{"id":1110,"date":"2023-01-06T12:51:12","date_gmt":"2023-01-06T12:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/?p=1110"},"modified":"2023-03-15T10:52:56","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T10:52:56","slug":"the-schaubuhne-berlin-under-thomas-ostermeier-reinventing-realism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/the-schaubuhne-berlin-under-thomas-ostermeier-reinventing-realism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Schaub\u00fchne Berlin Under Thomas Ostermeier: Reinventing Realism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ed. by Peter M. Boenish<\/strong>
232 pp. London: Methuen<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviewed by Ivan Medenica<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title and the subtitle of this book define its topic in a comprehensive and precise manner. In a series of wide-ranging essays by various scholars, critics and artists, the book treats the artistic and organisational concept and development of Berlin\u2019s Schaub\u00fchne <\/strong>am Lehniner Platz <\/em>theatre from the year 2000 until today, a period under the artistic directorship of theatre director Thomas Ostermeier. It also offers comparative analyses of the work of other Schaub\u00fchne directors as well essays on the development of Ostermeier\u2019s own poetics, which the editor terms \u201creinventing realism\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is divided into three sections: the history of the theatre and its institutional context and mission (chapter \u201cReinventing Institution\u201d); the thematic, ideological and formal characteristics of Ostermeier\u2019s own productions (chapter \u201cReinventing \u2018Directors\u2019 Theatre\u201d); the \u201cnew realism\u201d and other forms in the work of the directors and choreographers of Schaub\u00fchne, as well as a dialogue with different performing cultures established through touring and this theatre\u2019s own international festival called FIND (chapter \u201cThe Schaub\u00fchne\u2019s Experiments Across Forms and Borders: Towards a New Realism\u201c).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter M. Boenish, an expert on Ostermeier\u2019s work, has developed this book as a multi-perspective analysis of the accomplishments achieved in the past 20 years, both in the performances by the German director and in his artistic leadership in the theatre. However, the volume also includes a few remarks on the challenges, controversies and failures that have been following Schaub\u00fchne in this period. It also shows that Ostermeier\u2019s acknowledges some of these controversies (the failure of his initial concept of a democratic organisation of the theatre, including equal salaries for all the artists) and even succeeds to overcome some of them, including how women were represented in his performances, as well as in the very structure of Schaub\u00fchne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No doubt, the overall evaluation would have been considerably different had, say, critics from the leading German theatre journal Theater Heute<\/em> also been asked to write for this volume. Why was there such resistance by Berlin critics towards Ostermeier both as director and manager? The reasons are, of course, complex and not always consistent. And they are not very clear to anyone who does not live or work between Charlottenburg and Prenzlauer Berg.[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first part of the book is focused on the context of the foundation of Schaub\u00fchne, its history and current organization, as well as its social and cultural position. This part begins with a manifesto from 1999 (\u201cMission\u201d) written by the four new and young managers of this theatre — Ostermeier, the choreographer Sascha Walz, and dramaturges Jens Hillje and Jochen Sandig.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founded in West Berlin at the beginning of the 1960s, the theatre\u2019s unique organizational and artistic identity was created early on by its legendary manager and director Peter Stein. Theatre scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte\u2019s essay analyses the differences between this earlier period and the one in which Ostermeier and his associates emerged at the beginning of the 21st<\/sup> century. Fischer-Lichte recognises and even emphasises the continuity included in the democratic decision-making process and the system of directors-in-residence: Klaus Michael Gr\u00fcber, Claus Peymann and Luc Bondy early on as well as Katie Mitchell, Luk Perceval and Falk Richter[2]<\/sup><\/a> more recently. In both periods, Schaub\u00fchne became a kind of a \u201ctrademark\u201d of German theatre because of its international touring. Fischer-Lichte underlines the intention of both Stein and Ostermeier to make a political theatre. She labels Stein\u2019s political work as philosophical and Ostermeier\u2019s as sociological. Stein, she says, problematized the historical failure of the bourgeoisie (the consequences of which we are still living with), while Ostermeier adapted classics — most often works by Ibsen \u2013 and staged contemporary British, Scandinavian, and German plays to criticise contemporary capitalist society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ramona Mosse explores the same topic, the identity of the institution, but focuses specifically on Ostermeier. She raises the local issue<\/em> of the relationship between the locale where Schaub\u00fchne is situated and its social surrounding (that is, its bourgeois audience). She examines Ostermeier\u2019s concept of theatre as an institution for constructing an open society and the fact that it is itself a private theatre receiving public subventions. Mosse also raises larger issues including the Schaub\u00fchne\u2019s various forms of otherness<\/em>: its international exchanges (touring, the festival FIND, visiting directors and authors); its blog (Pearson\u2019s Preview)<\/em> which includes interviews and notes about their productions, a website run by a Canadian, Joseph Pearson (neither a German nor a theatre man); its self-critical concern with gender issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an echo of former analyses, the first part of the book ends with an interview with Ostermeier himself done by Clare Finburgh Delijani. After a competent mapping of the heritage Stein left at Schaub\u00fchne, with the problematization of certain lmyths[3]<\/sup><\/a>, Ostermeier explains how and why he took on the model of democratic management of theatre and equal salaries, and admits his failure in that area, stating that his priority in management was internationalization (which was, until then, rather rare in German theatre). He also explains his concept of political theatre and how his own political attitude is reflected in the plays and topics he chooses rather than in any concrete ideological agenda. Developing his thesis on relevance of a strong acting ensemble, Ostermeier states that this concept does not come in the way of cultural diversity of the employees and rejects yet another common objection to his work: socially engaged theatre does not necessarily belong to \u201chigh culture\u201d, it can also be popular and entertaining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The part of the book which deals with Ostermeier\u2019s specific work as a director and his own approach to realism starts with a text by American scholar Marvin Carlson, an expert in Berlin theatre life, who distinguishes Ostermeier\u2019s realism from the kind of socialist realism,<\/em> ubiquitous in the former eastern bloc (the difference is self-implied), but also from the ironically labelled capitalist realism<\/em> rooted in consumerism and advertising. Echoing Fisher-Lichte\u2019s thesis about Ostermeier\u2019s \u201csociological\u201d political theatre \u2013 one which criticizes contemporary capitalist society — Carlson gives an historical overview of the development of Ostermeier\u2019s specific critique of capitalism: from his first staging of British in-yer-face<\/em> plays in the \u201890s, through the staging of numerous plays by Ibsen, to a condemnation of neo-fascism in his adaptation of Shakespeare\u2019s Richard III<\/em>. Besides the significant distance of Ostermeier\u2019s work from both socialist and capitalist realism, Carlson mentions yet another line, the one that separates his work from Frank Castorf\u2019s \u201cdeconstructive\u201d approach in directing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most interesting and perhaps controversial aspect of the second part of the book is Jitka Goriaux Pelechov\u00e1\u2019s thesis that \u201cthis quest for a realism of the stage underlines all Ostermiere\u2019s Shakespeare productions\u201d (79). She analyses certain aspects of Ostermeier\u2019s realism in the staging of Shakespeare\u2019s plays: from dramaturgical re-contextualisation through set designs by Jan Papperbaum, through the form of his stage images which clarify each play\u2019s central situations (Goriaux Pelechov\u00e1 calls them \u201cdirector\u2019s fabrications\u201d), to an acting style that links expressive, physical performing to Stanislavski\u2019s tradition of acting from one\u2019s own experience. That said, the author does not link these separate characteristics in a coherent, theoretically elaborated concept of stage realism, which does leave her core thesis somewhat unfounded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other arguments in favour of Ostermeier\u2019s realism and political relevance in staging Shakespeare are offered from a socio-cultural direction by Elisa Leroy through her analysis of diachronic and synchronic changes that the performance Hamlet<\/em> went through between 2008 and 2020. The diachronic ones are those caused by the time and the places where the performance was held — in particular in Tehran and Ramala. The synchronic ones are those created by actor Lars Eidinger with his constant, and often topical improvisations. Boenish in his own text thoroughly analyses Ostermeier\u2019s realism, finding its uniqueness in the interweaving of dramatic fiction and the (post-dramatic) disclosure of the theatre frame, which he labels \u201cpost-conceptual director\u2019s theatre.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third part of the book introduces various comparative perspectives, providing an even broader context. Containing three texts which refer neither to Ostermeier\u2019s work nor to the main lines in Schaub\u00fchne program, these essays focus on individual performing forms or cultures. One is a detailed and erudite analysis of the performance Trust<\/em> by Falk Richter and the choreographer Anouk van Dijk, written by theorist Hans-Thies Lehmann; the second one (by Marina Ceppi) is a review of Mexican and Chilean political theatre performed at FIND festival, characterized by \u201crage\u201d and various forms of direct focus on audiences, with an idea to not leave viewers in the position of being mere observers; the third, written by Sabine Huschka, is an analysis of works of contemporary dance done at Schaub\u00fchne.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the first is a testimony about the aims, strategies and procedures in the work of the new Schaub\u00fchne in its first 10 years, and the second one a theoretical analysis of the realistic approach of the theatre\u2019s two directors, two texts by Jens Hillje and Benjamin Fowler are linked by the fact that both partially (Hillje) or fully (Fowler) compare Ostermeier\u2019s performances with the ones staged by other directors-in-residence. Hillje compares the work on classics by Ostermeier, Perceval, and Richter, especially in terms of acting, emphasising the contribution of this diversity to the development of the ensemble. On the one side, there is the performative nature of Perceval\u2019s method (which could be called non-acting<\/em>), while on the other we have Ostermeier\u2019s focus on acting within the given dramatic frame. He further argues that Richter creates a tension between speech as a form of thinking and the actions of the actors themselves. Hillje also offers detailed insight into the criteria behind the selection of new plays, of working on them (from commissioning to text development during rehearsal process), explaining such an approach by referring to the links that Schaub\u00fchne had with London\u2019s Royal Court, and explaining the genesis, concept and significance of their festival FIND.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have left Benjamin Fowler\u2019s text for the end of this review because it effectively brings together the main subjects of this important publication — the management of Schaub\u00fchne under Ostermeier (reasons for visiting directors\u2019 engagements, as well as the contribution of their work to the artistic identity of the theatre); Ostermeier\u2019s specific kind of realism which is here called not only sociological<\/em> but also critical<\/em> linking it to the more political Brechtian intentions of Ostermeier. Fowler also discusses the limits of this stage approach, and explains how Ostermeier overcame them through a comparative analysis of two stagings of Franz Xaver Kroetz’s Wunschkonzert<\/em>: one by director Katie Mitchell, the other by Ostermeier himself. Fowler concludes that Ostermeier’s realism is characterized by a physicality in the acting (akin to the spirit of Meyerhold’s biomechanics) which best expresses the hedonism, anxiety and alienation of capitalist society. In combination with the carefully designed materiality of the scene (costume and decor), this acting style develops a clear social criticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In sum, a most useful book for anyone interested in recent German theatre in general, the Schaub\u00fchne as both an aesthetic and a theatre, and\/or Thomas Ostermeier\u2019s very particular notions of stage realism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
Endnotes<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/sup><\/a> I tried to explain this controversy in my earlier text \u201cBerlin \u2013 une r\u00e9v\u00e9lation th\u00e9\u00e2trale\u201d in: Les Voyages ou l\u2019ailleurs du th\u00e9\u00e2tre: hommage \u00e0 Georges Banu<\/em>, (published in Alternatives  th\u00e9\u00e2trales,<\/em> Bruxelles, 2013 (240-48).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/sup><\/a> I believe that Fischer-Lichte makes an omission when in listing visiting directors during Ostermeier\u2019s mandate, she omits Falk Richter, one of the directors who has left one of the most significant marks in Schaub\u00fchne in the past 20 years.The work of the triumvirate of the \u201cdirectors-in-residence\u201d in the first 10 years of the new Schaub\u00fchne — Ostermeier, Perceval and Richter —  is thoroughly analysed in the text by Jens Hillje.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cWe now tend to look back at this time as a golden age of the Schaub\u00fchne, but reading the reviews, it is clear that early on, they were criticized,\u201d Ostermeier in conversation with Clare Finburgh Delijani, \u201cAudiences Know Their Cause will be Treated\u2019: Making Political Theatre at the Schaub\u00fchne\u201d (43). <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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*<\/a>Ivan Medenica<\/strong> is Artistic Director of the BITEF festival as well as a Professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade where he teaches history of world theatre and drama and introduction to theatre and performance studies. Active for many years as both a theatre critic and a member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Theatre Critics, he has long been a keen observer of modern German drama and theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2022 Ivan Medenica
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN:2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n

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

This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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