively established through this expulsion. The construction of the ‘not me’ as the abject establishes the boundaries of the body which are also the first contours of the subject.

This principle is also reflected in how conscious memory is constructed, as discussed above, that is, we create meaningful narratives or stories about our experiences by integrating them into schemes of prior knowledge. Caruth (1995: 153) elucidates the difference between such conscious or narrative memories and the ‘eschewed’ or unconscious memories, in this instance, traumatic memories:

The trauma is the confrontation with an event that, in its unexpectedness or horror, cannot be placed within the schemes of prior knowledge – that cannot, as George Bataille says, become a matter of “intelligence” – and thus continually returns, in its exactness, at a later time. Not having been fully integrated as it occurred, the event cannot become, as Janet says, a ‘narrative memory’ that is integrated into a completed story of the past.

In order to give expression theatrically to that which we have failed to integrate, then, it follows – we can argue – that we must engage forms that are the dialectical counterpart of those that posit a notion of unity. As Salverson (1996: 184) writes:

[r]isky stories’, stories of emergency and violation, need to be constructed in such a way that the subtleties of damage, hope, and the ‘not nameable’ can be

107 performed. There must be a ‘gap’ in the container to hold open ‘the circle of knowing.

As spectators we are likewise called upon to open ourselves to an experience of theatre that disrupts, disorientates, addresses us in ways we are less prepared for and therefore less capable of consciously assimilating and integrating, and to entertain the idea that this kind of experience may in fact be an-other way of knowing. Caruth

(1995: 156) expresses a similar appeal within the field of trauma therapy:

The attempt to gain access to a traumatic history, then, is also the project of listening beyond the pathology of individual suffering, to the reality of a history that in its crises can only be perceived in unassimilable forms. This history may speak through the individual or through the community, which in its own suffering, as Kai Erikson makes clear, may not only be the site of its disruption but the locus of a ‘wisdom all of its own’.

Finally, I will furthermore be arguing that modes of theatrical representation that displace the linguistic text from its position as central signifier to becoming one of a pallet of systems of representation, including, for example, the actor’s body, likewise lend themselves more readily to an engagement with the kind of subject matter discussed here. Rothschild (2000: 5) clearly demonstrates, for instance, that

‘[t]rauma is a psychophysical experience, even when the traumatic event causes no direct bodily harm’ by explaining first the link between somatic memory and the senses and then sensory memory and trauma (Rothschild, 2000: 44):

Our first impressions of an experience usually come from our senses – both interoceptive and exteroceptive. These impressions are not encoded as words, but as the somatic sensations they are: smells, sights, sounds, touches, tastes, movement, position, behavioral sequences, visceral reactions. […] Sensory memory is central to understanding how the memory of traumatic events is laid down – how as Bessel van der Kolk (1994) would put it, ‘the body keeps the score.’ Memories of traumatic events can be encoded just like other memories, both explicitly and implicitly. Typically, however, individuals with PTS and PTSD are missing the explicit information necessary to make sense of their distressing somatic symptoms – body sensations – many of which are implicit memories of trauma.

108 We could argue, therefore, that modes of theatre that are psycho-physical in their orientation, that run counter to a Cartesian bodymind dualism and rather foreground a bodymind61 continuum, such as required by the late plays of Samuel Beckett in which the language of gesture is a central signifier, allow for an audience experience of a different kind of knowing. If we take, for example, Footfalls, whereby the composition of the actor’s posture, movement and the light signify the entropy of the figure, May’s repetitive walking and successive ‘curling round slowly within’ until she finally disappears, ‘spiraling inward, inward’ (Ben-Zvi, 1992: 9) was the most significant element of the play for Beckett,

[I]f it is full of repetitions, then it is because of these life-long stretches of walking. That is the centre of the play, everything else is secondary’ (Knowlson, 1996: 628).

We could also refer to the visual image of the mouth in Not I, a supremely powerful signifier, ‘at once the female mouth spewing words and at the same time the female genitals, ‘a “hole” that represents absence, “the horror of nothing to see” within the systematics of representation in western logic’ (Cronin, 2006: 155). In the context of such forms of theatrical representation the word text refers not just to the written language component but to the sum of all theatrical signifiers – the actor’s body, performance space, lighting and sound – any of which can be given less or more weight according to individual artistic concerns.

61 I have referred to this concept of the actor’s bodymind in my article on the late plays of Beckett and Bachmann’s novel Malina (2006: 156): ‘In his psychophysical approach to actor training Phillip Zarrilli thematises the concept of the bodymind, as do the most prominent avant-garde theatre practitioners of the 20th century, such as Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski and Michael Chekhov. Such approaches oppose a body-mind dualism that posits the body as the instrument of the mind. Zarrilli (1995: 14) quotes Richard Schechner to explain why the performer must “realize an organic connection between the body and mind”: “When I talk of spirit or mind or feelings or psyche, I mean dimensions of the body. The body is an organism of endless adaptability. A knee can think, a finger can laugh, a belly cry, a brain walk and a buttock listen”’ (in Cronin, 2006: 156).

109 110 CHAPTER THREE

And might it not be […] that we also have appointments to keep in the past, in what has gone before and is for the most part extinguished, and must go there in search of places and people who have some connection with us on the far side of time, so to speak?

(W.G. Sebald, 200: 360)

Speaking Stones: images, voices, fragments …’from that which comes after’ is a piece of devised theatre that emerged from a collaboration between Theater Asou (A), director Phillip Zarrilli (Wales / USA) and playwright and dramaturge Kaite O’Reilly

(IRL / UK). It was first performed in a dedicated theatre space, the Theater im Palais,

Graz, on 12 September 2002. During this first series of performances the company heard of an underground Roman quarry – die Römer Höhlen – in Aflenz, southern

Styria, close to the Slovenian border, which had begun to be used as a performance space in the late 1980s. After a reconnaissance trip to the quarry there was an immediate consensus among the team that this was the space in which the piece

‘belonged’, as Zarrilli told me in interview (2006).62 The company was subsequently invited to stage two series of performances in the underground site in Aflenz, one in

November/December 2002 and another in October 2004 as part of an exhibition in the context of a wider cultural event in the region to mark its heritage. One section of the exhibition in the quarry was dedicated to the period from 1943 – 1945 when the quarry was appropriated by the Nazis for the manufacture of armaments, to which end concentration camp prisoners from Mauthausen were subjected to slave labour. The

62 ‘When I was taken to the Aflenz site during our initial run in the theatre in Graz, I – and I think all of us – immediately “knew” that this was the space in which the performance we were creating “belonged”’ (Zarrilli, 2006).

111 original English-language version, scripted by Kaite O’Reilly63, premiered on invitation to the Grotowski Centre in Wroclaw, Poland in November 2003. For the purposes of this study I will focus specifically on the staging of the piece in the underground site and what emerged out of this ‘composition’ of site and performance piece.

Broadly speaking, Speaking Stones is concerned with the traumatisation, displacement and dispossession of peoples in situations of war. It was not the team’s intention to anchor the material in any specific situation of war, although once housed in this underground site, it was inevitable that it would resonate most clearly with the events of WWII. The intention was rather to allow for any number of possibilities that would resonate with each spectator’s individual aggregation of narratives, the thinking behind this being that, given a conducive set of circumstances, war and genocide can take place at any given time and place in the world. Klaus Seewald of

Theater Asou gives expression in interview to this intention (Seewald, 2004):

Es soll vom Inhalt her ein Versuch sein, […], das weder auf das Judentum, sprich auf die NS-Zeit zu fixieren noch auf den Krieg in Jugoslawien, im früheren Jugoslawien, weil die Thematik so aktuell ist, dass sie jeder Zeit und an jedem x-beliebigen Ort auf der Welt wieder auftreten kann.

Speaking Stones is one of 5 case studies discussed by Phillip Zarrilli (2009:

174-187) in Psychophysical Acting: An Intercultural Approach after Stanislavski.

After a brief introduction to the context and inception of the piece, the influences that inspired and informed the work, and the performative premise, the main focus is on the application of Zarrilli’s psychophysical training process to the creation of the piece of theatre. In my discussion I will begin with an introduction to the genesis and development of the project and a structural outline of the piece. This section will also

63 O’Reilly’s experience as aid worker and drama therapist in former war-torn Yugoslavia from 1994 to 2000 was one of the reasons she was invited by Theater Asou to collaborate on this project.

112 include references to Phillip Zarrilli’s actor-training and directorial approaches. I will go on to introduce the underground site and its history, and discuss how it impacted not just on the spectator but also on the performer. My discussion of the piece of theatre, then, will include a consideration of the reciprocal relationship between the performance site and the piece – between the ‘ghost building’, that is the scenographic architecture that was the piece, and its ‘host building’, the site, to draw on the vocabulary of Theatre/Archaeology (Pearson and Thomas, 1994: 135), the relationship between the subject matter and the chosen modes of theatrical representation, and the role of the spectator as witness and meaning-maker. Finally, I will consider the question as to whether performance and performativity can give rise to acts of disturbance and allow for interventions in histories. In addition to the theoretical framework centered on trauma and memory discussed above in Chapter

Two, I will draw on discourses relating to the archaeological imagination for my discussion of this piece and the site-sensitive space in which it was performed, both in terms of the creation of the piece and my reception of it. Archaeology and the memory-work related to difficult histories are both concerned with retrieval and assemblage. In the case of both, that which is retrieved is necessarily a collection of shards, fragments which point to what is missing, leaving the assemblage full of gaps and holes, as Pearson writes, ‘Archaeology’s semiotic can only ever be synechdochic

– pieces for whole ways of life gone’ (Pearson, 2001: 56). The task in the case of both Archaeology and the reception of performance arising out of memory-work, therefore is not just to respond to what is retrieved but also to what is absent, to make meaning of that which remains fragmentary, to speak with Jennifer Wallace

(2004:24):

Though the archaeologist might spend much of his day digging, he studies the results of that excavation back at the top, looking only at debris ‘projected up

113 upon the surface’, in Jameson’s words, ‘in the anamorphic flatness of a scarcely recognizable afterimage’. Thus the archaeological imagination responds to what is missing rather than to what is there. It snatches objects from the ground only to try to restore some sense of their original context in the earth so as to understand them properly.

My discussion of Speaking Stones is informed by interviews I carried out with the director, the dramaturge, cast members, a local community officer in Aflenz, and an eye-witness to the events – Franz Trampusch – which took place in the underground quarry during WWII. A further interview with Franz Trampusch, carried out by Mag.

Bettina Messner, is also drawn upon in this discussion.

3.1. Speaking Stones: Genesis, Development and Structural Outline

The work on Speaking Stones was developed over a six-month period beginning with a two-week workshop phase in Graz in April 2002, followed by a further phase the following August at Phillip Zarrilli’s studio in Wales. A final series of rehearsals took place in Graz in September that led up to the premiere. Theater

Asou brought two main concerns to the initial discussions for the piece: one was their dismay at the formation of a coalition in Styria in 2002 between the centre-left CSP

(Christlich-Sozialistische Partei) and the right-wing FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei

Österreich) headed at the time by Jörg Haider, whose anti-immigration rhetoric had gained him increased popularity in the region. The other motivating force was their interest in elements of the theatre of the Japanese playwright Ota Shogo such as slowed down everyday movement and the exploration of objects (Seewald, 2004).

Sources of inspiration for the project for director Phillip Zarrilli (Interview, 2006) were A Chorus of Stones by Susan Griffin – which also inspired the title of the piece – and her often poetic way of writing about the private life of war, trauma and the on- going resonances in the lives of human beings of hidden or denied histories, The Body

114 in Pain by Elaine Scarry in which the author explores the inexpressibility of pain and the unmaking of an individual’s world through the infliction of torture, the image- based work of Japanese butoh, especially that of Kazuo Ohno such as in The Dead

Sea, How Societies Remember by Paul Connerton, The Semiotics of Zero by Brian

Rotman, and the psychophysical requirements of performing the theatres of Samuel

Beckett and Japanese playwright Ota Shoga, such as The Waterstation, with its non- verbal scores and ‘stories that are always present, but just not heard’ (Zarrilli, 2009:

176). Playwright and dramaturge Kaite O’Reilly drew on her experience as aid worker in the field of drama therapy with victims of trauma, warfare, and displacement in the war-torn former Yugoslavia from the early 1990s to 200064, and

64 The following is taken from an interview I conducted with Kaite O’Reilly in 2006, where the playwright gives an account of her experience as aid worker in former Yugoslavia. I quote at length, as apart from its socio-historical and theoretical relevance to this study, it is of interest in its own right as the document of an eye-witness to this period of European history (O’Reilly, May 2006): ‘I went primarily to Karlavac, a garrison town in the disputed Krajina (‘Krajina’ just means ‘country’ or ‘land’ – and it was the site of much of the bloodiest fighting between the Serbs and Croats). Karlovac was a frontline town and very much what Michael Ignatief coined ‘faultline town’ – when families were split during the conflict (mixed marriages between Croats and Serbs) – it became very harsh and bloody. When I was there, Karlovac was experiencing both the ‘official’ conflict between the Croats and Serbs over controlling the area as well as guerilla warfare between the rebel Krajina Serbs and rebel Krajina Croats – so we had the ‘national’ fighting – rocket launches from the hills, missile attacks, etc, and then local dirty fighting – snipers on the roof, car bombs, etc. (The area was important to both sides economically and culturally/historically: the area is landlocked, except for the road to the coast – important economically for whoever controls and ‘owns’ this area – also, a mythical area to both owing to Knin – which has resonance to the history and folklore to both sides - conflicts going back to 14th century between the two factions in Knin, which was maybe 30km from Karlovac). I first went in 1994 with my friend Christina Katic and we worked up to three times a year, every year until 2000, with Suncokret, a non-sectarian grassroots humanitarian relief aid agency, made up of people who were themselves displaced owing to the war. I worked supported by social workers, teachers and psychologists with children and young adults experiencing severe post traumatic disorder. We went every year, staying in the orphanage (the hotels were bombed), working with the displaced children and adults in the refugee camps and orphanage, and with local adults experiencing ‘war stress’. I worked primarily from Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed techniques – initially with children in 1994 just to try and get them playing again (war stress reduces young children to being virtually catatonic and inactive, with sudden violent bursts of rage) – with adults to reduce stress and encourage them to externalize their worries, concerns, things they’d seen, things they’d done etc – to find a forum where people could express themselves and then be supported by their local professionals who were witnessing. We found it very important to have an’outsider’ there. People would share things with me a) because I was exotic and strange, not being local, b) because I was someone from the west and they desperately wanted people in the UK and western Europe to know what was happening to them.’ […] After the war, in post-war reconstruction, I worked in conflict resolution with the young adults and families who had ‘returned’, trying to stop the next generation picking up arms in ten years time………….

In the early 90’s I also worked briefly in Osijek (again, on the frontline) and briefly, in Sebrenica, after the massacre – which informed some of the writing in Speaking Stones – the fragments from the

115 her use of a theatricalised form of British Sign Language in her work with disabled actors to inform textual and dramaturgical elements. While the text is authored in the main by O’ Reilly, it also includes what the director describes as ‘found texts’, such as fragments of text from The Semiotics of Zero by Brian Rotman and A Chorus of

Stones by Susan Griffin, a poem by Larry Zarrilli, the director’s father, and also a text fragment by one of the performers, Gernot Rieger.

What emerged from the collaboration is a piece of postdramatic, post- psychological theatre, consisting of a montage of eleven structures and involving six performers. The piece has neither plot nor psychologically motivated characters with coherent identities, and the ‘text’ that emerges is a composition of all theatrical signifiers – the actor’s body and its gestural language, performance space, set, costumes, props, lighting and sound. It is ‘theatre that cannot be taken in at once’

(Lehmann, 2006:11), one which operates in a liminal space: although it relates to the world – fragments of stories are heard and certain character types are embodied by the actors intermittently – it does not represent ‘the world as a surveyable whole’.

Through this form or container, fragments of stories of emergency, trauma, loss, violation are conveyed. This container is full of gaps and holes, unmarked spaces, and it is precisely this circumstance that allowed the piece to resonate with the space – enabling the latter to become the main protagonist rather than a suitable back-drop – and with the spectator’s individual aggregation of narratives. To speak with Julie

Salverson (1996:184,186), it is these gaps in a non-literalistic representational form

‘that hold [..] the circle of knowing open’, that create space ‘across which the familiar and the strange can gaze upon each other’. Zarrilli elucidates in his case study the

survivors – ‘the telephone bill came in his name’ ‘the spoon was still in the bowl on the table’, etc. The litany of loss.’

116 planning behind the creation of such a container that would hold ‘the circle of knowing open’ (2009: 177):

Before we began work, we knew that some structures would be non-verbal, emphasizing psychophysical engagement in tasks, while others gave voice to text – fragmentary memories, images, recollections, exchanges. Each structure and the etching as a whole would put into play many possible moments of resonance for the audience, but the impact and meaning would depend as much on what the audience brought as what we provided for them.

The performers – three female and three male – represent agents or figures rather than characters. It was required of the performers to carry out specific ‘tasks’ and embody psycho-physical states in performance, as Zarrilli stated in interview

(2006a). Dressed similarly in combinations of white or off-white tops, skirts, trousers and substantial boots to create a neutral or generic effect, elements of specific costume, such as headscarves for the female performers or belts for carrying weapons in the case of the male performers added to the neutral costume – in structure 5, for example – gesture toward character and gender. When these are removed the figures or agents regain their indeterminate status and potentiality for multiple points of entry.

Zarrilli, who trains actors’ bodymind through the medium of Asian martial art forms – kalarippayattu and tai chi chuan – and yoga to discover ‘what is “necessary” in the performative moment’ (Zarrilli, 1997: 105), works with a paradigm of acting whereby psychology ‘is no longer the central organizational force […] guiding the work of the actor’ but rather descriptors such as ‘energetics’ and ‘tasks’. In this kind of model acting is understood more in ‘qualitative terms of the shaping of “energies” toward engagement of “tasks”’ (email, 2006). Zarrilli explains (2009: 186) that ‘the “psycho” of the “psycho-physical” in the enactment of a scenario like this is not ‘psychology’ but rather the state of ‘resonant awareness’ that is generated within one when one fully embodies this simple score and actually listens and is “sensuous to” the tasks in

117 which one is engaged’. This kind of performance work requires intensive training

‘toward an alternative bodymind consciousness and awareness accomplished through attentiveness to the breath, and to focus / concentration in and through the breath’

(Zarrilli, 1997: 105). This is not to say that thoughts and resultant emotions are not part of this kind of performance (practice), but rather that instead of being based on psychological motivation the practitioner learns to locate thought and feeling through and in the embodiment of forms, developing an intuitive awareness of ‘“thought” as it takes shape in action’ (Zarrilli, 1997: 105). Drawing on Artaud’s teachings, Zarrilli describes this development of ‘an affective musculature which corresponds to the physical localization of feelings’ (Zarrilli, 1997: 105). What distinguishes Zarrilli’s approach to actor training, as Jerri Daboo argues (2004: 16), – here specifically in relation to his work on the plays of Samuel Beckett – from that of other theatre practitioners who use martial art forms and yoga as part of their actor training approaches, is that it does not remain as part of the pre-performative training, but rather ‘it goes beyond an initial training period, and has direct importance in not only the embodiment of the actor in performance but also, in the case of Beckett, in an enhanced understanding of the dramaturgy of the play and how this can be actualized’. Klaus Seewald, who has trained intensively with Zarrilli as part of the

Theater Asou ensemble, but has specialized further in the training as an individual artist, gives the following detailed and illuminating insight – with specific reference to the work on Speaking Stones – into the connection between the training and the performance work. He also explains how by proceeding in a task-based mode rather than a psychologically motivated one, emotions are bodied forth in the performative moment:

Phillip hat uns klare physische Aufgaben gestellt, jede Szene hat da ihre eigenen, wie etwa die Aufmerksamkeit ins Hören zu legen, in bestimmten

118 Szenen den Fokus – die Augen – zu gewissen, klar definierten Punkten zu richten, um Aufgaben zu haben, die ‘points of entry’ in diese Szenen darstellen. Zum einen ist für mich als Schauspieler in diesem Moment klar, worin mein ‘task’ besteht und in welchem Rahmen meine Spielmöglichkeiten sind, formal gesehen. Gleichzeitig ist diese Form etwas, die aus meiner Erfahrung und Geschichte als Schauspieler heraus, mich in einen Zustand bringt, in dem ich Images und / oder Assoziationen habe / haben kann, die diesen Formen Leben geben, sie lebendig machen. Durch die, wenn man es so bezeichnen will, Einengung in dem‘Was’ ich tue, bekomme ich Freiheitsgrade in dem ‘Wie’ ich es tue.65

[...] In Speaking Stones war es immer so, dass es gewisse Szenen gegeben hat, wo ich fast gegen die Tränen angekämpft habe, ohne dass ich großartig irgendwelche Bilder in mir hervorgerufen hätte oder auf die ich zurückgegriffen hätte, oder irgendwelche Bilder erzeugt hätte, sondern einfach nur dadurch, dass ich dem Menschen vor mir die Hände rauflege, nach vorne schaue, zu dieser Person schaue, und diese Momente von einem Moment zum anderen mit einander verbinde, genau wie es im Tai chi oder es im Kalari ist, wo es, glaube ich, ab einem gewissen Punkt hauptsächlich darum geht, nämlich diese Momente mit einander zu verbinden und einen Fluss reinzubringen und eine Kontinuität reinzukriegen. Genau so macht das auf der Bühne irgendwas mit dir, und erzeugt Emotionen mehr oder weniger in welche Richtung auch immer, das hängt davon ab, wo es hingeht, aber es erzeugt Leben, ohne dass man versucht, was draus zu machen, einfach nur dadurch, dass man diese gewissen, auf Speaking Stones bezogen sehr reduzierten Anweisungen folgt, erzeugt das etwas mit dir.

It follows, I would argue, that this kind of acting ‘at the nerve ends’ provides a clearer basis for the exploration through performance of human experience that defies integration and cannot therefore be ‘organized on a linguistic level’ but is left to be organized on a somatosensory level (Van der Kolk and Van der Hart in Caruth, 1995:

172).

65 In the following Seewald also gives an important insight into the difference between embodying the forms of the martial art for fitness purposes and cultivating an interiority to accompany each physical attitude in order to enable the actor to make each moment unique and alive for the spectator, ‘Im reinen (Kalari) Training mache ich eine Übung, mit sehr exakten Vorgaben. Sobald ich aber lediglich die Form mache, ohne auf meine innere Haltung zu achten ‚WIE’ ich die Übung ausführe, läuft sie Gefahr, eine mechanische Übung zu werden, die vielleicht einen Fitness-Effekt hat, aber die die Qualität entbehrt, die mir als Schauspieler von Nutzen ist. Ich muss also eine Fähigkeit entwickeln, den Moment neu wie zum ersten mal zu erleben, um auch diese ‚tasks’, mit denen ich bei Speaking Stones konfrontiert bin, für mich, und damit fürs Publikum lebendig zu halten – im Moment zu leben, d.h. auch auf den Raum und die dich umgebende Situation zu reagieren bzw. an dich ran zu lassen. Das ist vielleicht ein, wenn nicht DER Kernpunkt: diesen Moment zu leben und die ‘Informationen/Erfahrungen’ von diesem (Kalari / Tai Chi Chuan / Yoga) Training mitzunehmen auf die Bühne’.

119 The devising process was intended to be as collaborative as possible during the developmental period of work (Zarilli, 2006a). Possible scenarios were developed during the workshops using three main catalysts: ‘(1) psychophysical states – also incorporating BSL – set to music, (2) ‘found’ texts such as from The Semiotics of

Zero, or A Chorus of Stones and (3) text authored by Kaite O’Reilly’ (Zarrilli, 2006a).

The task of shaping the material into a whole is described by Zarrilli (2006a) as follows:

Once we assembled sufficient ‘material’ within scenarios which we felt had potential, we began the difficult work of shaping the score as a whole, and shaping the transitions between the scenarios.

The initial outcome consisted of a montage of twelve structures including a final structure entitled ‘Rubble’. This structure concluded with the incantation by one of the performers of the names of victims of abduction during the Balkan wars in the early 1990s and their activity at the time of abduction followed by a popular anti- immigration slogan of Austrian right-wing politicians as part of their election campaign in Styria in 2002: ‘Das Boot ist voll’. During the first run of performances in the Theater im Palais in Graz the director and the playwright / dramaturge decided that this was not the right concluding note for the piece. Consequently, they cut this structure, incorporating some elements from it into earlier structures, and brought the piece to a conclusion with structure eleven: ‘Why did you leave?’ This structure thematizes the inadequacy of the spoken word to communicate traumatic experience and uses the gestural language of theatricalised BSL to this end. The director (2006a) explains the motives for the change:

In terms of what we were trying to accomplish with regard to the ‘failure’ of language to fully represent experiences of displacement and trauma, finishing with a scenario in which words fail and are frozen in the final sepia image created a much better overall dramaturgy.

120 The structures making up the final montage are entitled66 as follows: 1. ‘Preset’67, 2.

‘Bewilderment’, 3. ‘Leaving’, 4. ‘Footsteps’, 5. ‘Internment’, 6. ‘Marching’, 7.

‘United Fucking Nations’, 8. ‘Semiotics of Zero’, 9. ‘Chair Stones’, 10.

‘Interrogation’, and 11. ‘Why did you leave?’ This revised version became the definitive version, which was presented in subsequent performances: in the premiere of the English-language version in Poland and the two sets of performances in Aflenz.

3.2 The Site

Ein besonderes Stück, eine besondere Ambiente, das erfordert auch besondere Sicherheitsmaßnahmen. Daher ersuche ich Sie, egal was passiert, Ruhe zu bewahren und unbedingt auf Ihren Sitzen zu bleiben. Sollte es, ich garantiere, bis jetzt ist es noch nie vorgekommen, zu einem Stromausfall kommen, verhalten Sie sich bitte ruhig. Das Personal, die Feuerwehr und ich sind mit vom Netz unabhängigen Notlampen ausgerüstet. Wir werden Sie sicher hinausbegleiten. Danke.

This announcement preceded each performance of Speaking Stones performed in one of the central caverns of the Roman Quarry of Aflenz. The announcement was delivered by Walter Gluschitsch, a local community officer in Aflenz, who has made it his hobby over the past ten years to conduct guided tours and facilitate the organisation of cultural events in this underground site. The announcement is similar in form, yet quite different in content to typical safety announcements made in dedicated theatre spaces where spectators are requested to switch off their mobile phones and take note of the nearest fire exit. Once these requests have been met, the spectator can generally forget about her body, sit back in a more or less comfortable seat and receive the performance from what feels like a ‘safe’ vantage point. Here in

66 The titles of the structures comprising the montage were not made available to the audience as the director did not want spectators’ expectations to be led by these. 67 Note that this first structure is not included in the appended DVD of Speaking Stones as the light was so dark that it was not possible to see anything in the videographed footage. Also, structure 6., ‘Marching’, is included in structure 5., ‘Internment’.

121 the damp, chilly, underground Austrian quarry the spectator is more acutely conscious of her spectator’s bodymind. In the constant 8 degrees of the caves and with humidity levels varying seasonally between 40% and 90%, 300 meters from the nearest and only exit, and knowing, should there be a power cut, that she would be enveloped in absolute darkness, the stakes seem somehow higher. The events manager, Walter

Gluschitsch, is clearly also more closely engaged than one would normally expect. In his capacity as security officer in this site, he has a more complicated duty of care towards the spectators than in a dedicated theatre space, yet he is clearly also an active spectator during each performance. A man who confesses to having no particular knowledge of theatre much less of experimental theatre forms, Walter Gluschitsch

(2004) struggles to find words to explain why this piece of theatre fascinates and affects him so deeply, remarking that he is unable to describe his responses:

Ja, speziell in Zusammenhang mit der Thematik, die es anspricht mit den Geschehnissen im 2. Weltkrieg, die gesamte Inszenierung, die ganze……. bin auf dem Gebiet nicht so versiert. Ich kann’s nicht ausdrücken, also der gesammte Eindrück ist eben … fasziniert mich. Es passt alles zusammen, und es passt alles her in den Steinbruch, es ist so ergreifend, dass ich es gar nicht beschreiben kann.

Had the playwright been familiar with the quarry before scripting the piece, he adds, he would have guessed that she had written it with this space in mind; he cannot imagine a piece of theatre that would work better in the space.

Another key force behind the re-opening of the Aflenz quarry to the public is

Franz Trampusch, a local elderly politician and eye-witness to the events which took place in the quarry during WWII. Trampusch worked untiringly for an inclusion in the

Styrian Landesausstellung of the Roman history of the region, including the exhibition in the Aflenz quarry entitled ‘2000 Jahre Arbeit’68, and scripted himself the

68 ‘[I]ch habe viele Jahre darum gekämpft als Bürgermeister schon von Wagna, dass wir eine Ausstellung zur Römer Zeit bekommen, weil die Stadt Flavia Slova war sozusagen die erste römische Stadt hier in der Steiermark und das ist dann gelungen und dieser Römer Stollen oder diese Römer

122 laminated placards on the walls of the caverns which inform the visitor of the quarry’s history. One section of the exhibition is dedicated to the period 1943 – 1945 when the

Nazis transferred their war industry underground after the Allies began to attack strategic military targets from the air. This section of the exhibition, entitled

‘Sklavenarbeit im 20. Jahrtausend’, focuses on the plight of the concentration camp prisoners from Mauthausen, moved to a subsidiary camp in Aflenz, who carried out slave labour in the quarry during that period. Up until the opening of the exhibition in the quarry in June 2004 this chapter of the region’s history had been largely cloaked in silence. Although the local community was aware at the time of what was taking place in their immediate environment, they were, according to Gluschitsch, forced by the regime to remain silent. Franz Trampusch (in Messner, 2007) gives important insights in interview into this process of silencing – over decades – an entire community. He begins with the example of his own mother, who together with her two young children69 – Trampusch, eight at the time, and his younger sister – and extended family constituted one of four families who lived within an area around the entrance to the quarry cordoned off by the Nazis. The families were allowed to continue living within this ‘Postenkette’ in order to maintain the appearance of normal rural life from the air. Trampusch explains how he went with his mother to the first meeting called by Nazi officials in a local inn in 1942 to inform the locals that a concentration camp would be instituted in the region and that ‘es dort nur

Schwerstverbrecher und Mörder gibt, und jeder Kontakt mit diesen Menschen per

Todesstrafe verboten ist.’ This sufficed to intimidate the locals from the outset, ‘[d]as war sozusagen der erste Eindruck und die Leute waren auch sehr eingeschüchtert’. He

Höhle war für mich ein Teil dieser Ausstellung’ (Trampusch, 2008). 69 The women were largely living on their own with their children at this stage of the war as by then all but the elderly men in the region had been conscripted.

123 explains then how as a 9-year-old he was taken from his home to witness over 40 executions in the quarry as a means of silencing his mother:

Meine Mutter hat sich einmal furchtbar aufgeregt, da hat ein Häftling vor lauter Hunger von einem Zwetschkenbaum Blätter runtergerissen und gegessen. Er wurde an Ort und Stelle erschlagen wegen ah Beschädigung deutschen Eigentums, obwohl der Baum meiner Mutter ghört hat. Und sie hat sich dann darüber aufgeregt und wurde selbst eingesperrt, weil das war ja verboten, drüber zu reden. [...] Man hat die Mutter dann wieder freigelassen, aber unter der Bedingung, dass ich geholt werde zu Exekutionen, also der Sohn, damit die Mutter schweigt und sie hat dann a kaum mehr drüber gredet. Sie hat viel viel später erst wieder drüber gredet, wie viele andere in Aflenz auch, vor lauter Angst. Und so wurde ich dann zu Exekutionen gholt net, nur damit die Mutter still ist. Und des hat a funktionert net, also, da hat sie sich nicht mehr getraut zu reden (Messner, 2007).

The local community was not just intimidated into silence by the Nazis during their occupation. When the Russians came in 1945 to claim the modern machinery from the quarry, the former Kapos, who had overseen the slave labour of the prisoners and gone into hiding once the camp was liquidated, knowing of course where all the best equipment was located, re-emerged to assist the Russians in their task. They proceeded to threaten the locals against revealing their identity as war criminals:

Jedenfalls die Kapos waren die großen Chefs auch bei den Russen, denn sie haben ja genau gewusst, wo die besten Maschinen stehen. Also sie haben ja das alles gekannt. Und diese Kapos sind gekommen auch zu meiner Mutter und i kann mich gut an einen erinnern, der einer der grausamsten war, das war ein Herr Langer aus Leoben, der hat gsagt, wenn ihr erzählts, was ihr gsehn habts, kommt ihr nach Sibirien. Also das heißt, man hat die Zivilbevölkerung noch einmal eingeschüchtert, zerst wars die NS, also Verwaltung, die gsagt hat, ihr kommts ins Konzentrationslager, wenn ihr drüber redets, und 1945 warens die Kapos, die gsagt haben, ihr kommts nach Sibirien, die Russen nehmen euch mit, net. Daraufhin haben die Leute beschlossen in Aflenz, sie haben nie was gsehn und ghört (Messner, 2007).

Walter Gluschitsch explains (2004) that the local community now wants the silence, what Griffin (1994: 8) describes as ‘the unnatural heaviness of unspoken truth’, surrounding the past to be broken. The current generation feels weighed down by a sense of guilt for crimes it did not commit, but needs to claim this part of the

124 community’s past. For the most part, however, those members of the community who could speak about the events of the past are either dead or have suppressed the memories for so long that they scarcely have access to them.70

3.3 Site Report – The Host Building of the Ghost Building

As the spectator’s task is not just to read the piece of theatre in this case but also the site-sensitive71 space and to consider how the space bestows meaning upon the piece and vice versa, before going on to take a closer look at the structures of

Speaking Stones I will present my ‘site report’, the aggregation of narratives that arose out of my investigations. Pearson defines site report as ‘the exposition of evidence with hypothesis, interpretation, and conclusion’ with a definite bias towards data. He posits the idea of an alternative site report in the overlap between performance and archaeology that ‘could embrace other narratives and draw them into dynamic juxtaposition’ (Pearson and Thomas, 1994: 136). In presenting my site report of the

Aflenz quarry I will reference my own spectator’s bodymind – as an instance of the

70 Walter Gluschitsch tells, for example, of an elderly man he encountered on one of the tours he led through the quarry, whom he assumed had been part of the Nazi surveillance apparatus in the quarry. The man indicated to him that he had been in the quarry during that period but despite Gluschitsch’s best efforts to get the man to communicate further with him on the matter, he did not: ‘Mir selbst ist es passiert, ich hatte eine Führung mit einer Pensionistengruppe aus Steiermark. Ein grauhaariger, hagerer, älterer Mann war während der ganzen Führung an meiner Seite. Sein Blick hing an meinen Lippen und als die Gruppe dann in den Bus stieg, war er der Letzte und …..zum Schluss, sagte er: “Ich war in der Zeit hier drinnen.” Ich habe dann natürlich, weil ich wusste, wo die Gruppe herkommt, Nachforschungen angestellt, habe einige Male mit ihm telefoniert aber er war nicht bereit, näher darüber zu berichten. Ich habe ihn dann gebeten, sollte er, er möge das niederschreiben und in seinem Nachlass mich dann bedenken. Ich habe dann die letzten Jahre nicht mehr Kontakt mit ihm gehabt. Ich werde wieder nachfragen, ob er noch unter uns weilt oder ob es im Nachlass etwas gibt. Meiner Meinung nach hatte er mit Sicherheit etwas mit den Aufsichtspersonen zu tun gehabt, weil er absolut nicht darüber sprechen wollte.’ Gluschitsch later informed me that the man had died without leaving any account of his experience. 71 We would describe this piece of theatre as site-senstive as opposed to site-specific, given that it was not originally created in relation to the space, but once moved into the site it dialogued in a particularly resonant way with it. Pearson (2001: 23) defines site-specific as follows: ‘Site-specific performances, […] “are conceived for, mounted within and conditioned by the particulars of found spaces, existing social situations or locations, both used and disused’.

125 spectator as meaning-maker – how the space activated it and influenced my reception of the piece of theatre I was to witness on arriving at the performance space.72

The access to the Roman quarry of Aflenz, situated approximately 10 kilometers from the Slovenian border, is described in a Kleine Zeitung article from

1989 as follows:

Gleich hinter Wagna steigt am anderen Ufer der Sulm ein kleiner Hügel steil an, ehe er in rund 40 Metern Höhe wieder abflacht und in Aflenz bei Retznei sanft ausläuft. In diesem von Tourismus und Transit kaum heimgesuchten reizlosen Dörfchen weist fast nichts darauf hin, was sich im Herzen des Bergleins außer Grundwasser und Gestein alles verbirgt. Nur wer durch ein riesiges Tor – zu Fuß, per Auto oder etwa auch mit dem Tieflader – Einlaβ findet, dem tut sich buchstäblich eine Unterwelt auf. Fernab von 1001 Nacht und Tutenchamun (Jungwirth, 1989).

The portal referred to that leads to the maze of chambers constituting the quarry is to be found in a rock wall at the end of a gravel track on this small mountain beyond the village. The Roman pillar to the left of the massive wooden doors and a plaque commemorating Caesar Titus Flavius Vespanianus testify to the first use of the stone by the Romans shortly after the birth of Christ to build the nearby ancient city of

Flavia Solva (where the town of Wagna is now situated). The quarry was first opened to the public when it came to be used as a performance space in 1989. A music teacher had become aware of the existence of the underground quarry and enlisted

Gluschitsch’s aid in approaching the company Stein von Grein, the current owners, to request access for the purposes of staging a concert there.

72 Zarrilli (2009: 180) refers to this process that each spectator (and of course each performer) underwent en route to the performance space: ‘For the performers and the audience alike, the space itself becomes an actor/activator – both physically and historically. This sense of activation begins with the ten minute walk from the parking lot, and the journey into this cold, dark, underground environment.’

126 Fig. 3.1 The only remaining access to the ‘Römer Höhlen’ beyond the village of Aflenz. There were formerly four other entrances and the Roman pillar to the left of the entrance in this photograph was moved from one of those other entrances to this one. (Photograph: Bernadette Cronin)

On first entering the quarry in October 2004 I am struck by the impact on my bodymind of moving from the golden daylight, which illuminates the bucolic Styrian landscape with its picturesque hills and valleys, into the darkness, the transition from

127 pleasant autumnal temperatures of around 20 degrees to the constant 8/9 degrees celsius of the quarry. These temperatures of themselves do not, of course, pose

Fig. 3.2 A picturesque view of the bank of the river Sulm. (Photograph: Klaus Seewald) a challenge to the human body. The atmospheric humidity in the caves, however, which ranges from around 90% in the summer to 40% in the winter, creates a chilling dampness that seeps relentlessly into the body the longer one remains underground.

As I move through the exhibition, entitled ‘2000 Jahre Arbeit’, I am informed about the geological origins of the calcareous sandstone and the history of the quarry during the period of the Romans, the Middle Ages, through to its appropriation by the Nazis from 1943 to 1945. I learn that the quarry was first used by the Romans, who seized the land from the early Celtic settlers, to build the town of Flavia Solva at the confluence of the rivers Sulm and Mur. The town took its name from the Roman

Caesar who vested it with the Roman city charter, Titus Flavius Vespanianus, and the river Sulm – Solva – on which it is built. The next recorded use of the quarry occurs in the 12th Century when it passed into the hands of the

128 Fig. 3.3 Just inside the entrance to the Römer Höhlen, Aflenz. (Photograph: Klaus

Seewald) archbishops of Salzburg, who had several churches built with its stone in southern

Styria. In the late Gothic and Renaissance periods several more churches and landmark historic buildings, such as the Stephansdom in Vienna and the Burg in Graz, were built with this stone from Aflenz.

The work in the quarry to build the ancient Roman city of Flavia Solva was carried out mostly by slaves and prisoners. This circumstance repeated itself almost

2000 years later: when the first US military planes approached from Foggia in Italy in the summer of 1943 to drop bombs on strategic military targets in Styria, the quarry with its area of 8000 square meters was appropriated by the Nazis to be used as an underground armaments factory. Machines were installed in the quarry’s chambers, many of which are 10 meters high, which produced gear wheels and crankshafts for airplane and tank engines for the German Armed Forces. The machines and conveyor belts were operated by concentration camp prisoners, who were detained in a nearby subsidiary camp of Mauthausen concentration camp, camouflaged under the name

‘Kalksteinwerk’. There were 49 subsidiary camps of Mauthausen in all, seven of

129 which were situated in Styria. This final section of the exhibition is mounted in an alcove where the ceiling of the quarry is at its lowest. This was a deliberate choice,

Walter Gluschitsch relates, to house this period of the quarry’s history in the most oppressive part of the caves. The creeping damp and oppressive atmosphere of the space heighten my sense of mortification as I look at images of the emaciated concentration camp prisoners displayed on the walls, and meet the gaze of those whose eyes are focused on the camera.

Fig. 3.4. The images and texts that constitute the exhibition for the most part take the form of laminated posters mounted on the walls of the caves. Having visited the quarry in October 2004 and again in June 2008, I noticed that they were disintegrating due to the high levels of humidity. In some instances this in evident in the ‘photographs of the photographs’, which bears witness to the environment in the quarry. (Photograph: Bernadette Cronin)

I read that approximately 600 lost their lives of malnutrition and exhaustion in the quarry that year, in accordance with Himmler’s concept of ‘Vernichtung durch

130 Arbeit’ and that the prisoners’ labour was employed mostly for the annexation of the caves in the quarry. Those too weak to work were beaten to death or shot on the job.

Fig. 3.5. (Photograph: B. Cronin)

A list of the groups that comprised the body of prisoners of the Mauthausen concentration camps is displayed on the wall and it includes the following entries:

15,118 Hungarian and Polish Jews, 17,232 civilian workers, mainly from the Sowiet

Union, 68 homosexuals, 196 bible scholars, 13 members of religious orders, 243 members of the Wehrmacht, 2,191 Spaniards, 551 antisocials, 200 Gypsies, 5,144

Soviet prisoners of war and 37,251 political prisoners. Another poster explains the colour code that categorized the prisoners. When I ask Franz Trampusch to describe from his memory as a young boy the appearance of the prisoners he replies that apart from the thin, cotton striped uniform and hat they had to wear all year around73 they 73 ‘Die Insassen des Konzentrationslagers haben alle dieses gestreifte Gewand gehabt, so mit blauem Streifen, so ein grobes, eine grobe Leinwand war das, also sehr dünn, was ja auch in dem Stollen, der 8

131 wore a patch of colour on the sleeve and the chest. The Jews wore yellow and the political prisoners, red. These two groups were always the first to die. In answer to my question as to what else he remembers of scenes in the quarry, he speaks of the acoustics and the atmosphere (Trampusch, 2008):

Es war einmal ein besonders starker Lärm, der fast nicht zu ertragen war, es sind sehr große Maschinen zur Metallverarbeitung gelaufen, und das Echo, die Akustik ist ja dort in dem Stollen einmalig, das sieht man ja auch bei musikalischen Aufführungen, bei Theateraufführungen, und das hat sich natürlich verstärkt, also das heißt, es war fast nicht auszuhalten, das ist die eine Geschichte, die zweite war, dass natürlich dieser Stollen voll gefüllt war mit Menschen, die schwer gearbeitet haben, die Angst gehabt haben, also man hat schon diese Atmosphäre gespürt.

On another part of the alcove wall I see an image of a rusty handcart, with the words ‘der Totenkarren’ written underneath. I move up close and read in the text beside the image that this cart was one of a number used to remove the iron filings from the milling machine during the day and in the evening to convey the bodies of those who had died on the job back to the concentration camp, that the prisoners pulling were frequently forced to sing as they carried out this task.74 As I back away from the image struggling to integrate this information, I almost collide with an object

I had not seen at first and turn to discover that it is the actual ‘Totenkarren’ standing there in the dimly lit alcove on the dirt floor of the quarry, exactly as it must have stood when used by the prisoners, only now it is covered in rust. At first I am disturbed by the fact that there

Grad zu jeder Jahreszeit gehabt hat, schon einmal ein großes Handikap war, und sie haben auf der Brust und am Ärmel alle einen farbigen Fleck gehabt. Aufgrund der Farbe wusste man, was man im Konzentrationslager war, und sie haben alle so eine Mütze gehabt, so ja, die sie tragen mussten, sie haben alle so eine Uniform angezogen, nich, und sie waren alle unterernährt und blass und krank aussehend’ (Trampusch, 2008). 74 Franz Trampusch relates in interview (2008) that those not pulling the cart were frequently forced to carry a stone weighing as much as 60kg: ‘Es waren einige, die immer wieder die Häftlinge dazu gezwungen haben, ihre Toten singend ins Lager zu bringen, was noch schlimmer war, es waren einige, die die Häftlinge dazugebracht haben, auch schwere Steine mitzuschleppen ins Lager, die Leute waren ja sehr entkräftet und trotzdem mussten sie Steine mit 40, 50, 60 Kilo Gewicht mit ins Lager tragen und am nächsten Morgen wieder zurück zum Steinbruch’. The ostensible reason for this was that it made it more difficult for prisoners to attempt escape.

132 Fig. 3.6. The colour coding for the different categories of prisoner. (Photograph: B.Cronin)

is no barrier between my bodymind and this object. It is not encased in any form of display structure, not mediated by any framing effect such as are used in museums and art galleries. I find that it is somehow not surveyable: there is no distance between me and it across which I could gaze and integrate it into some existing cognitive framework. Gluschitsch tells me that it had been uncovered under a pile of clay and stone just some months earlier when the alcove was being cleared to mount the exhibition in June, 2004. Apparently, it had been rumoured for the last 6 decades that it was buried somewhere in the caves but noone knew where.

133 Fig. 3.7. Image of the object standing the alcove of one of the caves, as I first encountered it. (Photograph: Phillip Zarrilli)

Another discovery that was made during the clearing of the alcove the previous summer – again rumoured to have been present somewhere in the quarry – is the image of a woman’s face chiseled by one of the prisoners into a section of the wall of the alcove, the anonymous face of the loved one of an anonymous victim75. There is something almost uncanny about the circumstance that these two remnants, each possessing a densely layered aura in the Benjaminin sense, were excavated in the very site where the organizers decided to install the part of the exhibition relating to the

75 Trampusch explains how the image was found (interview, 2008): ‘[D]as mit dem Bild war so, da hat es ein Gerücht gegeben, dass ein Häftling vor lauter Heimweh das Bild von seiner Frau oder von seiner Tochter wo eingraviert hat in den Stein, nur haben wir das Bild nie gefunden und wir haben gedacht, das war nur so eine Erzählung und wie wir das Steinmaterial weggeräumt haben für diese Ausstellung, ist dieses Bild zum Vorschein gekommen, das war hinter einem Steinhaufen einfach versteckt, wir haben ja insgesamt an die 40 solche Erinnerungen in den Stollen, und meistens versteckt, also die Häftlinge haben versucht, sich irgendwie in Erinnerung zu rufen’.

134 Fig. 3.8. Image engraved in the wall of the cave that hosts section 4 of the exhibition dedicated to the period 1943-45. (Photograph: B. Cronin)

Holocaust, almost as though, like memory-shards, they floated back up to the surface when the community at large was ready to break the silence, to ‘keep their appointments in the past’ (W.G. Sebald, 2002: 360). The archaeological imagination certainly offers itself here as a medium through which to approach this space and the few objects from former times that are in evidence here. In the following section I will explore the notion of the ‘aura’ - as seen from an archaeological perspective – first in relation to the death cart as an emblem of the Nazi project and then to the site in which it was excavated.

In his essay entitled ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical

Reproduction’ the twentieth century philosopher Walter Benjamin (1982: 222-3) argues that what is lacking in even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is what he calls its ‘aura’. This he describes as ‘its presence in space and time, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be’. The question of authenticity inevitably

135 poses itself in the context of the aura, and Benjamin describes this as ‘the essence of all that is transmissible from its beginning, ranging from its substantive duration to its testimony to the history which it has experienced’. Although the cart was originally one of many of its kind, a mass-produced object, as it were, it was the only one left behind in the Roman quarry by the Russians in 1945, thereby acquiring a certain uniqueness in this context, and I would like to apply this idea of the aura to the death cart and its photo-reproduction hanging on the wall. In Digging the dirt: The

Archaeological Imagination, Jennifer Wallace (2004:24) draws attention to the usefulness of Benjamin’s concept of the aura in the context of the archaeological object. Apart from whatever appeal the object might have had in its original form:

its value for the archaeologist, its aura, comes from its context in the ground and in time. It gains significance from its position in the soil, its reception within popular myth or history, the subsequent tales told about it, the historical information it can offer about owners long since deceased and disappeared.

The Nazis’ death cart, in spite of its duration in time being much too brief to classify as what would generally be of archaeological interest, fits many of the criteria that

Wallace applies to the archaeological object. Another aberration perhaps is that it only had one set of ‘owners’ and they are not so very long deceased and disappeared. The juxtaposition in the exhibition of the object and its reproduction makes the effect of the aura all too palpable. The photo, infinitely reproducible, displayed in a little laminated poster, is in itself not particularly powerful. The object, on the other hand, standing there in the dim light, an emblem of the systematized, rationalized cruelty of the Nazi project, possesses what could be described as a monstrous aura. Drawing on the archaeological concept of stratigraphy, used to describe the cultural layering of an excavated object, we could posit the idea of the layering of the death cart’s aura: the many hands that pulled it, calloused, sore, their deposits of sweat and skin cells, its cargo, alternating between the filings that were piled high in it during the day and the

136 dead bodies of the victims that lay in it in the evening, the singing that enveloped it, produced by the exhausted, malnourished

Fig. 3.9 Photograph of the photo-reproduction of the death cart in the quarry

(Photograph: Bernadette Cronin) bodies that accompanied it as it was wheeled back to the concentration camp. That kind of layering of its aura stopped there. But frozen in time under the layers of earth and stone in the quarry, a new layering of the aura began as its specter remained in the minds of the people down through the following six decades, who knew that it was buried there somewhere.

I myself might have added another layer to aura of the death cart in the local people’s consciousness: had I not seen it in time I could have fallen backwards into it, and had the incident been witnessed, the story might have spread among the local community of a woman visiting the quarry to see a piece of theatre, who had stumbled

137 backwards into the death cart. As far as I am concerned, however, I have added a layer to the aura of the cart: I am conscious of somehow having taken it back to my country with me. Branded on my consciousness, it has taken up its place on this other

European soil. My first experience of the Nazis’ death cart in the Roman quarry was that it visited itself upon me, without my seeking it out, something ‘alien’, breaking through my lines of defence, reminding me of my implication in the suffering of others. It almost felt like it had been waiting there for me: like a dark presence in a dream over which I had no control, it took me by surprise. I could liken it to a traumatic memory, one subject to its own laws, and not to the laws of conscious retrieval. This emblem of the Nazi project of extermination through slave labour and malnutrition defies my comprehension. The only way to look at it, I find, is with ‘a refusal of psychological understanding’, with ‘a blind gaze’ (Lanzmann in Caruth,

1995: 154). I wonder afterwards how I would have dealt with the experience had I actually fallen into the death cart, had I imbued it with my bodymind and it left its imprint on my cells. The source of my unease derives from a sense of being caught in a dialectical tension between the ‘Heimlichkeit’ and ‘Unheimlichkeit’ of its owners, the Nazi perpetrators. They are familiar yet strange, both self and other, and even though I cannot and do not want to be able to understand how they could conceive of and implement their project, I am compelled to ask myself where the similarity between them and me ends and to follow Primo Levi’s (2005a:17) dictum of remembrance: ‘Consider if this is a man / Consider if this is a woman’.

If we posit the death cart as an archaeological object, it follows that the quarry is an archaeological site and thus has its own aura, as Wallace writes (2004:25)

‘Archaeological sites possess a resonance or “aura” based on what is there now, what used to be there and what happened in between’. There is very little ‘there now’ in

138 terms of archaeological findings. However, as we are reminded in the first section of the exhibition, the quarry’s very existence bears testimony to the work of thousands of pairs of hands, the owners of whom have disappeared, nameless, from history, and to whom Trampusch dedicated the exhibition:

Die große Mehrheit der Menschen ist im Laufe der Jahrtausenden namenlos aus der Geschichte verschwunden, da sie weder Goldschmuck noch Sarkophage oder persönlichen Besitz hinterlassen haben. Doch jeder behauene Stein, jeder geformte Ziegel trägt Spuren menschlicher Arbeit. In diesen Höhlen wurden Spuren Jahrtausend langer Arbeit gefunden. Diese kleine Ausstellung soll daher jenen Zahllosen und namenlosen Menschen gewidmet sein, die außer der Spuren ihrer harten Arbeit nichts hinterlassen haben.

Der Ausstellungsgestalter, Franz Trampusch

The fact that what is absent is foregrounded in this exhibition further reinforces the idea of the quarry as an archaeological site, as ‘the archaeological imagination responds to what is missing rather than to what is there’ (Wallace, 2004: 24).

Between this last section of the exhibition and the performance space are approximately a further 100m. The spectator’s bodymind continues to be activated by the quarry, its aura, its history, its chilly dampness. This journey has the quality of a pilgrimage or a moving meditation; one arrives in the performance space reflecting upon the fact, to quote Levi again, ‘that this came about’. These reflections make me aware of the space as a protagonist, the sounds and visual images that are presented to the spectator, a densely layered presence that is in constant dialogue with the actors, who have also made this ‘pilgrimage’ before their performance.76 This ‘pilgrimage’ has also made me aware of my spectator’s responsibility as witness and meaning

76 Klaus Seewald references how the site activated his actor’s bodymind before the performance: ‘Der Weg zum Veranstaltungsort bzw. Ort der Aufführung, der einen vorbeiführt an dem Stahlkarren und den Bildern, die von der Geschichte dieses Ortes zeugen, in die stets gleichbleibende, konstante Kälte und Dunkelheit des Steinbruchs, ist schon ein eigener und unvergesslicher Beginn einer Aufführung, dem sich ein/e Schauspieler/in wohl nur schwer entziehen kann. Eine Vorbereitung, die keine aktive ist, sondern vielmehr das zwangsläufige Eintauchen in die Unterwelt des Steinbruchs von Aflenz und seiner Geschichte.’

139 maker. In being a witness to the live performance I am party to the creation of ‘the joint text’ (Lehmann, 2006: 17) between the actors and the spectators. In the following I will present my reading of Speaking Stones in the site-sensitive site. In reading the piece I will make reference to Pearson and Shanks’s (2001: 26-27) description of the subtle practice of assemblage, ‘a stratigraphy of pattern and

Fig. 3.10. The last section of the passage through the quarry which leads to the area used as a performance space. (Photograph: B. Cronin) detail’, described as follows:

Pattern only gains dramatic coherence through a judicious use of dynamics, modulations of speed, intensity, rhythm, mounting tension, pushing on and pulling back, energy expenditure, relaxation. Set one level of dynamics, of energy expenditure, at the outset and we may run the risk of alienating the audience, however intense that be. We may need a more subtle graph of speed, exertion, intensity, rhythm……And the use of ruptures – sudden unexpected changes in direction, emphasis, rhythm – will serve as a shock, a refocusing.

140 A third notion forwarded by Pearson and Shanks (2001: 1) that I will reference – specifically in relation to apprehension of performance – is ‘sensorium’, the seat of sensation in the brain.

Fig. 3.11. The performance space.77 (Photograph: B. Cronin)

4.1 Performance Analysis

On arriving at the performance space the spectator was invited to make use of a heavy woolen blanket to protect against the cold damp air while seated during the performance. One bank of seats facing the performance area constituted the seating area for the audience. Preset in the initially very dimly lit performance area were:

Miscellaneous stones and two dry stone walls – one upstage. A second about half-way upstage, and across approximately one half of the stage width, inside/in front of which are three chairs and a bench. Three other chairs, and a television set on a stand are also visible at the sides of the space, dispersed (O’Reilly, 2002: 2).

Structure 1: ‘Preset’

At the beginning of the performance the audience first hears the sound of the actors’ voices in the distance singing a mourning song from Crete before seeing them emerge in a slow procession – 6 faint figures clad in functional, light-coloured dress – from the back of the large cavern in which the performance space is situated. As the light fades to black one of the figures slowly crosses the stage holding a large clock in her

77 Due to the lack of light in the back of the cavern, it is scarcely possible to get a clear sense from this image of the dimensions or the ‘aura’ of the performance space.

141 left hand, as the others disappear into the wings. The figures to seem to be released from and then reabsorbed back into the rock formation of the cavern, human embodiments of stones as witnesses to and records of the experiences of those who have passed through the quarry. The large clock in the hand of the sixth performer points to the passage of time, on the one hand, invoking the long line of generations throughout the two millennia whose hands created this large ‘wound’ in the earth. On the other hand, the shiny ticking object stands out as an incongruity in the midst of the timelessness of the shared experience of those who passed through the quarry.

Structure 2: ‘Bewilderment’

This structure consists in the main of a psycho-physical score only, against the backdrop of a sound score – ‘Monk Drone’ (O’Reilly, 2002). Still in darkness and silence, the audience hears first the sound of faint breathing in the dark. As the light fades up – down / dump light – but remaining low, we see the actors swaying, one foot positioned on a stone, mouths open wide, gaze upwards. (Because of the humidity in the cave the actors’ breath is always visible when they speak or are breathing with their mouths open as in this structure.) The sound fades up, increasing in volume, and then fades again as the figure with the clock, who continues a slow walk through the swaying ‘mouthless dead searching for love’ (O’Reilly, 2002), completes her journey. When the sound fades we hear again only the actors’ breathing before the light fades again to black. After a beat, then, a burst of laughter penetrates the darkness, first from one woman, then together with a second. The laughter mounts to a wild cacophony. First one fades to silence, then the other fades to a giggle before cutting suddenly to silence.

142 The gaping mouths cast upwards – pleading to be filled – bespeak trauma and loss: holes blown in the bodyminds of the figures who stand for so many other figures. Their destabilized swaying bodies, lack balance or equilibrium. They are trapped, suspended in a time zone that is outside of chronological time, represented by the slow, steady journey of the seemingly unseeing figure that treads a path through them carrying a clock. It could be read as a visual representation of the simultaneity of the two incompatible worlds that exist in the trauma survivor, as L.L. Langer writes

(in Caruth, 1995: 177) ‘[Trauma] stops the chronological clock and fixes the moment permanently in memory and imagination, immune to the vicissitudes of time’. He describes the impossibility for one Holocaust survivor he encountered (in Caruth,

1995: 176):

It can… never be joined to the world he inhabits now. This suggests a permanent duality, not exactly a split or a doubling but a parallel existence. He switches from one to the other without synchronization because he is reporting not a sequence but a simultaneity.

Not having been integrated into narrative memory, the traumatic experience remains outside of time. The burst of disembodied laughter, then, breaking through the darkness has the force of a shock to the spectator’s senses, a rupture, which again points to a loss of balance or equilibrium. According to Baudelaire (in Caruth: 1995:

244) the loss of balance involved in laughter ‘can be traced back to mankind’s universal fallen condition with respect to a transcendental principle of unity and wholeness’. The shock of laughter for Baudelaire – the ‘choc perpétuel’ – Caruth writes (1995: 244) designates in his text, ‘the loss of equilibrium that is always entailed by an actual fall into history, where history itself can be experienced only nonteleologically as a constant falling. In this scene the fall into history that is experienced as a constant falling, is first represented on a visual level by the figures

143 suspended in a state of imbalance and then on the level of sound by the shock that is laughter. The content works both on the level of sensorium and intellect.

Structure 3: ‘Leaving’

This structure opens with five of the figures seated and facing out towards the audience, they sit silently, some with travel bags, or suitcases at their feet, sometimes reaching out tentatively for something or someone that is not there. They gaze ahead as though trying to penetrate the darkness. From stage right a sixth figure enters going from one of them to the next, apprehending each in turn mindfully before placing his hand or hands on their shoulders. Those seated respond almost imperceptibly to the touch, but there is no verbal communication as they continue to gaze ahead into the darkness. Perhaps he represents a lost loved one they search for in vain in the darkness. When he reaches the fourth seated figure, the fifth takes a violin, stands and silently invites the other two to dance. They dance a slow, joyless dance, a kind of anti-dance or death dance, as the sixth begins to speak, explaining that the one thing never to reveal is your name. Once ‘they’ have that and call you, you have no choice but to respond. His partner pulls away from him, slaps him on the face and goes to leave with another figure. The narrator continues with the story of how his father earned a living by picking stones from fields that belonged to others to make their land more arable. It was a thankless, Sisyphean task, as each year they seemed to wander back from the edges of the fields to take back up their position in the soil.

Finally he leaves with another figure, both taking suitcases with them. One figure is left seated, still gazing out into the darkness, before the scene fades to black.

These figures, in a quasi Beckettian landscape, pausing on their way from nowhere and headed nowhere, are clearly united by their experience of trauma, loss

144 and displacement. They represent ‘a gathering of the wounded’, to use Kai Erikson’s phrase (in Caruth, 1995: 186-7), as he explains in the context of his work with communities of trauma victims:

[E]strangement becomes the basis for communality, as if persons without homes or citizenship or any other niche in the larger order of things were invited to gather in a quarter set aside for the disfranchised, a ghetto for the unattached.

While just one of the figures communicates some fragments of his story, it is clear the others would also have stories to tell, we just do not hear them.

Structure 4: ‘Footsteps’

This structure, which consists purely of a psycho-physical score partly set to music, opens with a rupture: out of the darkness and silence come the sounds of a stone wall crashing down. As the lights fade up the company of actors is revealed in a dusty monochrome light advancing slowly in a staggered formation towards the pile of rubble. This consists of the stones that made up the second wall and the chairs over which they have tumbled down. The figures’ mouths, first clamped shut, open wide as they struggle over the pile of rubble, straining under the weight of something invisible they seem to cradle in their arms. The soundscape is a traditional Korean instrumental version of Pachelbel’s Canon, and while it retains its melodious quality, the staccato effect of the plucked strings creates a sense of disjointed rhythm. The actors slowly and silently assume erect positions as the music fades to silence and they begin to sign in unison the following: ‘footsteps’, ‘dead’, ‘carry’ and ‘love’ (O’Reilly, 2002). They gaze ahead towards the audience and into the dark. Finally, still in unison they begin to retreat slowly backwards into the darkness.

The opening and shutting mouths of the figures enact a wound, as do their empty arms which could be cradling the absent bodies of lost loved ones, their

145 straining under the ‘weight’ of the emptiness bespeaking their trauma. The transition to silence, the silent signing in unison and the steady gaze of the actors towards the spectators have the effect of shifting the focus from the activity of the physicalization of loss and redirecting it towards the spectator and the space around. The intensity of the figures’ focus, their entire bodyminds seeming to listen to the surrounding dark, silent space and their gaze challenging the spectator to listen with them, bring the nameless dead of the quarry rushing into the spectator’s consciousness, as the actors back away into the darkness as though to join the countless faceless and nameless others who ‘inhabit’ the caves. Although the spectator may not understand on the level of cognition what the signing signifies, a profound ‘joint text’ emerges between actor and spectator, as the actors’ bodyminds seem, to quote Zarrilli (1997: 103), to be

‘precariously counterpoised and counterbalanced “on the edge of breath”’.

Structure 5: ‘Internment’

Internment presents two different modes of performance. The three female actors positioned crouching behind massive stones to the rear of the space, facing outwards, are lit from below. They each wear a kind of headscarf that gestures towards a female, quasi-peasant status. The stones or boulders divide the performance space and performance modes. In front of the stones one of the male actors sits in profile in a large armchair facing a television, which he presently gets up to switch on. The title music of the television series ‘Dallas’ is heard playing very low. As the women slowly sink to their knees they struggle intermittently to articulate something, but only produce explosive, strangled sounds. Once on their knees they begin to utter monologic, disjointed fragments, microscopic details from anonymous lives, for example, ‘Her shoe, unlaced beneath the table’, ‘When I saw him lying there, he was

146 smiling’, ‘It was a silly argument – some cross words’ (O’Reilly, 2002). When they finish, the two other male actors enter – laughing convulsively – to join the first. They are wearing belts for weapons, gesturing to a military status. They tell of their experience of entering the houses of the displaced, as though it were a source of enormous hilarity, laughing wildly at each other’s additions. This exchange closes as follows:

A: Sometimes they travel separately. Women silent at the destination, the men yet to arrive. Being told to be patient, there was a diversion, a delay. Pause C: They’ll have a long fucking wait. (All laugh) (O’Reilly, 2002).

This structure again thematises the incompatibilities that characterize the traumatized mind. The two scenes constitute two parallel worlds, one happening in

‘real time’ in front of the rocks, and the other suspended in the now behind. The women addressing first their stymied attempts to speak, to testify to their stories, and then their fragments of stories out towards the audience reflect the spectator back to herself and also cast into relief the character-based scene that takes place in the space between. As the ‘soldiers’ laugh convulsively at the plight of the women who will wait at their destination in vain for their dead men, the silent watchful figures, the light from below making their eyes seem like huge dark hollows, become projection surfaces for the women the men refer to. Again, the laughter is a sign of ‘a choc perpétual’, ‘the explosive collision of two irreducible infinities’ (Newmark in Caruth,

1995: 242) contained in human consciousness, infinite misery on the one hand ‘by comparison to the Supreme Being of which it possess only the conception’, and infinite grandeur, on the other, ‘by comparison to the natural world’ (Newmark in

Caruth, 1995: 241). The laughter, which as Newmark (in Caruth, 1995: 251) writes,

‘is not necessarily a laughing matter’, is indicative of both the women’s trauma and that of the soldiers, in that ‘it always refers to its inability to occur as anything other

147 than a compulsively repeated reference that is never allowed to come to rest in the fullness of a final meaning’.

Structure 6: ‘Marching and Singing’

Structure 5 transitions straight into structure 6: as the sound of ‘Power of One’ fades up over the laughter. I quote the stage directions, ‘All melt into music. The rhythm is picked up in feet as they stamp’ (O’Reilly, 2002). As the male actors stand facing out stamping a quick rhythm to the beat of the music the women rise in the background, remove their head-gear and come forward to join the men in a similar stamping mode.

Powerful search lights come up from the back of the cavern casting the actors into dark silhouette as they come downstage in unison, parting three and three at the pile of rubble centre stage to come around it and advance further downstage toward the audience, their movements stiff, jerky and rhythmical throughout. As the music fades out, the back lighting cuts out and the actors are lit with a warm, gentle redish light from in front. Without pause they begin to sing in harmony a Carinthian folk song about the joy of being in a mountain idyll:

In die Berg bin i gern. Und do gfreit si mei gmiad. Wo die olmreslan woxn, und da enzian bliat, wo die olmreslan woxn und da enzian bliat (O’Reilly, 2002).

At the end of the song, a subtle lighting shift to a colder colour presents the actors standing in silence before the audience and then slowly in unison they begin to raise both arms in front of them to shoulder height, at which point, after a beat, they let stones drop to the ground that have been concealed in their hands.

The rhythmic advancing downstage of the silhouetted figures has a powerful kinaesthetic effect on the spectator, the tension mounting as they come closer.

Because they can be perceived only as indeterminate figures without faces, they are interchangeable, can stand for any party of people moving in unison, bound by the

148 rhythm of the music. They could call to mind for instance the marching of the concentration camp prisoners as they return from their day’s labour, their feet swollen and covered in sores from the deadly wooden shoes they were forced to wear, as described by Levi in the context of his Auschwitz experience (2005a: 36):

They walk in columns of five with a strange, unnatural hard gait, like stiff puppets made of jointless bones; but they walk scrupulously in time to the band.

Or likewise, they could call to mind a company of soldiers. The shift in dynamics signaled by the abrupt transition to song could read as a representation of the swift transition in post-war Austria from Nazi perpetrator or sympathizer to a sanitized self- image: the meticulously rendered harmonious singing of the folk song conjures up the carefully fabricated image of ‘heile Welt’, the ‘Heimatfilme’ of the 1950s, Julie

Andrews as Maria with her pupils in The Sound of Music, for example, which Austria projected in order to deflect away from the immediate past. Another abrupt transition then to complete silence, the actors’ gaze towards the spectator and the raising of the arms in unison apparently sent a shock wave through some of the older spectators, who communicated to cast members that at this point they anticipated the ‘heil Hitler’ salute. Whatever the silent sequence communicated to the individual spectator, it had the effect of stripping away the mask of identification with an idyll.

Structure 7: ‘United Fucking Nations’

Again, structure 6 transitions straight into structure 7: a shift in lighting and performance mode where the men remove their belts and all take up a position on the ground to explore piles of stones at their feet. While carrying out this activity two of the men tell fragments of stories from the traumatizing lives of soldiers deployed in foreign war-torn territories, the experience of entering the homes of the displaced,

149 finding isolated traces, fragments of the lives that used to be at home there: ‘A birth certificate, a love letter and a fucking tax bill. Just that. No more’ (O’ Reilly, 2002).

One of the female actors asks at this point: ‘What’s that to say for someone’s life?’

(O’Reilly, 2002), and after repeating the question, the three female actors rise, back away first and then turn and run upstage to the back of the cave, where they are lit, pinned to the wall in varying physical attitudes. One of the male actors then quotes from the love letter: ‘My darling, you must remember – there is no fear only love’, a sentiment which is eschewed by the other: ‘Saying it like a mantra, a fucking prayer in some ditch…’ (O’ Reilly, 2002). At this point the other picks up the sentiment and repeats it as though compulsively and then all the actors join in, the women running back downstage to form a chanting group with the male actors, as the tempo and volume mount to a crescendo before freezing suddenly to silence. After a beat, one of the male actors reverses the ‘mantra’, ‘There is no love, only fear’ (O’Reilly, 2002), which is followed by a blackout.

This scene first has a meditative quality, as the tension of the previous structure gives way to the mindful exploration of the stones. It is as though the meditation on the stones allows memory shards to be released, fragments of stories that stones might tell if they could speak. One of the ‘soldiers’ recounts how he spent an afternoon in someone’s former home doing a jigsaw puzzle, ‘I would have fucking cried if I wasn’t laughing’ (O’ Reilly, 2002). The actor enacts the attempt to reassemble the fragments of the lives that have been unmade by war and trauma. Out of the state of emergency created by the actors’ desperate insistence that love conquers fear, comes the cold realization that fear in fact conquers love. The transition to black and silence leaves the spectator alone in the dark with this thought.

Structure 8: ‘Semiotics of Zero’

150 As the lights come up downstage one actor kneels with a bowl of water beside the supine body of another, ‘washing’ the dead body with a stone. Behind them, seated, are three other performers. Upstage right a desk light is switched on to reveal a figure at a lectern. As Bach’s 1st Cantata for Altos fades up the washer begins to wash while the three figures behind begin to make circular movements with their arms, their whole bodies reaching as though for something or someone that is not there. In the background the figure at the lectern discusses in an evenly modulated voice the problem of the absence of a cipher that would best inscribe absence, ‘The most elemental solution, the ur-mark of absence, is an instance of an iconographic hole; any simple enclosure, ring, circle, ovoid, loop, and the like, which surrounds an absence and divides space into an inside and an outside’ (O’Reilly, 2002). When the speaker has finished speaking, the dead body, now representing stone taken from the earth, ground, mixed, fashioned into a bathroom tile, sits up and addresses the audience: ‘You think it is over? Who is fenced in? Who is fenced out? Who is it now who lives in fear?’ (O’Reilly, 10). When he has finished speaking, the light fades to black.

This structure, which draws on a text by Brian Rotman, ‘The Semiotics of

Zero’ represents a juxtaposition of attempts on two levels to grasp absence, one through the body and the other through the mind. The figures downstage use their arms to reach for the absent one who remains beyond their grasp using gestures that draw a hole or a zero in the empty space. Behind them, the calm rational voice of the figure at a lectern representing scientific enquiry as a means of exploration, also fails.

The gap between the two modes of inquiry, it could be argued, points to the nature of massive psychic trauma and the difficulty of integrating traumatic experiences into existing meaning schemes. The figures’ elegiac, hopeless configurations in space,

151 which enact the impossibility of grasping that which is gone and the melancholic inability of letting go, underline the futility of language and rationality as a means to penetrate the darkness and assign meaning. All we are left with is the contemplation of the invisible spaces drawn by the dancers’ arms in the air, unmarked spaces that the lost ones might occupy for an instant in the spectator’s imagination. The final address from the actor-as-stone on the ground likewise challenges our sense of the supremacy of the human mind and its ability to contain, explain, harness, and its tendency to eschew chaos.

Stucture 9: ‘Chair Stones’

As the lights come up on the actors in structure 9 they are all positioned in varying physicalizations of stones on chairs, which are placed in a straight line facing the spectators. The sound track is a piece of Korean meditation music. Occasionally all seem to experience something like a spark or a shudder through their bodies. Three in turn ‘melt from stone to human’ (O’Reilly, 2002) as such a shudder signals an impulse to speak. Once they have finished speaking, they ‘melt’ back to stone.

This structure thematizes the relationship between trauma and language, and trauma and melancholia. The first figure speaks of alienation and dislocation from a familiar linguistic environment due to displacement. This section is taken from

Griffin’s A Chorus of Stones (1992: 77):

I have often wondered what it would be like to be a refugee, to find oneself suddenly in a place where no one knew the same names for things. I would have to learn a new language but always there would be a longing for the old words. And perhaps at night, falling off to sleep, to comfort myself, I would whisper certain sounds: Leaf, river, doorbell, cup.

152 The second figure is driven by a more urgent need to relate her experience of being overwhelmed by the need she has encountered in a homeless family for whom the signifier ‘home’ has become dislocated from the signified:

[…] and I asked them, ‘Why don’t you go home?’ but they looked at me like I spoke another language. ‘Home’, I said, but they didn’t understand the word, it was old, outside their vocabulary, a definition didn’t exist in their dictionary. So I repeated it – home, casa, and one laughed and said home, Lucifer, burning. Gone.

The speaker’s tempo and sense of urgency increases as she expresses the overwhelming effect of the encounter:

All those mewling mouths open with want. Fingers like little fish hooks, catching at your clothes, snagging in your skin – pulling, tugging, ‘I want! I want! The need!

This sequence enacts a common need among trauma victims to communicate their traumatic experiences in order to reverse the state of being possessed by the events, as

Dori Laub writes:

There is in each survivor an imperative need to tell and thus to come to know one’s story, unimpeded by ghosts from the past against which one has to protect oneself. One has to know one’s buried truth in order to be able to live one’s life.

The third figure tells a story about his lost love: she requests from him a handkerchief and when he returns with it she is gone, ‘the door was open, the house was empty and you were gone’ (O’Reilly, 2002). As the figure melts back to stone he pushes the handkerchief into his mouth. In doing this he represents performatively the nature of melancholia as described by Freud (1991: 258) in Mourning and Melancholia.

According to Freud, when the subject is unable to withdraw the libido from the lost object, fails to displace it onto another object, it becomes withdrawn into the ego and establishes an identification of the ego with the lost object:

153 [T]he ego wants to incorporate this object into itself, and, in accordance with the oral or cannibalistic phase of libidinal development in which it is, it wants to do so by devouring it.

Here the actor enacts the identification of the ego with the lost object by engorging the handkerchief that stands for his lost love. This sequence might resonate very clearly for the spectator with the engraving on the wall of the cave of the anonymous woman by one of the Mauthausen concentration camp prisoners s/he passed earlier on the way to the performance space (see fig. 3.8).

Structure 10: Interrogation

In this structure the three female actors face out towards the audience and seem to address an invisible silent interrogator. The male actors remain rock-like, further upstage with their backs to the audience. One woman protests her ability and her desire to work for her living; she does not want to take in exchange for doing nothing.

Another tells of a mother’s desire for a better world for her child, how when having a child to care for ‘you see the order of things – and your place within that order’. A third witnesses to her inability to speak about the things she has experienced, ‘I can’t tell you….I’m sorry, I’m sorry…. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you’. She hints at a rape that she and the other young women in her village were subjected to, ‘[t]hey came into our village and rounded up all the girls’ (O’Reilly, 2002). This third figure represents the state of being possessed by the trauma, which she has not managed to integrate into her narrative memory and relegate to the past. She is not able to give coherent testimony as she has not managed to reconstitute the internal ‘thou’, as Dori Laub expresses it (in Caruth, 1995: 70):

The testimony is […] the process by which the narrator (the survivor) reclaims his position as a witness: reconstitutes the internal ‘thou’, and thus the possibility of a witness or a listener inside himself.

154 If the survivor fails to undergo this process s/he is in danger of becoming what Levi terms the ‘damned of the earth’ (2005c:185):

The traumatized mind holds on to that moment, preventing it from slipping back into its proper chronological place in the past and relives it over and over again in the compulsive musings of the day and the seething dreams of the night.

This structure has a gender-specific character: posited as suppliants before an interrogating force and set against the backdrop of unyielding, anonymous male backs, it calls to mind how women specifically are victimized in situations of war – abandoned, preyed upon, left to rebuild the wreckage and fend for themselves and their children on their own. The soundscape throughout this scene – the ‘Nosferatu

Gong’ – creates a sense of unrelenting danger, a call to remembrance and mindfulness that women continually find themselves in such situations in the war-torn parts of our world.

Structure 11: ‘Why did you leave?’

The piece ends in what could be described as a state of high emergency, thematising how pain destroys language. Facing the audience three actors sit downstage with three others standing behind them holding frames around the upper part of their bodies, as though they were images of absent loved ones, or perhaps split into two parallel and irreconcilable selves by their trauma. The three actors in front begin to sign the following: ‘Why did you leave? Why did you not want me? Why did you not want us? Words…destroyed’ (O’Reilly, 2002). The signing begins slowly and in silence, gradually gaining momentum as the actors first begin to mouth the text and then whisper it. As the gestures and aspirated and voiced sounds gain in momentum and urgency the three behind let the picture frames fall to the ground and join in. The tempo and volume gain in momentum and the faces and bodies of the actors become

155 convulsed, as though driven to this frantic state by the lack of response from unresponding or unavailable addressees. As the desperate questions are addressed out towards the audience, the spectator’s bodymind is hit by the full force of this ferocious need. At a moment of high crescendo, the actors suddenly cut to silence and freeze. The image of the six actors with bodies and faces contorted, gazing towards the spectator, is held for a moment in a sepia wash of light, like an old yellowed photograph. In the resounding silence the space and its history once again rushes into the spectator’s consciousness before an abrupt cut to darkness. This rapid shift had the effect of leaving a negative of the ‘photograph’ burned onto the retina of the spectator’s eye. Levi’s call to remembrance, Benjamin’s call for a state of emergency to be created as the only hope of winning the war against fascism, and Adorno’s pronouncement that since Auschwitz ‘the need to enable suffering to speak [has been] the precondition of all truth’ (Adorno xviii) come to mind here.

The dramatic coherence of Speaking Stones was organized along the principles of dynamics – drawing on a palate of sound, light, movement and text fragments – rather than story. The ‘subtle graph of speed, exertion, intensity, rhythm’ (Pearson and

Shanks: 2001: 26-27) and ruptures allowed the spectator to make meaning, to fill the gaps and holes in the fragmentary montage. It would be difficult having seen the piece to give an account of it, produce a narrative around it. The montage breaks back up into fragments once the performance has passed, as Pearson and Shanks (2001: 55) write,

What begins as a series of fragments is arranged in performance: dramaturgy is an act of assemblage. It then immediately falls to pieces as traces and fragments of a different order, ranging from documentary photographs to the memories of its participants: fragments/order/fragments.

156 The piece functioned more on a somatosensory or iconic level, which is why Walter

Gluschitsch was unable to explain why it affected him so much, it somehow got under his skin; he could not ‘organise’ it on a linguistic level. I would like to posit the idea of Speaking Stones as a montage of ‘stories of wounds that cry out’, which are ultimately always the same story, the story of a hole blown in the bodymind of a human being. The quarry, which itself could be characterized as a wound that has begun to cry out in recent years, a hole blown in the belly of a mountain, was not the only site within which the piece was intelligible, making it site-sensitive as opposed to site-specific. The site, however, re-contextualised the piece, to use Pearson/Shanks’

(2001: 23) expression, interpenetrating narratives jostled to create meaning. The images and impressions the spectator brought with her from the journey through the quarry formed a palimpsest with the piece, the experience of one being filtered through the other, the site with its deeply layered aura emerging as the primary actor, to quote the director (Zarrilli, 2006a):

Performed deep within one of the large, central caverns of the quarry, the primary actor here became the space itself as the quarry’s walls and ceilings are sounded and illuminated--as if for the first time, summoning forth its Nazi past and bringing that past into the present realities of south-central Europe. It was not to literally “tell” this history, but to “resonate” with that particular history in the images, voices, fragments, words, and tasks offered by Speaking Stones. Aflenz offers moments and glimpses backward and forward through time. The impact of Speaking Stones in Aflenz is in the actual play of light, shadow, and sound along the caverns’ walls, ceilings and some of the massive stones cut from within.

While the spectator had an individual experience of how the space bestowed meaning upon the piece, it would be difficult to measure the reverse: how was this space, and by extension the community so closely connected to it, affected by this piece of theatre? We could read it as a further event in the acts of disturbance carried out by Franz Trampusch and his colleague, Walter Gluschitsch, who do not cease in

157 their efforts to make known the history of the quarry and to speak with the younger generations about what took place there. The excavation work, a further act of disturbance, they had carried out in the quarry, which produced the shards from the past, has had its counterpart in an act of disturbance in the sedimented consciousness of their community. Having witnessed the reactions of some of the local community, an elderly woman on walking sticks, who refused the offer of help to lead her to the performance space because, as she explained, she knew her way around in the quarry, or another elderly woman seated in the front row who, overcome with emotion, had to bury her face in her hands several times during the performance,78 it was clear that for some of those among the local community who saw the piece, it had something in the realm of a cathartic effect. Walter Gluschitsch’s reference to his community’s need for the silence to be broken amounts to a need for some kind of catharsis or intervention in their history and by association the history of the quarry and its environs, which brings us back to the idea of the actor as a conduit or channel. For some of the actors, the performances of Speaking Stones in the quarry clearly constituted something like an intervention in history, an act of disturbance in the lives of those who – now long dead – left the traces of their labour in the walls of the quarry and by association those who inherited a past they have had difficulty in reclaiming. Uschi Litschauer (2004) relates how she drew on images of the concentration camp prisoners to inform her performance work, which she dedicated it to them:

Persönlich haben mich das Trauerlied am Beginn, das ich für die Gefangenen gesungen habe, ‘Bewilderment’: unsere Geste mit der Hand nach Liebe zu suchen, den Mund zu öffnen und quasi ein atmender Schornstein zu werden und ‘Footsteps of the Dead carrying love’ am meisten berührt an diesem Ort zu spielen. Ich habe in Andenken an diese unbekannten und vergessenen Menschen gespielt, die hier arbeiten mussten und umgekommen sind.

78 One of the performers, Monika Zöhrer, told me after that particular performance that this spectator’s emotional reactions almost overwhelmed her at various stages during the performance.

158 For Christian Heuegger (2004) a sense of intervention in history was most particularly pronounced as he testifies in his reflections on the question of the dialogue between site and piece:

Der Steinbruch mit seiner Vergangenheit war ein ganz spezieller Ort für dieses Stück, weil Speaking Stones die Geschichte dieses Ortes, der unterirdischen Fabrik im Steinbruch von Wagna erzählt in der hunderte Menschen ihr Leben gelassen haben. Jeder Blick streift Mauern und Steine, die das nicht nur mitangesehen haben. Ich hatte im Stück selbst immer wieder das Gefühl, dass all die Vorfälle die im Berg und auf den Feldern davor geschehen sind, wo das Außenlager von Mauthausen war, noch immer dort gespeichert sind. Stille Schreie der Menschen, die dort die Höhlen des Römersteinbruchs vergrößert und für die Fabrikation von Flugzeug und Fahrzeugteilen nutzbar gemacht wurden. Jedes Stück Felsen trägt die Inschrift eine Pickels, der von Hand geführt wurde und jeder Quadratmeter is voll von den Riefen, die das metallene Werkzeug in den Sandstein gerissen hat.

Besonders eindrucksvoll war die letzte Aufführung im Römersteinbruch, weil ich das Gefühl hatte, vor den versammelten Seelen, die dort Zwangsarbeit verrichten mussten, zu spielen, die gekommen waren, um Speaking Stones zu erleben, und während der ganzen Aufführung glaubte ich Raunen, Murmeln und Schritte zu hören.

Zusätzlich dazu waren immer wieder Menschen aus der Umgebung, die das Stück durch den bekannten Kontext einfach anders aufnehmen. Ich Glaube, dass es durch den Ort und die Verbundenheit mit den Auswirkungen des Krieges, die für jederman und jedefrau sichtbar, spürbar sind im Steinbruch von Wagna, einfach an Kraft gewinnt, damit es nicht nur ein Theaterstück ist sondern sehr dramatisch in die Herzen der Menschen dringt, so das Erinnern ermöglicht. (erinnern = spanisch - recordar, wieder ins Herz führen) (Christian Heuegger, 2005)

Following on from the performances of Speaking Stones in the Römer Höhlen,

Heuegger initiated a collaboration between the company and the ‘Büro für

Erinnerungen’, which was established in 2003 when Graz was European cultural capital, on a project entitled ‘Spuren der Erinnerung’. A series of interviews with eye witnesses in the area of Aflenz were carried out, and in June 2008 Theater Asou performed a new piece of work in the quarry – Unknown Origin – which spoke to issues that came to light in the interviews. We could conclude, then, that Speaking

159 Stones was also ‘an act of disturbance’ with further repercussions and reverberations, and therefore an important intervention in the history of the caves and the community living around them.

CHAPTER FOUR

160 Es geht um persönliche Wurzelsuche und Rückgewinnung, um individuelle Geschichte und damit Identität, um das, was uns, die wir nach dem Krieg Geborene sind, verschwiegen wurde, um das, was wir bereits verloren glaubten... (Eva Brenner)

Auf der Suche nach Jakob / Searching for Jacob / Szukajac Jakuba, a trilingual79 collaboration between the Projekt Theater Studio Vienna and Lee Breuer of Mabou

Mines, New York, premiered in Vienna at the Projekt Theater Studio in the Burggasse

38 on 1 April 2003, and toured to the Teatr Łaznia Nowa Kraków the following June as part of the ‘Polish Year in Austria 2002/2003’. This was a two-part performance, consisting of two devised pieces drawing on the same research material, presented one after the other with a brief interval in-between.

Searching for Jacob is concerned with memory-work as theatre. This is not memory in the sense of a chain of events that are readily retrievable and narratable but rather the exploration of the after-effects in the present of a past that cannot be recaptured because it was kept silent. The past in question relates specifically to the director Eva Brenner. Hers, however, is a history like many others of her generation in Austria: family life was characterized by silence and the withholding of histories, which, as in so many families like hers, created a whole new complex of problems. As

Dori Laub (in Caruth, 1995: 64) writes, ‘[T]he “not telling” of the story serves as a perpetuation of its tyranny. The events become more and more distorted in their silent retention and pervasively invade and contaminate the survivor’s daily life’. Brenner is one of a generation who vicariously experienced events surrounding the Holocaust,

79 The spoken elements of the pieces were largely in German, but a Polish member of the cast spoke in Polish and there were also passages rendered in English. The trilingual aspect was in keeping with the themes of the collaboration in question but also with the general intercultural and interlingual approach of the company.

161 whose life was shaped by the silence in her family. The history got lost to a large extent, but the after-effects, the ‘post-memories’, got handed down and became, what

James Young (2000: 1) calls, ‘hypermediated experiences of memory’. As referred to above in Chapter 2, Young examines the work of a post-war generation of artists and architects in the context of Germany’s Holocaust Memorial project and how these artists give expression to their vicarious experience of the Holocaust. Brenner uses the medium of theatre to do something similar in the exploration of her ‘post-memories’ and the on-going effects of her father’s silence in the microcosm of her family with regard to his former paradoxical existence as a ‘Jewish Nazi’. Her father, Wilhelm

Brenner (1917-1977), was the grandson of Jakob Brenner, who is believed to have been a Polish Jew that migrated to Vienna some time in the late 1800s. His status as

‘Jewish’ is thus one that would have been imposed upon him by Nazi racial law rather than one defined by matrilinear descent. Having joined the SA, Hitler’s

‘Sturmabteilung’ or Storm Troops, in 1938 at the age of 21, Wilhelm Brenner went to

Africa to serve under General Rommel, the so-called ‘Desert Fox’, during the latter’s

African campaign (1941-43) but soon got ill with hepatitis and had to be taken back to

Austria. During the war years he studied to be a medical doctor but discontinued his neurology studies after 1945. He daughter surmises that he might have been excluded from professional service as a doctor in the immediate post-war years due to his membership of the SA. He retrained as a dentist, but after becoming ‘de-nazified’ in

1947 began to practice once again as a doctor. He also made a career as a politician and president of his professional association before dying suddenly at the age of sixty of cirrhosis of the liver and cancer, which were assumed to be consequences of his war-time illness.

The theatre work took three basic principles as its point of departure:

162 1.The individual / familial story represents a microcosm of what is / was taking place in the macrocosm of society. 2. The future only becomes possible when we have understood the past. 3. The theatre as a social and ritual meeting place offers the framework that is conducive to the practice-based exploratory memory-work. (PTS documentation)

In the following I will give an overview of the preparatory research work that took place before rehearsals began, the stratigraphy of layers – including Brenner’s collections of text fragments scripted around her family’s history – which was brought to the devising process, the questions, and aesthetic and formal approaches the directorial team identified as of interest or relevant in the context of the subject matter. Finally, I will analyse the two-part performance. This consisted of two discrete performance pieces presented one after the other, one directed by Breuer and the other by Brenner – the original plan had been for just one performance, with

Breuer as artistic director and Brenner as dramaturge – both drawing on the same research material. This circumstance allows for a consideration of the idea that the assemblage yields as much an image of the individual storyteller as it does of the history in question, as Walter Benjamin (in Pearson and Shanks, 2001: xii) writes,

‘thus the traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel’. My discussion of In Search of Jacob, in addition to the discourses introduced in Chapter 2 above, is also informed by the idea of the theatre- maker as archaeologist, someone who digs down through the sedimented strata of time, using memory – her own and that of others – as a medium for exploring the past, to retrieve fragments and shards, which must then be assembled to create an image of the past. As Benjamin writes:

Language has unmistakably made plain that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past, but rather a medium. It is the medium of that which is experienced, just as the earth is the medium in which ancient cities lie buried’.

163 Following Pearson and Shanks (2001: 11), archaeology/theatre is ‘a work of mediation with the past’, and archaeologists/theatre-makers ‘work with material traces, with evidence, in order to create something – a meaning, a narrative, an image

– which stands for the past in the present’. As Pearson and Shanks suggest, we can apprehend devised performance through archaeological notions such as stratigraphy, assemblage and sensorium. In his essay entitled ‘Excavation and Memory’ Walter

Benjamin (1999: 576) thematises the connection between memory-work and the person doing the remembering, who in this case was Eva Brenner. Here he draws an analogy between memory-work and archaeological excavation: ‘Genuine memory must […] yield an image of the person who remembers, in the same way a good archaeological report not only informs us about the strata from which its findings originate but also gives an account of the strata which first had to be broken through.’

All the components that were used in Brenner’s personal research work – memories

(Brenner’s own and those of her relatives), conversations with family members, ensemble discussions, self-authored and found text, authentic photos, audio-visual material (an 8mm film from Brenner’s private collection), diverse objects (her father’s suitcase, for example) – comprise part of the stratigraphy of layers that were brought to the devising work.

A further idea that informs this discussion is Walter Benjamin’s (1982: 264-5) idea of a materialist historiography, a historiography which offers us ‘a unique experience with the past’ as opposed to historicism’s telling of events ‘like the beads of a rosary’. An historically materialist approach, Benjamin (1982: 257) tells us,

‘wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger’. The impulse to make this piece of theatre came from a vision or dream which Eva Brenner had in 1996 while attending a meditation

164 seminar with a friend whose mother had been killed at the Theresienstadt concentration camp. We might construe this vision or dream as a ‘moment of danger’: in the dream she was standing at her father’s grave; on her right side was Steve, one of her former acting teachers in New York, who was Jewish, and the space to her left was empty. Slowly her father came out of his grave towards her and made three brief utterances: ‘Ich entschuldige mich. Ich konnt’ es nicht tun. Du musst es für mich tun’.

After her vision, Eva Brenner wrote, ‘In diesem Moment wusste ich, wer er ist, wer er gewesen war’. In a sudden flash of insight, we might say, a moment of ‘Jetztzeit’,

‘blasted out of the continuum of history’ (Bejamin, 1982: 263), she sensed that her father had Jewish roots, something he had kept concealed during his lifetime.

Searching for Jacob was intended as an exploration of what this ‘it’ might be that her father wanted her to do for him, ‘a personal search for traces of the past’ (PTS- documentation), an individual history, that could nonetheless become symbolic of so many other histories.

4.1 Preparatory Research Work

Beginning the search for what it was her father wanted her to do for him,

Brenner rang all her older relatives that same night to ask if they knew of the existence of Jewish roots in the family. Her Aunt Franza told her of Jakob Brenner from Kraków, Eva Brenner’s great grandfather, who had been a Jew. Eva Brenner’s mother, who apparently had no knowledge of her deceased husband’s Jewish roots, finally agreed to let her daughter take a suitcase from the attic belonging to Wilhelm

Brenner. The suitcase contained various documents and old photos: among the aryanisation papers, student and travel IDs, passports (also ones belonging to Jakob

Brenner) and graduation certificates from the University of Vienna, Brenner found a

165 handwritten family tree, which had been used during the 1930s as proof of Aryan ancestry. The mother’s line reaches back for approximately two centuries whereas the father’s breaks off abruptly after the great grandfather, Jakob Brenner. Details entered for her great grandfather are that he came from Radziszów, near Kraków in Poland, was baptized Roman Catholic and his profession was ‘Privatier’, a loose term for a person of independent means. Above Jakob Brenner’s name is, as Brenner reports,

‘all white (painted over in white?) with tiny question marks in every column. Nothing but white […], with question marks extending to the top margin of the paper’ (PTS- documentation). Brenner deduced from this document that Wilhelm Brenner’s family members had ‘doctored’ the family tree in order to remove evidence of Jewish ancestry on the father’s side and thus to qualify as ‘pure Aryan’ under Nazi racial law.

The planning and research work for the theatre project took place at various stages between Vienna, New York and Poland between 2000 and 2003 before rehearsals began in January 2003. The search for further knowledge of Jakob Brenner and traces of Brenner’s Jewish roots took the Brenner/Breuer directorial team on a reconnaissance trip to Poland: Kraków, Radziszów, Auschwitz, in July 2001. Some remarks recorded in the protocol of the train journey are worth noting here in that they might serve to throw light on what ultimately led to differences of opinion between

Brenner and Breuer much later on in the process, giving rise to the circumstance of the two-part performance. Breuer remarks after they comment on how triste the Polish countryside looks: ‘The play should be funny, it should be fun! We are showing the process of remembering, no docu-drama!’ A little later he proposes: ‘Midway the play breaks off into open directions, away from the Jewish question into an exploration of the outcast. The breaking point is a Kantoresque scene about the migration of European Jews from the East to the West – to Vienna. It’s grotesque,

166 circus-like, comical’ (PTS-documentation). Eva Brenner’s thoughts, on the other hand, suggest quite a different mood for the piece: ‘For me it is a contemplation of the silence… that horrific silence which we grew up with. To make it comprehensible, sensationally’ (PTS-documentation). It also emerges during this conversation that

Lee Breuer is the only one of the directorial team who is actually Jewish, and after 30 years of being involved in theatre that this is his first production that deals specifically with the theme of Jewishness. He also reveals that he is of Austro-Hungarian Jewish heritage, his ancestors having come from the vicinity of Budapest. They were brewers and thus the name Breuer. His first name, Lee, is in fact an abbreviation of his full name, Leopold, a common Austrian name since the time of Leopold of Babenberg.

However, although he sees many figures around Vienna who remind him of his grandmother, who in his childhood had taught him fragments of Yiddish, he had no prior first-hand experience of Austrian, Central or Eastern European life. In spite of his Jewishness and Austro-Hungarian extraction he is the only member of the cast and crew who is outside of this specifically European or Eastern European experience of socialisation. The questions that arise for him on this trip that he sought to explore later in the theatre work are recorded as follows: (in relation to Brenner’s father)

‘What was he afraid of?’, ‘What are the qualities of Jewishness?’ or ‘Is there such a thing as a ‘Jewish Nazi’?’ ‘What are the characteristics of a Nazi?’ (PTS- documentation)

The first stop was Kraków, a former Austro-Hungarian metropolis, where they found the Jewish quarter Kazimierz – in sharp contrast to the inner city, which is pulsating with a new tourism – to be dominated by the silence of tombs: ‘a Jewish ghetto without Jews’ (PTS-documentation). Various attempts to garner further information in situ yielded few results. The Kosher restaurant they eat at turns out to

167 be run by an American Jew. The plaza looks like ‘a Jewish Disneyland’, a phrase repeated next day by the Director of the Centre for Jewish Culture. The latter apologizes for not being Jewish himself explaining that the City of Kraków officials could not find a qualified Jewish historian for the position. They discuss Polish history there with him for the evening. The following day they visit the Kantor archives, Tadeusz Kantor’s small Spartan apartment and a Kantor exhibition in a cellar, filled with grotesque puppets, props, old costumes and photographs which have already become theatre history. Eva Brenner’s reflections on this exhibition are worth quoting here as they are reflected in the piece of theatre which subsequently emerged from the research:

Here the ‘scandal’ called Eastern-Europe reigns supreme, dreams which became reality, dreams become nightmares of a society of scarcity, of deprivation, century-old repression, dreams are more than illusions around here, a sad reality, distorted to the grotesque, reminiscent of a cruel circus, simultaneously very funny and very tragic at the same time, crazed, menacing, then again cheerful (PTS-documentation).

The following day the team is welcomed in Radziszów, a village 20 miles from Krakow, by the Mayor in her home. The locals, who initially seem to remember a family of Brenners, become less certain as the afternoon progresses. One elderly woman has a faint memory of Jews living in the village but then remembers the name more as ‘Bima’ than ‘Brenner’. The local priest, who had promised to come by, excuses himself at the last moment, saying that church archives had yet to be consulted. They find nothing but green grass on the site where Jewish houses were said to have once stood. In short, apart from a few documents and passports attesting to the existence of Jakob Brenner, statements made by older family members that he was Jewish and a photograph of an old man with a long white beard, who only may have been Jakob Brenner, seated on a rock next to Eva Brenner’s father, Wilhelm,

168 there were no other traces of him to be found. For lack of concrete evidence they decide to use the photograph as a cover motif for the promotional material for the piece. The fact that the religion entered for Jakob Brenner in the family tree was

‘Roman Catholic’ created further difficulty in the attempt to clearly establish whether or not Jakob Brenner was in fact Jewish. This latter detail could perhaps be interpreted as a further element in the family’s strategy to protect itself during the period of Nazi rule.

The fruitless search for tangible traces of Jakob Brenner led Eva Brenner back to herself and the reality of having inherited the silence when approaching the devising process. It was decided that the central themes of the piece would be, on the one hand, an exploration of the after-effects of the experience of growing up with the unbroken silence and, on the other, the sociological phenomenon of (Jewish) victim turned (Nazi) perpetrator:

In der theatralen Forschungsarbeit sollen Konturen einer Topographie des Schweigens sowie das Soziogramm eine Opfers, das Täter wurde, sichtbar werden, Antworten auf die bedrückende Stille der Nachkriegsjahre, die grossteils bis heute währt (PTS-documentation).

Brenner’s father Wilhelm saw himself compelled to deny his history twice, once in

1938 (his Jewishness) and again in 1945 (his war-time activities serving in the Nazi army). The shadowy figure of her great-grandfather Jakob would remain an emblem of lost Eastern European Jewry, conspicuous by his absence. Why, we might ask, make a piece of theatre relating to narratives that are for the most part not recoverable? James Young stresses the centrality of the memory-work itself in the process and the outcome of creating pieces of work related to the Holocaust by the generation whose experience was mediated through the generation who had lived

169 through it. While Young (2000: 9) is discussing American visual artists, it would not be inappropriate to extend his ideas to other artistic processes:

[T]he void left behind by the destruction of European Jewry demands the reflection previously accorded the horrific details of the destruction itself. For these artists, it is the memory-work itself, the difficult attempt to know, to imagine vicariously, and to make meaning out of experiences they never knew directly that constitutes the object of memory.

The interviews that Eva Brenner carried out with the various members of her family were worked into the scripted scenes, of which there are 17 in all, a collection of texts which Brenner describes as ‘a puzzle of fictionalised memoires’ (PTS- documentation). A collection of short narrative texts depicting typical episodes from her childhood and her father’s role in their family life, his funeral, a self-authored love-song for Jakob, extracts of poetry, for example, by Elfriede Gerstl and Christian

Morgenstern, formed the body of the unpublished script that was to be used as the basis for the devising process. In the scenes depicting her father in his role as family man, he is featured as someone who suffers from self-inflicted isolation in his own home, someone who is distinctly patriarchal, at times frightening, and who exerts his control and seeks attention, for example, by suddenly pulling open doors or slamming them to break up cosy, domestic scenes shared by his wife, her female friends and his daughters. In other scenes he is depicted as a comical Chaplinesque figure or a little

Desert Fox – after his secret hero General Rommel – without a desert or an army, then as a tourist, a conqueror, a brilliant orator with a magnetic social persona, a

‘Renaissance man’ and an intellectual who worshiped Sigmund Freud, Karl Kraus,

Kurt Tucholsky and Ludwig Wittgenstein but despised Bertolt Brecht. A man whose life was marked by three different political systems – monarchy, dictatorship and democracy – his preferred scenario was that the Habsburg monarchy would never have ended. Elsewhere he becomes a mysterious figure who would spend time in the

170 Western Viennese train station every Sunday morning, although he never travelled by train, and return several hours later armed with a thick wad of foreign newspapers presenting the appearance of someone who had travelled a great distance and experienced a lot. In whichever guise he is portrayed, he is mainly characterised by his continuous shape-shifting and his inability to connect with those around him.

Attempts to engage with his loved ones generally result in alienating them.

Brenner’s mother is portrayed as the significantly younger, unreflecting trophy-wife, who knows nothing about her husband’s inner life and who does not attempt to explore it. She does not appear to be interested in anything that goes beyond the role ascribed to her by patriarchy, and thus we only see her managing the domestic sphere and being decorative. Her husband typically loves to show photographs to friends and associates of his beautiful young photogenic wife. In scene four, which features the conversation about the suitcase containing all her husband’s documents, she tells her probing daughter that she knows nothing about the documents because she has never looked at them. The part of a scene where her daughter asks her about Jakob Brenner is scripted as follows using the third person in a quasi Brechtian distancing style (PTS-documentation):

The daughter says: Did you know father was partly Jewish? The mother says: (amazed): No! What gave you that idea? The daughter says: His grandfather was a Jew! The mother says: Who told you that? The daughter says: I had a vision in which Father came out of his grave… The mother says: And so…? The daughter says: I called a few relatives, Aunt Franza, she knew about it! The mother says: What did Franza know? The daughter says: Not much, she told me about Jakob Brenner from Poland… The mother says: Who is Jakob Brenner? The daughter says: My great-grandfather! He must have been Jewish. The mother says: I wouldn’t be so sure! The daughter says: Did you know about Jakob? Did you ever speak about it? The mother says: I’ve never heard of him! I didn’t know anything! We never spoke about it! The daughter says: Franza says that Jakob was baptized!

171 The mother says: (relieved) Thank goodness, there you are! He was baptized!

Scene fourteen portrays the mother-figure in a dream sequence, dancing on a red carpet in a narrow corridor of mirrors. She is dressed in a 1950s silk ball gown which she has expertly sewn herself during many nights’ work. Brenner interjects autobiographical elements, quoting what her father used to say in relation to his wife:

‘Meine Frau hat goldene Hände’, and, ‘Darf ich meine bessere Hälfte vorstellen?’ The lines construct an apotheosis of the wife and leave her imprisoned by clichéd compliments. In the dream, the wife / mother-figure remains in the corridor hoping that something will happen, that somebody will come for her and lead her out of the frightening narrowness of the corridor into the freedom of the big wide world, where she can be admired in public. She is a woman who has internalised the patriarchal principle, who refuses any agency outside of the roles allotted to her. Elsewhere, in a recorded dialogue, she describes her years as a member of Hitler’s Bund Deutscher

Mädchen (League of German Girls) as the best ones of her youth because of the organised programme of activities and the companionship of the collective. She protests, ‘[w]ir haben von nichts gewusst, und hinterher sollten wir auch noch die

Schuld tragen!’ A displaced sense of guilt, however, at being a member of the Nazis’ chosen race, is expressed in the dream by the threat of engulfment. The other main figures who feature in the collection of scripted scenes are two sister-figures, based on

Eva Brenner herself and her younger sister, Monika Anzellini. The Brenner-figure always seeks engagement and answers in relation to the issues in question whereas the younger sister figure, on the other hand, frequently resists, wanting to leave matters rest.

A further layer was added to the stratigraphy by the cast and crew, all of whom, as it transpired early in the working process, had either Eastern European or

172 Southern European ancestors. It became clear that the existence of the latter had been denied or played down in the respective families during the Third Reich, and that members of the cast were directly affected by their family’s personal history of the

Second World War. At the beginning of the rehearsal period in January 2003, the ensemble members were encouraged by the directorial team to take the fragmentary sketch of Jakob as an impulse to reflect on their own biographies. Importance was attached to personal associations regarding the proposition ‘that one’s blood and soul are mixed and not “pure”’, be it Aryan or other’. Together the ensemble was to investigate and attempt to find answers to the questions: ‘Who am I?’, ‘Where do I come from?’ and ‘How did I become who I am?’ (PTS-documentation). In keeping with Eva Brenner’s interest in the use of the personal biography in performance, cast members were to be invited to work elements of their own histories into the preparatory improvisations and ultimately the performance work. Brenner explains her interest in this approach to performance (Interview, 2005):

Ich suche jetzt seit Jahren die Möglichkeit, wie ich erstens rauskomme aus dem reinen Rollenspiel des Theatralischen und was wir die Emanzipation des Schauspielers nennen, dass der Schauspieler sich aktiv in den Prozess einbringt. Also, dass ich als Regisseurin eine Spielleiterin bin oder Animateurin oder Dinge ermögliche oder zur Verfügung stelle, entwickele von Strukturen, aber nicht sage, was passiert, ich wähl dann aus, oder wenn Angebote kommen, leite ich oder lenke ich das, aber ich glaube nicht dran, dass ich den Leuten, gerade bei so einem sensibelen Thema, vorschreiben sollte oder könnte: sag das oder jenes oder zeig das oder jenes. Und eine Form der Emanzipation im Theater, glaube ich, ist schon dieses radikale sich in Beziehung setzten persönlich zu einem Thema.

This idea further underlines the notion of theatre as memory-work, I would argue, where performance becomes performative, in the sense proposed by J. L. Austin in

How to Do Things with Words. The cast member is thus not ‘merely’ performing in that moment but perhaps also altering something in their own state of consciousness and that of others witnessing the performance through the act of testifying to

173 something relevant and sensitive in their biography, to speak with Archbishop

Desmond Tutu (in Farber, 2008: 7), ‘for there is a capacity to heal the human heart in the act not only of speaking – but in finally being heard’. Clearly this kind of material has to be treated with sensitivity for the sake of the theatre work and all concerned, actor and spectator alike, and the challenge is to find an appropriate form to give it expression. Maren Rahmann, a performer who has worked with Brenner over an extended period of time, discusses in interview the complexities of introducing such a performance element (Rahmann, 2005):

Es ist nicht einfach, find ich, das rüberzubringen, entweder es wird zu sentimental, das kommt auch vor, ja wenn jemand wirklich in der Erinnerung in Tränen ausbricht, verliert es für mich diesen Performance-Charakter, wenn ich’s nur erzähle, hat es sowas Drüberstehendes, es ist irgendwas dazwischen. Ich erzähle eine Erinnerung ich versuche, mich zurückzuerinnern, ich vergess nicht, dass ich den Abstand habe.

Extracts from ensemble members’ reflections on their personal biographies were recorded in the documentation: Axel Bagatsch, a German, explained that he has no Jewish roots, that his mother was a Sudeten-German and one of the

‘Volksdeutschen’ who had been driven out of their home region directly after the war.

He and his sister were deeply affected by this circumstance as their mother tended to burden them on a regular basis with accounts of how much she had suffered and continued to suffer as a result of being exiled at the age of 14. When he began to engage with the Jewish question, then, however, he was readily able to relate to the issue of homelessness. The Polish member of the cast, Agnieszka Salamon, remarks that although the Jewish culture in Poland was destroyed as a result of the Holocaust, this culture was so deeply rooted in all of Europe that traces of it are present in all

Europeans. Stephanie Wächter, an Austrian, whose aunt and uncle were killed in a concentration camp, explained that her first thoughts centred on the question of the difference between guilt and the collective unconsciousness. While she distanced

174 herself from a personal guilt, at the same time she felt very much part of the collective unconsciousness that continues unaltered if it is not reappraised. She adds that this process of self-questioning forms one stone in the mosaic, as Fascism can begin in everyone. Maren Rahmann, a German, expressed her discomfort at how the past is made taboo, how guilt in one’s own family never gets spoken about. She added that there were so many who took the easy path and went along with the fascist regime and did not discover until later what was really going on. She remarks on how much more difficult it is to see oneself in this light as opposed to seeing oneself as a victim.

Daniel Kundi, an Austrian, suddenly discovered a year before rehearsals began that his father was Jewish. He wanted to use the performance as an incentive to talk to his father about this. Clemens Matzka, an Austrian, identifies with the search for the great-grandfather, as he is still searching for his own family. He discovered as a teenager that his paternal grandparents were not his biological grandparents that his father had been adopted. Barbara Liebhart, an Austrian, finds the whole area frightening, would like to have a meaningful talk with her relatives whose parents were killed in concentration camps, but doesn’t feel she has the right to and does not know how to formulate the questions.

Lee Breuer, co-founder of the internationally renowned New York avant-garde theatre company Mabou Mines, added further layers to the stratigraphy. One of

America’s foremost experimental authors and theatre practitioners, Breuer is world- renowned for his productions of the theatre of Samuel Beckett, who wrote pieces of theatre for Breuer and his company. Other landmark productions include ‘Ecco

Porco’, a review of 30 years’ work with Mabou Mines, and his Broadway production

‘Peter and Wendy’, an adaptation of the story of Peter Pan. He has received numerous awards including the prestigious Mac Arthur-Foundation Grant for his life’s work.

175 The fundamental principle that informs all of Breuer’s work is ‘that “high” and “low” and “seriousness” and “entertainment” are not aesthetic antitheses and that popular forms project a vitality rarely duplicated by high art’ (Foreman, 2005: 142). Drawing frequently on elements of other theatre cultures, particularly Asian ones, Breuer’s work has a strong intercultural emphasis. In an interview with Gerald Rabkin

(1984:1), Breuer tells the interviewer, for instance, that he ‘is more and more interested in the musical support of dialogue’ and that is why he is particularly interested in Japanese theatre: ‘[i]n the Noh and Kabuki, the narration is basically sung and the drama is interspersed’. In answer to Rabkin’s question about interculturalism in theatre and the loan from one culture to another Breuer replies:

I am desperately trying to develop an overview of what it means to be working interculturally in the theatre. There are a lot of underviews. They fall in the pattern of either I love the world and the world loves me, let’s all get together and party interculturally, or, the notion of Western cultural imperialism – that we are ripping off every cultural icon we can get hold of, and then selling it.

Josette Féral (1996) refers to Breuer’s reservations on the one hand regarding the ultimate purpose of interculturalism and his belief on the other hand that ‘cultures can be shared without its power being taken away in the process of the exchange’.

4.2 Aesthetic and formal approaches

The proposed style and methods used to approach the performance work are documented by the company: The aim was to develop ‘a new style of commemorative acting’ employing a synthesis of forms to create a ‘poetically dense, spirited, lyrical, musical and humorous play with grotesque, ironic, and deconstructivist elements’

(PTS-documentation). The choral work was to be central to the creation of this style:

The actors working in groups of 2 and 3 would portray one character sometimes speaking in chorus – like Balinese puppets linked together. This form of choral work

176 is an adaptation of Balinese dance forms which Breuer has developed during years of rehearsals following a period of studying traditional forms in Asia. Three actors representing different, sometimes conflicting, aspects of the same figure maintain bodily contact with one another while speaking sometimes in chorus, sometimes over one another, sometimes in succession. The signification is multi-layered, working on the levels of poetry, music, dance and psychology. The intention was also to employ a simultaneity of old and new epic performance techniques à la Meyerhold and Brecht, a split between psychologically motivated acting and performance art, including commentary in speech and gesture, supported by dance and live-music. The devising process would also draw on post-modern dance forms such as Pedestrian Movement,

Contact Improvisation, Six Viewpoints of Performance and Presence Work. Personal narrations were to be used in combination with the latest developments in motivational acting, influenced by Strasberg, Meisner, Breuer and others, to explore both specific characters in the play and epic personae who comment on their own

‘physical actions’ and emotions. The overall model was to be the theatre of Tadeusz

Kantor (1915 – 1990), a Polish visual artist and theatre director, who founded the theatre company Cricot 2 in Kraków in 1955. As British director Katie Mitchell writes

(in Kylander-Clark, 2001: 12), ‘To the British observer, Kantor’s work is startling and opaque, but Polish audiences are accustomed to decoding what is allusive, visual and not literal’. Given the subject matter of the Breuer/Brenner production, this would seem like an appropriate formal and aesthetic approach to apply to the theatre work.

Furthermore, there is a link between the memory-work at the core of the production and the key concerns that informed Kantor’s theatre work: According to Jan Kott (in

Kylander-Clark, 2001: 12) Kantors’s theatre is ‘one that is concerned with the juxtaposition of memory and forgetting, life and death’:

177 Kantor’s theatre renders visible the shadow cast by a world that has been forever effaced and can return only at odd times when doggedly summoned by the importuning of memory.

The rehearsal and devising process began in January 2003, but in spite of the carefully planned working process, which spanned a period of roughly five years, a few weeks into rehearsal Brenner became dissatisfied with how Breuer was dealing with the material. As she admitted herself, it was probably inevitable that she should react like this given the personal and sensitive nature of the material she had scripted and the fact that most of her family members portrayed in the work were still alive.

What she felt was Breuer’s irreverent and frivolous handling of the material, his emphasis on drill, choreography, and timing was not what she had envisaged. She felt he was too distanced from the theme and indifferent to cast members’ individual experiences,80 to the fact that for her as an Austrian the past was still present, and that there were still so many skeletons left in people’s cupboards. Breuer was unhappy about the fact that his approach was being questioned, and the production was almost cancelled. Fortunately, however, they decided on a compromise and that was a two- part performance: using the same performers, less one, and drawing on the same body of textual material, the same set and musical resources, a separate piece was to be devised and directed by Eva Brenner and presented directly after Lee Breuer’s piece.

4.3 Performance Analysis

Breuer’s mise-en-scène drew on the following text fragments from Brenner’s scripted material: the first was entitled ‘The Suitcase’ in which the daughter asks the mother to allow her access to her father’s papers, contained in a suitcase in the attic.

The daughter explains about her vision and Jakob, and finally persuades the mother to

80 Breuer did not, for example, choose to integrate any elements of individual cast members’ biographical details relating to the themes of the piece.

178 let her have the suitcase. She takes it home and covers it with an African quilt, only opening it months later to discover the documents mentioned above. The second is entitled ‘The Kitchen’, a scene depicting the four female members of the household around the kitchen table – mother, two daughters and ‘Aunt Lala’, the housekeeper.

The atmosphere is cheerful, everyone enjoying the fresh bread Aunt Lala has brought with her, the preserves, coffee and boiled eggs. Suddenly the father’s footsteps are heard in the corridor and the women’s voices fall quiet. Father pushes open the door abruptly, switches on the bright light, stands in the doorway surveying the scene but says nothing. The convivial atmosphere is destroyed: the oldest daughter leaves the table in anger, her breakfast unfinished, and Aunt Lala gets up hurriedly to do chores.

The third is entitled: ‘Where are you going? To the Westbahnhof!’,which treats of the father’s odd habit of spending Sunday mornings as the western railway station in

Vienna. The fourth is ‘The apple Tree’. Again this scene presents an image of the father as a figure in self-imposed isoloation but who tries to get the attention of his female family members and exert his power as the patriarch: the mother and her friends are sitting chatting in the garden in the midday sun; the daughters are playing.

Suddenly father emerges from his study and stands in the doorway, pale-skinned and shading himself from the sun. When noone pays him any attention, he strides up to a small apple tree – planted by the mother – that has just begun to bear fruit, picks one of the small apples, holds it up and announces to the company, ‘I have harvested!’

The fifth depicts the father’s burial in the Catholic area of the Viennese cemetery, a large-scale, pompous affair almost resembling a state funeral. The sixth scene, entitled

‘The Vision’, features Brenner’s experience at the meditation seminar as outlined above, and the final scene was written by Brenner’s sister Monika Anzellini, in which she describes going to see her older sister in her small third-floor apartment to hear

179 about her vision and her plans for the theatre project. Anzellini expresses her aversion to what she perceives as her sister’s obsession with their father. She does not want to open up the old wounds, would rather not get involved.

The set, which was completely white, was created by architect Walter

Lauterer: an hermetically sealed and yet permeable visual memory landscape on three sides (the fourth wall was made up of the audience, seated in a single row before the performers) made entirely of strips of white medical elastic bandaging fixed at the floor and the ceiling, a ‘memory box’ connecting with the father, Wilhelm Brenner, who was a medical doctor and a dentist. The soundtrack was presented in two modes, one a pre-recorded, experimental electronic score, and the other a live and interactive accompaniment with accordion, cello and percussion, as briefly outlined above. The live music also contained elements of Klezmer, in keeping with the Eastern Jewish theme of the piece. Klezmer, which originated in the Jewish ghettos of Eastern

Europe, is characterized by its adaptability to the pace, rhythm and mood of the situation at hand and its improvisatory quality.

All of the approaches to the theatrical work outlined above were present in

Breuer’s mise-en-scène: drawing on Brenner’s texts, comical, grotesque and serious elements were all juxtaposed within the various sequences. The performers frequently worked linked together in twos and threes, sometimes portraying different aspects of the same character. Two of Wilhelm Brenner’s guises, soldier and family man, for example, were portrayed by two male performers linked together wearing different hats, a trilby and a Wehrmacht soldier’s hat. In the sequence drawing on ‘The

Kitchen’, the female figures sing in chorus to a ‘cello accompaniment, describing the happy scene at the breakfast table. Suddenly an over-sized silhouette of the two- headed father-figure appears projected onto the white surface of the set from behind.

180 The female four figures immediately sink onto all fours whispering the rest of the narrative as they drag the cellist on the floor across the performing space behind them.

‘Aunt Lala’ brings up the rear, subserviently scrubing the floor behind them. Once they have exited the set, the shadow-play continues with the four female figures – as much smaller projections – running girlishly to the comparatively enormous father- figure projection, who places one of his four hands on each of their heads. The effect is of the controlling partriarch dominating his infantilized women-folk. The impressionistic portraits gave theatrical form to the elusive question of personal identity, which was central to the piece, while at the same time exploring Breuer’s questions relating to the father.

The choric element characterised the performance style throughout as figures narrated and/or sang the narration in unison while they embodied the action. In an early sequence, for instance, three female performers narrated in unison the passage in

Brenner’s script which details the contents of the father’s suitcase. As they narrated they danced seductively, pinning (authentic) photos to their breasts and buttocks. The scene took on an incestuous orgiastic element when they were joined by a father- figure dressed in a Nazi Wehrmacht uniform, who proceeded to do a striptease, a daughter-figure taking his belt in her mouth. The sequence ended with the father as a ridiculous figure sitting on a chamber pot and wiping himself with pieces of torn newspaper that were handed to him through the porous membrane framing the performance space, frustrated by the gleeful laughter of watching hidden others. The effect of having three female embodiments of the daughter, narrating in unison, was to amplify the significance of revealing elements of the father’s identity that had hitherto been secret. The spectator’s eye could shift to and fro from one figure to the next, all dressed identically but with very individual qualities, and each narrator’s

181 embodiment seemed to add a different layer to the narrative, taking it beyond the level of one personal history. The seductive movements of the daughter-figures and the father-figure’s striptease created a parallel visual narrative, which suggested that the father had compromised his integrity, that is, prostituted himself to the Nazis.

The role of music was also important and was used as an associative trigger for memory and as a counterpoint to the action of the scenes. In the scene just referred to above, for example, the performers moved to a version of Pachelbel’s Canon with a rhythmic percussive layer that lent it a sensuous character. This added a further layer of irony to the visual narrative, given that the Canon is generally associated with positive events (specifically weddings, and graduation ceremonies in the USA). In the following sequence, which related to Jakob and his birthplace Radziszów, five of the performers silently created and animated together a violin-playing puppet out of newspapers that first danced to the directions of the Polish performer, portraying a kind of stereotypical folk-dancing Pole. The sound score added to the visual image to create a new narrative: the Canon became distorted as the puppet began to tremble, a threatening percussive element was added, a haunting Klezmer sequence superimposed, and suddenly the comical scene evolved into something sinister and disturbing.

The very physical character of the performance, the use of the chorus and cabaretistic elements with live music – accordion and percussion – gave a Brechtian /

Meyerholdian tone to the performance. The overall feel of the piece, however, was

Kantoresque: the projection of a cruel circus, the audience ‘suspended between voiced and choked laughter’ (The Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor, Facets Video, 1991), and the use of puppetry and ‘poor’ objects, such as the suitcase.81 For Kantor an entity could

81 Kantor was interested in the ‘worn, unusable object’, because it ‘is available for art’, the object that ‘lies between eternity and the garbage’ (The Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor). Also, the intention for the piece - to measure the effects of the past in the present - are in keeping with Kantor’s theatre: ‘Kantor’s

182 contain side by side ‘barbarity and subtlety, tragedy and coarse laughter’ and ‘the more marked the contrasts the more the entity is palpable’. He also sought a democracy of sorts for the theatrical event in maintaining that ‘all elements of the representation are staged as equals: actors, spectators, text, stage, (poor) objects’ (The

Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor, Facets Video, 1991). In a sequence relating to the father’s mysterious Sunday mornings at the Wiener Westbahnhof, umbrellas were used to powerful effect, for instance, to portray military tanks and gunfire: an audio- recording of excerpts from Winston Churchill’s 1945 victory speech form a background to the sequence, another figure Brenner’s father admired. The sequence is both comical and farcical on the one hand and poignant on the other, the double male figure enacting a sort of slap-stick chaplinesque routine, while at the same time conveying a sense of the figure’s vulnerability. The father’s many personae – democrat, intellectual, medical doctor, Renaissance man, able politician, tourist, conquerer etc. – are declared by an actor representing him, who is conveyed across the space by bodies rolling beneath him, suggesting again a military tank and again presenting an image of the father as both ridiculous and vulnerable. The apple tree scene begins with choral singing of the narrative, one actor then breaking away to continue the story supported by gestures. The chorus’s note is held at the end after the father figure has announced that he has harvested, while apples are passed around to all of the performers. The sequence ends with everyone biting into an apple and

‘dying’ instantly, leading neatly into the funeral sequence, the father-figure remaining

‘dead’ on the ground while the others get up.

Breuer’s montage began and ended with a story-telling sequence: at the opening a daughter-figure was curled up in the embrace of a father-figure reading her theatre experiments and his chronicling of the official and unofficial history of the twentieth century are a testimony to his belief that theatre is an answer to reality rather than a representation of it’ (Kobialka, in Mitter and Shevtsova, 2005: 74).

183 a bedtime story; she recited elements of the story along with her father, as with a favourite story that she has learned by heart. Only this story happened to be the narrative in Brenner’s script of the tense exchange with her mother that ends with the handing over of the suitcase. The final sequences portrayed a pompous funeral, narrated by a daughter-figure in drag complete with a blonde wig and large sunglasses. Following this sequence three figures raised the father-figure’s ‘dead body’, puppet-like, from the ground and walked it towards the daughter-figure in drag who lay sleeping on the ground. In this sequence, which portrayed Brenner’s dream or vision in which her father rises from his grave to address her, the father-figure uttered his apology and request, picked up the daughter-figure and the scene returned to the story-telling mode seen at the beginning of the piece. The bedtime story that was told at the end concerns the two sisters and was taken from Monika Anzellini’s scripted version of her conversation with older sister conducted after the latter’s vision. And so the piece ends with a representation of the event that triggered the initial impulse to engage in the memory-work, creating a fitting circularity. We are reminded of

Benjamin’s advocacy of a concept of history whose site is ‘time filled by the presence of the now’, because the call for remembrance, whatever form it takes, must be blasted again and again out of the continuum of history if we are to ‘improve our position in the struggle against Fascism’ (1982: 259).

Brenner’s mise-en-scène drew on some of the same scripted material – the suitcase scene, the vision and the funeral – but also on some different scenes: the dream of her mother threatened with engulfment in the corridor of mirrors, a joke about Jews that her father used to tell, before which he would always laugh uncontrollably and which was always followed by an awkward silence, a scene between the two sisters, but from the older sister’s point of view, and a scene in which

184 the father relives and recounts his brief period in the African desert. This mise-en- scène also used ‘found texts’ such as Elfriede Gerstl’s poem ‘Wer ist denn schon?’, which in a subtle play of repetition and ellipsis asks the question, who of us is at home with ourselves.This second piece opened with the five ensemble members – each carrying a suitcase – in transit, moving around the performance space on a grid, speaking Gerstl’s verse:

Wer ist denn schon? Wer ist denn schon bei sich? Wer ist denn schon zuhause? Wer ist denn schon zuhause bei sich? Wer ist denn schon zuhause, wenn er bei sich ist?

The poem echoed, both on the level of text and content, the themes of fragmentedness and the ever-elusive answer to the search for identity that informed the theatre work.

The suitcases, which connected to the father, containing clues, shards, shreds of evidence, served also as objects for exploration and space and body improvisations.

There was frequently more than one focus of attention in the space, individual performers occupied with individual explorations. Brenner’s account of her vision was rendered by a father-figure following a daughter-figure through the space urging her to do this ‘it’ that he had not been able to do. The ‘Jewish’ joke was told in varying renditions, but none ever reached the punch line: one figure cried her way through it; another stumbled through it forgetting the details. Another began a comical

Chaplinesque rendition, which he stepped out of mid-way to insert a fragment of personal biography asking the audience – as himself the actor Daniel Kundi – to imagine suddenly finding out as an adult that your father was Jewish, not having had any inkling of this previously. The contrast between the two modes of performance and the abrupt shift from one to the other, arrested the flow of the performance and confronted the spectator with herself in an instant, a moment of ‘Jetztzeit blasted out of the continuum’, we could say with Benjamin (1982: 263), or an act of disturbance.

185 The act of confiding in the audience, to speak with Yael Farber (in Stuart Fischer,

2009) created ‘an intimacy and accountability with the audience’.

The dream about the beautiful young trophy wife, imprisoned by her fear of autonomy and her role in the marriage, was narrated by an epic figure who danced while representing gesturally what she was narrating. Her ‘goldene Hände’, encased in white elbow-length gloves, were held high over her head in a contorted position, almost as though handcuffed, underlying how she was trapped in her husband’s apotheosis. The fond recollections of her time in the Bund Deutscher Mädchen, in the collective, with all the other girls in white dresses, were disrupted by sounds of warfare in the recorded soundscape, causing her to momentarily take fright and lose her train of thought and rhythm. The disruptions served to create a sense of suppressed feelings of guilt and an attitude of avoidance and looking away.

This second performance piece ended in a very moving and arresting sequence: a father-figure pressed the suitcase on a daughter-figure, who took it and after considering it for a moment, opened it up, turning it towards the audience as the lights faded to black. The inside of the top of the case was covered with a white surface onto which an old black and white video clip was projected showing Wilhelm

Brenner playing delightedly with his infant daughter, Eva Brenner. Although mediated by the camera and ‘fixed’, it was another moment of ‘Jetztzeit’ in the performance, underlying the importance of the memory-work.

The spectator was free to connect the two pieces in whichever way she saw fit.

This circumstance was involuntarily productive, as it served to underline the archaeological aspect of devised performance: two different dramaturgies and assemblages of the material that had been excavated yielded two different images of the storytellers. It underlined the fact that, as Pearson and Shanks (2001: 56) argue,

186 ‘there is never a complete and definite picture’ and served to deconstruct any notion of objectivity. The two pieces shared stylistic elements: the use of puppets, the choric and epic elements, a tension between speech, gesture, music and/or percussion and of textual elements. The essential difference was in the mood: Brenner’s section was quieter, more meditative, the contrasts between ‘barbarity and subtlety, tragedy and coarse laughter’ not as marked, as compared with the emotionally distanced, faster moving, and more tightly choreographed quality of Breuer’s mise en scène.

The refusal in either piece to suggest meaning acted as a catalyst for the audience. As a spectator I found myself being drawn into the memory-work, bringing my own memory processes to bear, adding my shards and fragments to the respective dramaturgies, and thus becoming a co-creator of meaning. During the scene outlined from Breuer’s mise-en-scène for instance, in which the performers silently created a puppet out of newspaper I had a shattering moment of Jetztzeit, which haunted me for a long time after seeing the piece: Paul Celan’s poem Todesfuge (Death Fugue) emerged from my memory to complete this fragment: ‘Er ruft spielt süsser den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland / er ruft streicht dunkler die Geigen dann steigt ihr als Rauch in die Luft. dann habt ihr ein Grab in den Wolken da liegt man nicht eng’ (‘He shouts play death more sweetly this Death is a master from

Deutschland / he shouts scrape your strings darker you’ll rise up as smoke to the sky / you’ll then have a grave in the clouds where you won’t lie too cramped’) (Felstiner,

2001: 31-33). In the now of the live performance, in a joining of the energetic bodies of the performers with my own, Celan’s poem, with which I have been familiar for a very long time, was unlocked for me in a totally new and unique way, letting me understand the responsibility of accountability on another level. For me this amounted to something in the realm of an intervention in my own history. The puppet also

187 jogged my memory of Primo Levi’s account in his testimonial work If this is a Man of the experience of being transformed into a concentration camp prisoner in

Auschwitz: ‘There is nowhere to look in a mirror, but our appearance stands in front of us, reflected in a hundred livid faces, in a hundred miserable and sordid puppets’

(Levi, 2005a: 32).

The title of the piece might suggest to the spectator that Jakob, symbolic of

Eastern Europe’s lost Jewry, would be a significant figure in the performance. He was represented by a newspaper puppet in the first mise-en-scène and not at all directly in the second and was therefore conspicuous by his absence; there was a gap where he should have been, symbolic of the void left behind by the annihilation of Eastern

Europe’s Jewish population. This gap found expression in the open grave of his grandson in his great granddaughter’s vision, a wound in the earth crying out, calling for remembrance and for us, the subsequent generations, to remain in a state of wakefulness. The gap resonates with what Rolf Tiedeman (in Adorno, 2003: xiii) refers to as the ‘rupture that civilization has experienced’, referring to what took place in Auschwitz during WWII, Auschwitz as synecdochic of the entire Nazi project. This rupture does not allow for any assignation of meaning or construction of narratives, as that might lead to some kind of interpretation, which in turn might allow us to draw a line under that chapter of history and forget it. As such Searching for Jacob is a valid answer to Benjamin’s call ‘to bring about a real state of emergency’, the fragmented nature of the two-part performance bespeaking its open-endedness as ‘a project against forgetting’ and its status as work-in-progress.

188 CHAPTER FIVE

Pola, a piece of bi-lingual – German/Polish – theatre, was devised by the Projekt

Theater Studio and performed in November / December 2002 at the Projekt Theater

Studio, Burggasse 38 in Vienna. In creating this piece of theatre the company drew on two main literary sources: the short story ‘Pola’ by the Polish author and journalist

Hanna Krall (1937 -) from her collection entitled Da ist kein Fluss mehr / There, there won’t be another River / Tam juz nie ma zadnej rzeki (1998), for which she was awarded the Leipziger Buchpreis in March 2000. The second was Beckett’s dance or movement piece for Television - ‘Fernsehballett’ - Quad or Quadrat 1 + 2, in its original German title. Central to Krall’s short story, based on true facts outlined in

Christopher Browning’s historical account (2001: 125-6) Ordinary Men – Reserve

Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, and Daniel Goldhagen’s

Hitler’s Willing Executioners is the eponymous protagonist Pola or Apolonia

Machczyńska, a Polish woman who concealed 25 Jews under the floorboards of her house on the outskirts of Kock, in the district of Lublin, Western Poland, in the spring of 1943. Pola was betrayed by a Jewish neighbour, who hoped to save her own and her children’s lives by doing so, hunted down by members of the Police Batallion 101 and shot together with some of the Jews she had sheltered. The policeman, ordered at gunpoint to shoot Pola, had been her lover and she was pregnant by him at the time of her death. The Reserve Police Batallion 101 consisted of middle-aged family men of working- and lower-middle-class background from the city of Hamburg. Considered too old to be of use to the German army they had been drafted instead into the Order

Police, the Ordnungspolizei or Orpo. Most were raw recruits with no previous experience in German occupied territory (Browning, 2001:1). They were first sent to

189 Poland in 1939 as part of Hitler and Himmler’s demographic scheme to ‘germanise’ the occupied regions; this involved expelling all Poles and so-called ‘undesireables’, that is, Jews and Gypsies into central Poland, and repatriating and ‘resettling’ ethnic

Germans from the Soviet territory in the evacuated farms and apartments of the Poles

(Browning, 2001: 39). By 1942, the year in which the story is set, Himmler’s ‘final solution’, that is to exterminate the Jews, was being implemented, and Batallion 101 was given the task of rounding up the Jews in their villages in the district of Lublin and murdering them in nearby woods in sessions that sometimes lasted up to seventeen hours. This chapter analyses how the dramaturgy was shaped in response to the literary sources and how Krall’s text itself featured as a performer in the piece. I will consider some of the adaptation issues in the light of Linda Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation (2006), first examining the sources the piece of theatre drew on and then going on to discuss the adaptation for theatre. The adaptation by the Projekt

Theater Studio also allowed for a consideration of the idea of the text as performer in the piece.

5.1 Literary Sources

Quad, first transmitted in Germany by Süddeutscher Rundfunk in 1982 under the title Quadrat 1 + 2, is a piece for four players, light and percussion. I quote from the outline offered in The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett: 472):

Four figures, each in pastel djellabas, appear to describe a quadrangle to a rapid, polyrhythmic percussion, then depart in sequence. Each describes half the quad, but abruptly avoids the centre, turning to the left, like Dante’s damned. The action first seems comic, as characters rush toward a central collision, avoided by abrupt turns, but ‘something terrifying’ emerges. The pattern repeats, from one to four participants, then back to one, then none in an oscillation, crescendo, and diminuendo that shatters whatever comic possibilites were anticipated. The effect is of prescribed, determined, enforced, motion.

190 This describes the original Quadrat 1. Quadrat 2 is of a considerably slower tempo and the colour is monochrome. Like much of Beckett’s work, Quad represents a central tension between the futility of human existence and endeavour, on the one hand, and the imperative to keep going on, on the other. Beckett’s choreography is reminiscent of Kasimir Malevich’s revolutionary painting from 1918 ‘White Square on White Background’ and could be said to be an adaptation in itself, a transcoding from visual art to performance mode of Malevich’s representation of modernity.

A main point of interest for the Polish writer Hanna Krall in her work is the disappearance of the Jews in Europe and the after-effects in the present of WWII. She has gathered stories by interviewing countless survivors of the Holocaust in Europe,

North America, Canada, Israel, always ending her readings with the request that people tell her stories: ‘Erzählen sie mir eine Geschichte. Eine wahre…wichtige… eine fremde oder was über sich selbst..’ and with these stories she creates literary documents (PTS-documentation). Pola, from her collection, Da ist kein Fluss mehr /

There, There Won’t be Another River / Tam juz nie ma zadnej rzeki (1998) is a montage of 15 brief chapters in 17 pages, which draws together several strands of narrative in a non-linear mode. All of the motifs that are central to Krall’s prose are present in this short text: persecution of the Jews, the role of Poles, Jews and

Germans, during and after the war, crime and its origins, resistance and collaboration, love and the quotidian (PTS-documentation). Apart from the heroism and bravery of the central figure of Pola, who is betrayed and murdered on account of her attempt to conceal 25 Jews from the Nazi occupiers, also portrayed is the insolence of the SS officers during their occupation of Poland, the cruelty but also vulnerability of individual German police officers of the Reserve Battalion 101, the silence of Pola’s neighbours who choose not to see other than from behind their curtains, Pola’s father

191 who when given the choice of his life or his daughter’s surrenders his daughter, Pola’s children who are left orphaned, the young pregnant German wife of a police officer who stands by in the heat for an entire day watching executions over which her husband presides, the troupe of travelling performers from Berlin who ask to be allowed to take a turn at shooting Jews. We also get a sketch of the tragic love story between Pola and her assassin. Krall writes with a remarkable economy and simplicity of language, the writing style blending a mixture of journalism, documentary and poetry. The narrator keeps herself very much out of the way and the tone is almost laconic in its complete absence of pathos. This style has the effect of the figures retaining a sense of mystery, which allows them to take on a universal quality, almost parable-like. The simplicity of the language is deceptive, however: the narrative is constantly disrupted as the various threads of the story are interwoven, so that the reading experience is one of going back and forth between the fragments to get a complete picture of the story. This structure, which includes abrupt shifts to the present to include references to Browning and Goldhagen’s texts, generates a certain dynamic or magnetic field that endows all the figures and events depicted in the story with a searing quality. The narrative voice has something of the quality of

Lanzmann’s ‘blind gaze’, a refusal of ‘psychological understanding’. There is no sense of resolution at the end the narrative, that the events have been relegated to the past. It calls to mind Benjamin’s (1982: 265) idea of the materialst historian who:

stops telling the sequence of the events like the beads of a rosary. Instead, he grasps the constellation which his own era has formed with a definite earlier one. Thus he establishes a conception of the present as the ‘time of the now’ which is shot though with chips of Messianic time.

Although the story-line is clear, the fragments of the text somehow resist integration and the reader has the impulse to revisit, pick up the threads and try to piece it all together. This effort evokes, as it were, the greater issue of trying to come

192 to grips with the Holocaust and the central question: how was it possible? This question is framed in the narrative in the context of these ordinary middle-aged policemen who came to massacre thousands of innocent victims in the woods in

Poland (Krall, 2001: 23), ‘[w]arum waren normale Hamburger Bürger, zu alt für die

Front, zu Mördern geworden?’ The narrator leaves the reader suspended between the two polarised viewpoints of Browning and Goldhagen:

Weil sie Deutsche waren, und den Deutschen wurde der Hass gegen die Juden jahrhundertelang beigebracht, gibt Daniel Goldhagen in seinem Buch zur Antwort. Weil sie Menschen waren, und jeden Menschen kann man zum Mörder machen, antwortet Christopher Browning.

A dialectic is established which functions as a provocation and an appeal to the reader’s accountability. The events are not just reflected in the narrative; the reader – an ordinary person – is called upon to consider the question how ordinary men could have become mass murderers. The important thing, we could argue, is not to find a simple answer to the question, as Daniel Goldhagen does, but to keep meditating on the question and remain awake to the dangers of history repeating itself. Here again we could invoke Benjamin’s call for a state of emergency, and Levi’s directive in his testimonial work of literature, ‘[m]editate that this came about’.

If the reader is left struggling to take a position on the central question, out of the centre of the ‘magnetic field’ of the text emerge two very vivid and poetic images that also function as metaphors in the text: through a gap in the floor boards – sighted by Pola’s young sons – the image of the 25 Jews concealed in Pola’s cellar: ‘Unter unserm Fußboden sitzen irgendwelche Leute…’ (Krall, 2001: 19), could be said to function as a metaphor for the repressed memories, the silence and the refusal of many to engage with the past. Another image presented to the reader is the heart of a

Jew discovered under the melting ice by children playing by the lake in the springtime

193 after Pola and the Jews are murdered. One of the Jewish victims is buried there after first being dragged on a cord behind the sledge that conveys Pola and the others to their place of execution:

In der Grube erblickten sie Teile eines menschlichen Rumpfes. ‘Das sind Rippen’ sagte der Fischer. Daneben lag etwas Längliches, Rötlichblaues, das aussah wie zwei gefaltete Hände. ‘Das ist ein Herz’, sagte der Fischer. ‘Wem mag das gehören?’ ‘Einem Juden’ sagte einer der Jungs. ‘Dem, den sie vom Schlitten abgeschnitten haben’. ‘Das Herz von einem Juden’, sagte der Mann, hob den Sack an und schüttete die toten Fische in die Grube (Krall, 2001: 27).

The heart of the Jew re-emerging, returning unexpectedly from a hole in the earth, preserved by the ice, could be said to function as a metaphor for the wound or trauma left behind by the annihilation of Eastern Europe’s Jewry. Here we can invoke

Freud’s writing on trauma, the idea of the return linked to trauma and his interpretation of the parable of wound referred to in Chapter Two, the idea that trauma

‘is always the story of a wound that cries out, that addresses us in the attempt to tell us of a reality or truth that is not otherwise available’ (Caruth, 1996: 3).

We can conclude on the basis of the literary devices identified above that

Krall’s text would lend itself well to the shift from the ‘telling to showing mode’, that is, ‘from print to performance’ (Hutcheon, 2006: 38), the ‘leap from imagined and visualized literary text to the “directly perceived”’ (Hutcheon, 2006: 42), in that this text is not characterized by features that pose particular challenges in the transcoding process from prose to performance such as interior monologue, point of view, reflection, comment, irony, ambiguity. Transcoding print texts, as Hutcheon writes

(2006: 43), is not easy as ‘stage and screen must use indexical and iconic signs’, whereas ‘literature uses symbolic and conventional signs’. The very clear images and personae – apart from the central motifs – that emerge from the 15 brief chapters also

194 suggest that this text would be ‘adaptogenic’ (Hutcheon, 2006: 15) for performance mode. Brenner reinforced this argument in interview (2005):

Ja, die Bilder und die, ja man konnte den Text auch in Szenen aufteilen, also sie erzeugt in einer halben, auf einer drittel Seite, auf einer viertel Seite von einer halben Seite, in einem Paragraphen eindeutig ein Bild einer Zeit, eines Ortes, man sieht die Figuren, man sieht das Haus, man sieht den Weg dort, in dem Dorf, man sieht die Dunkelheit, die Dämmerung, das Eis, die Kinder, die dort fahren, man sieht das. Also das ist eine sehr bildliche Sprache und ich habe gedacht, das eignet sich sehr gut.

5.2 Adaptation and Context

Every adaptation has a context, as Hutcheon writes, (2006: 142): ‘[a]n adaptation, like the work it adapts, is always framed in a context – a time, a place, a society and a culture; it does not exist in a vacuum’. As mentioned above, Pola was devised and performed in the context of the ‘Polish year in Austria’ and also in this context a round-table discussion was organized by the Studio as a special event relating to the project. In discussion with members of the team were, among others,

Thomas Richards and Mario Biagini (Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas

Richards, Italy), Ludvik Flaszen (formerly dramaturge with Grotowski) and Jan

Tabaka (co-founder of the Gardzienice Centre in Poland). Tabaka and his wife

Susanna were also members of the cast of Pola, Susanna Tabaka a classically trained violinist who was largely responsible for the musical component of the piece.

As regards the political climate in Austria in the early years of the 21st

Century, the rise to power of the extreme right-wing Freedom party, who managed to secure an alarmingly high percentage of the votes (27%), was a source of concern to many in the ‘green’ 7th District of Vienna. In the microcosm of the company Eva

Brenner, the director, planned Pola as a precursor to Searching for Jacob which, as outlined above, related to her own family’s history with National Socialism and their

195 lost Eastern European Jewish roots. A key concern for all the members of the ensemble that was central to the piece of theatre they were creating was what Brenner identified in interview (2005) as the act of looking away that characterizes Austrian families:

Wir wollten versuchen dieses Wegschauen, das gerade in Österreich und Wien eines der Übel ist, als sehr bekannt in allen Familien, das kam in den Erzählungen mit den Schauspielern immer wieder vor, wie setzen wir das um?

As part of the adaptation and devising process, the five performers were furthermore invited by the directorial team, director (Brenner) and dramaturge (Bagatsch, who also played accordeon) to work elements of their personal biographies into the performance work, which were relevant to the thematic concerns of the piece, an approach that Brenner characterises as ‘the emancipation of the actor’, as discussed above in Chapter Four. (Two of the five performers ultimately chose to act on this invitation.) Two of the performers were Polish (Jan Tabaka and Susanna Tabaka), the rest Austrian (Clemens Matzka) or German (Maren Rahmann and Anna Wiederhold).

5.3 Performance Analysis

The performance space was divided into two areas – a quad in the middle of the space created by four rows of seats positioned facing out. Spaces were left at the corners of the square to enable the performers to move between the two areas. The audience was seated consequently with their backs to the quad. The other playing area was in front of the audience, a circular space, subtending the square. The audience therefore separated the two playing areas, and if they wanted to see what was happening in the central space they had to turn around in their seats. As regards the rest of the set, the space, as mentioned above, was a rectangular room, all painted white. Krall’s prose text, printed in blocks of type script on a continuous narrow band

196 of white paper, was mounted at eye-level along the four walls of the space, including the sliding door in one of the walls that led away from the performance space. The only other element of the set consisted of eight iron frames, two suspended at two ends of the space, in the outer playing area and two mounted on each of the other two remaining walls in front of sections of the text. The performers were dressed in generic, grey pin stripe suits, the women in long skirts and the men in trousers.

Beckett’s quad provided the answer to the question of how to represent the act of looking away. In the early phases of the theatre work the ensemble came to the conclusion that it was impossible to employ an illustrative approach to depicting the elements and themes of the text, that more abstract forms were required. Central questions which informed the dramaturgy were:

Wie verhält man sich performativ rund um das Thema, ohne es zeigen zu müssen, ohne auch in die Versuchung zu geraten, und trotzdem eine Nähe zu behaupten zu dem Thema? Wie halte ich mich fern und lasse trotzdem das Bild leben?’ (Brenner, 2005).

The company came up with the idea of adapting Beckett’s Quad as a constant structure throughout the piece, which could be broken away from periodically to perform in different modes in the space in front of the audience and then returned to.

The precise choreography of the direction of the movement was adhered to but the tempo varied, a slowing of the tempo signalling a breaking out of the structure in the inner performing area to move into memory-work and scenic representation in the outer area. When the audience entered the performance space, then, the adapted version of Quad was already being performed. The spectators were immediately confronted with the dilemma of taking a seat with their backs to the action. As the performers broke out of the quad in turn, shifting to another mode of performance, this took place in front of the spectators and involved representations of scenes from

Krall’s text. The adapted Quad was kept going, however, for the most part throughout

197 the 70-minute piece as the performers shifted between the two areas. Overall, it corresponded more to Quadrat 2, both in terms of tempo and colour scheme. The central point of the Quad, designated as ‘E’ ‘a supposed danger zone’ (Beckett’s stage directions), which the performers avoid by a sharp turn to the left, became the point of silence and avoidance that was central to Krall’s text and one of the key thematic concerns of the ensemble. I quote from an interview with the director (Brenner,

2005):

[Es ging] um eine Choreographie einer immer wiederkehrenden Bewegung, die sich auf das Zentrum zubewegt aber immer das Zentrum vermeidet, was irgendwie dieser Punkt des Schweigens und des Ausweichens war in/mit dem Text von Hanna Krall.

In the dialogue between the Krall’s text and Beckett’s Quad the latter became a death machine evoking the extermination on an industrial scale of Hitler’s victims in the concentration camps. By virtue of their positioning in the space the spectators performed the act of not looking at what was behind them, that is the past, and, in the

Austrian context, how Austria has dealt with its role in the Holocaust. In the act of turning around, if the audience chose to turn around, they performed the act of a conscious engagement with the past and in the act of remembering. In interview Eva

Brenner (2005) related how interesting it was at each performance for the ensemble to see how the audience members would react as they entered the space to find Quad already being performed in the central area - would they accept the fact that, should they take a seat, they would be seated with their backs to the action? Would they, once seated, turn around in their seats to watch what was going on behind them?

Would they move through the central space, the ‘death machine’? Needless to say, the reactions were different at each performance and the performers had to adjust their performance to some extent depending on the actions of the audience members. In

198 this sense the audience members became co-creators of the piece, ‘active witnesses who reflect on their own meaning-making’ (Jürs-Munby in Thies-Lehmann, 2006: 6).

Text fragments from Krall’s text were grafted onto the ‘death machine’ as a futher part of the process of adaptation, sometimes enunciated in chorus and sometimes solo, this marked a further divergence from Beckett’s script. Sentences, begun by one performer, were taken up by another. The first text fragments, for example, that were uttered by the individual performers at they paced the quad: were

‘101’, in Polish, (for the Police Battallion), ‘1942’ (for the year in which Pola, 25

Jews and many others were murdered by the German policemen) and ‘500’ for the

500 Jews who were hunted down by the Nazis and murdered in October 1942. The tone of the delivery in the inner space was devoid of colour and expression. This space represented the dark world of suppressed memories, caught up in the relentless machine. We could invoke here Primo Levi’s portrayal of the prisoner’s life in

Auschwitz and the impossibility of acquiring ‘an overall vision of his universe’: ‘[i]n short he felt overwhelmed by an enormous edifice of violence and menace but could not form for himself a representation of it because his eyes were fastened to the ground by every single minute’s needs’ (2008: 6). The breaking away from the ‘death machine’ and into the other playing area constituted a shift from the the hic et nunc to memory-work and scenic representation of passages from Krall’s text.

It could also be argued that the adaptation allowed the text to become a performer in the piece: it was not just drawn upon for its elements of dialogue and narrative, the performance work drew attention to the materiality of the text. In the first instance, as I mentioned, the text was an object in the space. The audience was confronted throughout with the visual, paratextual effect of the prose text running around the four walls of the performance space. Going beyond the visual impact, the

199 performers frequently interacted on a physical level with the text: when, for example,

Plebanki, the scene of the executions, was described, one of the performers pointed to what first seemed to indicate an imaginary place, saying: ‘There is Plebanki’, but as he moved towards that place, arm and forefinger extended, the movement was completed by his forefinger making contact with the word ‘Plebanki’ in the text mounted on the wall. A shift took place in one gesture between a traditional dramatic form and what could be described as a more post-dramatic mode of performance: the spectator is first required to suspend disbelief – the actor pointing to a place he sees in his imagination, conjuring it up for the spectator – and as the performer’s finger makes contact with the word in the text, the spectator is brought back to the here and now of the performance and their own material presence as a ‘reader’ in a broader sense in the space. We could argue that the aesthetic distance of the spectator, which is characteristic of dramatic theatre, is broken down here in the arc of one gesture. In a later scene some of the performers positioned themselves behind the iron frames suspended in the space and enunciated in turn the section of Krall’s text that relays the account in Browning’s book of the activities of the Police Battallion 101 in Lublin.

The performers read the text as a machine-like dictation, including the diacritical marks, comma, full-stop etc., where they occurred. Towards the end of the piece four of the five performers literally exited the text by pulling back the sliding door in the back wall of the space, on which part of the text was mounted, and closed it again behind them. This had the effect of leaving the fifth character, representing Pola’s lover who had shot her, locked into the text. He ran at the door trying in vain to break out of the text, then proceeded to run along the walls from one word or phrase to the next, beginning to say the words, which, however, seemed to get stuck in his throat.

The text as an agent, as material evidence of the facts, became a performer in the

200 piece, a force that refused to give way to any pleas or explanations or excuses; the text, it could be argued, enacted ‘a refusal of psychological understanding’.

The multi-layered and non-linear quality of the text was reflected in the performance, which was characterized throughout by ruptures, from the performance mode in the inner space to that in the outer space, from performers inhabiting roles of figures in the story, victim and perpetrator, to becoming epic-narrator figures, to becoming ‘themselves’ in order to include an element from their personal histories.

Maren Rahmann, a German actress, for example, chose a moment during the performance to take an old family photograph including her grandmother Gertrude from where she had inserted it in a gap in the wall of the set and explain to everyone present how she had only recently discovered that her ‘Oma Gertrude’ had been in a concentration camp during the war because she had hidden Jews in her house from the

Nazis. Clemens Matzka, an Austrian actor, likewise chose a moment to explain how his grandfather, an exceptionally short man with a hunchback, had been mistreated by the Nazi authorities on account of his disability. The shifting between different modes of enunciation added further to the fragmented, multi-layered quality of the performance: from monotone, to expressiveness, to dictation, to chorus, to chant, to song.

In its use of ruptures and shifts between very abstract modes of performance and elements of modes suggestive of more traditionally dramatic theatre we could refer here to Karen Jürs-Munby’s analysis of the prefix ‘post’ in postdramatic in her introduction to Lehmann’s seminal work (2006: 2):

‘post’ here is to be understood neither as an epochal category, nor simply as a chronological ‘after’ drama, a ‘forgetting’ of the dramatic ‘past’, but rather as a rupture and a beyond that continue to entertain relationships with drama and are in many ways an analysis and ‘anamnesis’ of drama.

201 We could cite here the example discussed above where the performer’s finger made contact with the word Plebanki in the text. Pola could also be characterized as postdramatic in the context of Lehmann’s discussion in that it did not constitute representation of a (fictionalized) reality from behind an invisible fourth wall, but rather an enquiry, an act of engaging with memory-work carried out in a site-specific performance space. It could also be described an ‘event’ in the way that Lehmann

(2006: 106) uses the term, in that it was, I quote, ‘a provocative situation for all particpants’. The spectator, who in traditional ‘dramatic theatre’ can expect to sit back in the dark and forget about her body, had to engage psychophysically in this performance and reflect on her own meaning-making, as her psychophysical presence impacted directly on the performance. What took place here is what Lehmann (2006:

106) describes as ‘a reversion of the artistic act towards the viewers’: ‘[t]he latter are made aware of their own presence and at the same time are forced into a virtual quarrel with the creators of this theatrical process: what is it they want of them?’

Pola was also postdramatic according to Lehmann’s concept in that it did not represent the world as a ‘manageable’, ‘surveyable whole’ which has a place for assignation of meaning and grand narratives. In tracing the genesis of the term postdramatic theatre, Jürs-Munby (in Lehmann, 2006: 13) makes the link to aspects of postmodernist and poststructuralist thinking, in particular to Lyotard’s analysis of the postmodern condition as an ‘incredulity towards grand narratives’ and - in relation to theatre - to the rejection of the model of classical drama with its conflicts and resolutions by post-WW2 playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Tadeusz Kantor and

Heiner Müller. Pola, in keeping with the source text by Krall, was not motivated by any impulse towards resolution but rather by ‘a refusal of psychological understanding’.

202 In the video-recording of the performance that I saw, there was no applause at the end of the performance. I would argue that this was the case because the performers were not making the shift at the end from ‘a closed-off fictional cosmos’

(Lehmann, 2006: 3) to the hic et nunc. Since the audience members had positioned themselves in the performance space and had performed their bodies in response to what was happening in the piece, applause would have signalled a distance between the audience and the performers that would have somehow been at odds with the nature of the theatrical. The five performers stood in silence before the audience for approximately one minute, returning the audience’s gaze rather than waiting to receive applause. Once again the latter did not know what was expected of them, should they clap? Was the performance over? Was this yet another rupture signalling a departure into another phase of the performance? Above all they were made acutely conscious of their own material presence in the here and now of the shared time and space of the theatrical event and the core concerns of remembrance and engagement with the past. As discussed above in Chapter Three, we could configure the performers in this event as conduits or channelers for the spectator of a process of engaging with an unclaimed past, and, in the sense that the piece was based on true facts, as witnesses to troubled his- and her-stories. Here, at the end of piece, they were silent witnesses deflecting away from their own persons through the act of reflection in the moment, inviting the audience to join them in reflection and to allow the literary text surrounding them all to speak. In this way Pola was also testimonial theatre in that it created an intimacy and accountability with the audience.

After the performance the spectators could take the opportunity to read the text in its entirety had they not already been familiar with it, filtered through a rich

‘palimpsestuous intertextuality’ (Hutcheon, 2006: 21) created by the multilayered

203 adaptation, many components of which were in themselves adaptations. These consisted of Beckett’s Quad, itself an adaptation haunted by Malevich’s painting,

Susanna Tabaka’s musical sequences (together with other cast members’ contributions using a variety of instruments), drawing on Eastern European forms such as Klezmer, all layered into the company’s Austrian adaptation of a Polish source text. The source text was also an adaptation in that it had been translated into

German and as such filtered through another’s sensibilities, as Benjamin (1984: 16) writes, ‘[t]ranslation [is] an engagement with a text that makes us see it in a different way’. Had the audience already been familiar with the source text, this new

‘palimpsestuous reading’ would have been quite a different experience, as Hutcheon

(2006: 121) writes, ‘what is intriguing is that, afterward, we often come to see the prior adapted work very differently as we compare it to the result of the adapter’s creative and interpretive act’.

204 CONCLUSION

In this dissertation I have discussed a selection of pieces of contemporary theatre created by theatre-makers working outside of the Austrian theatre establishment against the background of relevant thematic, theoretical and structural issues. Each of these pieces sought to address a specifically Austrian concern, that is, the impact of the repression of his- and her-stories by the generations who lived through WWII on the post-war generations within the microcosm of the family and the macrococosm of society. Each of the pieces represents an attempt to do the difficult and subtle work of remembrance and reclaiming the past, both in relation to those who have died and in relation to the heirs of the silences surrounding problematic histories. The tendency to repress difficult or risky stories, stories of emergency, oppression, violation and passivity is, however, a condition common to all human beings, and this circumstance allowed for the consideration in a broader context of the significance of these attempts to find theatrical forms to address such issues.

Many prominent Austrian writers of the 20th and 21st Century, some mentioned above, produced powerful works of dramatic literature which mounted scathing attacks on Austria’s attitude of avoidance and looking away, its unwillingness to face its role in Hitler’s Nazi project. The staging of such works offers the spectator not just a theatrical experience of engagement with the issues but in many instances also historical narrativity and specificity. The pieces of theatre I examined in this thesis were not stagings of dramatic literature and did not generate dramatic literature. They offered only to very limited extent, except perhaps in the case of Pola, but scarely at all in the case of Speaking Stones historical narativity and specificity. They offered something different, which, one could perhaps argue, is

205 more relevant to an era in which the generation who experienced the events has almost disappeared leaving many behind without access to narratives but still faced with the task of claiming the past, and in which to some extent – especially for the younger generations – narrative (and documentary) accounts perhaps no longer have the impact they once had.

This is not to say that each of the three pieces examined did not differ significantly from one another: Speaking Stones mounted in the site-sensitive space was the most abstract of the three pieces, an assemblage of structures made dramatically coherent not through character, psychology and story, for example, but rather through the shaping of energies, the use of dynamics, rhythm, intensity, rupture. The structures were generated during the workshops, and the script for the most part followed the devising process. The exception to this was in the case of

‘found texts’ such as from The Semiotics of Zero by Brian Rotman. The performance area was end-on and the performers played with the so-called fourth wall rather than engaging in any way with the spectators or acknowledging their presence as an integral part of the performance. In terms of content the piece almost totally resisted any historical specificity and this was one of the reasons why it read so differently in the shift from a dedicated theatre space to the Roman quarry. It seems almost uncanny that this piece found its way into the Roman quarry where it ‘fit’ so well and triggered further acts of disturbance in the sedimented silence surrounding the specific history of the quarry. In Search of Jacob was devised around a body of previously scripted material concerning a specific Austrian family. It worked with epic narrator figures and clear archetypes, father, mother, daughters, about whom, although fragmented, coherent stories emerged. While the piece was performed in a clearly defined playing area, it did not play to the fourth wall: the spectators, who lined the space, were

206 addressed by the performers in a number of ways. How the piece worked or could be read would not, I would argue, have changed significantly had it been moved to another performance space. Furthermore, an ‘accident’ in the form of a disagreement between members of the directorial team gave rise to an interesting circumstance and a unique feature – the juxtaposition of two disconnected performance pieces devised by different directors around the same source material – which allowed for further reflection in the context of the theoretical framework. Pola, then, as an adaptation of a literary narrative text had a greater degree of historical specificity and narrativity, although it worked with a very broad range of performance modes, some very abstract. The spectator, if s/he chose, was positioned right in the middle of the playing area and had the potential to impact significantly on the performance depending on where s/he sat and whether or not s/he moved during the performance. These choices as regards movement and positioning also determined to a very significant degree what the spectator saw of the performance. The spectator’s viewpoint varied considerably depending on her/his position in the space. Also, in the case of this piece the spectator was most challenged in terms of what s/he felt was expected of her/him: there was no clear code of behaviour for the audience member in relation to certain aspects of the performance. This piece, like In Search of Jacob, was devised in the space where it was subsequently performed and used the unique features of the space, like sliding doors leading into a back room. However, this piece could also have been moved to a different space without that necessarily changing in any significant way how it worked or how it could be read.

A crucial element common to all of the three pieces, however, was the fact that they were created with and for a specific ensemble of actors, who were all affected in their personal lives by the key concerns of the work and to one degree or

207 another brought their personal his- and her-stories to the devising process. The actors, like their audiences, had a very strong personal motivation to explore these concerns and channel their memory-work into the performance work. In the course of my investigations and observations for this research project on my trips to Graz, Aflenz and Vienna, through the encounters I have been fortunate enough to have had with creative individuals who give so much and so generously of themselves to their work,

I was struck again and again by the consciousness of the implications for the lives of individuals and communities caused by the withholding of histories between generations. During the days I spent in the Roman Caves in Aflenz with Theater

Asou, for example, it became increasingly clear to me that the histories and events this quarry witnessed are still very much affecting the life of the local community. I got an urgent sense of the importance of the work of people like Franz Trampusch and

Walter Gluschitsch for this particular small community, which could no doubt stand for many other communities throughout Austria, that as the generation of Austrians who witnessed the events during WWII is fast disappearing and in many cases taking their stories with them to eternal silence, it is a matter of crucial importance to engage in the work of remembering and re-claiming the past, of creating spaces in time and place to allow the past to enter in order to contemplate its after-effects in the present.

Histories are sometimes withheld or made tabu with the intention of protecting loved ones from danger, shame or hurt. A mood, a look or a gesture, however, can undermine such an intention and cause confusion in the absence of explanation.

Children, in particular, are susceptible to personalizing and taking on responsibility for their adult carers’ conflicts, as Susan Griffin writes (1994: 33), ‘[i]n the paucity of explanation for a mood, a look, a gesture, the child takes on the blame, and carries thus a guilt for circumstances beyond childish influence’. Eva Brenner (PTS-

208 documentation) of Projekt Theater Studio uncovers such intentions as misguided acts of ‘love’, which do not generate closeness but rather alienate and lead to a burdensome inheritance of silence and loss of cultural identity:

Psychoanalytisch gesprochen, haben viele von uns die Last des Schweigens von den Vätern/Müttern übernommen – eine klassische Übertragung, die sofern sie un(ter)bewusst bleibt, oft selbst/zerstörerische Züge annimmt. Obwohl es sich dabei in komplexer Weise um Akte der ‘Liebe’ handelt, geht diese ‘Liebe’ heute ins Leere. Sie erzeugt keine Nähe, sondern Entfremdung und kulturelle Distanz.

As playwright and director of testimonial theatre, Yael Farber (2008: 25), says in interview that it is precisely the issues that cause shame or secrecy that need to be exposed and publicly claimed because, ‘shame is usually a heat-seeking missile for precisely what is most valuable for the narrator to expose and publicly claim’. Perhaps that elderly man, who having hovered around Walter Gluschitsch all day during the pensioners’ tour to the quarry and finally tugged at his sleeve at the end of the day to confide in him that he had been in the quarry during the Nazi occupation period, had a great personal need to break his 60-year silence – his reported behaviour would certainly suggest this – but wanted to spare his children and their children the association with his history and consequently chose not to. One could conjecture that the breaking of his silence might have allowed his family members to consciously claim a difficult history, which will now, however, continue to get perpetuated on an unconscious level. One of the ensemble members of Theater Asou told me how as children she and her brother and cousins often used to ask their grandfather about what it was like for him during the war, but all he would ever reply was that they should just be glad that they were not alive during that time. His refusal or inability to recount from this chapter of his past just kept them wondering about things they felt they needed to know. Susan Griffin (1994: 33) writes about the destructive effects of the withholding of knowledge, ‘[t]he soul has a natural movement toward knowledge,

209 so that not to know can be to despair’. Brenner (PTS-documentation) also gives expression to the destructive power of avoidance:

Verstecken, Verdrängen, Verschweigen, Vertuschen, Verharmlosen - endlos ist die Liste der Strategien, die wir gegen uns selbst an/wenden, um historische “Wahrheiten” zu umgehen. Diese List macht krank, zerstört kulturelle Identitätsfindung.

In chapter two above I argued for a collective sense of responsibility towards the victims of the Holocaust, that personal histories of crisis are never merely personal on the basis that we are all somehow implicated in each other’s traumas, and that traumas can and must be claimed by subsequent generations. Levi made it clear to us that it was of utmost importance to the victims of the Holocaust that the world would remember them, and Adorno draws our attention to the fact that the one thing we can offer the victims in our powerlessness is remembrance. To forget the past, as Bishop

Desmond Tutu (in Farber, 2008: 12) expresses in relation to the victims of South

African Apartheid, would constitute a ‘further victimization of victims by denying them their awful experiences’. Lanzmann’s Film Shoah taught us that we cannot represent these highly complex issues illustratively, that more subtle and innovative forms are required, and I have argued in this dissertation that a theatre, which is open to exploring new forms, juxtaposing and breaking open existing forms that are founded on psychological motivation and a positivist philosophy that assigns meaning and tends to present the world as ‘a surveyable whole’, provides a more suitable container to explore the impact of events which proved such thinking to be untenable.

As Horowitz (1992: 51) writes:

[O]ur cultural frames of reference and our preexisting categories..[which] delimit and determine our perception of reality have failed, essentially, both to contain, and to account for, the scale of what has happened in contemporary history.

210 I am arguing, then, that each of these theatrical projects represents an act of disturbance, an excavation. To use the language of Archaeology, the objects for contemplation – the silence, the buried memories, the after-effects in the present of the past – can only be measured once the context in which they lie buried has been disturbed. As Wallace (2004: 24) writes of the archaeologist, we could also argue that the theatre/archaeologist,

Digs deep into the earth, reading the language of its strata, only to bring all the fruits of his quarrying up to the surface, laying one period’s debris beside another, flattened out on trays to present a simultaneous history. It is the depth, the sedimentation, the embedding soil, which gives the objects their aura, their historical, political significance or, as Elizabeth Stone puts it, their ‘voice’. Nevertheless, those objects can only be contemplated once that context has been disturbed.

The excavation tools of such theatre makers include memory-work as a cutting tool, their psychophysical possibilities as performers, and essentially, the willingness to take risks in the search for new forms to respond to what is missing when contemplating the debris that constitutes their find.

Theatre as a social place of meeting and ritual provides, I would argue, a particularly conducive context in which to carry out this work. Theatrical forms can create a distance, which paradoxically allows us to experience something in the moment on a deeper level, as Hutcheon (2006 : 131) writes,

[T]he theatre audience is more distanced from the action (ie than the film audience); indeed it is at a fixed distance physically, even if actors can create intimacy through their ‘presence’. Brook noted that ‘the degree of involvement is always varying…’ This is why theatre permits one to experience something in an incredibly powerful way, and at the same time to retain a certain freedom.

I would also argue that each of the theatre projects discussed above had the potential to intervene in a personal history (which is never ‘merely’ personal) in that they all

211 dealt – directly or indirectly – with testimony. Salverson (1996: 110) explains how the performance of testimony can intervene in history:

In this way, the performance of testimony can be seen to intervene in the historical process, rather than simply ‘reflect’ it in a representational form. It bears witness to that which lies beyond knowable and comprehendible facts and draws us into what Agamben describes as the ‘non-coincidence’ between facts and truth, between verification and comprehension’ (Agamben 1999: 12)

Finally, I would argue that the structures, practices and cultural and political orientation of companies and theatre makers such as Theater Asou and the Projekt

Theater Studio working outside of the theatre establishment are better positioned to succeed at this kind of work. The artistic freedom they claim comes with a high price, as we saw above in Chapter One, but without their willingness to pay this price, such projects would be unthinkable: to take a piece of theatre such as such as Speaking

Stones into the Roman caves of Aflenz knowing that there would be no financial return and that in this remote corner it would reach only a handful of spectators, or

Brenner’s decision to mount her own theatrical montage in In Search of Jacob at risk of alienating an international theatre star such as Breuer, would be inconceiveable within the theatre institution. Most important of all, I would argue, is such companies’ drive and desire to formulate on the one hand and willingness on the other to act on their questions, such as Brenner’s key question in relation to the complex of issues the companies sought to address with these projects against forgetting:

Können wir heute Frieden schliessen, indem wir anschliessen an eine verschüttete Wahrheit? Kann der individuell und kulturell wirksame Verlust wieder gutgemacht werden ?

There are and can be no easy answers, as we have seen, but such theatre makers show us that the search for the answers to such questions is what counts most, as Brenner insists:

212 Wir haben keine Antworten anzubieten aber wir verweigern die postmoderne Beliebigkeit und Utopielosigkeit, die keine mehr sucht. Unsere Utopie liegt in der gemeinsamen Erinnerungsarbeit. Diese heißt Selbst-Erfahrung, (Rück)gewinnung kultureller und biografischer Identität/en, Grenzüberschreitung, Emanzipation!

I would like to conclude by paying a tribute to these artists who have dedicated and continue to dedicate their lives to work that is so socially relevant and crucial for the world in which we live, and also by remembering Gernot Rieger of Theater Asou, who, like all of his colleagues I encountered in the free theatre scene of Graz and

Vienna, was truly ‘an athlete of the heart’.

213 APPENDICES

Interviews:

1. Franz Trampusch / Bernadette Cronin, 28th May 2008, Wagna.

BC: Herr Trampusch, was muss Ihres Erachtens noch passieren, was ist wichtig in dieser Zeit, wo die letzten Zeitzeugen noch am Leben sind, um der Vergangenheit entgegenzuwirken? - Sie leisten ja sehr viel Arbeit, und wie ich in Ihrem Interview mit Frau Mag. Bettina Messner gelesen habe, ich finde es unglaublich bewundernswert, wie Sie Ihr Leben gelebt haben, hren Mut, Ihre Integrität, und was Sie noch alles bewirken wollen - um der Vergangenheit entgegenzuwirken, was ist wichtig, was muss passieren?

FT: Erstens die Menschen lernen sehr wenig aus der Geschichte und eine wichtige Aufgabe von Zeitzeugen ist es, einfach zu sagen, man darf keine Feindbilder erzeugen, denn es ist ein Instinkt der Menschen, dass sie vor Allem Angst haben, was sie nicht kennen, was unbekannt ist. Ob das jetzt Menschen sind mit einer anderen Sprache, mit einer anderen Religion, mit einem anderen Aussehen, es ist sehr einfach zu sagen, die sind schuld, wenn man selbst Probleme hat, und das ist leider noch immer so und das war auch seiner Zeit die Situation, die zu diesen schrecklichen Dingen geführt hat, man hat Feindbilder erzeugt und die Aufgabe ist es eben, vor allem, den jüngeren Menschen zu sagen, dass man alles tut, damit keine Feindbilder entstehen oder vermehrt werden.

BC: Diese Gegend und speziell der Steinbruch, diese Geschichte lastet sozusagen vielleicht auf der Psyche der Menschen, auch wenn man das nicht miterlebt hat, erbt man irgendwie etwas aus dieser Zeit. Was ist wichtig, damit Heilung stattfinden kann?

FT: Der Mensch hat auch das Bedürfnis, unangenehme Dinge zu verdrängen, also das heiβt, er kann sich nicht erinnern, er weiβ nichts davon, und damit werden die Dinge aber nicht erledigt, sondern man muss darüber reden und man muss vielen Menschen sagen, lernen wir aus diesen Fehlern der Vergangenheit, und das ist auch hier passiert, viele Menschen sagen, ich hab nie etwas davon gewusst oder so schlimm war es ja nicht und es gibt eigentlich wenige, die den Mut haben, darüber zu reden und zu sagen, dass man daraus lernen müsste und gerade dieser Steinbruch hat viel Schönes erlebt, wenn man denkt, wieviele historische Gebäude, Skulpturen und andere künstlerische Dinge dort mit diesem Stein passiert sind, und er hat schlimme Dinge erlebt, also das heiβt, man muss über Beides reden, man muss darüber reden in dem Steinbruch, und das ist sicher auch eine Aufgabe von Theater Asou zu sagen, was es da Schönes gibt aber was da auch Schlimmes passiert ist und das Wichtige ist eben, das nicht zu verdrängen, sondern darüber zu reden.

BC: Darüber zu reden, das scheint immer ein sehr wichtiger Punkt zu sein, was heiβt das so für Sie persönlich so als Zeitzeuge, wie ist diese Erfahrung? Wie erfahren Sie

214 das am eigenen Körper, am Geist, an der Seele, über diese Dinge zu reden, was ist das am Aussprechen, das Sie meinen so wichtig ist?

FT: Ich hab das alles als Kind erlebt, ich war so 9 Jahre, 10 Jahre alt, und ich habe sicher in den ersten Jahren danach, Schwierigkeiten gehabt, aber die Bandbreite, was der Mensch alles machen kann, führt dazu, dass man sagt, man soll das Positive in den Vordergrund stellen und man muss halt nur immer wieder auch die Mahnung aussprechen, dass der Mensch so viel Schönes kann aber auch so viel Schlimmes kann und man muss eben darüber reden und das habe ich als Aufgabe empfunden, mit den Menschen darüber zu reden.

BC: Über Ihre persönliche Geschichte?

FT: Persönlich war das so, dass ich eher zum Einzelgänger geworden bin, in dem Alter, spielt man ja mit anderen Kameraden. Ich wurde in der Schule geohrfeigt, weil ich nicht bereit war, dieser Hitlerjugend beizutreten, also durch diese dramatischen Erlebnisse wird man ein politischer Mensch, auch schon als Kind, und das hat mich natürlich auch beruflich und im Leben geprägt, meine Kompensation war, dass ich angefangen hab, Lyrik zu schreiben, schon als Zehnjähriger, und das war für mich damals das Ventil, mit diesen Dingen fertigzuwerden.

BC: Können Sie sich noch daran erinnern, wie Sie, also durch die Lyrik wahrscheinlich in erster Linie, das war das erste Ventil, haben Sie gesagt, aber dann anderen Menschen gegenüber, das zum Ausdruck zu bringen, können Sie sich noch daran erinnern, was das in Ihnen bewirkt hat?

FT: Ich habe nie Probleme gehabt, das Anderen mitzuteilen, weil ich das nicht theoretisch gemacht habe, sondern immer mit Beispielen sagen konnte, also aus dem persönlichen Erlebnis heraus, aber ich habe auch nie pauschal Verurteilungen vorgenommen, denn ich habe bei vielen Menschen, die Schlimmes getan haben, auch wieder menschliche Seiten erlebt und umgekehrt, also das heiβt für mich war es eher eine Frage, vor allem anderen jungen Menschen mitzuteilen, dass man den Menschen einfach, ja, dass man sie irgendwo prägen sollte, dass man ihnen gewisse Werte mitgibt, und sie nicht allein lässt, das ist bei den jungen Menschen heute wichtig noch, ich habe viele Führungen, die jungen Menschen sind sehr beeindruckt, aber sie sagen fast alle, wieso habt ihr euch das gefallen lassen? Es ist sehr schwer in einer Demokratie, und wir leben doch in einer relativ freien Welt, dann zu erklären, was Diktatur und was Zwang ist, also diese Frage ist nach wie vor schwierig zu beantworten, man weiβ, was eine Diktatur ist, wenn man sie selbst erlebt hat.

BC: Und wie erklären Sie das für sich, dass Sie so stark bleiben konnten, Sie haben offenbar, eine individualistische Art zu denken und Sie haben reagiert, Sie haben gemerkt, dass es nicht geht, man sollte die Leute nicht zu etwas zwingen, was sie nicht machen wollen, wie können Sie das für sich erklären, dass als so junger Mensch, Sie diese Einsichten hatten, diese innere Kraft, diese Stärke, diese Klarsicht?

FT: Man wird sicherlich durch verschiedene Umstände geprägt, auch schon als Kind, zum Teil mag es Vererbung sein und zum Anderen sind es andere Erlebnisse, ich habe eine schwere Kinderlähmung hinter mir gehabt, also ich war eine Zeitlang gelähmt und hab schon als Kind gemerkt, man braucht einen irrsinnig starken Willen

215 und viel Energie, um etwas zu überwinden und ich bin dann relativ gesund geworden und hab dann diese Energie verwendet, um sozusagen, gegen dieses Unrecht, das ich schon als Kind als Unrecht empfunden hab, aufzutreten und das hat mich einfach bestärkt und je mehr ich gemaβregelt worden bin dafür, umso, würde ich sagen, sturer bin ich geworden, das heiβt, ich habe einfach meine Mentalität entwickelt, dass ich nichts tue, wenn jemand zu mir sagt, du musst, für mich ist da die Überzeugung viel wichtiger als irgendein Zwang und das war dann mein Leitmotiv, also das ist heute noch so, dass bei mir niemand was erreicht, wenn er zu mir sagt, du musst. Man muss einen Menschen überzeugen, mit Argumenten, und wenn das nicht gelingt, man muss sagen, man hat nicht genug gute Argumente gehabt, um zu überzeugen, aber man darf nie jemanden zu etwas zwingen, das ist einfach für mich widernatürlich und unmenschlich und das ist für mich dann das Leitmotiv, wie ich sagte, und dann hab ich sehr viele Jugendgruppen gegründet in dieser Zeit, nicht nur hier sondern in der ganzen Steiermark, weil ich die jungen Menschen dazu bringen wollte, gemeinsam was zu unternehmen, ja, und das hat funktioniert, und das war meine Aufgabe und das habe ich gerne gemacht und so habe ich eigentlich das Ganze, sagen wir mal, kompensiert.

BC: Um auf den Steinbruch zu kommen und auf die Ausstellung, also ich habe von Walter Gluschitsch mitbekommen, Sie haben da sehr viel Energie investiert und insbesondere in diesen Teil über die Zeit von 1943 – 45, können Sie ein klein bisschen darüber sagen?

FT: Gerne, es war so, wir haben hier in der Steiermark früher jedes Jahr eine Landesausstellung gehabt, das ist eine Kultursache, die auch öffentlich gefördert wird und ich habe viele Jahre darum gekämpft als Bürgermeister schon von Wagna, dass wir eine Ausstellung zur Römer Zeit bekommen, weil die Stadt Flavia Slova war sozusagen die erste römische Stadt hier in der Steiermark und das ist dann gelungen und dieser Römer Stollen oder dieser Römer Höhle war für mich ein Teil dieser Ausstellung. Die Wissenschaftler wollten aber das Ganze konzentrieren auf ein Schloss ja, bei der Gelegenheit sind immer alte Schlösser renoviert worden, das war eher eine politische Frage, und daraufhin haben wir gesagt, wir machen eine Subausstellung, also selbst noch eine Ausstellung zur Geschichte des Römer Stollens und da hat es ein klares Ziel gegeben. Alle historischen Ausstellungen, und ich nehme keine aus, haben einen groβen Fehler, sie zeigen immer das, was so die Oberschicht einer Gesellschaft hinterlassen hat, denn was bleibt von einem Menschen übrig nach zweitausend Jahren, wenn er keine Marmorsarkophage gehabt hat, keinen Goldschmuck, also diese Ausstellungen zeigen nie, die Maβe der Menschen, weil sie haben nichts gehabt, und sie haben keine Spuren hinterlassen, und in diesem Steinbruch ist aber jeder Kratzer an der Wand, die Spur eines Menschen, der irgendwann gelebt hat und der dort gearbeitet hat, und der sonst nichts hinterlassen hat, also man findet von diesen Menschen nichts mehr als nur Spuren ihrer Arbeit und dann habe ich die Ausstellung in Erinnerung an diese Menschen gemacht. Und der Erfolg war, dass wir fast mehr Besucher gehabt haben als die offizielle Ausstelllung.

BC: Und dort wo Sie die Ausstellung montiert haben, speziell zu der Zeit 1943 bis 1945, können Sie dazu was sagen, so speziell zu diesem Teil der Höhle.

216 FT: Ja es ist so, es waren insgesamt 5 Stollen, die da als Rüstungsbetrieb adaptiert worden sind, und dieser Stollen war der gröβte, dort haben sich auch die meisten dramatischen Dinge abgespielt, und es war strengstens verboten, den Stollen als Ausβensteher zu betreten, auch wir Kinder durften nicht hinein, ich bin aber einige Male von der Wachmannschaft miteingeschleust worden, weil das waren Leute, die selbst Kinder gehabt haben und die sozusagen ja auch Heimweh gehabt haben und so, und da hat sich halt das ergeben, dass sie an mich herangetreten sind und versucht haben, mit mir zu reden und umgekehrt war das bei mir auch der Fall und ich bin einige Male hineingekommen und hab auch Exekutionen erlebt also es sind auch Leute da drinnen erschlagen worden, weil sie nicht mehr arbeitsfähig waren, und das war der geeignete Ort, eine Ausstellung zu machen, und diese Ausstellung gliedert sich in vier kleinen Abschnitten, einer davon heiβt eben „Sklavenarbeit im 20. Jahrhundert“.

BC: Können Sie das Bild ganz konkret beschreiben, was haben Sie gesehen zu der Zeit, wenn Sie als Kind da hineingegangen sind, wie sah das konkret aus?

FT: Es war einmal ein besonders starker Lärm, der fast nicht zu ertragen war, es sind sehr groβe Maschinen zur Metallverarbeitung gelaufen, und das Echo, die Akustik ist ja dort in dem Stollen einmalig, das sieht man ja auch bei musikalischen Aufführungen, bei Theateraufführungen, und das hat sich natürlich verstärkt, also das heiβt, es war fast nicht auszuhalten, das ist die eine Geschichte, die zweite war, dass natürlich dieser Stollen voll gefüllt war mit Menschen, die schwer gearbeitet haben, die Angst gehabt haben, also man hat schon diese Atmosphäre gespürt.

BC: Wie haben diese Menschen ausgesehen, was haben sie getragen?

FT: Es waren eigentlich drei Gruppen von Menschen dort: das war einmal die Bewachung, also die Aufsicht, das waren aber im Stollen in erster Linie Kapos, also nicht die SS-Mannschaft, die Kapos, die waren selbst Häftlinge, allerdings alle mit dem grünen Fleck, also Kriminelle, die haben sich durchgesetzt in der Lagerhierarchie und die waren einfach die grausamsten, denn sie waren für die Arbeitsmoral verantwortlich und den Groβteil der Exekutionen, die ich erlebt habe, sind also von den Kapos durchgeführt worden, also die haben als kleine Gruppe das Ganze dort beherrscht. [Kaffeemaschine eingeschaltet im Hintergrund von einem Kollegen, der Zigaretten-/Kaffeepause macht] Dann waren die sogenannten Facharbeiter, das waren Zivilarbeiter, also keine KZ-Häftlinge, die wurden vom Militärdienst freigestellt, weil sie Spezialisten waren, also Schlosser, Elektriker, die mussten dort auch arbeiten aber sie waren ansonsten frei, das heiβt, die haben mehr zu essen bekommen und waren nicht eingesperrt, sie waren nur zur Arbeit verpflichtet, also und dann waren die Insassen des Konzentrationslagers, die sozusagen alle Hilfsarbeiten und Bauarbeiten zu verrichten hatten, das waren die, die halt dann zum Teil umgekommen sind.

BC: Können Sie beschreiben, wie die Menschen ausgesehen haben, was sie getragen haben?

FT: Die Insassen des Konzentrationslagers haben alle dieses gestreifte Gewand gehabt, so mit blauem Streifen, so ein grobes, eine grobe Leinwand war das, also sehr dünn, was ja auch in dem Stollen, der 8 Grad zu jeder Jahreszeit gehabt hat, schon einmal ein groβes Handikap war, und sie haben auf der Brust und am Ärmel alle

217 einen farbigen Fleck gehabt. Aufgrund der Farbe wusste man, was man im Konzentrationslager war, und sie haben alle so eine Mütze gehabt, so ja, die sie tragen mussten, sie haben alle so eine Uniform angezogen, nich, und sie waren alle unterernährt und und blass und krank aussehend.

BC: Gefunden worden im Steinbruch in 2004 ist dieser Toteskarren und dieses Bild eingraviert in die Wand von der Frau, wie sind diese Gegenstände entdeckt worden?

FT: Der Toteskarren, das war einer von vielen, sie haben jeden Tag riesen Mengen von Eisenspähnen hinausgeführt, die bei den Arbeiten entstanden sind, da waren Fräsmaschinen für die Metallbearbeitung, und diese Metallspähne hat man mit diesen Karren hinausgebracht und dort dann die Eingänge zugedeckt, damit die Luftaufklärung nicht sehen konnten, was da los war, abends hat man dann die Toten mit ins Lager geführt mit solchen Karren und deshalb nennen wir sie Toteskarren, in Wirklichkeit waren das Karren für den Transport von Eisenmaterial, und das mit dem Bild war so, da hat es ein Gerücht gegeben, dass ein Häftling vor lauter Heimweh das Bild von seiner Frau oder von seiner Tochter wo eingraviert hat in den Stein, nur haben wir das Bild nie gefunden und wir haben gedacht, das war nur so eine Erzählung und wie wir das Steinmaterial weggeräumt haben für diese Ausstellung ist dieses Bild zum Vorschein gekommen, das war hinter einem Steinhaufen einfach versteckt, wir haben ja insgesamt an die 40 solche Erinnerungen in den Stollen, und meistens versteckt, also die Häftlinge haben versucht, sich irgendwie in Erinnerung zu rufen.

BC: Aber keiner weiß, wer das war.

FT: Na, na, also es steht da ein Monogram, F.K. steht dort, ob das der Gleiche war, das entzieht sich unserer Erkenntnis.

BC: Um auf das Theaterstück zu kommen: Sie haben das Stück Speaking Stones erlebt, waren Sie einmal dabei, als es aufgeführt wurde? Wie haben Sie auf das Stück reagiert, wie haben Sie das empfangen, empfunden?

FT: Na, ich war schon sehr beeindruckt, weil es die Atmosphäre dieses Stollens in besonderer Weise zum Ausdruckt gebracht hat, und das ist schade, dass das nicht noch mehr Menschen miterlebt haben.

BC: Meinen Sie, dass Menschen aus der Gegend reingegangen sind, um das Stück zu sehen?

FT: Leider war das keine gröβere Anzahl, soweit ich das in Erinnerung hab, war das in erster Linie Leute aus Graz, also aus dem Kulturraum Graz, die hier halt auch einen engeren Bezug zu dieser Form von Theater haben.

BC: Das ist einfach zu fremdartig...?

FT: Ja, ja.

BC: Aber manche Leute aus der Gegend haben das schon miterlebt?

218 FT: Sind schon, ja.

BC: Wissen Sie, wie sie darauf reagiert haben?

FT: Na ja, wie ich schon gesagt habe, sie waren alle sehr beeindruckt und nachdenklich, würde ich sagen, war ja nicht etwas zum Feiern sondern zum Nachdenken.

BC: Und meinen Sie, dass Theater eine Rolle spielen kann, um sich mit der Vergangenheit auseinanderzusetzen? Um in diesem Ort, in dem Steinbruch etwas zu bewirken, Sie haben gesagt, dieser Steinbruch hat gute Dinge und schlimme Dinge erlebt. Meinen Sie, dass Theater spezifisch etwas bewirken kann, eine Rolle spielen kann bei dieser Arbeit, die Sie ja betreiben?

FT: Ich glaube schon, nur, vielleicht ist das eine etwas konservative Ansicht, ich glaube Kunst in jeder Form, also Theater, Malerei, Lyrik, Musik, ist dann echt, wenn der Zuschauer, der Betrachter, der Zuhörer Ähnliches Empfinden kann als der Künstler, der das produziert, dann ist das für mich Kunst. Wenn diese Kommunikation nicht stattfindet, ist es für mich Scharlatanerie, das heiβt, ich bin da kein Anhänger dieser extremen Malerei, wo man dann vielleicht nur mehr einen schwarzen Würfel sieht und sonst nichts mehr, also ich will da nicht in die Richtung zu weit gehen, aber ich will da sagen, Theater ist sicherlich ein sehr geeignetes Mittel, es muss nur rüberkommen zwischen den Schauspielern oder dem Regisseur, oder wer das immer macht, und dem Publikum, wenn das gelingt, dann ist das sehr gutes Theater, und das ist in dem Fall passiert.

BC: Und warum meinen Sie, es ist in dem Fall passiert? Bei dieser Truppe, bei diesen Schauspielern, bei diesem Stück?

FT: Ja, na, dieser Stolle hat eine besondere Atmosphäre, wenn man etwas weiβ von der Geschichte, von dem was sich dort ereignet hat, dann ist das die Brücke genau am Ort des Geschehens, wo dieser Funke zwischen dem Schauspieler und dem Publikum überspringen kann, das mag woanders unter anderen Voraussetzungen gar net funktionieren, aber dort funktioniert es sicher, weil es einfach zeigt in künstlischer Form, was dort passiert ist, oder was hätte passieren können, was der Mensch damit zum Ausdruck bringt, oder wie er das vermitteln möchte, was da passiert ist, für diesen Ort sicher die geeignete Form der Darstellung gewesen.

BC: Der eine Schauspieler hat mir gesagt, Christian Heuegger, dass die letzte Vorstellung von Speaking Stones, die beste für ihn war und die ganze Zeit, während er gespielt hat, hat er das Gefühl gehabt, er hört Stimmen und Raunen und spürt was von den Seelen der Menschen, die dort gearbeitet, gelitten haben, er hat das Gefühl gehabt, sie wären gekommen, um das Stück zu sehen. Meinen Sie, das klingt vielleicht ein Bisschen phantasiereich, aber meinen Sie, das so auf dieser Ebene ein Stück, eine solche künstlerische Arbeit, irgendwie eingreifen kann in die Geschichte, oder etwas bewirken kann, so als Heilmittel.

FT: Sie haben ein Stichwort gesagt, Phantasie, die menschliche Phantasie ist sowieso etwas Unbegrenztes, also der Mensch kann eigentlich in seiner Phantasie alles erleben, da gibt es nichts, was nicht sein könnte, nur die Frage ist, wie kann das

219 vermittelt werden, was der Einzelne empfindet, und jeder empfindet anders, es gibt nicht zwei Menschen, die hundertprozentig gleich empfinden und jetzt kommt es sehr darauf an, ob es gelingt zu sagen, eine gewisse Anzahl von Menschen dazuzubringen, Gleiches zu empfinden, und ich kann mir schon vorstellen, dass jemand, der sehr sensibel ist, hier, und im Wissen, was sich alles da getan hat, eine andere Vorstellungswelt und auch eine andere Empfindungswelt dann erlebt, als jemand, der völlig unbefangen dort hingeht und halt das einmal anschaut, daher glaube ich, dass es schon Schauspieler gegeben hat, die das besonders tief empfunden haben, das glaube ich schon, und das ist auch das Schöne, was uns vom Computer unterscheidet, der Computer wird nie die Menschliche Phantasie ersetzen, vielleicht alles Andere.

B.C: Ihr Wunsch für die Zukunft, für diese Gegend, für die Gemeinde, für die Nachgeborenen, ich weiβ nicht, ob Sie selbst Kinder haben, Herr Trampusch, was ist Ihr Wunsch für die Zukunft?

FT: Na, ich hab selbst drei Kinder und schon 5 Enkelkinder, ich seh das auch selbst bei den Eigenen, man muss einfach eine Brücke bauen, man kann nicht mit Argumenten, die halt vielleicht vor 50 Jahren aktuell waren, junge Menschen beeindrucken, man muss sie anders hinführen, und man muss einfach alles unternehmen, damit solche Dinge nicht ganz vergessen werden, wir werden heuer noch ein Mahnmal, dort künstlerisch gestaltetes Mahnmal bekommen, im Bereich Aflenz, oder Römer Höhle, der Standort steht noch nicht fest, also auch ein sichtbares Zeichen, und wir hoffen schon, da wird auch der Bundespräsident kommen zur Einweihung, dass das wiederum eine Breitenwirkung hat, dass noch mehr Menschen aufmerksam gemacht werden auf den Ort des Geschehens und wir sind vor Allem dabei, möglichst viele Schulen dazuzuanimieren, sich das einfach einmal anzuschauen, es ist ja nicht nur die tragische Geschichte interessant, sondern diese Erlebniswelt eines groβen Stollens, einer Höhle im Korallenrief, d.h. für junge Menschen könnte man das auch in anderer Form attraktiv machen, und bei dieser Gelegenheit dann natürlich auch sagen, was ich früher schon betont hab, was der Mensche Schönes aber auch Schlimmes tun kann, wenn das gelingt, dass man nach wie vor Menschen dorthin bringt, und mit ihnen darüber redet, wieso das passiert ist und was man tun muss, dass das nicht mehr passiert, dann hat das schon, glaube ich, eine bestimmte Funktion erfüllt.

B: Ich hätte noch eine letzte Frage zu dem Toteskarren: es hat geheiβen, dass die Häftlinge mitunter noch singen mussten, wenn Sie den Karren mit den Leichen aus dem Stollen geführt haben, zurück ins Lagen geführt haben, haben Sie das gehört oder miterlebt?

FT: Ich habe das oft miterlebt, ich hab am Eingang eines dieser Stollen gewohnt, und ja ich hab das fast jeden Tag erlebt bei Arbeitsschluss, es war immer sehr abhängig vom Bewachungspersonal, es waren sicher welche dabei, die das nicht so provokant organisiert haben, wo das still und leise passiert ist, aber es waren einige, die immer wieder die Häftlinge dazu gezwungen haben, ihre Toten singend ins Lager zu bringen, was noch schlimmer war, es waren Einige, die die Häftinge dazugebracht haben, auch schwere Steine mitzuschleppen ins Lager, die Leute waren ja sehr entkräftet und trotzdem mussten sie Steine mit 40, 50, 60 KiloGewicht mit ins Lager tragen und am nächsten Morgen wieder zurück zum Steinbruch, also das heiβt..

220 B: Um sie zu peinigen?

FT: Ja ja, offizieller Grund war, damit sie nicht flüchten konnten, net, denn diese Häftlinge wurden auf einer Straβe ungefähr 300/400 Meter ins Lager getrieben und vom Lager dann wieder zum Steinbruch und das ist klar, wenn jemand einen schweren Stein trägt, und den wegwirft, dann wird er sofort wegen Fluchtgefahr erschossen, nicht, so lange er den Stein auf der Schulter getragen war, war ja keine Gefahr, also es war für die Bewachung übersichtlicher, wenn die Kolonne marschiert ist, wenn alle einen schweren Stein getragen haben, und das dürfte neben sehr provokanten der Hauptgrund gewesen sein, dass ja auch keine Flucht passiert.

BC: Und das Bild von dem Karren, wieviele Leute haben das gezogen?

FT: Es war so, dass manchmal ein Toter, manchmal zwei, in extremen Fällen vielleicht auch drei Tote auf dem Karren gelegen haben, nackt, denn sie sind immer nur nackt transportiert worden, und zwei Häftlinge haben den Karren gezogen, also so habe ich es in Erinnerung.

BC: Vielen Dank, Herr Trampusch.

FT: Bitte, gerne.

221 2. Walter Gluschitsch / Bernadette Cronin, 23. November 2004, Aflenz.

BC: Könnten Sie bitte erklären, wie Sie zu Ihrer Tätigkeit hier im Römer Steinbruch gekommen sind?

WG: Ich bin Gemeindebediensteter. Im Jahr 1989 hat ein Musikschullehrer erfahren, dass es den unterirdischen Steinbruch hier gibt und ist an mich herangetreten und hat mich gefragt, ob man kulturelle Veranstaltungen drinnen abhalten kann. Ich hab mit der Firma Stein von Grein Verbindung aufgenommen und die Firma hat uns das ohne größere Schwierigkeiten erlaubt, allerdings ist das ja ein aktiver Bergbau und da sind immer wieder sehr viele Aufgaben zu erfüllen. Nachdem mich das selbst interessiert hat, habe ich mich der Sache speziell angenommen und mache es seit dem 1. Juli 1998, da hat die erste Veranstaltung stattgefunden, betreibe das und habe es zu meinem Hobby gemacht.

BC: Können Sie erklären, wie diese Ausstellung im Steinbruch zustandegekommen ist, die ja auch Informationen über die Zeit während des 2. Weltkrieges mit einschließt?

WG: Der Grund, das ist überhaupt die Landesausstellung über die Römer, die es hier bei uns gibt, ist Herr Franz Trampusch. Der arbeitet seit über 10 Jahren daran, dass wir hier am historischen Boden von Flavia Solva zur Landesausstellung kommen, endlich ist es soweit, da ja auch Steine aus diesem Steinbruch für Flavia Solva Verwendung gefunden hatten, war nichts näher als, dass dieser Steinbruch auch mit einbezogen wird. Eine Landesausstellung ist eine Veranstaltung des Landes Steiermark, die Marktgemeinde Wagna hat aber als Rahmenprogramm zur Landesaustellung 1) das römische Dorf, wo Streitwagenrennen, Gladiatorenkämpfe und solche Dinge stattfinden, den Römer zum Angreifen zeigen wollen und 2) den Steinbruch von der Firma Grein für 6 Monate gepachtet, um eben hier drinnen a) die Ausstellung b) Veranstaltungen wie Konzerte, Theater usw. abhalten zu können. Warum es zur Ausstellunng gekommen ist, Herr Franz Trampusch in seiner Jugend als Kind eigentlich mit 9/11 Jahren, speziell in der Zeit 1943/1945 als es sich beim Steinbruch um die Außenstelle des KZ Mauthausen gehandelt hat, ganz in der Nähe gewohnt. Er wohnte bei seinen Großeltern, die eine kleine Landwirtschaft hier führten. Er musste auch an ca. 40 Exekutionen teilnehmen, da seine Mutter einigen Häftlingen Äpfel zusteckte, einer der Häftlinge konnte sich auf Grund des Hungers nicht beherrschen und begann sofort das zu essen. Daher wurde festgestellt, von wo sie die Äpfel herhatten. Bestraft wurde die Mutter in der Art, dass Franz Trampusch beiwohnen muste, wie der besagte Häftling in der Nähe des Aflenz Baches seine Grube aushob und als die Grube groß genug war mit einem Genickschuss getötet wurde. In weiterer Folge diente er als Faustpfand gegenüber der Mutter, damit sie ja in der Offentlichhkeit oder außerhalb des Gebietes nichts preisgibt, musste er ja immer zu solchen Exekutionen und musste diesen beiwohnen. Aus diesem Grund heraus, um diese Geheimnisse den Leuten zugänglich zu machen ist der 4. Teil der Ausstellung zustandegekommen. Die Ausstellung hat auch den Untertitel 2000 Jahre Arbeit. Franz Trampusch ist der Meinung, dass die Funde, die man hier in Flavia Solva, oder allgemein archeologisch erforscht und findet meist von den reichen Leuten stammen. Wer konnte sich goldene Fibeln (heute profan Sicherheitsnadeln, die das Gewand zusammenhalten) leisten? Wer konnte sich derartigen Prunk leisten? Das waren reiche Leute. Von den armen Leuten findet man kaum etwas, wenn man nicht

222 oder wird nichts präsentiert, man braucht nur sehr genau schauen und man sieht sehr wohl die Werke, die mit der Hände Fleiß geschaffen wurden. Sehe die Höhlen, das ausgehöhlte, das nicht direkt darauf hinweist, dass die Leute gearbeitet haben, aber es muss gewesen sein, weil sonst wären sie nicht da. Man schaue in weiterer Folge die großen Bauwerke, ok finanziert von den reichen Leuten, aber wer hat sie geschaffen? Die Handwerker, die armen Leute, die eben Hand angelegt haben und fleißig waren. Darum auch diese Ausstellung von den Römern, von der Entstehung des Kalksteins, über die Römer, über das Mittelalter bis hin zur traurigen Geschichte des 2. Weltkrieges und alles Weitere wird außerhalb der Ausstellung bei Führungen dann erklärt.

BC: Und wie stehen die Einheimischen in der Umgebung dazu, dass diese Tatsachen bekanntgegeben werden?

WG: Auf Grund des Großen Erfolges – wir zählen jetzt im Römersteinbruch über 30,000 Besucher – steht die Bevölkerung auch dahinter. Es war natürlich so, die Leute wussten von den Geschehnissen im 2. Weltkrieg, waren aber bei Todesstrafe dazu verdammt, nichts (mehr) davon zu erzählen. Also mussten sie das mehr oder weniger herunterschlucken und konnten auch danach ihr Gewissen nicht beruhigen, weil sie wussten davon, dass Untaten stattfinden und konnten darüber nicht berichten, also die hatten auf eine Art und Weise auch ein schlechtes Gewissen. Selbst Forschungen der Uni Graz haben kaum etwas gebracht, weil die Leute immer wieder sagten, über diese Zeit möchte ich nicht sprechen. Mir selbst ist es passiert, ich hatte eine Führung mit einer Pensionistengruppe aus Steiermark. Ein grauhaariger, hagerer, älterer Mann war während der ganzen Führung an meiner Seite. Sein Blick hing an meinen Lippen und als die Gruppe dann in den Bus stieg, war er der Letzte und …..zuschließ, sagte er: “Ich war in der Zeit hier drinnen.” Ich habe dann natürlich, weil ich wusste, wo die Gruppe herkommt, Nachforschungen angestellt, habe einige Male mit ihm telefoniert aber er war nicht bereit, näher darüber zu berichten. Ich habe ihn dann gebeten, sollte er, er möge das niederschreiben und in seinem Nachlass mich dann bedenken. Ich habe dann die letzten Jahre nicht mehr Kontakt mit ihm gehabt. Ich werde wieder nachfragen, ob er noch unter uns weilt oder ob es im Nachlass etwas gibt. Meiner Meinung nach hatte er mit Sicherheit etwas mit den Aufsichtspersonen zu tun gehabt, weil er absolut nicht darüber sprechen wollte.

BC: Und haben Sie das Stück Speaking Stones schon gesehen?

WG: Bereits das 6. Mal jetzt.

BC: Und wie finden Sie es, dass dieses Stück in dem Römersteinbruch aufgeführt wird. Wie wirkt das auf Sie?

WG: Wenn der Autor den Römersteinbruch vorher gekannt hätte, hätte ich gesagt, er hätte das Stück dafür geschrieben. Ich habe es zuerst in Graz gesehen, im Theater im Palais, habe es vor 2. Jahren hier im Steinbruch gesehen. Jetzt die Wiederaufnahme. Ich kann mir kein Stück vorstellen, dass besser herpasst. Außerdem muss ich sagen, die erste Vorstellung heute war die beste, die ich bisher gesehen habe.

223 BC: Können sie vielleicht ein bisschen näher darauf eingehen, was Ihnen an diesem Stück imponiert. Sie haben gesagt, das passt ideal in diese Umgebung. Können sie ein bisschen mehr darauf eingehen?

WG: Ja, speziell in Zusammenhang mit der Thematik, die es anspricht mit den Geschehnissen im 2. Weltkrieg, die gesamte Inszenierung, die ganze... bin auf dem Gebiet nicht so versiert. Ich kann’s nicht ausdrücken, also der gesammte Eindrück ist eben … fasziniert mich. Es passt alles zusammen, und es passt alles her in den Steinbruch, es ist so ergreifend, dass ich es gar nicht beschreiben kann.

224 225 3. Uschi Litschauer / Bernadette Cronin August 2002 / September 2009, Graz.

BC: Uschi, kannst du mir zunächst einmal sagen, wie du dazu gekommen bist, Schauspielerin zu werden?

UL: Also meine Karriere sozusagen began ‘94, wo ich hier in Graz eine Theater- Sommerschule besucht hab, einen Kurs, Straßentheater mit Abel Solares. Ja dann im Anschluss an dem Kurs einfach weiter einen Kurs angeboten hat, aus dem her Theater Asou letztlich hervorgegangen ist. Davor habe ich Pädagogik studiert, ich hab mich im Speziellen mit Theaterpädagogik beschäftigt, aber mit einer anderen Methode, nämlich der Methode von Augusto Boal, der brazilianischer Theatermacher ist, der also von einem politischen Theateransatz auskommt, den wir auch dann schon in der Praxis umgesetzt haben, im Bereich Erwachsenentheater, hauptsächlich Jugendarbeit. Und davor war das eigentlich immer ein Traum, also ich habe ganz viele Kurse gemacht nebenbei, einerseits Theaterkurse und Pantomime, Kontaktimprovisation, aber so dieser Schritt dann, wirklich sich auch dafür zu entscheiden, auch das Studium letztlich abzubrechen, hat der Abel Solares ausgelöst.

B: Und die Schauspielschule wolltest du nicht besuchen?

U: Nein, das war nie ein Ziel eigentlich, also an offiziellen Dingen zu spielen, das hat mich nie so interessiert oder so fasziniert und natürlich war ich auch schon sehr vom Abel geprägt, also unser Gründer von Asou, er war wirklich so der Vater vom Theater Asou und auch von der Theaterrichtung, in die er uns eingeführt hat, und er hatte immer eine sehr starke Opposition zu diesem klassischen Theater gestellt und von den Kontakten, die ich gehabt hatte, hat sich das bestätigt, und für mich war es irgendwie, also ich war schon 26 und ich habe mir gedacht, das ist zu spät für mich, weil ich, ich bin aus Wien, ich bin 94 nach Graz gekommen, umgesiedelt, und in Wien war das halt irgendwie Reinhardt Seminar, und ein paar Leute von einer privaten Schauspielschule habe ich gekannt und das war eher so, sie haben die Ausbildung gemacht, haben sich dann ein bisschen irgendwie umgehört im deutschsprachigen Raum, sind dann auch davon abgekommen, also Theater zu machen, weil sie gesagt haben, dieses ewige Vorsprechen, das wollen sie nicht mehr. Das war so mein Eindruck von der klassischen Ausbildung, und ich arbeite gern in Gruppen und dann hat sich sehr schnell diese Gruppe geformt, zunächst auch mit vielen Frauen, die nebenbei berufstätig waren, die also 30-/40-Stunden Jobs gemacht haben, und in dem Moment, wo wir dann zu produzieren begonnen haben, sind halt viele Leute, die das quasi als Hobby machen, einfach gegangen. Die einzige, die aus der Zeit geblieben ist, ist die Monika, die nach wie vor irgendwie ihre 40-Stunden Job macht und halt die volle Theaterarbeit.

BC: Könntest du deine Rolle als Theatermacher in der Gesellschaft characterisieren?

UL: Es ist ja Groß. Es gibt schon Vorbilder. Es gibt schon für mich so Gruppen, also einerseits ein Vorbild ist auch die Eva Brenner, die Leiterin des Projekttheaters in Wien, die so einfach uns jetzt ermöglicht hat, Leute kennenzulernen, die halt in New York arbeiten, und das ist ja dann Teil der offiziellen Ausbildung, einfach experimentelle Theateransätze lehren, und sie hat irgendwie die Leute nach Österreich gebracht, und halt einfach, aber für die freie Szene, die da im offiziellen Bereich überhaupt keine Chance hat, Fuß zu fassen. Und das finde ich sehr bewundernswert,

226 also dieses Engagement zu haben, ja als freie Szene, was ist die freie Szene? Einfach eben freie und neue Formen auszuprobieren, auch zu experimentieren, Theater auch an Plätze zu bringen, wo es normalerweise nicht stattfindet, kein Bildungstheater machen zu müssen. Was unsere Schwierigkeit ist, ist die finanzielle Situation, also das steht im krassen Widerspruch gegenüber dem Engagement……..

BC: Also du hast eben gesagt, Theater dorthinzubringen, wo es das normalerweise nicht gibt, da wollte ich eigentlich darauf hinaus mit meiner Frage, was bewirkt das, deines Erachtens, Theater irgendwohin zu bringen, wo es das sonst nicht gibt?

UL: Ja vielleicht ist das immer noch so eine politische Einstellung einfach, wobei das muss nicht politisches Theater sein, aber auch halt Leute anzusprechen, die wo normalerweise nicht in diese Bildungstheaterschicht gehören.

BC: Was kann dann das Theater bewirken, sagen wir mal, im Gegensatz zu anderen Formen der Aufklärung?

UL: Na ja, da ist auf alle Fälle eine Lustkomponente dabei und auch die Komponente der Unterhaltung, egal, das ist ja ein Aspekt.

BC: Meinst du damit, spielerisch lernen?

UL: Mit unserer form, sagen wir mal so, was wir in Asou machen oder mit dem Abel, das waren sehr oft entwicklungspolitische Themen, die wir mit ihm behandelt haben. Natürlich sind wir dann auch zu dem Publikum gekommen, die sich halt auch dafür interessieren. Aber ab und zu war es doch auch so, dass einfach Leute hineingestolpert sind in so eine Aufführung. Dann im Bereich vom Kindertheater machen wir sehr viel auch im öffentlichen Raum, das heißt auf Spielplätzen, wo ich jetzt mal sag, sie würden nie ins Theater gehen, also wir veranstalten einerseits auch diese Spielplatzsachen, natürlich spielen wir dann auch im Theater, aber, wo ich jetzt mal sag von den BesucherInnen, das fängt mit den Kindern an aber natürlich sind denn auch die Mütter und auch die paar wenige Väter. Das ist so quasi Theater im Hof, so betiteln wir das. Was wir noch nicht gemacht haben in dem Bereich, also was ich mehr mache jetzt, ich habe dieses zweite Staatsexamen in Theaterpädagogik gemacht und da gibt's den Michael Wrentschur, der ist auch noch sehr interessant, von Inter-Act, die machen dieses Forumtheater, also wo es wirklich darum geht, einen sozialen Konflikt quasi darzustellen, so eine Art Modell-Szene zu bauen, dorthinzugehen und der Gemeinde alles vorzuspielen, und die Leute dazu zu befragen, und sie steigen dann in diese Szene ein und spielen ihren Vorschlag, also das ist nochmal eine andere Form, und sonst, wie es sich jetzt entwickelt, die Sache, die Zusammenarbeit mit Phillip, das ist natürlich Theater für Festivals, also wo dieser Anspruch, an ungewöhnlichen Orten zu spielen, eigentlich immer mehr zurückgeht, aber was uns sehr viel Spaß macht.

BC: Also die Arbeit von Asou würdest du als experimentell bezeichnen?

UL: Schwer zu sagen, ich meine experimentell…. Das ist eine sehr schwierige Frage.

BC: Oder wenn nicht experimentell, dann hättest du vielleicht eine andere Bezeichnung?

227 UL: Sagen wir mal so, wir sind auch gerade in einem Prozess, unsere Theaterform zu finden, ich würde sagen, das ist wirklich ein starker Prozess jetzt, weil wir so, zuerst haben wir sehr vage definiert, wir machen experimentelles Theater, vor allen Dingen im Erwachsenenberieich. Wir waren sehr frei. Also wir haben irgendwie, also alles war körperorientierte Arbeit, sagen wir mal im weitesten Sinne anthropologische Theateransätze, das heißt sehr viele Theaterformen, die aus dem Orient kommen, bzw Phillips Kalari oder auch Kathakali, der Abel hat sehr viel eingebracht aus Japan, wir haben Butoh Workshops gemacht und dann haben wir gearbeitet mit der New Yorkerin Catherine Coray, Sharon Fogarty, Stephen Wangh. Das war mehr Grotowski bezogen und Eugenio Barba bezogen, das heißt, die haben ja eigentlich die Prinzipien von orientalischen Theaterformen übernommen und haben das eingesetzt quasi in eine eigene Trainingsstruktur. Der Barba hat z.B. die ganze Energiearbeit halt genommen und hat seine Leute aufgefordert, selber Formen zu entwickeln. Und so haben wir sehr stark mit Abel gearbeitet. Wir haben unsere eigene Bewegungssequenzen entwickelt. Grotowski hat schon diesen experiementellen Ansatz gehabt, aber ich denke, das waren die 60er Jahre. Wir sind jetzt schon im Jahre 2002 und ich denke, das ist auch schon was klassisches in irgendeiner Form.

BC: Ihr bewegt euch jetzt in eine neue Richtung?

UL: Wir haben aber nicht, wir haben nie z. B. mit Video usw experimentiert also von der Performanceströmung, so experimentell in diesem sinn haben wir nicht gearbeitet. Wir haben einfach mal ausprobiert, sagen wir mal so, und jetzt probieren wir im Erwachsenenbereich, so eine Linie zu finden. Im Kindertheater, was halt unsere finanzielle Basis ist, haben wir einfach diese Methoden umgesetzt, das heißt, wir machen ein sehr verspieltes Theater, sehr körperorientiertes Theater, immer mit Livemusik immer mit sehr einfachen Kostümen. Wir haben keine Kulissen, sondern wir haben einfache Gegenstände, die wir transformieren und zu Requisitien umgestalten……wir sind am Suchen, also irgendwie am Suchen, auch in der Erwachsenenschiene. Was sicher bleiben wird, ist diese Suche und dieses Forschen, um halt diese orientalischen Methoden für uns zu übersetzen.

BC: Also ihr bekennt euch zu der Suche?

UL: Ja.

[Sep 2009: Ich denke, dass sich Theater ASOU auch heute durch Vielfalt im Erwachsenenbereich charakterisiert. Ein Grund dafür liegt sicher auch in der Unterschiedlichkeit unserer Gruppenmitglieder, ihrer unterschiedlichen Interessen, Anliegen und Arbeitszugängen. Deshalb gab es in den vergangenen Jahren, neben einigen gemeinsamen Projekten, auch kleinere individuellere Arbeiten in kleineren Teams.

Wir haben uns Klassikern, wie Becketts Endspiel und Shakespeares “Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung” gestellt, in unserer Butohproduktion-“Henshin” die Verbindung zwischen Butohtanz und Kafkas Verwandlung gesucht und oftmals in Projekten persönliche Themen oder Anliegen bearbeitet, wie in “Aus dem Rahmen, das Kinski-experiment”, “Das 33. Jahr”, “Zeit zu Lieben”.

228 Eine neue Art der Arbeit war “Spuren der Erinnerung” Ausgangsbasis war das Interesse und die Forschung/Spurensuche an diesem speziellen Ort, am unterirdischen Römersteinbruch Aflenz bei Leibnitz und seiner Geschichte. Der Steinbruch war ab 1944 ein Außenlager vom KZ Mauthausen, dort wurde von den Häftlingen in Zwangsarbeit unterirdisch Rüstungs – und Flugzeugteile hergestellt. Diese Geschichte ist tabuisiert, bis vor kurzem gab es kein Mahnmal, keinen Hinweis darauf. Wir haben uns auf die Suche nach persönlichen Erinnerungen an diesem Ort und dieser Zeit gemacht. In Zusammenarbeit mit der Soziologin Mag. Bettina Messner entstanden biografische Interviews mit ZeitzeugInnen. Dieses Material war Ausgangsarbeit für unsere theatralen Aktionen und Abschlussperformance in Rahmen des 10 tägigen Projektes “Spuren der Erinnerung” im Steinbruch, sowie in den benachbarten Orten Wagna und Leibnitz im Juni 2008.]

BC: Können wir nochmal kurz zu der Geschichte von Asou zurückkommen. Ihr habt mit Abel Solares in 1994 mit einigen von euch die Gruppe gegründet, kannst du ein bisschen näher darauf eingehen, wie die anderen Mitglieder dazugekommen sind?

UL: Ja, von der ursprünglichen Gruppe, sind noch Monika, Christian und ich und dann kam der Gernot dazu, der in Prinzip ein Freund von Christian war, der halt auch in einer anderen Studentengruppe gespielt hat, und sie haben eine Produktion gemeinsam gemacht und Gernot war dann auch sehr begeistert von der Arbeit, von unserem Training mit Abel, und dann kam der Klaus dazu, der über einen Workshop von Abel zu uns gestoßen ist - weil der Abel quasi der war, der diese Öffnung der Gruppe irgendwie ermöglicht hat, das heißt, er hat Workshops gegeben und hat einige Leute dann einfach entweder ausgesucht oder sie einfach oder sie sind, sie haben den Abel angesprochen. Der Abel war eineinhalb Jahre da und dann ist er nach Japan gegangen und dann waren wir quasi allein auf uns gestellt und zu dem Zeitpunkt waren wir nur mehr 6 und wir haben dann beschlossen als Gruppe Fortbildungen zu besuchen und halt dann als Gruppe die Ansätze in unserem täglichen Training weiterzumachen, was sehr viel Disziplin erfordert hat, weil wir quasi ohne Leitung waren und in der Phase haben wir dann noch den Phillip kennengelernt, bzw Catherine Coray, die auch wieder kommt, diese New Yorker Leute.

BC: Also ihr arbeitet nicht mehr mit dem ursprünglichen Leiter?

UL: Wir haben mit dem Abel, das war halt so, wir haben allein quasi Kindertheater Produktionen gemacht und er ist dann einmal im Jahr gekommen und hat quasi dieses Stück, das wir entwickelt hatten, einfach geputzt also noch einmal regiemäßig geputzt, und das war so ein Prozess für uns, das zu lernen, weil das erste Stück hatte noch nicht einmal eine offizielle Regieleitung und jetzt ist es so, dass einer von uns immer die Regie übernimmt oder hauptverantwortlich ist.

BC: Die Arten von Theater, die Asou macht, also du hast gesagt Kindertheater, anthropologisches Theater. Ich verstehe das so, dass Abel das sowohl das Erwachsenentheater als auch das Kindertheater geprägt hat, aber kannst du vielleicht nocheinmal erklären, weshalb ausgerechent diese Formen von Theater?

UL:Das ist ganz stark von Abel geprägt worden. Es war einfach eine unheimliche Begeisterung von ihm da, oder von us oder für ihn auch da. Es war faszinierend, dieses Zusammenführen von der Körperarbeit, von Stilarbeit, und es war wenig Text,

229 einfach zu lernen, sich mit dem Körper auszudrücken, zu spielen, ja es hat sehr viel Spass, Enthusiasmus geweckt und dass das im orientalischen Theater nicht so getrennt ist, also dieses Tanz und Theater und selbst Oper, das als eine Einheit - faszinierend.

BC: Du hast vorhin erwähnt, dass ihr Theater für Kinder und deren Mütter macht. Für wen sonst macht ihr Theater?

UL: Ja für wen sonst. Ja beim Kindertheater für die Kinder und natürlich auch die Eltern und die Begleiter, es soll ja für alle Spass machen. Dann die Zuschauer bei diesen Grundstücken, das war sicher für Leute, die sich für entwicklungspolitische Themen interessieren. Das hat sich sehr stark erweitert, also für Leute, die irgendwie interessante Theaterformen kennenlernen wollen in prinzip, wie dieses Stück – Speaking Stones – oder wie Beckett. Also, da haben wir uns überhaupt nicht an einer zielgruppe orientiert, weil das völlig klar ist, dass das so eine Minorität ist ja, das ist einfach für uns, um einen Schritt weiterzumachen, und auch mit Phillip Zarrilli einen Schritt weiterzugehen. Also wirtschaftlich ist das eine Katastrophe, so ein Stück zu machen, weil das Publikum dafür wirklich so eine Minorität ist, also auch gesellschaftlich gesehen, also ich meine, wieviel Leute schauen sich Beckett an oder so ein Stück wie Speaking Stones?

BC: Welche Rolle spielt überhaupt das Publikum für dich?

UL: Ja, eine untergeordnete, muss ich schon sagen, ich meine, im Entwickeln von dem Stück denke ich ganz wenig ans Publikum, ja im Erwachsenenbereich. Bei Kindern ist es anders. Ich finde, es macht riesen viel Spass, für Kinder zu spielen. Es ist ein total ehrliches Publikum. Man weiß sofort, ob etwas funktioniert oder nicht und ich mache das sehr gerne, das möchte ich auch weitermachen. Im Erwachsenenbereich sind's wirklich, kommt das Publikum, also von der Idee her ist das hinten angestellt. Es kommt, weil wir uns selbst vermarkten, kommen dann irgendwann halt die ökonomischen Überlegungen dazu, an wen wir das richten und für dieses Stück, ganz klar war es auch gedacht, an Festivals zu kommen und auch irgendwie diesen Eintritt zu schaffen.

[Sep 2009: Dieses Statement stimmt für mich heute nur noch bedingt. Nach wie vor steht am Anfang einer Produktion eine Idee, ein Anliegen, ein Text, aber in der Entwicklung des Stücks auch immer die Frage, wie kann ich das Publikum erreichen, wie kann und will ich das Publikum berühren. Daraus ergibt sich die Wahl der Ästhetik, der Stilmittel, der Form, manchmal auch des Aufführungsortes, für die wir uns entscheiden.]

BC: Und während der Aufführung die Beziehung zum Publikum?

UL: Bei dieser Form ist es ganz klar, dass man spielt mit der vierten Wand. Das Publikum ist nicht das, was ich sehr wahrnehme, das ist viel stärker eine Arbeit, so fast wie bei Butoh.Es geht viel um Imagination und Vorstellung, um in diese geforderte Struktur hineinzugehen und die halt quasi mit meinen Bildern zu füllen, irgendwie zu füllen, zu sagen, also das ist ganz stark eine Energiearbeit und Vorstellungsarbeit, Image-work, und das geht natürlich darum, die Energie zu projezieren, aber es ist nicht wie Straßentheater oder so wie bei den Kindern, wo das

230 klar ist, dass das Publikum zu animieren wäre, mit einzubeziehen. Es ist bei dem stück sicher nicht der Fall.

BC: Ein Geben und Nehmen, ein Nehmen und Geben. Das spielt für dich also keine Rolle?

UL: [Sep 2009: Heute ganz klar, denn Theater ist Kommunikationsmittel.]

Bei dem Stück? Im Theater im allgemeinen nicht, weil es ist wirklich abhängig davon, wie ich das Stück konzipiere. Ich mein, wir haben uns auch überlegt, das Publikum völlig einzubeziehen also das heißt, dass sie quasi in einem Haus, das zerstört ist oder z. B. bei dem Tuxa, das ist ein Stück, das erzählt die Geschichte eines indigenen Volkes, das auf Grund eines Staudammprojektes vertrieben wird, das war ganz bewusst so gewählt, dass das Publikum auf Matrazen tief sitzt, also wie in einem Boot und wir haben auf Stegen rund um sie gespielt und das war ein ganz starker Publikumsbezug, also das Publikum war Teil das Bühnenbildes im Prinzip.

BC: Und hat das dann deine Performance beeinflusst?

UL: Ja klar, ich will mal sagen, in unseren Stücken gibt's immer ganz unterschiedliche Aufgaben, die an die Schauspieler gestellt sind. Ich will nicht sagen, dass wir Theater machen, wo das Publikum nicht da ist, ich habe nur vorhin gemeint, wenn wir ein Stück, oder wenn eine Stück-Idee entsteht, dann orientiert sich das nicht so an eine Zielgruppe. Ich könnte auch sagen, z.B. wir haben einmal im Kindertheater eine Entscheidung getroffen, wir brauchen einfach Geld. Wir müssen ein Stück machen oder die Basis des Stücks muss ein Buch sein, ein Kinderbuch, das sehr bekannt ist, da haben wir "Das kleine Ich bin ich" gewählt, haben es dann mit unseren Formen umgesetzt, aber das war ganz klar eine Entscheidung, wo ich mal sag, das war zuerst das Publikum und eine finanzielle Überlegung, an welches Publikum sich das richtet, ich möchte eine breite Schicht erreichen. Wir überlegen auch jetzt mal, eine Komödie zu machen, die auch auf der Straße spielt, zum Beispiel ein Straßentheaterfestival, ganz klar eine ökonomische Orientierung, gute Unterhaltung, da ist der Gedanke an das Publikum da. Bis jetzt war das im Erwachsenenbereich nicht so, aber wird auch kommen, weil wir auch vom Theater leben wollen und es kommt die ökonomische Überlegung dazu.

BC: Das Publikum, das ins Mainstream-Theater geht, in die staatlichen Theater, zu euch kommt ein anderes Publikum?

UL: In der Regel schon. Aber es ist nicht so, dass sich das ausschließen muss, es ist eher so, dass wir die Leute nicht erreichen und ich denke mir jetzt, es hat früher eine sehr starke Trennung gegeben zwischen offiziellen Bühnen und freier Szene und nachdem es jetzt insgesamt so eine Kürzung gibt vom Gesamtbüdget, beginnen sich irgendwie Gesprächsbasen zu bilden, das heißt, dass wir gemeinsam überlegen, wie wir überhaupt kulturpolitisch vorgehen und es gibt kleine Öffnungen und es gibt eine Dramaturgin von dem Schauspielhaus, sie wird sicher kommmen. Wir spielen jetzt im Theater der Schauspielschule, also es beginnt sich aufzuweichen. Es gibt Berührungpunkte.

231 BC: Kann man mit anderen Theaterformen das Bewusstsein, die Perspektive des Publikums, der Gesellschaft ändern?

UL: Na, ich denk mir, die Szene ist für mich der Nährboden. Man muss auch den Nährboden, auch für die offizielle Kultur und vieles, was so im Anfang im Wildwuchs ist, wieder dann auch ein bisschen transformiert und offiziell gespielt. Und mit einem viel besserem Budget und mit weit größeren Mitteln, da muss man immer aufpassen, das ist auch immer unsere Überlegung, wieviel dann wird eigentlich abgezogen an Resourcen von der Szene, z. B. wenn wir beginnen halt, im Schauspielhaus zu spielen oder solche Sachen oder Produktionen dort anzubieten, aber auf der anderen Seite, ich denke mir, man sollte die Konkurrenz einfach aufheben und wirklich sich gemeinsam überlegen, wie man vorgeht, einerseits jetzt gegenüber politischen Ämtern, die die Struktur vorgeben, also das ist ihre Aufgabe, die Struktur vorzugeben, aber auch in Bezug auf Publikum, weil diese Minorität ist bei beiden, also wer geht ins Theater, wieviel Prozent der Leute, wieviel erreicht man mit der Form überhaupt noch, dass sind schon Überlegungen, denke ich mir, was kann das Theater heute? Welche Aufgabe hat es?

BC: Es hört sich so an dann, also ich habe dich vorhin gefragt, für wen du Theater machst. In erster Linie machst du das für dich?

UL: Ja, eigentlich schon, ist die ehrliche Antwort. Ich finde das einfach eine irrsinnige Herausforderung und es ist so anstrengend und immer wieder, aber es ist irgendwie mein Leben, es sind fast alle Bereiche, es ist nicht die Trennung zwischen Arbeit und Freizeit, die gibt es nicht, ja es ist schön irgendwie, sich damit auseinanderzusetzen, es ist fast, nachher denke ich immer so, fast ein Luxus, sich mit einem text und Wörtern zu beschäftigen. Noch immer finde ich Theater zu machen herausfordernd, bereichernd und natürlich habe ich Theater als mein Ausdrucksmittel gewählt und es ist mein Beruf. Die Trennung zwischen Beruf und Freizeit gibt es noch immer nicht, obwohl ich viel mehr darauf achte, wirkliche Auszeiten zu haben. Denn obwohl wir angestellt sind, sind wir auch unsere eigene Firma, also selbständig. Durch unsere veränderte Organisationsstruktur gibt es zeitliche Entlastungen.

BC: Können wir noch einmal auf die Texte zurückkommen, und ja überhaupt die Frage der Ästhetik, wonach richtet ihr euch bei der Aussuche von literarischen Texten?

UL: Ja, also ein Stück umzusetzen haben wir erst zweimal gemacht, das eine Mal war das, weil wir den Autor gekannt haben aus Graz , Mathias Grill, der auch Regie gemacht hat bei dem Stück. Wir sind irgendwie so zusammengekommen. Mit der Kaite O’Reilly war es in Prinzip ähnlich, wir hatten schon ein Leitbild formuliert, das war schon ein Punkt, mit Zeitgenössichen Autoren und Autorinnen zu arbeiten, so als Ziel ja. Bis dahin hatter der Text immer eine untergeordnete Rolle gehabt. Das wir ja Themenspezifisch im Erwachsenenbereich, das war eine mal Tuxa, das habe ich vorhin kurz erzählt. Jetzt war die Idee rund herum um Flüchtlinge, so es war irgendwie so dieses Thema Bosnien, Durchführungen der Flüchtlinge. Es war sehr aktuell in den Medien und den Zeitungen, aus dem ist diese Idee entstanden. Und das war ganz klar, dass wir das mit Phillip machen wollten und auch mit der Kaite und das hat dann für alle gepasst. Und Beckett, dieses Projekt ist entstanden, weil wir damals mit Becketttexten einfach herumgespielt haben und experimentiert haben mit

232 diesen Methoden aus New York, die wir kennengelernt haben und da haben wir einfach Beckett-texte hergenommen und ja und Phillip hat damals eine Workshop gehalten in Utrecht und eben Kalari mit Umsetzung von Beckett-texten und da haben wir ihn angesprochen und wir haben Beckett gemacht. Wir wollen einmal Shakespeare machen mit diesen experimentellen New Yorker Methoden, also mit diesem Grotowski-Ansatz, Imagework mit einem körperlichen Zugang, so Beziehungsarbeit zu Textinterpretationen, also nicht für alle in der Gruppe, aber für einen Teil.

BC: Wie hast du das empfunden, die Arbeit an dem Beckett-Stück?

UL: Ja, irrsinnig interessant, weil es für mich das erste Mal spürbar war, dass quasi diese Energiearbeit und dieses Kalari in eine Textarbeit einfließt und dass dieselben Prinzipien dort gelten, wobei Beckett natürlich ein sehr formaler Autor ist – es geht jetzt nicht um Textgestaltung sondern eher wirklich um Geschwindigkeit, Rhythmus, ja Tonhöhe, Energie, Fokus, also kein psychologischer Zugang sondern sehr formale Kriterien.

BC: Wer hat was gespielt?

UL: Ohio Impromptu war der Klaus, Klaus war der Leser und Gernot der Zuhörer, dann Spiel war Christian, Gernot und ich, wir haben das gewechselt – den Mann habe ich gespielt und die zwei Frauen haben die Männer gespielt, Eh Joe war Christian, Christian hat den Joe gemacht und ich die Stimme.

BC: Du hast leicht daraufhingedeutet, dass die Gruppe politisch motiviert ist, magst du ein bisschen näher daraufeingehen, wie stark diese Komponente ist.

UL: Also, es gibt immer wieder Auseinandersetzungen über aktuelle Themen, die sind unterschiedlich stark aber ich denke, es gibt so eine geteilte Meinung, das nicht auszublenden und halt auch sich darüber auszutauschen, aber es ist jetzt nicht mehr so stark im Vordergrund. Das war so auch, Abel ist ein Flüchtling, der ist aus Guatemala. Der ist von Guatemala nach Mexiko geflohen, dann von Mexiko nach Frankreich und ist jetzt in Europa, jetzt in Japan also der ist irgendwie nie sesshaft, ja er war ganz politisch, sozialisiert. Es gibt nach wie vor sehr starke Kontakte nach Lateinamerika oder Argentinien, wir haben Kontakt zu El Baldio wo natürlich ja das ganz stark im Vordergrund steht. Da geht’s ganz viel darum, auf die Straße rauszugehen, aktuelle Themen, politische Themen zu spielen, zu spiegeln. Das machen wir da viel, also im minimalen Ausmaß, also ich denke mir, dieses Stück hat auch eine politische Motivation, aber das ist überhaupt nicht agitatorisch, sage ich mal, überhaupt nicht. Also wir machen nicht in der Straße Theater in dieser Form.

BC: Interessiert sich die Gruppe für die Frage einer österreichischen Identität?

UL: Überhaupt nicht, ganz im Gegenteil, also wir suchen die Internationalität.

BC: Warum?

233 UL: Warum? Einerseits weil die Kontakte immer sehr befruchtend waren, alle Kontakte, die wir bislang nach außen gehabt hatten, nach Lateinamerika, nach England, nach New York und nach Indien, und Österreich und Graz speziell ist theatermäßig voll der Kaff. Also es heißt immer wieder so, ja was machen wir eigentlich in Graz, warum eigentlich Graz, also ich meine Graz ist eine nette Stadt und nett ist genau der richtige Ausdruck, Graz ist einfach fad, es gibt irgendwie wenig Auseinandersetzung, Erweiterungen, also im produktiven Sinn, ja.

BC: Wäret ihr lieber in Wien?

UL: Ja, ich meine, wir hatten einen starken Kontkt nach Wien über die Eva, da hat’s ja ein extended circle gegeben, also es waren hauptsächlich Grazer, weil wir ja aus Graz sind. Es hat ein paar Leute von Innsbruck gegeben, die auch dabei waren. Es ist dann wieder verlaufen, dadurch, dass wir selber alles organisieren müssen. Es ist dann schwierig. Eine Zeit lang hat es einmal im Monat, hat’s dieses Treffen gegeben, das war auch aussschließlich in Wien. Ja, aber Österreich, in Österreich habe ich das Gefühl muss man sich wirklich erstmal einen Namen außerhalb gemacht haben, bevor man dort hineinkommt. Vielleicht auch in diese Festivals, wo es wirklich auch interessant ist, zu sein, zu spielen, sich auszutauschen, in Kontakt zu kommen mit anderen Leuten.

BC: Auch innerhalb der freien Szene?

UL: Kann ich nicht so sagen, aber ich glaub, also ich vermute das, aber die Eva kann dir da sicherlich viel erzählen, sie ist politisch sehr engagiert und voller Wut und Zorn.

BC: Um nochmal auf die organisatorischen Faktoren zurückzukommen, wie würdest du die organisatorische Struktur der Gruppe beschreiben?

UL: Chaotisch. Wir hatte jetzt eigentlich über drei Jahre jemanden im Büro angestellt und zwar gab’s das vom Arbeitsamt-Sevice, das war eine sehr nette Frau, eine sehr liebe Frau, die aber relativ wenig Erfahrung mitgebracht hat. Wir organisieren das zur Zeit zu Dritt, also, und das funktioniert.

[Sep 2009: Heute ist das anders. Seit 2004 gibt e seine kontinuierliche Angestellte für die Organisation, Mag. Lissa Gartler. Diese kontinuierliche Anstellung hat Kontinuität und Professionalität in die Geschäftsführung gebracht und Gernot, Klaus und mir ermöglicht, sich in viel höherem Ausmaß der künstlerischen Arbeit zu widmen. Zunächst war Lissa auch ein Jahr über eine geförderte Stelle vom AMS bei uns angestellt, dann haben wir ihre Anstellung übernommen. Dies war aber nur möglich, weil Christian zum gleichen Zeitpunkt aus der Gruppe ausgeschieden ist. Von 2004 – Juli 2009 hatten wir somit 4 Angestellte (Lissa, Gernot, Klaus und ich).]

BC: Das heißt drei Leute sind quasi angestellt.

UL: Ja, wir sind angestellt. Also wir haben Subventionen, sie sind sehr gering, also 110,000 Schilling von der Stadt, 60,000 vom Landamt, 20,000 vom Bund, Jahressubventionen, das sind ca 200,000 Schilling, das für sechs Leute.

234 [Sep 2009: Die Subventionen sind ab 2003 gestiegen (auf grund unseres positiven Abschneidens bei einer Evaluierung, die von der Stadt Graz in Auftrag gegeben wurde) und wir haben derzeit mehrjährige Verträge mit Stadt und Land.Details dazu kann ich dir schicken, wenn du das brauchst.Dennoch befinden wir uns mit unserem Einkommen von € 954,-- pro Monat an der Armutsgrenze. Und nicht immer konnten wir die Anstellungen finanzieren und mussten in die Arbeitslose gehen.]

BC: Was sind die Kriterien dafür, dass man Subventionen bekommt?

UL: Na ja, man stellt einfach Anträge. Es dauert immer bis die Leute kommen und sich das anschauen. Dann sind sie da und es wächst langsam… Vom Bund war das Kriterium, dass wir so auch Österreich-weit spielt, auch im Kindertheater, das heißt wir spielen nicht nur im Steiermark sondern auch in Kärnten, in Tirol und Vorarlberg auch in Niederösterreich und Burgenland, und durch diese Österreichweite Tätigkeit haben wir die Budessubventionen im Bereich Kindertheater bekommen. Für dieses Projekt gibt es eine eigene Kategorie.und Förderprojektspezifisch.Es gibt diese freie Szene mit fixen Häusern. Sie haben die Standarkosten Kosten für Haus usw. Wir sind da in einer anderen Bereichskategorie und dann gibt’s halt einen Restpost und Budget, die zwischen diesen freien Gruppen, die kein Haus habe, aufgeteilt werden, und da sind wir relative fleißig, da wir regelmäßig arbeiten, das heißt regelmäßige Produktionen mit relativ guten ZuschauerInnenanteil, aber...

BC: ..Man kann nicht davon leben?

U: Wir leben von den Einnahmen. [Sep 2009: Sie machen 50% unseres Jahresbudget aus.]

BC: Und nebenbei wird gejobbt?

UL: Nebenbei wird gejobbt, größtenteils.

BC: Was wünschst du dir, was ist dein Traum für die Zukunft?

UL: Also finanziell gesehen natürlich, dass wir mehr subventioniert werden, dass wir uns mehr im Erwachsenentheater etablieren, dass wir auf Festivals letztlich kommen, auch auf internationale Festivals. Unser Ziel ist weiter, diese internationale Zusammenarbeit zu suchen, einen Austausch zu haben mit internationalen Gruppen, zu reisen, Tourneen zu machen, also in Argentinien oder so Workshops zu machen, aufzuführen, weil wir das Stadion erreicht haben, dass wir Workshops selber leiten können, also diese Tätigkeit mehr zu etablieren und natürlich einfach ein gesicherteres Einkommen auch zu haben aus dem. Auch die Organisation bald wieder an eine kompetente Person abgeben zu können, um sich mehr auf das Künstlerische konzentrieren zu können und die Gruppe aufzumachen, über die Workshops durch neue Leute größer werden zu lassen.

[Sep 2009: Die Träume sind teilweise umgesetzt werden, wir waren auf regionalen und internationalen Festivals und haben uns in einem gewissen Ausmaß auch im Erwachsenenbereich etablieren können, wir werden höher subventioniert, wir haben eine bessere Organisationsstruktur.

235 Weiters gibt es vorallem 2 KünstlerInnen, die sehr regelmäßig mit uns, oder einem Teil der Gruppe zusammenarbeiten, nämlich Michael Hofkirchner (Regie, Schauspiel, Puppenbau, Grafik) und Uschi Molitschnig (Schauspiel), weiters Henrik Sande ( Musik und Komposition), Arian Andiel (Video, Fotografie, Bühnenbild), Sabine Wiesenbauer, Eugen Schöberl (beide Licht) Barbara Häusl (Kostüm), Christine Weber (Bühnenbild und Licht), Robert Riedl (Autor). Es gibt fixe Veranstaltungspartner.]

BC: Was sind denn für dich die wichtigsten Unterschiede zwischen dem freien und dem staatlichen Theater?

UL: Also der wichtigste Unterschied ist, dass wir als Gruppe existieren und nicht als Schauspielerin oder Schauspieler, die für eine Produktion gekauft wird und dann wieder weg ist, sondern, dass wir wirklich gemeinsam als Ensemble quasi wie Leiter arbeiten, trainieren und produzieren und forschen auch letztlich, wobei das ist auch ein Ideal, nicht wahr, es gibt auch die Realität, die anders ausschaut, und das Spielen und die eigene Produktion halt zu machen und diese Produktion heißt eben Kostüme, organisieren usw, bleibt dann wenig Zeit dafür. Also ich wünsche mir einfach bessere Arbeitsbedingungen, sowie in Wales, ich finde es sehr gut also wirklich, so geblockt zu arbeiten, nur künstlerisch zu arbeiten, dann Organisation zu machen. Dass wir ein Ensemble sind, über längere Zeit arbeiten, dass wir halt unsere Themenschwerpunkte selber wählen und selbst Regisseure/innen einladen, selbst Autoren/Autorinnen einladen, das finde ich einen großen Unterschied. Ja, mit den Vor- und Nachteilen, das ist halt diese Selbstorganisation, die auch anstrengend ist, und die auch immer an Geld scheitert, also es gibt halt Ideale und dann gibt’s halt die Realität.

BC: Meinst du, dass ein Stück Kreativität durch die finanzielle Situation verloren geht?

UL: Ja absolut, es fehlt dann die Zeit, und es hindert dich, die finanziellen Resourcen, um bestimmte Projekte überhaupt zu konzipieren oder durchzuführen und es ist manchmal einfach zuviel. Es gibt für mich Momente, wo ich denke, es ist, also ich bin 35, was habe ich für eine Absicherung, wie lange kann ich es noch machen, mit so wenig Geld zu leben, mit so wenig Perspektive, dass sich das ändert letztlich, und das ist auch körperlich und seelisch anstrengend. Wir haben auch manchmal sehr viele Konflikte, wohingegen neulich in Wales, wo alle weg sind, gibt’s die Konflikte einfach nicht, weil wir nicht tausend Sachen gleichzeitig im Kopf haben, die entschieden werden müssen und wie eintscheidet man das mit so wenig Geld, all die Sachen. Manchmal ist es sehr schwer.

BC: Vielen Dank.

236 4. Eva Brenner, Maren Rahmann / Bernadette Cronin, 23. September, 2005, Vienna.

BC: Eva, könntest bitte über das Konzept für Pola sprechen?

EB: Ja, so wir haben damals 2001 bis 2003 konkrete Vorbereitungen getroffen zu einem projekt, dass wir erst 2003 aus finanziellen und terminlichen Gründen verwirklichen konnten nach einem Text, den ich geschrieben habe, Auf der Suche nach Jakob, über die Geschichte meines Vaters, also eine Erinnerung an diese verdrängte jüdische Geschichte, auf die ich erst vor 10, 9 Jahren genau hingewiesen wurde, und wir haben dann begonnen im Ensemble zu überlegen, dass wir gemeinsam ein Projekt machen, wo wir uns mit der verdrängten jüdischen Geschichte beschäftigen, bzw welcher Stellenwert das in der Familie, im Leben der Einzelnen hat und da die Gruppe besteht aus sehr verschiedenen Leuten, ich würde sagen, zwischen zwanzig und 50 sind die Erinnerungsmodelle sehr verschieden, wie man sich erinnert, ob man sich erinnert, wie weit man weg ist, ob es einen betrifft oder nicht, und wir haben damals nach einem Text gesucht und ich bin irgendwie durch eine Lesung im Literaturhaus Wien auf die Hanna Krall gestoßen und da wir damals schon nach Polen fuhren für Recherchen nach Krakow nach Warschau, habe ich Hanna Krall angerufen und habe sie gefragt, ob sie uns die Rechte geben würde für eine der Kurzgeschichten. Wir haben uns relativ schnell für Pola entschieden. Das ist eine Erzählung nach einem tatsächlichen Vorfall. Da gibt’s auch ein Buch von Christopher Browning, das heißt Ganz normale Männer oder so, also es handelt sich um ein Hamburger Polizeibataillon, das ganz unerwartet gegen Ende des Krieges aufgerufen wurde, in einen Zug gesteckt und nach Polen verfrachtet und sie sind dort angekommen früh morgens und haben überhaupt nicht gewusst, was ihnen bevorsteht. Und das waren keine Nazis oder auch nicht einmal Soldaten sondern ganz normale deutsche Männer, und der Auftrag war – und das haben ganz viele überhaupt nicht verkraftet – ab dem Moment, wo sie den Zug verlassen haben, Juden zu erschießen, also da waren Massenerschießungen dabei und das ist also historisch aufgearbeitet, dieses berühmte Polizeibataillon, das steht in der Pressemappe, ich glaube 133 oder so, also da schrieben verschiedenste Wissenschaftler darüber, Christopher Browning, wie heißt der Andere, der Hitlers willfährige Vollstrecker geschrieben hat – Goldhagen. Und was mich so fasziniert hat, ist die Knappheit der Sprache von der Hanna Krall und diese Fähigkeit, mit diesem ungeheurem Vorgang der Massenerschießungen und sie ist auch aus einem teils jüdischen Elternhaus und sie hat, glaube ich, auch erst später erfahren, dass das der Fall ist, also sie ist bei Christlichen Eltern aufgewachsen. Wie sie mit dem Grauen umgeht und wie sie versucht, das zu fassen, dem habhaft zu werden, in einer sehr trockenen aber doch empathischen Form, also man spurt ihre Betroffenheit aber sie benennt die Dinge, ohne sie genau zu benennen, also der Reich Ranicki, der kritischer Geist ist, hat also ihre Form mit dieser Geschichte, mit dem Komplex umzugehen also ganz außerordentlich und wichtig erachtet. Also sie gilt als eine der wichtigsten polnischen Schriftstellerinnen. Sie ist jetzt, glaube ich, schon 70, über 70, glaube ich 1933 geboren. Da ist das ein Zitat von dem Marcel Reich Ranicki, ‘Eines der Merkmale der Prosa der Hanna Krall ist, dass sie alles berichtet und nichts kommentiert’. Also sie stellt die Fakten einfach aus, natürlich gefiltert durch ihre Wahrnehmungen, ja und die ist eigentlich eine sehr weibliche und eine Selbstbetroffene und das hat uns interessiert und vor allem hat es uns interessiert als

237 österreich- und deutsches Ensemble, also wir haben keine jüdischen Personen in unserer Gruppe, uns damit zu beschäftigen, wie man das im Theater überhaupt darstellen kann, und welche Formen man finden kann. Zu der Zeit haben wir uns auch mit Beckett wieder beschäftigt. Wir haben 1998 bis 2000 am Endspiel von Beckett gearbeitet, an 6 verschiedenen Versionen, die in Wien und Graz gezeigt wurden, Endspiel in Prozess 1 – 5, hieß das. Die 6. war quasi eine Version für Graz und irgendwie ist dieses Quadrat von Beckett in die Diskussion gekommen und ich habe mir gedacht, das ware sehr interessant choreographisch mit dem Quadrat von Beckett zu arbeiten und das als dieses Todesquadrat, das es in der Literatur von Hanna Krall oft vorkommt zu behaupten. Wir haben das eigentlich nicht versucht aber man könnte jetzt rätseln, hat es der Beckett auch so gemeint? Darum ging’s auch gar nicht sondern um eine Choreographie einer immer wiederkehrenden Bewegung, die sich auf das Zentrum zubewegt aber immer das Zentrum vermeidet, was irgendwie dieser Punkt des Schweigens und des Ausweichens war in/mit dem Text von Hanna Krall. Das fanden wir sehr interessant und wir haben also mehrgleisig geprobt, es war dann auch spannend, dass zwei polnische KünstlerInnen dabei waren, also ein polnischer Schauspieler und Musiker und eine Österreicherin, die aber lange in Polen gelebt und gearbeitet hat und Violinistin ist, auch Klezmer, diese Tradition spielen konnte und Polnisch spricht. Wir haben also polnisch und deutsch gearbeitet, parallel, auch in der Aufführung. Das Polnische war eher 10%, knapp gehalten, aber trotzdem present, das war mir wichtig, beide Personen auch nicht jüdisch, und das war sehr interessant im Probeprozess, die Haltung des polnischen Kollegen, der sich oft schuldig gefühlt hat, das ist alles bei uns passiert, also wir Polen sind schuld am Holocaust und an diesen Massenmorden und das finde ich sehr richtig und wichtig, dass er das abgewehrt hat, weil Polen ja besetzt war und dass die Polen auch Opfer waren und er hat seine Familiengeschichte begonnen zu erzählen, also wir haben einerseits inhaltlich an den Texten gearbeitet vor allem an der Frage, wie kann sich ein Ensemble, wie können sich junge Menschen heut zu diesem ganzen Thema/Komplex verhalten und wir sind gestoßen auf die Form biographische, kurze Erzählungen der Ensemblemitglieder einzubauen, das war das erste Mal, dass wir das so konsequent gemacht haben und das fand ich sehr wichtig, das war ein Durchbruch für uns, also ‚the use of personal biography’, das ist natürlich nicht neu und in der Performance Art kennt man das, im Experimentaltheaterbereich ist das immer wieder vorgekommen, aber eine ästhetische Form dafür zu finden, also einen Fluss einer Performance, einer Rede zu unterbrechen, rauszutreten, auch wenn ich das nicht physisch mache, aber klar einen Bruch zu setzen, also zum Beispiel, die eine Schauspielerin hat dann in einer Mauerspalt im Bühnenbild einfach ein Foto ihrer Oma rausgezogen, da war ihre Tante drauf, die Juden versteckt hat und das hat sie auch erst erfahren vor einigen Jahren und dann hat sie das geschildert, sie ist aus einer norddeutschen Familie und sie weiß eigentlich nicht genau, was die Großeltern, sie ist damals eine so 35-jährige Schauspielerin gewesen, was sie gemacht haben, woran sie beteiligt waren, was die wussten, aber das hat sie erfahren und das scheinbar auch unter großen Mühen in der Familie ist es erst herausgekommen, dass diese Tante sozusagen sich die Hände schmutzig gemacht hat. Also diese Ambivalenz, dass man heute eigentlich stolz sein müsste für Menschen, die im Widerstand waren, auf welcher Art auch immer im Aktiven oder wo beginnt der aktive widerstand, also viele, viele Frauen, die geholfen haben, indem sie Essen gebracht haben oder Menschen versteckt haben und Geheimnisse bewahrt haben und darum geht’s auch in dem Text, also in dem Text wird in wenigen Seiten geschildert, dass eine Polin sich in einen Deutschen verliebt und dann von ihm erschossen wird, also dieser Polizist wird gezwungen, von seinem

238 Vorgesetzten sie zu erschießen, weil sie nämlich Juden versteckt hat. Er kommt da drauf durch die Liebesbeziehung, dass sie Juden versteckt hat und das kommt immer wieder vor, dieses Bild ‘unter unserem Fussboden’ das wirst du im Video sehen, ‘hört man Stimmen oder bewegen sich Menschen, oder da lebt etwas unter unserem Boden’, und das hat sie auf so eine eindringliche Weise geschrieben, also im Grund geht’s bei der Elfriede Jelinek auch um das, diese Verdrängung und diese Vision, dass unter unserem Boden diese ganze unbearbeitete Geschichte noch immer vorhanden ist. Das hat sie auch sprachlich auf so nutzbare Weise beschrieben, dass man wirklich das Gefühl hat, man hört diese Stimmen, man kann sich das vorstellen, in diesen einfachen polnischen Häusern, dass unter den Brettern Menschen leben, und diese Breite der Assoziationen, dies sich dadurch ergeben, also das war total spannend und wir sind dann drauf gekommen, wir können das eigentlich nicht bebildern, das war auch ein Grund, warum wir den Beckett gewählt haben, weil das so eine abstrakte Form ist, das Quadrat, das wir quasi drüber gelegt haben, oder umgekehrt das Quadrat eigentlich zuerst geprobt haben. Das ist nämlich überhaupt nicht einfach, die Choreographie überhaupt zu erfüllen mit vier Personen oder waren es sechs, Moment Maren Rahman, Clemens Matzka, Anne wiederhold, Jan Tabaka und seine Frau Susanne Tabaka-Pillhofer, das waren fünf Performer und der Axel Bagatsch hat dann noch Akkordeon gespielt, aber es waren fünf. Also es waren immer vier im Quadrat, und ein fünfter, der wartet und wir haben auch eine choreographische Mitarbeiterin gehabt, weil es eben mindestens zwei oder drei Wochen in Anspruch genommen hat, es überhaupt zu lernen, überhaupt einen Rhythmus zu finden, der nicht eine Abbildung der Beckettschen Performance ist sondern einfach die Benutzung der Struktur und dann haben wir Schritt für Schritt begonnen, Texte einzufügen und dann sind wir drauf gekommen, dass das Quadrat eigentlich die Maschine ist, also diese Todesmaschine, das innere Feld kann man sagen, ist das Todesquadrat oder könnte das Todesquadrat sein und die Bewegung des Abschreitens der Linien des Quadrats und des Zuschreitens auf das Zentrum, das Ausweichen vor dem Zentrum, vor einander usw, dass das eigentlich eine Maschine ergibt, die kaum Denken zulässt, weil du musst ununterbrochen arbeiten körperlich gehen, gehen, ob langsam, ob schnell. Wir haben dann versucht, rund um das Quadrat bestimmte Szenen aus dem Text anzusiedeln, weil es nicht möglich war, in das Quadrat diese Texte reinzubringen. Es gab welche aber die waren meist chorisch, also wir haben einige Stellen rausgesucht, die chorisch performt wurden, auf deutsch und polnisch, die so Teil der Maschine waren und die ihre reflexiven und persönlichen essayistischen außen angesiedelt, also es hat sich auch dann choreographisch und geometrisch im Raum eine klare Struktur gegeben, also innen das Quadrat und außen vier leere Stellen, an denen sich in den Ecken auch sehr assoziative Szenen, Körperbilder entwickelt haben, wir haben dann überlegt, wie schaut der Raum überhaupt aus, wo sitzen die Zuschauer, wir haben sehr sehr lange rumüberlegt, wir wollten versuchen dieses Wegschauen, das gerade in Österreich und Wien eines der Übel ist, also sehr bekannt ist in allen Familien, das kam in den Erzählungen mit den Schauspielern immer wieder vor, wie setzen wir das um? Wo sitzen die Leute? Das schien mir sehr wichtig, also wir wollten, dass sie mitten im Geschehen sind und nicht dass sie drauf schauen, wir wollten sie einbeziehen und auch ansprechen als Selbstbetroffene, wir haben uns dann entschieden, sie an den Schakeln des Quadrats rund um zu setzen und zwar mit dem Rücken zum Zentrum und, das war total spannend also das heißt, es gab nur 16 Stühle, weil der Raum sehr klein ist, also 16 Zuschauer pro Vorstellung und die Zuschauer haben eigentlich nach außen geschaut und mit dem Rücken zur Geschichte, zum Todesquadrat und wenn sich drinnen was abgespielt hat. Also dieser

239 Wechsel der Positionen mussten sie sich umdrehen, es war relativ unbequem, über die Schulter schauen, manche haben sich sogar umgesetzt, manche. Das war so interessant, also ein weißer Raum, der sehr klar und karg beleuchtet war, also manche sind aufgestanden und haben sich auf einen anderen Sessel gesetzt. Durchgegangen durch das Todesequadrat ist nie wer, aber selbst diese kleinen Positionenwechsel waren so bedeutsam, das hat was ausgesagt, also einige Leute haben das gemacht, andere hätten das nie gemacht, es war total spannend, wie sitzen sie, nehmen Sie es an, dass sie eigentlich mit dem Rücken zum Geschehen sitzen und dann haben wir uns überlegt, wir wollen, dass dieser Text mitgelesen werden kann, weil wir haben nicht den gesamten text untergebracht in die Performance, d.h. unser Bühnenbildner, der Walter Lauterer, hat den Text in so eine Schreibmaschinenform, also wie wenn’s aus der Schreibmaschine käme, aufbereitet und auf große Blätter projiziert, also drucken lassen. Das wurde als Textband rundherum montiert, also an einer stelle des Raumes beginnend herumführend bis zum Schluss, d.h. jeder Zuschauer konnte einen Teil des Textes mitlesen, wir haben das auch in die Performance eingebaut. Es gab Szenen, wo die Schauspieler neben oder vor oder unter dem Text standen/lagen und direkt mit dem Text an der Wand gearbeitet haben und dann gab’s noch ein Raumelement: Unser Bühnenbildner hatte aus schwerem Eisen leere Bilderrahmen, die hatte er für irgendeine Installationsprojekt, die hat er dann umgebaut, variiert ein paar dazu gestaltet und die hingen so in Augenhöhe an verschiedenen Punkten im Raum, manchmal hat man die Schauspieler durch die Rahmen gesehen, manchmal neben den Rahmen, manchmal über den Rahmen und das hat so durch das Material des Eisens so eine Brutalität auch, es konnte auch musikalisch mitgearbeitet werden. Die ganze Performance war sehr musikalisch. Das war das erste Mal, dass alle Schauspieller auch ein Intrument gespielt haben, nicht nur die Stimme verwendet haben, also Cello, Geige, Gitarre, Akkordeon und Klarinette. Das war sehr wichtig, und die Violinistin, die eine klassische Musikausbildung hat, hat auch musikalisch mit der Gruppe gearbeitet, um ein Paar so Orchesterstücke oder Lieder einzuproben, und das war natürlich ästhetisch sehr entscheidend. Es hat den Ausdruck der Performance sehr geprägt. Wir haben jetzt nicht versucht, das auf jüdisch zu machen oder Klezmer irgendwie nachzuahmen aber den melancholsichen Ton und diesen Osteuropäischen Charakter irgendwie einzufangen. Und die Hanna Krall war z. B. bei der Premiere, das war ein glücklicher Zufall, weil sie in Wien eine Lesung hatte, d.h. wir haben die Premiere so geplant, weil es war das Jahr Polnisch-Österreichisch oder war ja irgendwie Österreich in Polen oder so, das steht aber im Pressetext. Und wir haben die Premiere so gelegt, dass sie nach ihrer Lesung zur Premiere kommen kann, und sie war, glaube ich, sehr überrascht, sie ist doch eine ältere Dame, sie hat sich bereit erklärt, wir haben sie abgeholt im Hotel und ich habe gemerkt, dass sie sich denkt, na ja mal schauen, was wird, so ein kleines Theater, kann ja jeder sagen, er nimmt so einen Text, und ich habe auch gemerkt, sie spricht Deutsch aber sie wollte nicht deutsch sprechen, dass da Resentiments sind gegenüber Österreich und Deutschland, das hat sie klar abgegrenzt, dass sie Englisch sprach und nicht Deutsch. Man hat aber gemerkt, dass sie es versteht und auch da denke ich, dass sie vielleicht Vorurteile aber jedenfalls Befürchtungen hatte, und sie war am Schluss so gerührt und sie ist aufgestanden und wir haben einen Blumestrauß überreicht und sie hat gesprochen zum Publikum und zu den Schaufspielern, es war wahnsinnig berührend, weil sie hat es angenommen. (Eva weint an dieser Stelle.) Sie hat gesagt, das ist eine tolle Arbeit, wo man denkt, das Theater fügt dem Text etwas hinzu, es ist nicht Rezitation, man stellt sich nicht eitel über den Text und macht da jetzt Riesenperformances und sie hat sogar, glaube ich, in einem Brief oder in einem Telefonat mit mir, hat sie sogar

240 gesagt, das hat etwas von Kantor, das war sehr beeindruckend. Das hat uns natürlich sehr gefallen. Aber das hat sie zumindest angenommen und als eine wichtige Arbeit bezeichnet, wissend, dass da wenig Mittel dahinter sind und, dass wir von Polen wenig wissen, aber sie hat den Versuch, glaube ich, gemerkt, das auf die eigene Situation zu beziehen und trotzdem die Distanz zu wahren.

BC: Dieses Schweigen und Verstecken zu thematisieren überhaupt?

EB: Ja. Das ist natürlich ihr Thema auch, also sie schreibt, dass in Polen, um in Polen, diesen Aufarbeitungsprozess in Gang zu bringen oder diesen zu bestärken, der ist ja, es ist ja nicht so lange her also Polen, wieviele ex-Kommunistische Länder haben dieses Selbstbewusstsein, wir sind Antifaschisten und wir haben das Problem erledigt. Das liegt hinter uns und wir sind nicht schuld, das ist aber auch danach auch noch in der kommunistischen Zeit pogrommartige, dass es Judenverfolgungen gab und, dass viele viele Dinge vorgefallen sind, an die man sich jetzt erst erinnert, also ich glaube nicht, dass das so lang her ist, fünf bis zehn Jahre maximal und sie ist eine wichtige, sie war ja eine Journalistin, ursprünglich eine wichtige journalistische und literarische Stimme, die das verbindet explizit ohne drauf zu drücken auch mit ihrer persönlichen Biographie. Sie lässt sich ja viele Geschichten erzählen, da sieht man auch, diesen journalistischen Arbeitsprozess, also sie reist herum, Leute schreieben sie an, sie macht Interviews, um die alltäglichen Geschichten zu hören und die bearbeitet sie dann literarisch aber du merkst den journalistischen Ursprung noch. Und sie hat germerkt, und das ist, glaube ich, uns gelungen, in irgendeiner Form, das auf Österreich, auf Wien zu übertragen in einem Kontext von viel viel jüngeren Menschen, und mein Angebot als Regisseurin war also dieses Quadrat und der Versuch sehr minimalistisch sehr choreographisch zu arbeiten, die Texte nicht zu emotional zu belegen sondern klar und deutlich zu lassen. Es gab so Momente von Figurenarbeit schon, also man wusste, wer Pola ist, wer die Nachbarin ist, wer der deutsche Polizist ist, aber die Kostüme waren z.B. Einheitskostüme, schwarze, dunkelgraue Anzüge und die Frauen trugen lange Röcke, das war so ein Nadelstreif, aber sehr heutig eigentlich und trotzdem Bühnenkostüme, aber nicht der Versuch jetzt irgendwie Folklore zu machen oder Nazi…

BC: Zeitbezogen….

EB: Zeitbezogen, nein überhaupt nicht. Trotzdem war es, glaube ich, erkennbar fürs Publikum, die Maren war die Pola und der Clemens war der deutsche Polizist, die Anna war die Nachbarin und die zwei polnischen Darsteller so, waren irgendwie das Volk rundherum und haben verschiedene kleine Nebenfiguren immer wieder gespielt. Aber es war nicht so eine gradlinige Zuordnung. Und mein Angebot war auch an die Gruppe, dass jeder, jede, zumindest eine Privatgeschichte, einen Kommentartext verfasst, oder entwickelt oder schreibt und dann auch einbringt, und das ist nicht gelungen bzw da haben sich einige dagegen entschieden. Also nur zwei Schauspieler, die am längsten mit mir arbeiten, die Maren und der Clemens, haben das gemacht, ich glaube, das hat mit Mut zu tun, also…

BC: Haben die anderen Schauspieler erklärt, warum sie nicht mitmachen wollten?

EB: Nicht wirklich, und ich habe da auch nicht gedrängt, aber ich glaube, dass es ihnen peinlich war, oder was mir auch aufgefallen ist, das war in der ganzen Gruppe

241 eigentlich am Anfang da, ich habe ja zu dem ganzen Thema nichts zu sagen. Bei uns wurde nicht darüber gesprochen oder meine Eltern sind erst 50, die sind nach dem Krieg geboren. Ich glaube, für den Polen war es sehr schwer, weil er aus einer antifashistischen Familie kommt und er hat das Gefühl gehabt, jetzt muss ich mich da zu irgendeiner Schuld bekennen, ich habe aber gar keine diesbezüglichen Gefühle. Ich glaube, das ist eine Frage, wie weit ein Performer, also ein Schauspieler Mut hat, in dem Moment privat zu werden, zum Performer zu werden, weil das ist keine schauspielerische Aufgabe mehr, zu einem Text, den man theatral bearbeitet, jetzt einen persönlichen Kommentar dazu zu sagen, zu sprechen, der nicht von der Regie vorgegeben ist, der nicht wieder literarisch vorgefasst ist, z.B. der Clemens hat erzählt, dass sein Opa, der kleinwüchsig war, er hat ihn kleinwuchsig genannt, jetzt könnte man sagen, er war ein Zwerg, wie klein er war, wissen wir bis heute nicht, verfolgt wurde, da waren Abende, wo er zu weinen begonnen hat, weil er scheinbar seinen Opa sehr geliebt hat und er war auch Schriftsteller, er hat Gedichte geschrieben, und er hat zitiert aus den Gedichten und er hat nie wirklich etwas Bestimmtes gesagt, was mit dem Opa passiert ist, ihm ist in dem Sinn nichts passiert, er hat überlebt, aber es hätte ihm was passieren können, nicht als Jude sondern als Behinderter.

BC: Und er hat darunter leiden müssen.

EB: Ja, ich glaube schon, emotional. Ich habe nicht so sehr gepuscht, aber ich glaube, dass der Schauspieler sehr klar emotional diese Geschichte ausgewählt hat.

BC: Und Eva, das ist dann real, inwiefern ist das denn Kunst, oder ist das eine Begegnung zwischen Kunst und Realität, oder was ist das?

EB: Ich suche jetzt seit Jahren die Möglichkeit, wie ich erstens rauskomme aus dem reinen Rollenspiel des Theatralischen und was wir wir die Emanzipation des Schauspielers nennen, dass der Schauspieler sich aktiv in den Prozess einbringt. Also, dass ich als Regisseurin eine Spielleiterin bin oder Animateurin oder Dinge ermögliche oder zur Verfügung stelle, entwickele von Strukturen, aber nicht sage, was passiert, ich wähl dann aus, oder wenn Angbote kommen leite ich oder lenke ich das, aber ich glaube nicht dran, dass ich den Leuten, gerade bei so einem sensibelen Thema, vorschreiben sollte oder könnte: sag das oder jenes oder zeig das oder jenes. Und eine Form der Emanzipation im Theater, glaube ich, ist schon dieses radikale sich in Beziehung setzten persönlich zu einem Text.

BC: Aber warum muss das einen Platz auf der Bühne haben oder warum muss das vor einem Publikum geschehen? Kann das die Aufführung nicht einfach informieren?

EB: Hat es ja. Ich glaube auch, bei den polnischen Schauspielern, die das nicht gemacht haben oder bei denen, die entschieden haben es nicht zu machen, hast du die Betroffenheit oder die Verbindung auch gespürt. Vielleicht geht das über den Rahmen hinaus, das kann sein. Und es waren vielleicht Abende, wo sich Zuschauer peinlich betroffen gefühlt haben, besonders wenn es dann in so eine sicherlich nicht theatrale Weise ausartete, als dass jemand zu weinen beginnt. Es ist nicht mehr kontrollierbar, der Moment, nicht mehr kontrollierbar und ich bin sicher, dass einigen Leuten das unangenehm war, ich weiß, dass as aber andere Leute sehr berührt hat, also einfach, diese Grenze auszudehnen.

242 BC: Weil manche sich strikt dagegen wehren, überhaupt so Persönliches mit einzubringen; neulich sagte mir eine Schauspielerin, das findet sie entsetzlich, wenn ein anderer Schauspieler/eine andere Schauspielerin mit den eigenen Emotionen arbeitet.

EB: Es war nicht wirklich in dem Sinne emotional, also ich habe nicht gepusht, dass hier geschrieen, geweint oder sonst wie emotional agiert wird sondern, dass diese knappe, kurze, in alltagssprachige halt eine Erzählung dafür steht, was die Maren sehr klar machte, und der Clemens war offensichtlich und ich glaube, das war für ihn auch als Mann ein großer Schritt, sich das zu gestatten auch in der Öffentlichkeit, es hat ihn so emotional berührt, die Geschichte von dem Opa. Manchmal blieb er cool, aber das war ihm nicht immer möglich.

BC: Ist da ein Unterschied, weil das halt in dem Rahmen stattfindet, ist da ein Unterschied zwischen dem, was die Schauspieler auf der Bühne gemacht haben und, sagen wir mal, Konfessionellem?

EB: Es war so kurz und ich glaube, es wäre nicht gegangen in einer realistischen Aufführung, es war so abstrakt, durch diese ständige Begehung des Quadrats das war nämlich durchgängig, also es gab Momente, wo nur einer drin war, oder slow motion gearbeitet wurde, aber es war immer jemand im Quadrat, d.h. die Maschine lief ununterbrochen und dieser weiße, cleane Raum mit diesem Textband rundherum und diesem auch wieder quadratischen, eisernen Bilderrahmen hat das so klar strukturiert, dass es möglich war. Also ich wusste es auch nicht, ob ich es wagen soll.

BC Für dich war es aber ein wichtiger Moment, also das hast du mir einmal gesagt, das war für dich ein wichtiger Moment.

EB: Es hat sich so ergeben, ich habe es vielleicht auch als Vorarbeit und Recherche für meine Arbeit am Text ‘Auf der Suche nach Jakob’ benützt, weil ich mir überlegt habe, wie kann ich das überhaupt zu Papier bringen, obwohl das großteils aus Träumen und Erzählungen und Assoziationen besteht, weil ich ja nichts de facto weiß über diesen angeblich jüdischen Großvater. Ich weiß nur, dass er Jakob Brenner hieß und, dass er aus einem kleinen Ort kommt, das sich Radziszów nennt, bei Krakow. Ich kann das Wort nicht einmal richtig aussprechen, und wir haben jetzt im Zuge der Reisen versucht, Papiere zu finden, es ist unmöglich, weil die Rote Armee oder die Nazis, man weiß es nicht genau, haben alles zerstört, aber wir wissen, dass er in keiner der kirchlichen Listen mehr drin ist, also ich vermuute, dass er Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts nach Wien kam, aus Gründen, die wir auch nicht genau kennen, aber damals sind sehr sehr viele, die sind in diese Hauptstadt gekommen in die Nähe des Hofes, um hier zu arbeiten, also das muss jetzt nicht aktive Diskriminierung gewesen sein, aber in jedem Fall wäre mein Vater, der 1938 der SA beigetreten ist, da war er 21, 1917 geboren, und ich frage mich warum, weil mentalitätsmäßig und politisch war mein Vater kein Nazi, eher ein Monarchist, also ein Konservativer aber kein Faschist, das war er sicher nicht, das würde ich wissen und das hätte ich auch gespürt in der Kindheit, in der Jugendzeit. Aber es hat mich immer beschäftigt. Stimmt es, stimmt es nicht? Warum hat er das gemacht? Und ich habe vermutet aus Schutzgründen und um zu vermeiden, dass da nachgeforscht wird, sind da z.B., wie ich herausgefunden habe, in den Papieren sind alle auf der rechten Seite, die Mutterlinie lässt sich

243 zurückverfolgen zwei, drei Jahrhunderte und alles, was unterhalb des Jakobs ist, ist weiß mit Fragezeichen versehen in Bleistift und das halte ich für keinen Zufall, da ist versucht worden, diesen Teil der Geschichte reinzuwaschen. Und ich habe mich gefragt, wie geht man damit um? Wie beschreibt man das und vielleicht war das einer der Ansätze, mal zu versuchen in einem objektiveren Setting mit einem anderen Text, mit dem Text eines Autors, sich dem anzunähern, und ich glaube, dass auch für die Schauspieler sehr wichtig war, wenn ich das ausgebreitet hätte, wenn es Szenen geworden wären von 5 – 10 Minuten, dann wäre es unerträglich gewesen.

BC: Das waren nur Momente?

EB: 10 Sekunden, also das von der Maren waren 10/20 Sekunden, und das von dem Clemens vielleicht ein bisschen länger, aber nicht viel. Es war so wie ein Blitz, der plötzlich auftaucht, und das war sehr überraschend und sehr interessant. Manche haben es vielleicht gar nicht gemerkt im Publikum und haben gedacht, das ist Teil des Textes. Jetzt erzählt er halt vom Opa. Warum weiß man nicht genau, aber der Text hat auch durch die Knappheit ein bisschen was Abstraktes gehabt, das ist eine Erzählung, man weiß genau, worum es geht, jeder Satz ist verständlich aber es geht so Schlag auf Schlag, und sie arbeitet auch mit poetischen Bildern, z. B. Das Herz eines Juden, das Kinder unterm Eis finden, da ist jemand zu Tode gebracht worden und offenbar sind Jahre später Kinder dort Schlittschuhgelaufen und haben einen Leichnam unter der Eisdecke gefunden und ob das jetzt wirkich ein Herz war oder nicht, aber es war eine wunderbare Metapher, das Herz eines Juden, und solche Bilder also der Text hat etwas sehr Peotisches trotz dieser journalistischen Komponente.

BC: Deshalb hast du gesagt, dass es theatral zugänglich war, wegen der Stimme und der Bilder?

EB: Ja, die Bilder und die, ja man konnte den Text auch in Szenen aufteilen, also sie erzeugt in einer halben, auf einer drittel Seite, auf einer viertel Seite von einer halben Seite, in einem Paragraphen eindeutig ein Bild einer Zeit, eines Ortes, man sieht die Figuren, man sieht das Haus, man sieht den Weg dort, in dem Dorf, man sieht die Dunkelheit, die Dämmerung, das Eis, die Kinder, die dort fahren, man sieht das. Also das ist eine sehr bildliche Sprache und ich habe gedacht, das eignet sich sehr gut. Dann ist immer noch die große Herausforderung, wenn ich es nur spreche, agiere ich das auch aus, wie weit illustriere ich das, wie weit halte ich mich fern vom Illustrieren? Das war eigentlich unser Ziel, wie halte ich mich fern und lass trotzdem das Bild leben.

BC: Weil Bildliches zu literal oder zu plakativ ist?

EB: Na, es wäre Kitsch, und es wäre vor allen für Menschen, die so eine belastete Geschichte haben zu dem Thema, das Thema ist zu schwer. Also es ist meiner Meinung nach nicht zu bebildern, das wissen wir von Shoah, von Lanzmann, das ist ja nicht umsonst, die Ikone des Umgangs mit dem Thema. Man kann es nicht zeigen. Und wie verhält man sich performativ rund um das Thema, ohne es zeigen zu müssen, ohne auch in die Versuchung zu geraten und trotzdem eine Nähe zu behaupten zu dem Thema, also man könnte ganz cool darüber reden, das hat mit mir gor nix zu tun, es war einmal. Ein bisschen hat die Schreibweise von der Hanna Krall einen Ton manchmal von „Es war einmal“, als wär’s ein Märchen und dann kommen so knall

244 harte historische Fakten und Zahlen, dass sie nennt, wieviele Polizisten das waren, wieviele Schüsse abgegeben wurden etc, und da merkst du, es ist kein Märchen, es ist passiert.

BC: Und vielleicht noch zu dem Probenprozess, Eva, du hast geschildert so wie ihr da vorgegangen seid der wie ihr choreographisch gemacht habt, und konkreter, sagen wir mal zu dieser Such- und Experimentierphase, welche Ansätze, welche theatralen Ansätze, mit welchen hast du gearbeitet?

EB: Also eine Methode, die wir seit Jahren verwenden und wo wir jetzt an einem Punkt sind – wir gehen hinaus auf die Straße mit dem neuen Projekt mit ‘Seit einem Jahr’ mit der Fleischerei, mit dem neuen Raum, wo sich klar zeigt, wir brauchen neue Methoden, auch körperliche, sprachliche, wir brauchen neue Methoden oder wir müssen, und wir müssen die alten transformieren bis dahin. Wir waren ja bis 2004 in dem alten Raum, von 1998 bis 2004, und in dem weißen Raum haben sich so choreographische Ansätze wie die 6 Viewpoints of Performance von der Mary Overlie sehr geeignet, also die haben wir verwendet und natürlich die rein choreographische Arbeit ist und auch die Ensemblearbeit, wir machen ja Training und da geht’s immer um also wenn’s geht, täglich von ca 1, manchmal 2 Stunden Grotowski Training, Spiele, laufen, Ensembleübungen, Raumübungen, Rhythmusübungen, erstens um einen Ensemblegeist zu erzeugen, diese körperliche, diese synästhetische Wahrnehmung zu schärfen, zweitens um den ganzen Raum zu füllen, weil wir immer versuchen, das Publikum hineinzusetzen in den Event. Auch wenn die Leute quasi mit dem Rücken an der Wand entlang in einer Reihe sitzen, sind sie in einem offenen, weißen Raum, jeder sieht jeden. Also da gibt’s keinen Abtritt, da gibt’s keinen Auftritt in dem Sinn, es ist möglich als Zuschauer aufzustehen und sich umzusetzen, und in dem Moment wird man gewisserweise Teil der Performance, was in einem klassischen Theater nicht ist und ich glaube, dass man anders arbeiten muss, also experimenteller oder kollektiver. Wir haben bis ungefähr 2001 – 2002 die Bachmann Arbeit auf jeden Fall – 2000 – noch mit Riva-Arbeit von Grotowski gearbeitet, das hat sich aber seltsamerweise mehr und mehr reduziert, obwohl gerade die Riva-Arbeit sehr zum Autobiographischen führt. Wir haben das dann mehr in diese textliche Ebene weiterentwickelt. Eines war sicherlich die räumlich- choreographische an dem Beckettschen Quadrat, dann die Viewpoint Trainingsarbeit, die ja immer in unsere szenische Arbeit einfließt und die dritte wichtige, glaub ich, die eher stark war, also vier sind’s eigentlich, aber die dritte ist die musikalische Ebene gewesen, die musikalische Atmosphäre dieser Osteuropäischen, und die Qualitäten, die hier musikalisch im Ensemble vorhanden waren, stimmlich aber auch instrumental, die zu benutzen, und Lieder und instrumentale Stücke zu entwickeln.

MR: (Ist inszwischen hinzugekommen) Ich glaube, das 4. ist, dass wir versucht haben am Erinnerungsgestus zu arbeiten, also wie ist es, wenn man einen Text nicht behauptet sondern sich versucht zu erinnern, das haben wir versucht zu erforschen.

EB: Weil das in der Geste der Sprache ist, sie wechselt die Zeiten und es hat diesen Ton von‚ wir erinnern uns an etwas, das passiert ist’. Mir ist es gar nicht mehr so präsent, wie wir das gefunden haben, also es war sehr wichtig, dass ein Schauspieler nicht wiederholt, was war gestern sondern, dass er den Erinnerungsgestus von dem, was er gestern gemacht hat, versucht zu zeigen in den Raum zu bringen.

245 BC: Maren, vielleicht kannst du auch einen Augenblick darüber sprechen – wir haben geraden eben über die Augenblicke in der Performance gesprochen, wo für dich und für Clemens reale Erfahrungen oder Reales aus eurem Leben mit reingebracht wurden, ich habe Eva gefragt, inwiefern gehört sich das auf die Bühne. Wieso muss Reales aus dem eigenen Leben plötzlich auf der Bühne geschehen oder mit reingebracht werden oder was hat das für dich bedeutet? Weil viele sich dagegen wehren. Sie wollen nicht, dass Persönliches dem Publikum entgegengebracht wird.

MR: Ja, mich wundert, ich stelle immer wieder fest, dass sehr viele Schauspielerinnen ganz strikt sich eigentlich dagegen wehren, obwohl es ja natürlich immer in die eigene Arbeit einfließt, also Strasberg hat ja eigentlich nur damit gearbeitet und auch Grotowski mit der Erinnerung des Körpers,

BC: Das soll dann halt die Performance prägen oder gestalten aber nicht...

MR: Es soll im Geheimen bleiben, das ist sozusagen Werkgeheimnis des Schauspielers, mit was für Erinnerungen er arbeitet.

BC: Die Quellen, die man anzapft.

MR: Ja, also ich persönlich finde das sehr spannend, dass jeder Mensch der in einem Theaterprozess dabei ist, auch persönliches Material wirklich real verwendet, nicht nur als Werkgeheimnis im Hintergrund, sondern als Teil des Stücks.

BC: Als Teil des Stücks?

MR: Es ist nicht einfach, find ich, das rüberzubringen, entweder es wird zu sentimental, das kommt auch vor, ja wenn jemand wirklich in der Erinnerung in Tränen ausbricht, verliert es für mich diesen Performance-Charakter, wenn ich’s nur erzähle, hat es sowas Drüberstehendes, es ist irgendwas dazwischen. Ich erzähle eine Erinnerung ich versuche, mich zurückzuerinnern, ich vergess nicht, dass ich den Abstand habe.

BC: Oder das zu vergegenwärtigen ohne, dass es zu ermotionsgeladen wäre, oder dass es, was weiß ich, so Therapie ist oder therapeutischen Charakter hätte??

MR: In die Situation wirklich reingehen, finde ich stimmt nicht, weil ich bin in einer Theatersituation, ich kann nur versuchen mich zu erinnern.

BC: Sehr subtile Arbeit?

MR: Ja, ich, es ist sicher nicht immer gelungen. Es ist ein Forschen, glaube ich, auf dieser, auf diesem Seil, ja wo ist die Balance?

BC: Aber es hat einen Platz für dich, oder das ist schauspielerisch interessant, oder fürs Publikum?

MR: Für mich auf jeden Fall. Und ich seh’s auch gern, also nicht nur, dass ich gern mich da selber einbringen möchte, sondern mich interessieren einfach Erinnerungen von Menschen, ganz reale Erinnerungen nicht nur als Werkgeheimnis sondern ich

246 finde, es gibt einen großen Schatz in den Menschen, nämlich diese Erinnerungen. Ich finde das interessant, wenn er gehoben wird. Ich höre auch anderen Menschen gern zu bei ihren Erinnerungen.

EB: Ich habe das zuwenig betont am Anfang, aber ich glaube, dass diese Frage des Erinnerns und des Vergessens, wir haben noch viele Gespräche, sogenannte ‘special events’ mit bekannten Personen, auch Leuten die hier rund um die Holocaustforschung in Österreich tätig sind, veranstaltet, und es ist dann auch, es fällt mir gerade ein, in der Arbeit, die wir gerade abgeschlossen haben in Korsika, eingeflossen, also wo es um draste Memoir ging, Spuren der Erinnerung in einem korsischen Dorf aus dem 9. Jahrhundert und da ging’s nicht nur um den Holocaust sondern um ihre Erinnerungen, wie früher das Leben war, oder überhaupt die Frage, diese Landschaft, die Häuser, die da stehen, die teilweise 900 Jahre alt sind, noch länger also 1100 Jahre alt sind. Welche Erinnerungen bergen die? Und mit welchen Erinnerungen leben die Menschen, die teilweise Vergangenheit und teilweise Gegenwart sind, von Lebensweisen, von Arten, Landwirtschaft zu betreiben, wie das soziale Leben sich gestaltet und diese enormen Veränderungen durch diesen Modalisierungprozess. Eigentlich ist seit der Pola oder eigentlich seit der Bachmann 2000 dieses Thema der Erinnerung, ist in der Bachmannschen Arbeit stark vorhanden, und auch der Holocaust ist sehr stark vorhanden auch wenn sie nicht davon spricht.

MR: Es ist ja auch interessant, dass es da kulturelle Unterschiede gibt, es gibt, glaube ich, Kulturen, die das eher ablehnen, also haben wir jetzt festgestellt, dass es in Korsika z.B. viele mit diesem Thema Probleme hatten, ich habe das jetzt auch gehört in Bulgarien, dass das auch abgelehnt wird, dieses sich Erinnern.

BC: Man will sich nicht damit auseinandersetzen?

MR: Ja, keine Ahnung, ich meine in Österreich gibt’s das natürlich auch in gewissem Maß und dann gibt’s natürlich die Gegenbewegung, die sagt, wir müssen jetzt endlich, was unter den Teppich gekehrt wurde....

BC: Rausholen und anschauen?

MR: Endlich mal rausholen und anschauen, ja das...

EB: Wir haben (bei Pola) auch sehr rhythmisch teilweise, Maren macht ja sehr viel sprachlich rhythmische Arbeit, das war z.B. einer dieser skandierten chorischen Texte: ‘Unter unserem Fußboden sitzen irgendwelche Leute’, also in dem Text geht’s um Erinnerung und Gedächtnisarbeit, aber warum das uns speziell so...ich weiß nicht, woher es kam, nicht direkt aus Beckett, also nicht direkt aus der Endspielarbeit sondern aus der Bachmannarbeit und der Arbeit an der eigenen Geschichte, dem Umgang mit dem Holocaust, also dieser verdrängte jüdische Frage, die mich damals sehr beschäftigt hat.

MR: Das hat dich schon immer beschäftigt...

EB: Ja, aber das ist irgendwann dann wieder aufgebrochen, als Lee Breuer, der amerikanische Jude, sagte, der möchte mit uns an dem Jakob arbeiten, wir haben 5 Jahre fast auf das hingearbeitet, weil das ein sehr bekannter amerikanischer Regisseur

247 des Experimentaltheaters ist, es war zeitlich ganz schwierig, ihn nach Wien zu kriegen, und finanziell und so weiter, wir haben sehr lange Vorbereitungsarbeiten gemacht.

MR: Hängt das auch nicht mit deinem USA-Aufenthalt zusammen? Also ich glaube, wenn man lange Zeit Distanz von seiner Heimat hat, hat man einen anderen Blick und andere Bedürfnisse, mit Vergangenheit unnd Erinnerungen umzugehen.

EB: Aber warum es gerade 2000 war und nicht 2003 war, weiß ich nicht, weil ich 1994 zurückgekommen, also das habe ich mich noch nicht gefragt, aber es hat sicher mit der Gruppendynamik zu tun, dass plötzlich klar war, dass es die anderen auch interessiert. Bei Maren war das sehr stark und bei Clemens. Es waren nicht alle, die unbedingt daran arbeiten wollten.

BC: Und würdet ihr diese Arbeit fortsetzen, ist es.. bleibt das für euch ein Thema?

EB: Ja, aber, für mich ist, ich, ja sicher, aber vorläufig wird diese jüdische Erinnerungsgeschichte nach hinten gerückt. Wir beschäftigen uns im Moment mit Erinnerungen im 7. Bezirk und eigentlich fast mit der Erinnerung unserer Existenz vor 2 Jahren, weil durch die Theaterreform und die Krise, durch die wir unseren Raum verloren haben und unsere Existenz über ein Jahr lang gefährdet war und eigentlich die Arbeit, die wir gemacht haben bis vor einem Jahr schon Erinnerung ist, und wir uns jetzt hier fragen, wie geht’s weiter mit dem Theater, wie geht’s weiter mit dem Leben in dem Berzirk, z.B. was für Erinnerungen haben die Leute hier daran, wie hier die Läden früher waren. Also viele Läden stehen leer, also irgendwie in den letzten 2 Jahren, das Thema Globalisierung oder was das bedeutet... das wollte ich eigentlich sagen, diese Insistenz, dass der Alltag oder die Geschichte der einzelnen Leute, die Geschichte macht. Das stand sogar in der Pressemappe für Kosika drin, das ist in allen Arbeiten da.

BC: Und das geht durch die Globalisierung ganz krass verloren....

EB: Ja, glaube ich schon, das Individuelle und die Möglichkeiten auch. Viele Geschichten verschwinden, weil Menschen aus dem Blickwinkel geschoben werden,

MR: Oder sterben einfach...

EB: Sterben oder arbeitslos werden, ihre Geschäfte zusperren müssen, kein Sprachrohr mehr haben. Es ist ja alles konzentriert und monopolisiert. Im Moment ist diese jüdische Frage nicht mehr so, aber sie wird wohl wiederkommen.

MR: Sie kommt immer wieder, das glaube ich schon. Da gibt’s ja hier herum viele Geschichte. Vor längerer Zeit da bin ich zufällig ins Gespräch gekommen mit einer Geschäftsfrau hier, die erzählt hat von - ihre Mutter hatte ihr das erzählt, wie das Geschäft arisiert wurde, die jüdische Bevölkerung plötzlich auf der Straße stand, wie sie sich gefragt haben, warum sind die nicht mehr da auf einmal...

BC: Und habt ihr das Gefühl, so ihr beschäftigt euch damit so in dieser Theatergruppe, beschäftigen sich auch andere Theatergruppen damit in Wien, so in der freien Szene oder im Staatstheater oder ist es....?

248 EB: Glaub ich schon, oder es ist ein kleiner Prozentsatz, mir fällt die Nika Sommer ein mit Weiterleben von der Ruth Klüger, Zweipersonenstück mit 2 Frauen, das sehr erfolgreich war, Hubsi kramer, ein sehr politischer Theatermacher, der immer wieder seine Hitlermonologe, wo er selber als Hitler in Uniform auftritt, natürlich sehr ironisiert aber durch seine persönliche, politische Arbeit als Aktivist nimmt man ihn sehr ernst, also das ist immer da. Und am Burgtheater ja, unter Peymann war’s stärker da, durch Bernhard und auch natürlich durch Heldenplatz und durch die Jelinek- Aufführungen. Wir werden nächstes Jahr wahrscheinlich an Jelinek arbeiten, da wird es wieder kommen, nehme ich an. Durch Jelinek ist es auch da, auch durch Streeruwitz, von der wir mehrere Texte gemacht haben, aber ich würde nicht sagen, dass es annähernd den Stellenwert hat in der Theaterarbeit, den es haben sollte, meiner Meinung nach, wobei ich jetzt nicht nur das jüdische Thema meine, also z.B. ich habe dieses eine Stück oder diesen Text verfasst über die Erinnerungen an meinen Vater, und meine Mutter habe ich irgendwie links liegen lassen, typisch, und jetzt denke ich mir, ich würde gern etwas machen, weil sie lebt noch, über ihre Flucht, sie war ein Mädchen, sie war 16 Jahre alt am Ende des Krieges und die ganze weibliche Bevölkerung ist nach Tirol geflohen und was die erlebt haben auf dem Weg. Und da gibt’s auch noch Tagebuchaufzeichnungen und Fotos und so, also ich meine jetzt nicht, dass es nur um die jüdische Geschichte gehen sollte, sondern überhaupt um die Vergegenwärtigung der näheren Vergangenheit also so ein Frauenprojekt mal zu mmachen fände ich total spannend, sogenannte Täterfrauen oder Frauen aus Täterfamilien, die damals zu jung waren, du kannst eine 15/16-Jährige nicht als Täterin bezeichnen...

BC: Und wie steht ihr dazu, dass diese Generation, die diese Erinnerungen noch haben, dass die quasi ausgestorben ist oder nur sehr wenige von ihnen noch am Leben sind, und die die am Leben sind, sind teilweise nicht imstande zu sprechen, da höre ich es immer wieder, so z.B. dass der Großvater sich geweigert hat zu sprechen, der konnte nicht über diese Dinge reden, wollte nicht, und dass diese Geschichten dann verlorengehen?

MR: Ich habe den Eindruck, die Opfergeschichten gehen eher nicht verloren, aber die Tätergeschichten, da redet niemand drüber. Ich habe schon öfter alte Leute befragt, was haben sie gemacht im Krieg, oder wie war das, da sind dann Geschichten gekommen, ja haben wir dem und dem geholfen und einen Befehl verweigert und irgendwem Essen zugeschoben, das sind eigentlich Heldengeschichten, ja, aus der heutigen Sicht, die werden aufbewahrt und sie werden erzählt. Die Tätergeschichten...

EB: Oder sie werden sogar überbetont.

MR: Ich frage mich eigentlich, wer diese ganzen Leute waren, die wirklich, was weiß ich, Massenexekutionen vollzogen haben. Wo sind die? Da redet niemand drüber.

BC: Und die ganzen Mitschwimmer....

MR: Da gibt’s, glaube ich, wirklich ein ganz großes Schamgefühl, zum Glück, ich meine, wenn sie mit Stolz darüber reden würden...

249 EB: Es gibt ja in Österreich, obwohl der Haider im Moment eher nicht im Wiederaufstieg begriffen ist, aber es kann sein, es war schon öfter der Fall, dass er quasi abgestürzt ist und wieder wie ein Phönix aus der Asche wieder aufstieg, aber es gibt dieses Sediment, das wird, glaube ich, auf fast 20% geschätzt. Der Haider hatte ja vor einigen Jahren ja fast 27% der Stimmen. Es gibt dieses Sediment, das sich ungerecht behandelt fühlt und missverstanden, und sie waren ja nur Opfer und sie haben nur ihre Pflicht getan und ein großes Resentiment, ein antisemitisches haben, dass so viel über die jüdischen Autoren und ständig kriegen sie Preise und sind in den Medien und über sie wird halt nichts geredet. Ich glaube, das ist nach wie vor vorhanden.

MR: Wir leben natürlich hier in Wien, Provinz in Österreich ist ein ganz anderes Kapitel, glaube ich. In Kärnten, mir ist es unbegreiflich, dieser Widerstand immer noch gegen die zweisprachigen Ortstafeln. Ich weiß nicht, was da eigentlich los ist, dieser ganze Abwehrkampfgeschichte und diese Volksabstimmung, das wird dermaßen glorifiziert, das war, glaube ich, damals 1912, diese Volksabstimmung, ja, das ist so lange her, und in jedem Ort gibt es keinen jüdischen Friedhof oder ein Denkmal dafür, aber eine Gedenktafel ‘Volksabstimmung 1912’. Wir haben abgestimmt, dass wir nicht zu Jugoslawien damals gehören, ja, sondern zum deutschen Reich, die großdeutsche Idee.

EB: Ja, ja, und es ist sicherlich heute in andrer Weise in der EU Debatte drinnen, in Österreich gibt es sehr starke Ablehnung der möglichen Mitgliedschaft der Türkei, wir haben einen hohen Prozentsatz von Türken und wir haben im letzten Projekt das schon gestreift, da haben wir von der Lasker-Schüler ein Projekt gemacht ‘Herz.Angst’ und da war auch eine türkische Schauspielerin dabei, aber in Wien kann man darüber reden, vor allem in diesen Innenbezirken, also wir sind hier im grünen Bezirk Österreichs. Es sind hier sehr viele aufgeschlossene Menschen, auch in unserem Publikum, und wenn ich das erzähle 30/35 Km von hier sind die Leute böse auf uns, auf unser Schielfestival, weil am nächsten Tag die Blasmusik gestört war. Die behaupten jetzt echt, die Neulengbacher Blaskapelle hat verloren, weil sie nicht proben konnten, weil wir sie sabotiert haben durch unser Schiele-Performance- Aufbauwerk, und das kann mir auch keiner sagen, dass das ein Zufall ist, warum kann man nicht beides? Ich find’s unangenehm, ich brauche nicht diese laute Musik und zehn Blaskapellen und den ganzen Tag hörst du es, es schallt überall durch, aber sie sollen es machen dürfen, aber wir sollen unsere Sache auch machen dürfen.

BC: Und warum macht ihr das ausgerechnet in Neulengbach?

EB: Weil meine Mutter von daher ist, und weil der Schiele dort im Gefängnis war, weil wir wollten eigentlich dort, eigentlich unsere Workshops platzieren und haben dann über diese Schiele-Geschichte gefunden, dass es eignet sich, dass man da tiefer geht, und es entwickelt sich.

MR: Eigentlich auch eine Erinnerungsarbeit, weil Schiele auch nicht sehr angesehen war oder immer noch nicht ist in Neulengbach.

BC: Heutzutage immer noch nicht?

250 EB: Es gibt Leute, die sagen er war ein Schmierant, schön sind ja nur die Landschaften und wie kann man sowas zeichnen, und es wird schon einen Grund gehabt haben, wieso sie ihn eingesperrt haben, obwohl bewiesen ist, dass er niemanden verführt hat. Er ist wegen Verführung einer Minderjährigen angeblich in Untersuchungshaft gekommen und es hat sich dann als falsch erwiesen...

MR: Es gab doch, wie der Platz in Egon Schiele Platz umbenannt wurde, gab’s da auch große Proteste, dieses Schwein, danach soll jetzt ein Platz hier benannt werden, und das war vor ein paar Jahren.

EB: Ja, ja, 2000. Also das ist noch sehr stark in Österreich da, insofern ist diese Theaterarbeit...

BC: Dieses provinzielle Denken?

EB: Naja, das ist auch entartete Kunst, wenn man sagt, das Schwein, dieser Schmierant, das kein echter Künstler, schön sind nur die Landschaften, d.h. akzeptabel sind nur die Landschaften, dann ist das eine Aussage über Kunst auch.

BC: Vielen Dank fürs Gespräch.

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