The New York Times (November 21, 2000: ARTS ABROAD)
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
FRANKFURT, Nov. 20 Few theatrical works in Germany have been more reviled than "Die Massnahme" ("The Measures Taken"), written by Bertolt Brecht and first performed in 1930. The play centers on a Communist in a country very like China who supports a peasant revolution but who is executed by his comrades because his efforts interfere with ideological goals.
At the time, the play was widely attacked as an apology for Stalinist totalitarianism and the sacrifice of the individual on behalf of revolution. Brecht himself was so shaken by the criticism
that he virtually disowned the play and prohibited it from being performed. Even today, Brecht's heirs have relaxed the ban on only a few, carefully controlled occasions.
It hardly sounds like material for a crowd- pleasing remake, but the much-hated play has now been turned upside down and given a post- Communist spin by two of Germany's brightest young theater directors. And in a development that might have made Brecht smile, the two directors grew up in Communist East Germany and came of age just as the Berlin Wall crumbled 11 years ago.
The directors, Tom Kuhnel, 29, and Robert Schuster, 30, work as a team and now run Frankfurt's renowned avant-garde Theater am Turm. They have drawn on their roots in the east to produce images and ideas that have attracted big followings in the west.
In their hands, Brecht's play has been transmuted into a work titled "Das Kontingent" ("The Contingent"). The structure and the basic moral dilemma remain, but Mr. Kuhnel, Mr. Schuster and the members of their collaborative theater group have turned it into a critique of Western dogma. Brecht's revolutionaries have been replaced by members of a United Nations peacekeeping force in the Caucasus (but think Kosovo).
The rigid ideology expressed in the play now takes the form of the United Nations' own rules of engagement: absolute neutrality, prevention of violence and an impersonal devotion to "processes" like free elections, or even distribution of food aid.
The tragic central character is now a well- meaning but naïve American named Bill who is outraged by the inequities around him and repeatedly violates his oath of neutrality. Like those of
Brecht's revolutionary, Bill's efforts merely lead to more problems, and he is executed by his own United Nations comrades.
The message of the play, which was recently performed for an invited audience at the United Nations in New York, is hardly a paean of praise. Though Bill is caricatured as a bumbling and
overly emotional simpleton, the United Nations comes across as a depersonalized enforcer of arbitrary rules that merely provide new opportunities for war criminals. There is no "right" side in the play; the point, instead, is that the West has cloaked itself in its own rigid certainties.
The staging is stark, dominated by gray risers in front of huge blue banners that bear the United Nations emblem. The characters are all dressed in silver-gray uniforms that one German critic
described as a "mix of Spaceship Orion and Prada." Atonal music backs up a chorus that, in the tradition of Greek tragedies, provides a running commentary on the action.
"'Das Kontingent' shows that the West has its own ideology," Mr. Schuster said in a recent interview. "The tragedy is that one has to make a decision, but there really is no good choice. No
politician can decide in that kind of situation with certainty; it's impossible. But they have to nonetheless."
None of the team's original works so far have dealt overtly with themes like the collapse of Communism or German reunification. But their plays do evoke the sense of being an outsider in one's own land.
When Communism collapsed, the East Germans found their system almost immediately replaced by another set of rules transplanted directly from a smug, know-it-all western Germany. In "German for Foreigners," produced last year, the actors spend the entire play reciting a litany of schoolbook conversations that are supposed to prepare them for the gamut of social interactions in a united Germany, in effect reflecting the fact that many former East Germans feel like outsiders in their own country.
Mr. Kuhnel and Mr. Schuster joined the Frankfurt theater in 1999. Though it has a long tradition of producing avant-garde drama, the city-financed Theater am Turm had been struggling financially and looking for new creative direction. The men were recruited by the
choreographer William Forsythe, a New Yorker who had recently taken over as overall director of the theater.
The two directors formed their partnership while studying drama at the Ernst Busch School for Dramatic Arts in Berlin. Mr. Schuster, a muscular and gregarious man, had started out by acting and staging shows at a church in his hometown of Meissen, near Dresden. Mr. Kuhnel, quiet and bespectacled, grew up in Cottbus, near Berlin, and had originally planned to pursue a career in physics but became bored and veered toward drama by the end of high school.
The partnership evolved out of rivalry. Both men wanted to stage a new adaptation of "Die Massnahme" because they were convinced the themes had a new relevance in the context of Communism's collapse. Though the Brecht family foundation generally prohibited anyone from performing the play, it was willing to make an exception for the Busch school so long as it did not try to publicize the event or sell tickets.
"We both wanted to direct the play in our own way, so we decided, `Fine, we'll do it both ways,' " Mr. Kuhnel recalled. "As we began rehearsals, we noticed that we didn't have such different
subjective views."
Both men had conceived of similar costumes, and both decided to use puppets for some of the characters. From that point on, the two have worked almost entirely as a duo.
Mr. Kuhnel has a particularly sharp ear for music and structure. "He is very structural, almost mathematical," said Christian Tschirner, an actor who went to drama school with the directors and is a veteran of many of their productions. Mr. Schuster, by contrast, tends to become more involved with the story and the actors.
The two men are part of a theater collective of actors and writers called Soeren Voima, most of whose members met at the Busch school in the early 1990's. Original works like "Das Kontingent" and "German for Foreigners" are written anonymously under the name
Soeren Voima, and writing is usually a collaborative process, with one or two people taking the lead.
In a throwback to the idealism that accompanied the fall of the Berlin Wall, all members of the collective earn the same amount of money: about 60,000 marks a year, or about $26,000. But the
egalitarian vision is under considerable strain because some actors and writers are capable of earning far more on the open market than others.
Mr. Kuhnel and Mr. Schuster admit to frustration themselves because actors have the time to earn extra money outside the theater while the directors do not. "It can be the case that the
directors actually earn less than the actors," Mr. Tschirner said.
Mr. Kuhnel is not ready to give up but admits that even many of the more senior actors consider the equal-salary scheme absurd. "It is always an issue," he said. "Does equality lead to less motivation? Should equality be some kind of sacred cow? How long can we keep it going? One cannot absolutely say."
It could almost be the theme of their next production.
© 2000 by The New York Times
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