The next turn in Munich’s great cultural debate: The play “Birds” will not be shown again at the Metropoltheater. The international rights holders of Wajdi Mouawad’s play insist that the work be performed in full after the debates in Munich. Jochen Schölch, the director of the Metropoltheater, who also directs the production there, thinks it is “in no way affordable”.
The theater would have wanted to put the play back in its schedule on Sunday, March 26th. A total of twelve performances were planned by the end of April. In November 2022, the theater suspended a first series of performances after the Association of Jewish Students in Bavaria and the Jewish Student Union Germany raised allegations of anti-Semitism.
Wajdi Mouawad was born in Lebanon in 1968. In the play “Birds”, the love affair between the Jewish geneticist Eitan and Wahida, who is of Arabic descent, leads to identity conflicts erupting in Eitan’s family, which are negotiated against the background of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
The play was created in 2017 with the participation of Jewish-Israeli actors at the Paris Théâtre national de la Colline, where it premiered in the same year. The German premiere took place in 2018 at the Staatstheater Stuttgart. This year it has already been shown in Germany in Lüneburg, at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg and at the Berliner Ensemble.
The international rights are held by Leméac Editeur Inc. based in Montréal/Canada. The German translation is published by the authors’ publishing house based in Frankfurt am Main. He has now been informed in writing that due to the exceptional situation in which the performances are in Munich, cuts or changes, even of a minor nature, are prohibited. It is said that this should help ensure that the piece “is not further damaged by unjustified allegations of anti-Semitism and a heated debate in Munich”.
In the original version, the characters all spoke in their respective mother tongues, which means that the play speaks English, Arabic, Hebrew and German. In the German translation, the complete text of the play comprises 106 A5 pages. For the stage version performed in Munich, the length was roughly halved. All characters spoke German. Director Jochen Schölch justified this step with dramaturgical considerations: Due to the length of the dialogues presented, it is easier for the audience to follow the action and the presentation of the actors.
Changes were planned in two places for the revival of the play. As the Jewish geneticist Eitan says to his grandfather, “If trauma left its mark on the genes that we pass on to our children, do you think our people would today make another suffer the oppression they suffered?” This statement is scientifically untenable – trauma can be read in the genes – and can be understood as equating the treatment of the Palestinians with the Holocaust. In addition, a dialogue should be changed in which the grandmother regrets that her husband did not die in the concentration camp – because then she would no longer have to endure him.
The publisher of the authors reacted to the corresponding announcement by the Metropoltheater by pointing out that no “revised version” would be presented: “Instead, the theater and publisher have agreed that two deletions made in the original production compared to the original text will be reversed in order to this way to make the context clearer and to avoid possible misinterpretations.” Overall, however, the publisher welcomed the resumption. Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, director of the Center for Anti-Semitism Research at the TU Berlin, also made a statement.
“We felt it was absolutely necessary to play our performance again, so we deeply regret this development,” says theater director Jochen Schölch. Former member of parliament Jerzy Montag (Greens) said in a statement that the incident had damaged culture in Munich. “Those who did not immediately stand in front of the theater to protect themselves and allow debates about cuts in funds, bans on performances and censorship measures by self-appointed anti-Semitism supervisors to run wild can now sweep up the shards.” In his opinion, these are “the city council factions, first and foremost the Greens, but also the cultural department and the mayor”. They should now “remember that the necessary confrontation with misanthropic anti-Semitism is not conducted by unreservedly believing every accusation of alleged anti-Semitism”.