UCLA Live’s International Theatre Festival has already
brought us the likes of the acclaimed Shakespeare’s Globe
Theatre this season. Now, the festival gets set to shift into high
gear again when Berlin’s celebrated avant-garde theater
group, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg Platz (or Volksbühne,
for short), helmed by famed renegade director Frank Castorf, takes
the stage for a three-day stint at UCLA’s Freud Playhouse,
running Dec. 17-19. Castorf’s stage adaptation of Fyodor
Dostoevsky’s “The Insulted and Injured” is a near
five-hour theatrical tour de force of Wagnerian proportions,
surreally set in what seems like the sleazy late 60s or early 70s,
and augmented by a kinky reality TV type format (conceived well
before the U.S. “Big Brother” craze), employing live
cameras and video screens masquerading as billboards. The
production is all high-concept, but as international critics have
pointed out, also hugely entertaining (the production is making its
U.S. premier, but has toured extensively outside of Germany, and
has even played in Canada). Carl Hegemann is
Volksbühne’s resident dramaturge, and an expert on the
work of both Dostoevsky and Castorf. Hegemann, speaking from
Germany, was on hand to provide some insight into the creative
concepts behind what promises to be a complex and stunning
theatrical experience for U.S. audiences at the Freud.
***
dB Magazine: Firstly, this production is performed entirely in
German. How do you think the American audience will react or
respond to a play in a language they are largely unfamiliar with?
How many times has the production played outside of Germany to a
non-German speaking audience, and if so, what was
the response? Also, is the production being adapted in
any way for this US performance? What do you think are the
challenges or barriers for Volksbühne in making this US
run a success?
Carl Hegemann: The play will be performed in German, but there
will be subtitles. This enables everybody to understand the whole
text, even those who don’t know any German. We use this
subtitling technique in all our performances abroad, projecting the
text in the specific languages of the country. The show itself is
exactly the same as in Berlin. The themes and subjects of the play
““ the life struggle in a big city, the economic and erotic
self-exploitation of each individual, the contrast of rich and poor
““ (should be) understandable for everyone, everywhere.
Unusual and surprising might be the non-theatrical way of acting
and the aesthetics of the video-projections used in the performance
““ many of the scenes take place inside the building on stage
and can be observed only by the means of video surveillance.
Furthermore, we follow Dostoevsky’s text chronologically, but
in an associative way. Therefore the performance does not always
match the linear structure of the narrative, which we are familiar
with from typical theater or film productions.
dB: There are many famous German writers, like Goethe, for
example. Why has Castorf consistently chosen to work with, and to
adapt, Dostoevsky? What is Castorf’s particular connection or
affinity to Dostoevsky and his works? Is there a particular
connection, if any, between Dostoevsky and German culture? And
between Dostoevsky and German theater?
CH: Castorf has already directed many plays by Schiller, Goethe
and other German playwrights, for instance, Hauptmann, Zuckmayer,
Müller, and Lessing. In the last five years, he has worked on
three performances based on the American texts of Tennessee
Williams and Eugene O’Neill, and five based on the Russian
prose of Dostoevsky and Bulgakow. The juxtaposition of these texts
illustrates that they have more in common than they have
differences. Dostoevsky’s “weltanschauung”
(meaning, his “philosophy of life”), and his despair,
results from his very specific analysis of German idealism.
Conversely, the German analysis of Dostoevsky’s work, for
example Friedrich Nietzsche’s, formed the basis for
existentialism ““ for which Williams and O’Neill can be
cited as American representatives. From the cultural-historical
point of view, Dostoevsky is probably the most important Russian
author. In Germany he is just as well known as Schiller or Goethe.
No other author has been influenced as thoroughly by German
literature and philosophy, and no other author has influenced
““ for more than a hundred years ““ German, French and at
least indirectly, American literature, as Dostoevsky. He is
probably to be considered as (an) important representative of world
literature rather simply confining his influence to one specific
society. Dostoevsky is not an exotic author for a German audience
““ no less than the American playwrights for whom Castorf
holds such affection. Dostoevsky is considered the inventor
of existentialism, and (he) claims to (have been influenced) mostly
by the Bible, Goethe, Schiller and the philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Nietzsche referred to (the happenstance of) Dostoevsky’s
influence on his life as one of “pure luck.”
dB: What were the technical difficulties in adapting a Russian
novel into a German stage play? In the first place, why adapt a
novel into a play, since this was not the intent of Dostoevsky (to
write a play)? What are Castorf’s major objectives in
adapting novels, in general, for the stage?
CH: There are several very good translations of
Dostoevsky’s texts into German. We used the Russian original
only in moments of extreme doubt. Since the novel is based, among
others, on Schiller’s play “Kabbale und Liebe,”
it is very suitable for a staged version. Some literary scholars
claim that (Dostoevsky’s) newspaper-novel “Erniedrigte
und Beleidigte” (“The Insulted and Injured”) is a
hidden theatre play, or that its form, including all the direct
speech, corresponds more to drama than to a novel. Furthermore, in
all their complexity and relevance to real life, novels ““
according to Castorf himself ““ have formed the most intense
challenge for him in the last few years. Plays, with their clear
structure, are basically more unrealistic. Reality itself is
definitely obscure, and functions more like a novel.
dB: Besides Dostoevsky, what are Castorf’s influences, and
what was his inspiration for this production? The production has a
Hollywood late 60s feel, as well as avant-garde, mixed-media
elements ““ what influenced these elements, and what tone or
message is he trying to convey?
CH: Castorf has to be seen in (a) direct aesthetic and political
line (descending from) the tradition of Bertolt Brecht and Heiner
Müller. Castorf is, as he himself puts it, a wayward student
of Brecht. He developed his own style in the GDR (the former
eastern German Democratic Republic), against the will of the
authorities, and in opposition to the instrumental culture machine.
He has been banished into exile to the provinces, and his
productions have been repeatedly forbidden. Now, in the West he is
free to do whatever he wants. But it (hasn’t, however, made)
him any happier ““ in the free West, he has to fight
constantly with triviality and indifference towards the production
of art. The Volksbühne has followed the tradition of modern
theatre from as early as 1925 ““ when Erwin Piscator (a
teacher of O’Neill, and co-founder of the New School for
Social Research in New York) started his Multi-media performances
here (in Germany). The juxtaposition of theater and live-camera,
used by Castorf long before TV formats like “Big
Brother,” has its origin in the massive break with theatrical
conventions materialized in the stage sets of Bert Neumann
(long-time Volksbühne collaborator, and renowned avant-garde
theater set designer).
dB: Speaking of Bert Neumann, please explain to an audience who
has never seen such a thing before, how the deployment of a
“datcha,” or container, works in terms of the staging
of this play. Is this something common to all of Castorf’s
productions? Conceptually, what is its function or
significance?
CH: In conventional theater, the stage set is meant to show the
audience as much of the action on stage as possible. In German we
use the word “schauspiel” for theatre, originating from
“schau,” meaning “to look, observe,” and
“spiel,” meaning “game, action, play.”
Since the first Dostoevsky performance in our theater, however,
Bert Neumann has built closed buildings on stage ““ a
“container-architecture,” one-level standard bungalows
with small windows, through which the audience is barely able to
peer inside. The “Demons” (another of
Dostoevsky’s novels adapted to stage and film by Castorf)
performance took place in a small wooden holiday home container, or
“datcha,” placed in the Russian taiga. The audience
could follow parts of (the performance) only by listening, almost
like a radio play. In “The Insulted and Injured,” the
house is cast into stone ““ consisting of few containers
““ and placed in a city. The losers and winners live there
wall to wall under one roof. The view into the house is just as
restricted as in “Demons.” But on the roof there is a
big screen, like a billboard, projecting the captured images of
everything taking place inside the building, which is filmed by
live-cameras. As a side effect, we have the possibility to put
theater and film, video footage and real humans, next to each other
and compare them directly.
Interview conducted by Alex Wen, dB Magazine
reporter.