Roman Dolzhansky about the Theatertreffen festival

Every year in May, ten of the best performances from the so-called “German-speaking area” - Germany, Austria and northern Switzerland - are shown in Berlin. German theater in Russia has long ceased to be something incomprehensible and distant: thanks to the flourishing of festival activities, our viewers had the opportunity to get acquainted with many “exhibition” products of the above-mentioned space. For many of us, German theater has remained alien, but at the same time it has gained many fans. In any case, the German model of organizing theatrical life, very close to the Russian one, but working not only much more intelligently (who would doubt it!), but also much more interesting in a creative sense, attracts the close attention of everyone who is capable of being unbiased.

They say about “Theatertreffen” that it is the German “Golden Mask”. Which, of course, is not true: why do the Germans care about our gigantomania? There is only one nomination, moreover, strictly limited to ten performances. And this is not a nomination at all - no awards are given at the end of the festival. But passions run high no less than ours - the decisions of the expert council of critics who choose the coveted top ten are discussed furiously and mercilessly. Especially in recent years: for some time now, critics invited by the festival began to demonstratively neglect the unwritten rule according to which the main theater festival must respect the works of masters and maintain a balance of interests and egos of representatives of different generations and cities.

Imagine that the "Golden Mask", moreover, strictly reduced to a "decimal" format, from year to year would not only ignore the performances of Lev Dodin and Pyotr Fomenko (everyone has already forgotten when Peter Stein, Luc Bondi were called to the "Theatertreffen" or Klaus Peimann), but would also ignore the productions of the best directors of the middle generation - say, Andrei Moguchy or Kirill Serebrennikov. No, this cannot happen to us. The fact is that Germans are generally very suspicious of anyone’s stable success—they immediately see the threat of stagnation. There, not only do they not strive, like ours, to create idols for themselves, but they know how to indifferently throw recent heroes off the ship of modernity. No one is allowed to rest on their laurels. Although anyone “discarded” has a chance to return - after several years of being “ignored”, the Volskbühne theater, super popular in the 1990s, is again included in the list of festival favorites - invited with three performances at once. The well-known Munich Kammerspiele was presented twice. And, no matter what they say, “Theatertreffen” cannot do without the Vienna “Burgtheater” - one of the most famous, rich and arrogant theaters in Europe.

"Platonov", directed by Alvis Hermanis
Photo: © Georg Soulek

By the way, when looking at the festival poster, the Moscow eye will notice the Burgtheater performance for itself - because it is a play by Chekhov and because it was staged by the Golden Mask award winner, the head of the New Riga Theater Alvis Hermanis. When the play "Platonov" begins, the spectator takes a deep breath of amazement: the German theater has not seen such detailed, naturalistic scenery since the times of the great Chekhov performances of the same Peter Stein, that is, at least a quarter of a century. The details of everyday life, down to the smallest, are reproduced by the artist Monika Pormale with extraordinary diligence, accuracy and authenticity. The director seems to want to make the viewer feel the true passage of time in Platonov. Using old theatrical means, he creates a magical illusion of reality - and it seems like an unheard-of innovation. Especially in German-language theatre, where staging a classic play in the costumes and interiors of the era in which the play was written has long been considered a laughable, old-fashioned absurdity.

Neither the length nor the overload of Chekhov's text with minor characters and tedious conversations, apparently, bothered Alvis Hermanis. He made minimal cuts in the untitled play; the performance at the Vienna Burgtheater lasts, including intermission, about five hours - and the extreme duration was probably part of the director's intention. His "Platonov", in essence, turns out to be a very bold experiment in the study of current theatrical reality. Hermanis, who by nature is prone to gentle provocations, decided to test whether it is possible today to create a serious performance in obviously archaic coordinate systems - and carried a team of excellent actors on this journey, including the famous Martin Wutke, who plays the title role.

It is interesting that this, the most traditional - at least outwardly - performance of the program is somewhat similar to the most radical participant of the festival, the documentary play “Radio Hate”, made by Milo Rau at the Hebbel am Ufer theater. It also restores the real flow of time. This theatrical work takes the viewer back to one of the bloodiest pages in world history of the last century - the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, when representatives of the Hutu people exterminated about a million of their compatriots belonging to the Tutsi tribe in just a few weeks. How many of us remember this? But not everyone in Germany remembers it, and the creators of the play decided to recall the bloody massacre. The testimonies of eyewitnesses and victims of the nightmare, whose faces appear on video screens, are only a prologue to the main part of the action: the performance recreates one hour-long broadcast of the world-famous Rwandan Radio of a Thousand Hills, which in 1994 became one of the mouthpieces of hatred and the most effective instigator of murderers. In a radio studio built on stage, actors play presenters: music and optional chatter on the air are easily interspersed with calls addressed to listeners to deal with their fellow citizens. The hatred dissolved in the ether here is relaxed and everyday - and that’s why it’s especially terrible. It’s probably useful to remind the Germans of this too. And we just need it.

Festival schedule on the website www.berlinerfestspiele.de

From Chekhov to genocide