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The Lehrstück As Performance

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The Lehrstück As Performance The Lehrstück As Performance Andrzej Wirth I Reading Brecht’s Lehrstücke as thesis pieces has become an established tenet of German studies even though there are disagreements over the status of the theses in Brecht’s texts. Should they be understood in terms of content or form: as political appeals or as formal exercises in the art of the dialectic (see Steinweg )? But there is also a third possibility: Perhaps the short pieces are performance drafts with intentionally controversial governing principles that have the power to generate a performance (as acceptance or rebellion). Drama therapy as pedagogy: Lehrstück texts are therapeutic sound poems. This hypothesis deserves to be interrogated. The critical discourse in German studies has overlooked that the Lehrstücke are libretti and can be interpreted only in relation to the vocal, musical, and choreographic performance: The music and the orientation toward particular target groups make the Lehrstücke applied texts, explainable simply in terms of performance practice. The originally envisioned target groups of the Lehrstücke (for example, the workers’ choruses of the Weimar Republic) be- long to the past. What is learned from a Lehrstück (as “thesis” or experience) depends upon the composition of the actual target group. In the Lehrstück project, two utopian concepts meet: the theatre as metatheatre, and society as changeable. Both are equally radical: theatre should function without an audience, society without classes. The short pieces written from to are formally the most innovative in Brecht’s oeuvre. In the last seven years of his life, Brecht, a theoretical socialist, was confronted with the political practice of a state which called itself socialist. He was able to live in a small state that understood itself as a Lehrstück and had to learn that such a state needed no Lehrstücke from its poets. But this realization doesn’t discredit the significance and importance of the initial grand design for a new theatre practice. The abstract style of the Lehrstücke proved to be forward-looking. As a utopia for the theatre, the project stimulated work that, since the s, has taken different forms in both theatrical and paratheatrical practice. The spread of encounter workshops (self-awareness groups) since the ’s, despite having a different objective, has perpetuated the idea of self-sufficient role-play. Formal affinities are evident in the abstract dramaturgy of Gertrude Stein and the aesthetic of Robert Wilson (repetitions, symmetry of the acts, singing). The Drama Review , (T), Winter . Copyright © New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/105420499760263570 by guest on 03 October 2021 Andrzej Wirth It is not surprising that Robert Wilson directed Der Ozeanflug [The Flight over the Ocean] with the Berliner Ensemble in . The abstract dramaturgy of the Lehrstücke anticipates the later, fully developed theory of Verfremdung [alienation] and uses much sharper alienation effects than those of the large parable pieces. Verfremdungseffekte in the Lehrstücke refer not only to the Gestus of the singing and the music composed for the text. They also concern movements, which are not presented as action but as the report of action that has already taken place. Further, Verfremdung is achieved through role ex- change. The composition is based on the montage of diverse elements: chorus, quoted dialogue, quoted movements and situations, aria-like solo numbers, commentaries, and so on. The diversity and flexibility of these loosely as- sembled elements is a distinguishing feature of this novel module-dramaturgy. The “modular” structure of the short pieces—they are constructed of sym- metrical units—allows for shifts of elements, depending upon the play’s ar- rangement. If one takes Brecht at his word, as expressed in his theory, then the Lehrstücke (completely apart from the fact that they were initially performed for the public) potentially constitute a theatre without an audience—that is, without passive spectators. Lehrstücke once more raise the issue of representa- tion in the theatre: no characters, no roles with the call for identification, ac- tions rather than an action—what is represented is the learning process. The space of the Lehrstücke is a play space beyond a conventional dichotomy of the stage and the auditorium. In the ideal Lehrstück, performing and watch- ing are two modalities of theatrical acting. Erfahrungs-theatre is the antithesis of Erlebnis-theatre. For this reason, attempts to perform the Lehrstücke in the con- ventional theatre space are problematic, even if they were originally performed in such spaces—for example, Die Maßnahme [The Measures Taken] at the Ber- liner Philharmonie, – December . Lehrstücke were once a subversive form of the alternative culture. The performance strategies used in The Measures Taken included the incorporation of the workers’ chorus trained in classical rep- ertoire (Bach, Händel), the use of bourgeois opera soloists, and a change of venue to a conventional concert hall (Berliner Philharmonie) with high admis- sions prices. One can assume that the actual (not to be equated with the in- tended) learning process of the Lehrstücke—also in Brecht’s time—referred more to the “camaraderie of performance” than to ideological indoctrination. Today, any pedagogical effort in the performed Lehrstücke, if at all effective, re- fers to the ethos of artistic collaboration and not to indoctrination. The critical interrogation of the material in today’s “postideological era” is what distin- guishes a Lehrstück from a conventional production. Lehrstücke should be seen as works of aesthetic and ideological (in that or- der) dissidence. These works are still avantgarde and relevant; this is con- firmed by looking at the music as well as the libretti and their dramatic form. I suspect, although I cannot prove, that they were much more effective as an act of artistic rather than ideological dissidence. The Brechtian Lehrstück project is a utopian plan under the conditions of compromise. Lehrstücke are realized through scenic presentation and stage presence (the Gestus); in other words, through performance. The music locks out the free- dom of improvisation and is not only a distancing but also a disciplining me- dium. In my experience with Lehrstück projects students often want to perform their own music, which I consider to be pedagogically legitimate and perhaps an elegant approach: self-devised discipline in the performance. The central problem of the Fatzer material and Measures Taken—spontane- ity versus doctrine—becomes primarily artistic exercise in the performed pre- sentation. Through the introduction of voice and music, the dogmatic edge of the writing is raised from the ideological to the aesthetic level of multimedia. So: Aestheticization of ideology with the medium of the Lehrstück? Style as Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/105420499760263570 by guest on 03 October 2021 Lehrstück the final determinant of the message? The aestheticization of ideology would become a disruptive factor in a pedagogy that is based on the Socratic method (Meäutik) of ascertaining the truth. But such a pedagogy is not Brecht’s con- cern. Brecht’s theory of the Lehrstücke is more radical than what was prac- ticed in the productions of his lifetime, involving strategic and cultural political compromises. Their utopian radical core is the unrepeatable, autarkic metatheatre without audience, in which the performers function as actors and spectators. The performed Lehrstück coheres into a performance piece par ex- cellence once the singing, Sprechgesang [Speech-song], quoted dialogue, or- chestration, and choreographed movement (without intending a Gesamtkunstwerk) are united as a fully realized multimedia play. Lehrstücke are sound poems with music, and their most rigorous guiding principles are composed according to the rule of homophony. The “Yes” of the boy in Jasager [He Who Said Yes] is not abstractable from its performed recitation. It is in fact articulated with a childish alto voice in response to the basso profundo of the chorus. (The act of the agreement is relativized and made suspect through seduction and intimidation.) Seduction and intimidation of the young by adults appears only at the level of presentation, that is, the performance—the performed text becomes multi- dimensional. The sentences that come across as theses lose their dogmatic call and become performance material wanting to be sung—the musicalizing and singing invalidating ideology. Danced ideological deviations from the party line (Fatzer’s walks, the young comrade’s break of discipline) become a musi- cal or choreographic event. Stepping out of the collective becomes a Dionysian dancer’s step out of the chorus. This movement of the anti-ecstatic Brecht toward Nietzsche’s aesthetic (evident in performance only) at first comes as a surprise. But then one notices an astonishing parallel in the conception of the chorus. For Nietzsche, “the dithyrambic chorus is a chorus of the transformed, who have completely for- gotten their civic past, their social status” (, :). It corresponds exactly to the Brechtian notion of the control chorus in the Lehrstücke. With the anti-ecstatic Brecht there is yet another similarity to Nietzsche, which is noticeable only in the practical work with a Lehrstück performer. The intended adept of the Lehrstück becomes a multimedia performer:
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