When the amiable presenter Anna Schudt announced that it was 1-0 for Hungary, not in the first Philosophical Song Competition (Hungary was not represented there), but in football, it felt like a cold shower. Should Hungary still win the game after the illumination ban for the Munich arena, that would have been a hard blow to the office.
There was no blow. What went on stage at the “European Philosophical Song Contest”, one of the highlights of the “Theater der Welt” festival, in the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, was of a completely different, refreshing, cosmopolitan attitude – like the theater festival itself. The idea is wonderful: a song contest that replaces the usual hit kitsch with intelligent, elaborate, sometimes thoughtful, and then again rather humorous content; ten participating countries from Slovenia to Norway, a four-person, sympathetic, diverse jury, an audience that votes with feet and vocal cords.
“European Philosophical Song Contest”: shrill and glamorous like the original, only the lyrics are more substantial – they come from European philosophers and intellectuals from ten countries.
(Photo: Laure Ceillier and Pierre Nydegg)
Parody? Yes, if you understand the term in terms of structure: You take over a form (the singing competition) and give it a completely contrary content (philosophy). Not to make fun of it; that would be cheap, as far as the song contest is concerned, and inadequate in relation to the perhaps casual but noticeable mental exertion on which the evening is reliably based. The European philosophers, who asked Massimo Furlan and Claire de Ribaupierre from the Vidy-Lausanne Theater to think about a topic of their choice and cast it into singable verses, responded to the invitation with consistently original texts. They were set to music by members of the Vaud Wallis Friborg University of Music. The result is not exhaustingly ambitious, but always stimulating and, in the often rousing, sometimes fantastic performance as far as the costumes are concerned, extremely entertaining. And, yes, isn’t that what you want from an evening at the theater that, unlike a bad football game or a panel discussion, should be remembered?
Ancient thinkers systematically excluded women, animals, and barbarians
Right at the beginning, the Slovene Mladen Dolar reminded that ancient thinkers systematically excluded women, animals and barbarians when they began to lay the foundation of Western philosophy. The French Philippe Artière wrote a thoughtful chanson about people who “lead an obscure life”, the outcasts of this world. The Italian Michela Marzano devoted herself to human fragility. The young German Leon Engler charmingly satirized the shamed dreams of all of our youth. But the bird, at least from the point of view of the jury, which awarded the maximum number of 40 points, was shot by the Portuguese José Bragança de Miranda, with a haunted and gentle plea for the, philosophically speaking, equal value not only of all living creatures, but even mineral figures on this planet: “Everything thinks” is the title of his little work.
Most of the time, philosophy is about nuances, ambivalences, respect and tolerance. Occasionally, young people are fed up with that. “You screwed it up” is the mildest form of accusation that is thrown at all people “born before 1965” and marked as “boomers” when it says on Gustaf-Gründgens-Platz in front of the theater: “It’s mine Micro on? ” Greta Thunberg once put the (probably rhetorical) question to the British Parliament; Now the Canadian author Jordan Tannahill puts it in the mouth of his twelve to sixteen year olds, for whom he wrote a spoken opera about climate change, including the associated affects and injustices. The “old people” who count their change in the supermarket, complain about the price of tomatoes and have no idea that they are still far too cheap: Yes, those are pretty clichés, but this is not about the culinary packaging of fragile messages like in the Philosophical Song Competition, but about emotional urgency: The climate is definitely “a black and white issue”, say the young people (or their librettist Tannahill) with the self-assurance of those born afterwards.
“Pistes” is a report on horrific events in Namibia, which was a German colony for 30 years
The French actress and playwright Penda Diouf, born in Dijon in 1981, has Senegalese-Ivorian roots. Her autofictional text “Pistes”, tracks or traces, tells on the one hand of experiences of isolation that she had to make as a child in southern France. When she wanted to put on black make-up like everyone else during an act of disguise under the motto “Africa”, they countered her: “But no, you’re already black!” This is how Penda Diouf’s laconic contribution on the subject of “Blackfacing” turns out to be. On the other hand, “Pistes” is also an unvarnished report on horrific events in Namibia, which was a German colony as “South West Africa” for 30 years. In 2010 Diouf went there alone; actually it was about the Namibian sprinter Frankie Fredericks, who competed against his “American brothers” at the Olympics.
But what she learned about German customs and traditions on this trip is an unflattering but necessary lesson for the descendants of the colonizers; for not much is known about this part of German history, such as the first concentration camps. It’s just a bit of a shame that Penda Diouf didn’t perform her monologue herself. The actress Nanyadji Ka-gara, who comes from Chad, performed the moving text with her trolley case on an empty stage – it remained, so to speak, a second-hand thing; the author would have contributed the pinch of authenticity and personality that would have given this evening even more impact and weight.