University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln zz Theatre & Film Faculty Publications

1995

Howith's Glaube Liebe Hoffnung and the Current Scene in Dresden

William Grange University of Nebraska - Lincoln, [email protected]

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Grange, William, "Howith's Glaube Liebe Hoffnung and the Current Scene in Dresden" (1995). zz Theatre & Film Faculty Publications. 3. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/theaterfilmfacpub/3

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in zz Theatre & Film Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Howith's Glaube Liebe Hoffnung and the Current Scene in Dresden

Williiam Grange

While the venerable Dresden Schauspielhaus, The production features startling scenic built in 1910, is undergoing renovation (the process effects, reminiscent of Ariane Mnouchkine's Mephisto was begun in August of 1993 and is scheduled for in Paris nearly fifteen years ago. There is no stage completion next summer), the Staatschauspiel Dresden floor in the Kuppeltheater, for instance. Designer is located in numerous venues throughout the city. Volker Walther has replaced it by water, over which They include the Kleines Haus in der Neustadt, a twelve inch-wide boards have been placed to create former recital hall on the north bank of the Elbe; a walkways for the actors. A five foot-wide pigeon small space in a former recital hall on the north bank coop is situated up the side of the tent, running across of the Elbe; a small space in a former automotive its roof to the tent's center; inside it, live pigeons bill factory; a small chapel in the restored Dresden Castle; and wo throughout the performance. A character and a tent near the present Schauspielhaus. The tent falls unto the water and sinks in up to his neck; a is called the "Kuppeltheater" (Cupola Theatre), and cow's skull sits rotting in the water and garbage is it has a vague, if weirdly abstract resemblance to the piling up in one place, while the process of cupolas sitting atop the baroque palaces, churches, and putrefaction is taking place in others. A character museums for which this city is well known. Any deposits dry ice into the water fiom his briefcase resemblance between the Kuppel Theater and the creating a bubbling fog effect that lasts for several renowned architecture of the "German Florence," as minutes. A fire display occurs in the upper reaches Dresden has traditionally been called is purely of the tent, alternating with rain that falls coincidental; the tent has been rented hma West intermittently throughout the performance. A wind German entrepreneur and its interior has facilitated machine drives a tempest of rain and fog across the Irmgard Lange's innovative production of Od8n von stage area. "My future has fallen into the water" is HorvAthYsGlaube Liebe Homg,the shorter version a common German aphorism (whose analogy in he subtitled "a little dance of death." Lange has also English might be Amanda Wingfield's "All my hopes interlarded the working script with snippets of the and dreams---up the spout! ' '); as Elisabeth repeats it, playwright's work related to the play, and the result she evokes much of what this production has to say. is a dark, disturbed vision of a world in complete In the midst of a sewer, life goes on. It may be at collapse. the bacterial level, but it is going on nevertheless. Anyone who has seen Horvhth in Dramaturg Beate Seidel views that small performance will recognize that world; he did not level of life as crucial to understanding Elisabeth's present a particularly happy outlook, even though he motivation. She is determined to become independent titled his plays Volhtiicke, a genre historically as a traveling saleslady, to rise above the decay which associated with young love, musical backgrounds, and surrounds her. Thus begins her "little dance of robust humor. This play briefly portrays a loving death," because in attempting - independence she couple, but the music Horvirth recommends is initiates "a gigantic struggle between herself and Chopin's Funeral March and its humor is cadaverous society," according to Seidel. The best she can hope rather than robust. It begins in fiont of a mortuary, for is "a moment or two to enjoy the illusion of a after all, and its central conflict arises between its cease fire" with a society determined to swallow her. heroine Elisabeth and her one-time benefactor, the Thus the production proposes that life is closely Mortician. Is there any faith, hope, or charity to be associated with the process of death. That is not found here? Inngard Lange and her ensemble make exactly an original proposal, but in the midst of the an extensive search for them, but they turn up just complete overhaul this part of Germany is fleetingly in the brave attempts of the doomed experiencing, the production has found an exposed Elisabeth. She has a tiny hope for a little love in her nerve. It does so by calling attention to the life; what she gets instead is a prison term, rejection "essentials" of existence which many in the Dresden from the only decent man she ever met, and finally. audience might overlook in their rush to buy new death. cars, televisions, or washing machines. Those

Published in WESTERN EUROPEAN STAGES 7:1 (Winter 1995), pp. 81-86. Copyright © 1994 Center for the Advanced Study in Theatre Arts, CUNY. Heinrich and SchrOder in GIaube Liebe Hohng. Photo: Hans-Ludwig BBhme. essentials include faith, hope, and charity on the section of society and to negate the idea of a intellectual level, but at the most basic level (this generational conflict. The only characters in their production emphasizes) they are water, fire, wind, and forties or fifties are power figures like the Judge, the earth. Judge's Wife, and Elisabeth's employer, Irene Prantl. The production entertains the possibility of The conflict among them all ensues from society's transformation in the midst of wholesale collapse. expectations of Elisabeth; the Mortician, for example, Elisabeth attempts to rise above the putrefaction wants to become Elisabeth's paramour; society could surrounding her, but she (along with her future) accept such an arrangement although he is really more repeatedly falls back into it; by the play's end she has interested in his pigeons, his dead dog, and his become just another piece of decaying earth. Director terrarium than he is in women. But Elisabeth elects Lange presents her audience, in the figure of independence from him--even though she taxes his Elisabeth, with a metaphor for the "new" German money to help her pay off a fine she incurred for who was a citizen of the old German Democratic selling womens' underwear without a proper license. Republic. You can buy all the gadgets you want, she Alfons comes to represent Elisabeth's fondest hopes, seem to be saying, you can travel to all the places that namely a faith in love. The love scene they share were formerly forbidden; in the end you must explodes into a trapeze act, staged high above the confiont your own meager faith, hope, or love. The audience on a swinging chair; it quickly hurtles to the production completely abandons any hint of concrete ground when the police detective arrives to arrest representation in the performance of that Elisabeth for violation of probation. With her love confrontation; it embraces instead a level of the crashes also any faith she had left, faith in other abstract that is, as noted, visually arresting and human beings or even faith in herself. provocative. Christiane Heinrich's performance as Lange has cast several male characters (the Elisabeth is marked by ecstatic outbursts and an policeman Alfons, the antagonistic Mortician, the astounding level of energy maintained throughout the decadent Baron, the Accountant, Joachim Prantl, and entire performance (it lasts more than two hours and several minor characters) within the same age range is presented without an intermission). Heinrich lacks as Elisabeth to avoid the impression of a broad cross- the world-weary voice and demeanor one might ex- pect in Elisabeth, but director Lange sees the either. But thanks to the trapeze arrangement character metaphorically, and as such she regards her provided them by designer Walther, hope with a measure of optimism. As the mortician, momentarily takes flight before the police come Michael Meister has been allowed to indulge in some crashing in. After the police reveal to Alfons the extravagant histrionics, most notably with his voice. danger Elisabeth poses to his career, Lange places The result is a figure lacking human dimensions, but SchrUder in groups in order to isolate Heinrich and representing, as director Lange intended, the social make her self-destructiofi appear more inevitable. Yet forces which destroy Elizabeth. He mirrors the Elisabeth, as Heinrich plays the character, is not quite traditional Spiessbiirger one finds in all Horviith ready to give up the ghost. When police bring in her plays, a type Horvhth himself described as an body on the presumption she has drowned herself, "egotistical hypochondriac;" he is brimming with Heinrich's energy confounds the audience's tendency self-pity and narcissism. at that point to feel sony for her. 'Ihe Accountant As the policeman Alfons Klostermayer, (whom Lange has conceived as a personification of Alexander Schraer carefully avoids any obvious death) breathes life back into her long enough for the display of self-pity. By the play's end, he seems final scene between her and SchMder, and Schr6der genuinely mystified why his wife (he had been again resists the temptation to indulge in remorse. married earlier; he was attracted to Elisabeth because "You go and drop yourself into the water, after I she looked so much like his deceased spouse) and stretch my hand out to you," he says, still mystified. Elisabeth have died. "I just don't have any luck," he The Accountant sums up the whole mortal laments; but Schriider tinges the lament with affair with the familiar (to German audiences, at least) bafflement. His scenes with Heinrich likewise feature folk lyric "I live, but know not how much long- a conspicuous lack of self-absorption. They are die, but know not when./I travel on, I know not presented simply as two young people in love; true, where/And wonder why I feel so happy." Despite it is a very small love, and their hopes are not high, their travails, reasons driiinaturg Seidel, the citizens of

Ghbe Liebe Hoflung. Photo: Hans-Ludwig EMhme.

83 Dresden have reason to hope that they have a slight the term most often employed to describe East chance for happiness. The character Elisabeth is not Germany's collapse. The term had its first usage here intended as a literal metaphor for their experience; she in Dresden, when thousands of people marched dies at the end, but she nevertheless experienced that through the streets in October of 1989, demanding wonderful flight of freedom. Likewise Dresdeners freedom of assembly, expression, and travel. Egon too have experienced a brief rush of freedom. Krenz (head of the Socialist Unity Party in Dresden Whither their faith, love, and hope now? They of and the successor to Erich Homecker as head of the course have no earthly idea All they see now as Party throughout the German Democratic Republic) citizens of a united Germany (according to Seidel's used "die Wende" to describe what was going on in quote in the production program from St. Paul in the Dresden and what he hoped would be a change in thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, and from East-West German relations. Krenz had no idea how whom Howhth derived the play's title) is "through a big a change there was to come. glass darkly." The word "Wende" means "turnaround" or GIaube Liebe Hoffnung marks the first time "transition," but it does not even approximate a a Horvhth play has ever been performed in Dresden, description of what happened in peoples' lives afier a fact remarkable in view of the city's importance as 1989, Gorne says. Prior to November, 1989 the a theatre center. Dresden has billed itself "The theatres were packed every night; afterwards, they Florence of the North" since the days of August the were completely empty. "I don't know where the Strong (1670-1 733), who attempted to make the city audiences went," Giirne affably admits. "Maybe a showplace for Baroque architecture and an imitation they went shopping, or maybe they took trips to Paris on the absolutist mode of Louis XIV. He Ireland. Maybe they spent all their money on largely succeeded, though as a result Saxony (of American cigarettes and Japanese televisions. Since which Dresden is the capital) remained bankrupt for then they have been much more selective. They don't most of the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth automatically come to see whatever we offer, as in century the city benefited from the architectural work the old days." of Gottfried Semper (1803-1879), who built two In the "old days," going to the theatre was opera houses and an art museum in the city square a treat everyone could afford, and theatre attendance facing the royal palace and the Zwinger, an enormous was an occasion of which East Germans could and elaborate pavilion. The city was a leading rightfilly boast. In Dresden, for exmaple (as well as operatic center in the 1840s, largely due to Richard in most other GDR cities), one could have a Wagner (1 8 13- 1883), who premiered four operas in sumptuous dinner in the theatre restaurant at prices the second Semper Oper. everyone could afford; one could then see a superbly In the 1920s Dresden was home to at least designed, directed, and moderately well-acted seven theatres, though none of them premiered new production of Schiller, Kleist, or maybe Gorki at plays of much consequence. That Horvhth has never prices which were lower than seeing a movie. been performed here is a reflection of the repressive Theatre-going was a national pastime, if not a cultural policies both of the Nazi regime and of the national passion, in the GDR. Gorne has called the old German Democratic Republic; productions of relationship between theatres and audiences an Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald and of Kusimir und "entente codiale" in a recent issue of Die deutsche Karoline took place in East Germany after the Biihne; performances were often "events" "Howiith revival" in the late 1960s, but those nevertheless, in which social protest and political productions did not run for long. Howah was criticism could, however faintly, be detected. regarded as both decadent and inconsequential. Those days are gone in more than just the "Censorship in the German Democratic chronological sense. They are barely a memory in the Republic was a subtle thing," says Dieter Giirne, minds of many audience members, because they are Intendant of the Staatschauspiel Dresden, a position too busy now trying to make a living. Professionals he has held since October of 1990. "No one was like doctors, lawyers, engineers, and teachers (who ever forbidden to present certain plays, but we all made up the bulk of the Staatschaupiel's audience knew that some would not be looked upon with under the GDR regime) now find themselves favor." Finding and producing the "right" kinds of burdened with previously unthinkable workloads. plays now is ironically a more daunting task than the "The paperwork alone has doubled," says Gorse. same task was five years ago, before "die Wende," "Doctors, for example, never had to fill out insurance fombefore. Now they're in their offices until 7:30 what the Intendant picturesquely calls "voluntary at night trying to catch up." Industrial workers, if subjugation." His job, along with that of his they are fortunate enough to be working at all, are colleagues, is to create theatre for an audience made likewise too strapped for time and money to afford up of people who have taken on the capitalist burden, what is now the "luxury" of theatre attendance. who find themselves laboring and more heavily laden Though ticket prices have escalated dramatically, they than they ever expected to be. still do not even approach a level where the box "The plain fact is," says his colleague and office is expected to finance much of the theatre's drarnaturg Beate Seidel, "our side lost." She was operation. The Staatschauspiel Dresden will receive born and grew up in a system she knew was in about $18,000,000 this year (and that amount is competition with the West, one who was taught in intended only for current production costs), which school that America was the "heart of the beast" represents a 93% subsidy of operations. The against whom their noble struggle was directed. "But renovation of the theatre, a process expected to take then I started seeing American movies, which I found two years, is paid fiom even larger public accounts. fascinating. Now I thank God twice a day for the The generous subvention this theatre enjoys revolution." Her gratitude is understandable, but is typical of government support for theatre in Saxony what does it do to help her create productions for the and throughout the German-speaking world generally. Dresden audience? The implication is that the "We have historically believed in theatre as a 'moral revolution she personally experienced plays a large institution'," says Game, "and I don't think any role in helping her to find plays and develop German government is ready to embrace the kind of approaches to them that "legitimize" the upheaval theatre system under which American regional audiences members are experiencing. "The best theatres operate." At the same time, Giirne example so far," says Seidel, "is Ibsen's Ladyfrom recognizes that with subvention comes expectation. the Sea." Before the revolution, very few theatres The theatre is to be the brief and abstract chronicle of did the play. "But in the figure of Ellida Wangel the times, but how is it to do that when the times are audience members perhaps saw a bit of themselves. so fraught with change? Ellida has a history that Ibsen saw needed telling. The theatre must first of all help its audience Audiences in Dresden identified with her and with her confront the enormous, almost unprecedented sufferings, sensing that their story was being told, too. psychological barrier of German reunification. The The sake may be true of Elisabeth in the lives of every former East German citizen have current production of Glaube Liebe Hoflnung, says changed to an extent nobody could possibly have Seidel. "She is a person who is at a loss to know imagined, says Gome. But theatre can't throw in the exactly where her life is headed. She has some hope towel and present only light comedies and that it will turn out all right, but mostly she's at sixes musicals--yet neither can it "throw salt in the and sevens with herself." A similar situation exists wounds," according to G6me. It must look for ways in Miss Julie by Sp.indberg, says Seidel, which may to rebuild its audience while challenging it at the explain why it, too, went over so well in Dresden. same time. Part of the rebuilding process is The These plays feature characters who, like many Rocky Horror Show and Es liegt in der Lufi, musicals audience members, have a longing they can't which have attracted large followings and would have adequately articulate. been unthinkable five years ago. On the other hand, some productions Giirne naturally views the reunification of experience no resonance whatsoever with audiences Germany fiom the standpoint of someone who spent and are forced to close aha few performances. his entire adult life under a system that he fieely That was the case with both Engagement for a Clown admits could not have lasted much longer. "Did you by the Romanian playwright Matei Visniec and notice all the dilapidated apartment buildings on your Eiszeit by Tankred Dorst. Both productions were way over here?" he asked. "They were in fine shape critically well received, but audiences showed little after the war, but they were allowed to disintegrate interest in them. The former dealt with unemployed over the years until finally, nobody could live in clowns, which "came a little too close for comfort," them." They are a kind of emblem for an entire era. says Seldel. It furthermore resembled Beckett's The German Democratic Republic would have Waiting for Godot too closely, because it was SO collapsed in on itself after a while anyway; meantime abstract. The same may be said of the Dorst play the citizens who lived in it now find themselves in which, like Pinter's The Caretaker (the play it most closely resembles), takes place in a non-concrete set Hollander, Rienzi,Tannhauser, and Lohengrin at the of circumstances. Semper. Though Wagner was forced to flee Dresden Then there is Rocky Horror. It is a big hit, after those premieres, musical extravaganzas by but its success aggravates many intellectuals who Andrew Lloyd Webber would not seem revolutionary. wonder why taxpayers' money must support Dresden has had its revolution, both in the streets and "boulevard triviality." If theatre is to rebuild its in its theatre; what theatre artists here hope to do is audience in Dresden, however, such productions are find ways by which they and their fellow citizens can a good idea. The situation here resembles the state of throw off the yoke of "voluntary subjugation," while German theatre immediately after World War 11, keeping some parts of the revolution's fervor intact. when plays long since forbidden under the Nazis were "The last thing I hope to see in Dresden," says extensively produced. Before long, Rocky Horror actress Christiane Heinrich, "is the situation they will no longer seem so exotic. Can Phantom of the have in the former West Germany, where actors are Opera be far behind? The venerable Semper Oper civil servants with job security. They phone in their seems like a perfect venue for it. After all, taxpayer performances and couldn't care less about their money paid for Wagner's premieres of Derfliegende audiences."

Staatsoper Dresden, La Bohdme. Photo: Erwin Dijring.

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