At the opening of the Berlin Theatertreffen, there has hardly ever been such heartwarming, unreservedly enthusiastic applause as this year. Not for an artistic performance, but for the meeting as such, which after two digital pandemic editions will again take place analogously, in its inherent form as an industry meeting and best-of show, discussion forum and theater festival. As a spectacle of physical presence. Hello everyone, long time no see, but recognized (almost) immediately. The applause was initially for their own presence, but then also for the theater itself, the relevance of which was invoked so emphatically in the opening speeches that one could immediately become suspicious. Does this ancient human art need it so badly?
After their much-lamented poor treatment during the pandemic and in view of the current crises, apparently yes. Theaters are “places of freedom and democracy”, stressed the outgoing festival director Yvonne Büdenholzer, they reflect “what keeps humanity alive”. and Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth in her committed, exuberant way she added similar phrases – theater as a “place of social debate”, as a “driving force of democratic understanding”, as a “basic food” – to finally declare it “systemically relevant” “without any ifs or buts”. Which made her heart fly, because she didn’t come across as a bad actress, and that’s saying something in theater circles. The fact that the stages were closed due to the corona “almost physically hurt” her was also accepted by this empathetic politician.
For a moment, theater seemed like the most existential, essential thing in the world. Unfortunately, that’s not what it is.
Otherwise it would be much more sought out, wanted, needed and missed by people right now, when “crises overlap like tectonic plates” (Roth). The opposite is the case. The theater has an audience problem. After two years of the pandemic, people are not running down the doors of the houses starved, but are hesitant to come or stay away. Under the hashtag “#Audience Shrinkage”, the director and Theatertreffen favorite Christopher Rüping, spoiled by success, has in front of his recent production “Breasts and Balls” at the Hamburg Thalia Theater publicly referred to the phenomenon: This was his first premiere that would not be sold out. To what extent this may have been due to the cracked title (of the novel by Mieko Kawakami) remains to be seen. One thing is certain: everyone is currently suffering from the loss. Even at the Theatertreffen, where tickets are usually sold out immediately, advance sales were slow. The same applies to the Mülheimer Theatertage: 40 percent fewer tickets in advance than in the same period in 2019, reports its director Stephanie Steinberg. Which doesn’t mean that these people all stay away. “They just book much more quickly.”
Corona is one thing. The self-referential program on stage is the other
Of course, corona effects have an impact here. Some don’t want to go back between too many people out of fear, others don’t feel like wearing a mask. Added to this is the power of weaning – and getting used to it. Netflix has become an important player in the pandemic and the sofa is a cheap subscription. Especially people who have an affinity for acting also appreciate good series. Another problem is the unreliability of card booking. Due to the many cases of illness in the ensembles and the resulting changes in the schedule, no premiere, no performance was certain.
“We were practically sold out for the whole of last autumn,” reports the director of the Thalia Theater, Joachim Lux. “Demand then plummeted from mid-December, precisely when the Omikron variant became known.” Since the war in Ukraine there has been another significant slump. “Instead of relief, people got this hammer on top of that. So they make Oblomov even more.” Means: You hold back and your money together. Unlike his Bochum director colleague Johan Simons (“60 percent room occupancy, if you’re lucky”) Lux does not believe that the audience will automatically return. The task now is “to win back part of it and, above all, to win a new one”. This will be a fight.
Which brings us back to the Theatertreffen. If you look at what this festival presents as the ten most notable productions of a year, at least according to the seven-member jury of critics, then this is a rather nerdy specialist selection for the discourse in the bubble. Niche and small formats dominate, performative choreographies with music (great: “Slippery Slope”), thematic concerns such as dementia (“All right. Good night”), classism and child poverty (“A man in his class”), sexualised violence (” Like Lovers Do”). With Ewelina Marciniak’s feminist “Jungfrau von Orleans” from Mannheim and Volker Loesch’s capitalism-critical interpretation of “Tartuffe” from Dresden, two radical approaches to the classical canon are represented outside of the big houses.
A Netflix audience that loves good stories and complex characters won’t be lured off the couch like that
The opener was Rüping’s Bochum production “Das Neue Leben”, a musical-performative exploration of unlived love in the footsteps of Dante Alighieri, created as an impromptu between two lockdowns. Not his best work. Workshop-like poking around by a quartet of actors on an oversized, empty, image-refusing stage, with everyone sharing the (thin) text – as is the fashion today – and filling it with pop songs, in this case by Meatloaf and Britney Spears, because then there’s always something goes. Only when the plague comes into play and with it a gigantic light pendulum comes into motion on stage, does things theatrically gain momentum, in order to redeem their claim “to donate consolation” at the touching feel-good end. Which then has a lot to do with the performance of the fabulous Viviane De Muynck and the wisdom that this cool old lady from the Belgian theater knocks out over the ears of the four Dante performers.
These are certainly all honorable and worth seeing works, but as a tableau, this selection of ten radiates as much glamour, sexiness and potential for attraction as a timetable for the post-dramatic tutoring course. theater of actors? none. A must-see like the sensational Lina Beckmann as “Richard III.”? Not there. And Kirill Serebrennikow’s Hamburg production of Chekhov, “The Black Monk”, which is remarkable for political reasons alone, has been invited to Paris and Avignon, but not to Berlin.
Social misery from Schauspiel Hannover: “A man in his class” based on the novel by Christian Baron, directed by Lukas Holzhausen.
(Photo: Katrin Ribbe/Katrin Ribbe)
A theater-weaned Netflix audience who loves good stories and complex characters is unlikely to be lured out of Home mode in this way. A general development in the theater is reflected in the selection: the desire to become a dramaturge and the formation of bubbles in the name of the correct, woken and good. It goes hand in hand with a tendency to tunnel vision and often at the expense of the playful, free, crazy beautiful. Or simply: connectivity. After all, the theater has the right and important themes, but it often doesn’t appeal to the audience. And why? Because it’s way too busy with itself.
But it also has its hands full, at least if it wants to remain sustainable and live up to its avant-garde claim as a social driving force. Just what is wrong within the company itself was discussed during the two-day “Burning Issues” conference at the Academy of Arts, which was attached to the Theatertreffen, where – mainly by women, many of them people of color – the “burning issues” were discussed. Hot issues such as gender equality, abuse of power, diversity, inclusion, work-life balance, reform of patriarchal structures – everything that institutionally ails theater and that no one can overlook since the “Me Too” movement.
Founded in 2018 as a grassroots movement by the actress Lisa Jopt and the then head of drama Nicola Bramkamp at the Bonn Theater – at that time still as a conspiratorial meeting excluding men – the “Burning Issues” have long been about more than gender issues and participation. The buzzwords are “intersectionality”, “marginal perspectives”, “empowerment”, “sustainability” (because the theater now also has to save the world), and the overarching goal is a fundamental “transformation”. The artistic director Sonja Anders and the physically disabled actress Alrun Hofert reported on their experience of turning the Hanover theater into a diverse theatre. Structural debates and critical whiteness workshops are part of the artistic work there. Amelie Deuflhard, the Hamburg Kampnagel boss, had the coaching woman with her for the “change process” at her house. This advised everyone to an “illusionless persistence”. The Berlin Secretary of State for Culture, Torsten Wöhlert, was put under such rhetorical pressure by the three black cultural agents and activists Clementine Burnley, Sandrine Micossé-Aikins and Ella Steinmann that the next post as director in Berlin will certainly not be awarded without a call for applications and a selection committee. At least not without an outcry.
Stay tuned, international networking, mentoring, change meeting structures, involve bosses (“talk to your peers”), exert pressure, create catalogs of measures, and please don’t forget to be mindful! The to-do list is now immense. And important. But where is the art? Content should be at the top of this list. Getting there is the hot topic of the season. Because imagine that the theater solves all problems – and nobody goes there.