Gracie Gardner was born in 1991, lives in Los Angeles and abhors any tendency that tries to squeeze people into standardizing or normative molds. You can see that in her writing. For her play “Pussy Sludge” she received the “American Playwriting Foundation’s Relentless Award” in 2017, which is endowed with 45,000 dollars and honors exceptionally courageous plays. That fits. In 2019 “Pussy Sludge” appeared at the Stückemarkt of the Berliner Theatertreffen, now Mirjam Loibl organized the German-language premiere at the Munich Volkstheater, and even if after the premiere hardly anyone can say in two or three sentences what the play is about, that’s well known but that you have just experienced a great evening at the theatre.
Last season, the Volkstheater was the theater in Munich that came through the (post-)corona crisis best. One reason for this is certainly the enduring sensation of the new building that opened a year ago. What is more important, however, is that you never know what to expect here, except that it could be exciting, that sharpens interest, and even the most extravagant ventures are simply foisted on the audience here. The absence of large-format, dramaturgical fuss in the announcements creates that low-threshold that all theaters strive for, but which only a few achieve. And then, of course, there is the fact that in Christian Stückl’s house it is mostly quite young people who are on stage.
The Munich Volkstheater creates something that all theaters crave
However, “The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum”, Heinrich Böll’s story, which Philipp Arnold brings to the big stage in the version by John von Düffel, proves that their charm can sometimes be finite. With this, the Volkstheater opens the season (“Pussy Sludge” follows three days later). Böll’s indignation at the arbitrariness of the police and the sensationalism of tabloid journalism seems a little museum-like at first – in view of today’s Internet harassment. The policemen are far too stupid here, and the greasy reporter is no more dangerous than pulling out his ears once to put him in his place. But: At a certain point, Arnold, whose staging is a video blow-up of the live events, doubles the figure of the supposed terrorist helper Blum. Two Katharinas are then on stage, Ruth Bohsung and Nina Steile, and without being able to classify this duplication in a simplified way, it is immensely fascinating. A riddle, but a beautiful one, a double introspective of the character, which in its precision is almost reminiscent of the silent play in Kroetz’s “Request Concert”.
Almost a possible love: Anne Stein (left) and Henriette Nagel in “Pussy Sludge”.
(Photo: Konrad Fersterer)
Of course, as far as puzzles go, Gardner’s “Pussy Sludge” has a lot more to offer. Pussy Sludge, the title character, secretes endless amounts of petroleum from her vagina, leaving her home and living in her own swamp in a national park. Various people pass by there, all of whom want something from her, which she usually doesn’t want, the mother, a strange suitor who loves tin cans and talks nonsense, a young woman with whom she develops a kind of relationship through masturbating together , a ranger and other lost figures whose perception revolves exclusively around their own state of mind. In addition, the oil swamp develops an organic life of its own.
Mirjam Loibl takes the tricky screwed sentences as they come, lets everyone involved play freely and merrily, cleverly understands the piece as a surreal, free-floating metaphor that contains many possible answers to questions of (sexual) self-determination. The stage is bursting with ideas, painted ovaries line the oil vagina on the stage floor, the characters are fantastically outfitted, a thousand ideas, all good, few to be explained directly. And yet everything is aimed at the relaxed friendliness of Henriette Nagel as Pussy Sludge, at Anne Stein’s brilliant language and the funny goings-on of the other three. Actors’ theater of an unexplained and unexplained dimension, which gives pleasure in a very peculiar way.