Driving Deeper Into That Thing

CriticalActs Driving Deeper into That Thing The Humanity of Heiner Goebbels’s Stifters Dinge Gelsey Bell Entering the expansive hall in the Park Avenue Adalbert Stifter, a 19th-century Romantic author Armory in New York City, all I could see were who is little known outside of Germany (though metal stairs leading up the back of a makeshift a number of his works have been translated into theatre, much like the ramp into an alien space- English).2 Originally premiered in September craft on a Hollywood set. Despite the distant 2007 at Théâtre Vidy in Lausanne, Switzerland, and ominous reverberations bouncing through Stifters Dinge has since been traveling through- the cavernous space, it was my footsteps, and out Europe, with runs in such cities as Berlin, those of the audience members in front of me, London, and Paris, as well as the Festival that lay the heavy tone upon the afternoon. The d’Avignon in France and BITEF (Belgrade pace was slow and felt preparatory rather than International Theatre Festival) in Serbia (where tired. Once at the top of the stairs, I was cloaked it won the Grand Prix “Mira Trailovic”) in 2008, in almost complete darkness — a stark contrast and Croatia’s World Theatre Festival in 2009. to the bright afternoon sun hitting the fresh It finally made its way to the New World for white snow on the city streets I had just walked five days in mid-December 2009, where I saw it in from. Turning a corner, I found myself at the on an uncharacteristically (for New York City) top of the small set of bleacher seats facing the snow-white Sunday afternoon. dimly lit stage, only 165 seats in all. Though Described by Goebbels as a “composition my eyes were taking their time adjusting to the for five pianos with no pianists, a play with no darkness that obscured the enormity of the hall, actors, a performance without performers — one 1 I could listen to the aural architecture as low might say a no-man show” (2009b), Stifters metallic tones and wobbly mid-register melodies Dinge’s foundational claim to avantgarde inno- bounced off its vast balloon shed roof. vation, and the original inspiration for its cre- The performance is Stifters Dinge (Stifter’s ators, is an absence of human performers. But Things), the latest music theatre work of com- rather than fulfilling Samuel Beckett’s dream of poser and director Heiner Goebbels to cross the a theatre without actors by allowing the text to Atlantic from Germany. The piece is named for annihilate the performer,3 Goebbels and set and 1. Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter define hearing as “the detection of sound” and listening as “active attention or reaction to the meaning, emotions, and symbolism contained within the sound.” Aural architecture denotes “the properties of a space that can be experienced by listening” (2007:5). 2. Born in 1805 in southern Bohemia, Stifter spent most of his life in Austria as a tutor and schulrat (elementary school supervisor), while he wrote novels and short stories until his death in 1868 (see Gump 1974). 3. “Not for me these Grotowskis and Methods. The best possible play is one in which there are no actors, only the text. I’m trying to find a way to write one.” Samuel Beckett to Deirdre Bair, 19 June 1973 (in Bair 1978:513). Gelsey Bell is a doctoral candidate in the department of Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts/NYU, where she is working on a dissertation on 20th-century experimental vocal music. She is also an experimental vocalist, a singer-songwriter, and TDR’s Managing Editor. Critical Acts 150 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00009 by guest on 27 September 2021 lighting designer Klaus Grünberg (a frequent collaborator) developed the show by working with tangi- ble materials — things like pianos and water. By choosing to highlight nonhuman activity for a live audience, they created a meditation on objecthood and our relationship to things, materials, and the environ- ment. Composed of an 80-minute performance for a seated audience and then a 20- to 30-minute period in which the audience is encouraged to walk around the stage space for a closer look at its music- making landscape, the whole event is both performance and installation. The soundscape is dirty and mysterious. Dirty because the tones are impure, overflowing with illog- ical harmonics, and replete with low, gritty discordances. The music evokes enigma both metaphorically and literally. Metaphorically, the dissonant harmonies are struc- tured by a slow beating rhythm, with unanticipated rhythmic accents, that marks time in a continuous machinelike pumping and evokes the cinematic thriller. (Waiting in my seat for the performance to “begin,” I try to figure out what time signature the music is in. One moment it feels like 4/4 and the next 5/8, until I realize that it is simply a continuous ticking, broken Figure 1. Heiner Goebbels’s Stifters Dinge (2007), at Park Avenue Armory, into smaller divisions only by my New York City, December 2009. (Photo: Stephanie Berger/Lincoln Center) own creative listening.) In addition, I literally cannot tell how the sounds head grid between the stage and the expanse were being made. Directionally, it is clear that of the hall. Most of the stage floor is taken up most of them are created live on the stage, but with three rectangular cavities running con- it is not easy to identify the individual parts secutively from front to back and parallel to that make the sonic whole. The set groans and the bleachers; they are filled with water shortly hums like a waiting beast. Not necessarily an after the beginning of the piece. Flanking the unkind beast, but a disfigured one — a patient pools on the right are four speakers, poised monster half in the shadows, waiting until you like heads on tall figural stands. On the left are are more accustomed to its presence, its natural three glowing contraptions that appear to con- rumblings, before it starts to really sing. tain the water that fills the pools. Looming The theatrical space is set up as a prosce- upstage are the most sculptural elements of the Critical Acts nium without the arch, clearly demarcating the landscape: pianos, pipes, percussion, leafless audience from the stage rather than integrat- trees, metal, and assorted mechanical gadgetry ing us. There is only the scaffolding and over- arranged in three layers of depth. The pianos 151 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00009 by guest on 27 September 2021 Figure 2. Heiner Goebbels’s Stifters Dinge (2007), at Park Avenue Armory, New York City, December 2009. (Photo: Stephanie Berger/Lincoln Center) are in various states: four uprights and the body tion on thingness and not the nonhuman in its of one baby grand turned on its side, all with natural element. They remind us of the light strings exposed, some with no keyboards, sil- board operator, the usher seating latecomers, ver mechanical arms rigged to rush across the and then of ourselves, sinking farther into our strings, all prepared in one way or another. seats. Have we gathered here because of our The pianos reinforce the decidedly steam punk excitement for the void of human performance? aura of the whole thing — proud Victorian-era What intellectual poetry is involved in such instruments shown in Frankensteinian derange- a feat? And what is brought into relief when ment. Mechanical technology that — compared technicians then walk amidst the performing to the sleek digital sterility of today — seems scenery? For surely their jobs could have been somehow more organic, replete with dirt, rust, automated as well...The technicians’ presence mold, even bacteria, as if the gilded-era Armory begs the question, which I think the piece’s exists as a greenhouse for forests of wild pianos creators wanted asked, How nonhuman is the and steam-powered drums. performance of scenery, theatrical props, and However, despite the clear protagonists of musical instruments in this “no-man show”? the performance being the sonic- producing Or, should I say, how human? set and the tenacious “no-man show” mar- Though there is a progression to the events keting, the performance begins with two men in Stifters Dinge, the piece moves forward spreading salt over the empty pools and then more like a dream than a story. Trying after- filling them with water. Though they do not wards to recall the sequence, what came when linger, their appearance as technicians — a is not only unclear but seems irrelevant. As if performance of non-performance, the under- the experience was meant to mix in the head stated attitude of “we’re just doing our job” — of the receiver, to give an overall impression of highlights the backstage human hands that the show or to exhibit what this creation was make the machine run. They remind the audi- capable of doing, rather than conclude along ence that this is a fantastical human medita- a linear line of logic or plot. This lack of story Critical Acts 152 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DRAM_a_00009 by guest on 27 September 2021 is entirely appropriate for a consideration of trees falling over from the weight of ice that has the nonhuman, as it is humanity that inces- collected on them: santly creates meaning and mythology. As Alan Now we recognized the noise that we Bourassa relates, “the human is but the cre- had heard earlier in the air; it was not ation of a system of meanings and values that in the air, it was close to us now.

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