{"id":353,"date":"2019-05-27T14:06:22","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T14:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/?p=353"},"modified":"2022-02-06T20:05:55","modified_gmt":"2022-02-06T20:05:55","slug":"the-twentieth-century-in-one-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/the-twentieth-century-in-one-family\/","title":{"rendered":"The Twentieth Century in One Family"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lasha Chkhartishvili<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Das achte Leben (F\u00fcr Brilka)<\/em>, or The Eighth Life (for Brilka)<\/em>. Adapted by Julia Lochte and Emilia Linda Heinrich from the novel by Nino Kharatishvili. Directed by Jette Steckel. Costume designer: Pauline H\u00fcners; stage designer: Florian L\u00f6sche; video by Zaza Rusadze; choreographer: Yohan Stegli; music adapted by Mark Badur; photographer: Armin Smailovic. Cast: Franziska Hartmann, Mirco Kreibich, Karin Neuh\u00e4user, Barbara N\u00fcsse, Sebastian Rudolph, Maja Sch\u00f6ne, Andr\u00e9 Szymanski, Cath\u00e9rine Seifert. World premiere: April 8, 2017, at Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany. Seen in Tbilisi during the Tbilisi International Festival of Theatre, in October 2018.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Georgian\ntheatre chose the European model and form from its outset. This link was never\nbroken,\neven when the censors of the Soviet Union put up the Iron\nCurtain. The productions of Kote\nMarjanishvili in the 1920s and of his student Sandro Akhmeteli, who was shot in\n1937 as an enemy of the people, are the best examples of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nino Kharatishvili (born 1983) is a Georgian author.\nShe writes in German and lives in Germany. By performing a stage version of her\nnovel, Das achte Leben (F\u00fcr Brilka)<\/em>,\nHamburg\u2019s Thalia Theater bridges the gap between twentieth-century Georgian\nhistory and present-day Europe. Kharatishvili was preceded in the German\nlanguage by Grigol Robakidze, who emigrated to Germany in 1930, the same year\nhis play Lamara<\/em> was staged by the\naforementioned directors, Marjanishvili and Akhmeteli, in the Rustaveli\nNational Theatre. Robakidze went on to write some of his best plays and novels\nin German.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
New Year\u2019s masquerade in Christine\u2019s house. L-R: Mirco Kreibich, Lisa Hagmeister, Karin Neuh\u00e4user, Franziska Hartmann, Cath\u00e9rine Seifert, Sebastian Rudolph. Photo: Armin Smailovic<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The\nvisiting performance of The Eighth Life\n(for Brilka)<\/em> took place in that same Rustaveli National Theatre, within the\nframework of the Tbilisi International Festival of Theatre. The stage adaptation of\nthe novel is by Julia\nLochte and Emilia Linda Heinrich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nperformance faithfully follows the storyline of the 2014 novel. It offers an\naccount of twentieth-century Georgia and the dramatic life of the entire\npost-Soviet period through the example of one family. The family saga starts in\n1900 with the birth of the main heroine, Stasia (Barbara N\u00fcsse), and flows through six generations,\nthrough all the wars and revolutions; from the Russian Revolution to the\ncreation of the New Europe at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is\na true chronicle of its time, seen through the eyes of Georgian family members,\nimprisoned in history and defined by the totalitarian regime, social disorders and\nfamily tragedies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Elena and Kostia in Moscow. At the table, Andr\u00e9 Szymanski and Karin Neuh\u00e4user; next to the mirror, Cath\u00e9rine Seifert and Sebastian Rudolph. Photo: Armin Smailovic<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The story begins in a small town in Georgia, where Stasia’s father, a gifted chocolatier, creates a recipe for a hot chocolate drink which becomes a huge success. The story immediately brings up for any Georgian the image of Lagidze Waters, a soft drink with a secret recipe still on the market today. Stasia and her three sisters are brought up in luxury. When Stasia\u2019s sister Christine (Maja Sch\u00f6ne), a woman of exquisite beauty, is noticed by Stalin\u2019s right-hand man Beria, who is never mentioned by name in the performance, the misfortunes of the family start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brilka\n(Cath\u00e9rine Seifert) is the last offspring of this family, born in newly\nindependent Georgia in the 1990s, a time of hardships and internal conflicts.\nBrilka is a hope for the family, symbolizing the hope of the entire country\nthat the new generation, the eighth since the establishment of the Soviet\nregime in Georgia, will lead a peaceful life. Nino Kharatishvili’s characters\nare people trapped in time and space, through which they are united.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\nare German actors performing Georgian history, full of drama and adversity,\ncruelty and kindness. They weave the Georgian national character, reacting with\ndramatic precision to the given situations and aesthetics of the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The director Jette Steckel,\nwho discovered\nthe Georgian audience through the stage\nadaptation of Kharatishvili’s novel, is considered a great master of\ncontemporary theatrical art.\nAt a time of technical development and virtual\nreality, Steckel takes\nthe more\ndifficult path,\nchoosing to forgo “scenic effects” and\n“visual emotions”\nto involve the viewer in the performance; opting instead for\ntraditional, realistic and effective ways. Rather than trying to please and\nimpress the audience with new inventions, the director puts her experience,\nfantasy and mastery into the various components of the performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout\nthe play, the director keeps in constant touch with the audience. She knows\nexactly when to make them cry or smile, when to make them relax or how to make\nan emotional impact. In this minimalist setting, the authors of the play are\ntelling us real stories of real people who have been through hard times. Their\npsyche is broken; impacted by the violations of each era. Interestingly, these\neras do not much differ from each other. The director keeps a constant balance\nbetween drama and humor, pathos and irony; however, she is \u201cpowerless\u201d when it\ncomes to the emotional background of the text, which successfully generates in\nthe audience a real sense of the hard and ruthless past of the Georgian nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Stasia (Barbara N\u00fcsse) does the hula hoop. Left: Franziska Hartmann. Photo: Armin Smailovic<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Steckel and stage designer Florian L\u00f6sche have created an original stage space, empty but for a suspended rug which, from a distance, seems to be decorated with Georgian ornaments but, up-close, is seen to have artistic portraits of Stalin on it. The rug serves the function of a screen. Documentary footage relevant to each era (video by Zaza Rusadze) is shown in parallel with the performers\u2019 actions on the stage. When the story reaches April 9, 1989, when the Soviet army dispersed a peaceful demonstration of young people, resulting in 21 deaths, the rug turns into a river of blood; later it becomes a river of flowers, to bring back memories of the hundreds of thousands of tulips brought by Georgians to the place of the tragedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For obvious reasons, only three symbolic colours are used on stage\u2014red, black and white. The metaphor of these colours continues in the costumes (created by Pauline H\u00fcners). All theatrical components organically unite in this performance, their synthesis creating a theatrical harmony. In the staging, these components do not strictly adhere to \u201cnationality,\u201d which is good, as in this way the authors of the play give the tragic stories a much larger scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, nine actors perform the\nfive-hour play: Lisa Hagmeister, Franziska Hartmann, Mirco Kreibich, Marie\nL\u00f6cker, Karin Neuh\u00e4user, Barbara N\u00fcsse, Sebastian Rudolph, Maja Sch\u00f6ne and\nAndr\u00e9 Szymanski. They each create unforgettably the characters and heroes of\nthe novel. Although they play ethnic Georgians, they also demonstrate how\nanyone would act in the given situation, showing us how hard times impact on\npeople and lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nino Kharatishvili\u2019s The Eighth Life (for Brilka)<\/em> is an epic scenic work, replete with artistic faces, shadows and reflections of the era: lovers and disappointed couples, angry and despairing conformists formed in the inevitable historical processes, conscious and unconscious sinners, struggling heroes and those who have faced their destiny. Kharatishvili\u2019s novel did much more for Georgia than any politician in recent decades: she has managed to present our country\u2019s tragic destiny to Europe in a magnificent way. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n\"\"\n\n\n\n

*<\/a>Lasha Chkhartishvili<\/strong>, PhD, theatre critic and blogger of Artarea TV<\/em>, General Manager of Contemporary Georgian Theatre Research center, Assistant Professor of Shota Rustaveli Theatre and Film Georgian State University, Vice President of the Georgian Theatre Critics Union, Member of International Association of Theatre Critics (AICT-IATC), Invited Professor at the Caucasus University and Ilia State University (Tbilisi, Georgia), Author of 10 monographs and over 500 articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2019 Lasha Chkhartishvili
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Creative<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lasha Chkhartishvili* Das achte Leben (F\u00fcr Brilka), or The Eighth Life (for Brilka). Adapted by Julia Lochte and Emilia Linda Heinrich from the novel by Nino Kharatishvili. Directed by Jette Steckel. Costume designer: Pauline H\u00fcners; stage designer: Florian L\u00f6sche; video by Zaza<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[32],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performance-reviews","tag-by-lasha-chkhartishvili","","tg-column-two"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2019\/05\/PER-lashamburg-photo-1-new-year-masquerade.jpg?fit=700%2C463&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paUXOT-5H","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1310,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/1310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/19\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}