The pig has always been the proverbial poor in human culture. In whom do the demonic spirits go after Jesus drove them out of the possessed at the Sea of Galilee, as told in the Gospel of Mark? In a herd of pigs, which then drowns in the lake. Who does the bewitching Circe on the island of Aiaia transform the men of Odysseus into, as Homer tells of in “The Odyssey”? Into a horde of pigs, which is only transformed back after personal engagement of the hero. And who, more than 2000 years later, has to serve for the perverse lust for meat as well as meat lust in our time, which is oriented towards mass slaughter and mass tourism, about which Elfriede Jelinek tells in her new play? Again the poor pigs, victims of human excesses of killing and governors for the abnormal here too. Although in this case they are given text at least once, performed in a “pig ballet in the choir”.
So in Jelinek’s pandemic, they give “Noise. Blind vision. Blind see!” ironic-eloquent information about their own slaughter and preparation, their Schnitzel existence in the special offer – not without malicious reference to the danger of virus spread by their murderers, who were crammed into Koben like themselves: “People from abroad, they are infecting you now, ätsch ! ” Jelinek is alluding to the corona outbreak among temporary workers in the Tönnies meat factory. This is merged with the first superspreader event, which took place in an Austrian après ski bar at the beginning of 2020, where partying sex-in-the-snow tourists let the pig go. What Jelinek in turn reminds of the Odysseus story with Circe, see above.
In Jelinek’s pandemic play “Lärm” in Hamburg, Eva Mattes as Circe snips around a suckling pig’s head
All of this is puffed up, dressed up and cooked with the pandemic whim of the times into a brew that simmers like a poisonous cauldron in the world premiere by Karin Beier at the Hamburger Schauspielhaus. With the pig as the main ingredient and the most important pictorial metaphor – be it in the form of trunk masks, pig ears, cruel slaughter factory videos or eight halves of pork made of silicone hanging on hooks on the stage (reinforced inside with wooden slats, PU foam and cotton wool, as the theater explains on request) . But there is also a real pig’s head on stage, which the prop always orders “fresh” from a Hamburg butcher’s shop: a suckling pig’s head that Eva Mattes snips at as “Circe”.
Pig’s head masks and operations on the sow: Scene from Elfriede Jelinek’s play “Noise. Blindes See. Blind See!”, Premiered at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg.
(Photo: Matthias Horn / Schauspielhaus Hamburg)
But that’s only the tip of the meat mountain. Everywhere you see pigs on the stages. And not only in their human-male form, from which the theater has always lived, but actually in animal form, mostly in sawn-up form: as lifelike reproduced pork halves. Their production is likely to be many times more expensive than the cheap meat that Germans prefer to buy. The fact that the discounter Aldi wants to ban this from its shelves in the future is a step that could really make a difference. The theater rubs its eyes in amazement: Social change – wasn’t and isn’t that its business?
In the theater, the cattle are still hanging around symbolically for the time being. For example in the butcher’s shop, which is located in Frank Castorf’s current production “Fabian or The Walk to the Dogs” at the Berliner Ensemble in the inner casing of the packed revolving stage. The bare meat in his “Babylon Berlin” version based on the novel by Erich Kästner has, so to speak, a nucleus here, used as a back room for drive removal and animal lust. There is also no missing – the best symbol for Castorf’s directing method – a carnation machine in which a woman’s hand lands one day. Everything is hacked up. Man is a wolf to the other – and the Castorf Theater is a meat grinder.
Julia Hölscher also has pig in her world premiere of Anja Hilling’s play “Teil (Hartes Brot)” in the Munich Marstalltheater. With her, a rebellious woman named Lumir wears half a plastic pig as a stole around her neck, as if it were the latest theatrical fad. And indeed she can use it to charm the light bulb manufacturer Turelure, whom she visits in his “temple”. This neo-colonial phosphate mine owner, who calls himself godlike “Lord”, is soon eagerly butchering the animal, pulling out its intestines, caressing the carcass. Typical big capitalist.
At least since Brecht’s “Saint Joan of the Slaughterhouses”, capitalism has also been demonstrated with pigs
A pretty hung metaphor that the theater apparently cannot drive out. Ever since Bertolt Brecht’s play “Die Heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe” from 1931, which was set in the working class of the slaughterhouses in Chicago at the time of the Great Depression, the slaughtered, industrially exploited, stock exchange-traded bristle cattle have become the epitome of capitalist exploitation and greed. An insignia for western capitalism, similar to the big cigar. Only much more drastic, plastic, sexually charged images can be produced with sows. What have bloody pig carcasses been hanging around on the stage since then!
In Thomas Ostermeier’s Shakespeare production “Maß für Maß”, which was released at the Salzburg Festival in 2011 before it went to the Berlin Schaubühne, a real, freshly slaughtered half pig dangled from a monstrous chandelier every time. It came from the “surplus” production of a slaughterhouse (animals which, if they were not sold, are processed into biodiesel), was punching ball for all kinds of dirty things and was finally beheaded with an electric saw. Not exactly a subtle image for the Augean stable described in the play and the impending death penalty for the defendant Claudio. There were lawsuits from animal rights activists. Today, says Ostermeier, he would no longer use real pigs: “Because I have an understanding of the dignity of dead animals.” At that time he wanted to bring “a concrete image of transience” onto the stage with the dripping meat. Of course it was also (but he doesn’t say that) a blast.
Everything is messed up in the theater meat grinder: Marc Hosemann and Margarita Breitkreiz in Frank Castorf’s production “Fabian or The Walk to the Dogs” at the Berliner Ensemble.
(Photo: Matthias Horn)
When talking about the theater’s interest in the slaughtered cloven-hoofed ungulate, Ostermeier comes less to mind than Rainer Werner Fassbinder. His slaughterhouse sequence in the film “In a year with 13 moons” (1978) with coolly mounted images of miserably perishing animals was “most shocking” to him. He thinks it is one of the “most impressive scenes in film history”, and many colleagues are sure to do that.
Which director doesn’t want that: to create lasting, cathartic images that get under people’s skin, shake them up, touch them. Possibly also consciously shock. Why not? The only question is, by what means. When Martin Kušej wanted to eviscerate a freshly slaughtered deer every time in his Munich opera production “Rusalka” as a sign of the tortured creature, the outcry was so great that the project was stopped. Bambi didn’t have to die for the opera, reproductions were enough. In 1969, the Viennese action artist Otto Muehl had a pig slaughtered with an ax in front of an audience at the Braunschweig Art College, and then he smeared the blood with excrement over a naked woman.
Animals and children have no place on the stage, says an old theater rule
Killing animals in the name of art is no longer possible today. But also live animals – and children! – have no place on the stage, at least that is what an old rule of the 19th century “cultural theater”, which distinguished itself from the circus, says. They are too unpredictable, too dangerous – also to the extent that they all too often steal the show from the actors. But who is sticking to it?
When four-legged friends have guest appearances in culture as representatives of nature despite the now strict animal welfare requirements, it affects the child – and the animal – in all of us. Mostly with a lasting impression. Think of the chickens in Peter Stein’s “Zerbrochnem Krug” (2008), the pigeon house in Alvis Hermanis’ “Wassa” (2012), the camel in Castorf’s “Judith” (2016), the black horse in Romeo Castellucci’s Salzburg “Salome” (2018). Not to forget the pigs that had to serve as village extras in Johan Simons’ rustic “Lear” in the Munich Kammerspiele in 2013. Or their three conspecifics, to whom the actor Philip Dechamps crawled into the koben in 2016 in the Munich Marstall (which is not a stable): completely naked and on all fours, fraternizing with the animals. The play was Pier Paolo Pasolini’s satirical post-war political parable “Der Schweinestall”, released as a film in 1969, in which the non-conformist Julian is ultimately eaten by omnivores. In other words: swallowed by the pig system.
While in contemporary drama many animals have recently become title heroes, for example in Marius von Mayenburg’s “Die Affen” or in Caren Jeß ‘fable “Bookpink” (in which a whole flock of talking birds appear), the pigs remain the representative characters for human messes. The ones that demons have always driven into. Farm animals in this sense too.
In the play “Oinkonomy”, which the lyric poet Nora Gomringer wrote very quickly and boldly last year for the theater in Gütersloh – where the Tönnies meat factory is located just around the corner – the old island magician Circe appears again . At Gomringer, she runs a meat empire with her son and sausages tourists. Greek myth goes low-wage business. Even the pigs who don’t have a pig occasionally have their say, it’s almost like Jelinek’s. Only the jokes are less cheeky and verbose: What is the difference between men and pigs? – “Pigs do not turn into men when they are drunk.” Poor Wutzen, forever human.