It’s always amazing what a natural and cultural area the Ruhr area is. Many people, especially those from the Alps, often have a clichéd picture of the coal pot in their minds. But if you then, for example, stay in the retirement home of Recklinghausen, which is also a hotel, you will find yourself surrounded by the most expensive villas and the cosiest greenery. The Festspielhaus, which is not far away, is enthroned so self-confidently on the hill of the Stadtgarten that the Recklinghauser speak of their “Green Hill”. Which, from Bayreuth’s point of view, is of course presumptuous. Visually, however, it always goes through, especially in the burgeoning month of May, traditionally the beginning of the Ruhr Festival, not with the much younger one, which begins later in the year Ruhrtriennale may be confused.
“Coal for art, art for coal” – this fair deal was the basis for the founding of Europe’s oldest theater festival. In the frosty winter of 1946/47, miners from Recklinghausen smuggled coal to Hamburg: as fuel for the cooled theater halls. A year later, the Hanseatic League came and thanked the buddies with samples of their art. That’s how it started. As an act of solidarity. The fact that the Ruhrfestspiele are a workers’ festival, supported by the DGB, is not necessarily obvious from the outside, the audience looks very middle-class and no longer sits in the theater with lunch boxes, as they did in the 1960s, because it could take longer. But the number of trade unionists and company bosses on the opening night is particularly high here, and at the end of all the speeches there is almost always a hearty “Glück auf!”, the old friend’s greeting, which already hints at this year’s festival motto: “Attitude and hope”.
After two years of pandemic disruption, it is a full face-to-face festival again for the first time, and the director Olaf Kröck is overjoyed about it. 92 productions in six weeks, including cabaret, Cirque Nouveau, Guest performances like “The Threepenny Opera” by BEpop concerts by Imany and Element of Crime, prominent actors like Charly Hübner and Matthias Brandt – what some label as a general store, Kröck calls “basic supply”, also with “low-threshold offers” and an “accompanying educational program”. The milieus mixed more in the Ruhr area than perhaps elsewhere: “It’s not the bubble here.” Art and aesthetics are all well and good. Underlying everything, however, is the orientation of the content of these “workers’ festivals”, and that is primarily of a political nature.
The motto “attitude and hope” – perfectly embodied by the author Sharon Dodua Otoo
High-quality art on an international level and political aspirations – at this year’s start, they all went together in the most successful way. It all began with the witty, extremely charming opening speech by the writer, or as she calls herself: “storyteller”, Sharon Dodua Otoo (“Ada’s Room”). The Berlin-based author with Ghanaian roots, who was the first black woman to win the Ingeborg Bachmann Competition in 2016, also evoked the power and importance of storytelling when it comes to politics, exclusion and discrimination. Populists like Donald Trump or Boris Johnson have built their successes on utilitarian narratives. Even those who want to bring facts to the people and strengthen empathy – for example towards all refugees, not just those from Ukraine – have to tell stories, stories of people, fates, visions. Yes, that’s what you think. And that evening in the theater is just right.
‘Attitude and Hope’ – Sharon Dodua Otoo embodied both. When she asked the audience to make the sound of rain by tapping their fingers in the palm of their hand, it suddenly seemed to be dripping, pouring, pouring in the Recklinghausen Festspielhaus. An amazing effect – and magical moment. Perfect as an introduction to “Sibyl”, the new piece by the South African magician and all-round artist William Kentridge, a beguiling synthesis of the arts of music, song, dance and visual effects, enticing, strange, beguiling.
Like Bob Ross, only more intellectual: Willilam Kentridge in his studio in Johannesburg.
(Photo: Stella Olivier)
The evening begins in the first part with a film (“The Moment Has Gone”). You can see Kentridge in his studio in Johannesburg surrounded by slips of paper, notebooks and papers doing a kind of making-of: how he draws and paints with a thick charcoal pencil (charcoal for art!), draws and measures lines and often blurs what is finished again , while the images immediately take on a life of their own, begin to run. It’s a bit like Bob Ross. Just a lot more art intellectual. Doubled as a person, the master sometimes looks over his own shoulder with the camera and ultimately becomes a drawing himself, a viewer in an animated museum. It is a flip book of metamorphoses, an intoxication of images of associations. They tell of slave labor, apartheid, mortality, death. This process of creation and decay of the moving images is accompanied by live music on stage: four black people in the look of plantation workers sing in the highest, weirdest, most painful and beautiful tones, accompanied by the grandiose pianist (and musical director) Kyle Shepherd.
Nothing lasts on this stage. Everything flows
The second part (“Waiting for the Sibyl”) comes up with a visually stunning chamber opera in the midst of a veritable paper economy. The title alludes to the prophetess Sibyl of Cumae. According to legend, she foresaw the fate of humans and wrote it down on tree leaves in front of her cave, but the leaves were blown about by the wind. So that although people received predictions, they could not be sure whether it was really about their own destiny. Kentridge takes this as an opportunity for a musical-dance whirlwind of fears, hopes and beliefs, projections and shadow plays. A Babylonian cacophony of voices, sounds and prophecies, performed by nine highly dynamic black singers and dancers who perform strange feats and sing in the most diverse African dialects. The old gods are tired, they say, and no future prognosis, no certainty, nothing concrete can be expected from the prophetess either. In the guise of Thandazile Radebe, she dances like a dervish in the middle of the stage with her skirt gathered, and her shadow enlarges and becomes independent on the large projection screen behind her, which looks like an office book. Nothing is permanent on this puzzle picture stage. Everything flows. leaves are blowing. Rorschach images blot up and melt away. Sentences like oracles appear as projections on the pages of the supposed book of life: “You’re not next”, “Let’s be reasonable”. Questions pop up, reference is made to an algorithm – and to a happy man in northern Brazil. But there are no sure answers and paths. Everyone has to take their life into their own hands. This is what this sensual, sensual evening of theater calls for. According to grand old William Kentridge, the state of insecurity has become something of a “common language around the world.” On this basis we understand each other. At least in the field of his art.