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Saturday, 27 February 2010
Monday, 15 February 2010
CALL FOR AUDIENCES
On February 26,
YOU are invited to an evening of fragments, unfinished work, beginnings, failures, experiments, first attempts, microtheatres - featuring, among others:
Betwixt and Between (Hildesheim):
Lenzomat - eine Performance über Wahnsinn
Richard Pfützenreuter:
FLEISCHGERICHT
[oder die gar wundersame Frage, warum Gott durch seinen Bauchnabel Blut in Antonins Buchstabensuppe schiss]
(ca. 45 mins)
the antigone project (lucy beynon & lisa jeschke):
john hurts [from idiot]
(ca. 30 mins)
performances - drinks
free admission - bring friends
7pm - Theaterhaus Mitte Berlin (Wallstr. 32, Haus C: http://www.thbm.foerderband.org/conpress/_rubric/index.php?rubric=Kontakt )
YOU are invited to an evening of fragments, unfinished work, beginnings, failures, experiments, first attempts, microtheatres - featuring, among others:
Betwixt and Between (Hildesheim):
Lenzomat - eine Performance über Wahnsinn
(ca. 30 mins)
Ina Richter:
Performance of Takemitsu's "Voice"
(ca. 5 mins)
Ina Richter:
Performance of Takemitsu's "Voice"
(ca. 5 mins)
Richard Pfützenreuter:
FLEISCHGERICHT
[oder die gar wundersame Frage, warum Gott durch seinen Bauchnabel Blut in Antonins Buchstabensuppe schiss]
(ca. 45 mins)
Nancy Schwade
beauthingsies of goddessies
(ca. 10 mins)
the antigone project (lucy beynon & lisa jeschke):
john hurts [from idiot]
(ca. 30 mins)
performances - drinks
free admission - bring friends
7pm - Theaterhaus Mitte Berlin (Wallstr. 32, Haus C: http://www.thbm.foerderband.
NEW LOCATION since last summer - plese click on the link for a map
please forward this to friends, mailing lists and anyone who might be interested
facebook events page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=306707260902&ref=ts
please forward this to friends, mailing lists and anyone who might be interested
facebook events page: http://www.facebook.com/home.
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
waste in virtual circulation
It is strange that everyone always speaks of the theatre as the paradigmatically public form of art. For unlike writing, theatre in itself is not made for public circulation: rather, it takes place within a very specific room. Only few people can witness it – even if these few are several hundreds, which is nothing in comparison to any text, or video, or photography, all of which at least imply the possibility of reaching – everyone. In this sense, theatre is always curiously private and intimate, as well as hidden from public view. Street theatre imagines it can counteract this hiddenness, but even theatre on the street is never visible to more than a handful of spectators at any one point, and in this sense theatre always takes place on a small scale. It can never be for the masses; people's theatre (I mean in a vaguely socialist tradition: Volkstheater) can only exist on a qualitative, never on a quantitative level.
Friday, 29 January 2010
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
idiot
we've improved, that is disfigured, the polite translation of konrad bayer's idiot we've been working with so far.
idiot
[konrad bayer]
performance text
a human-like creature is waiting at a street corner. let’s call it a man and give him a name: a. he walks back and forth.
a (to himself): damn it.
b (passes by): shut your face!
a falls silent, feeling hurt.
b looks back again threateningly. a bows down, shaken. exit b. enter c.
you can see from a’s face that he wants to ask c something. his muscles move! a does not leave the spot. c goes up to a and kicks him. exit c.
d enters hand in hand with a girl. they must be lovers!
a goes up to the pair, clears his throat, coughs and prepares to give a speech. that is to say he opens his gob.
d gives him a hook to the chin. the girl goes up to the collapsed man and kicks him in the kidney. a writhes and groans. then the girl picks up a bar from the ground and hits d over the head. d upends.
e comes from the other side, looks at the girl, twists her arm, tears it off and hits her over the head with it. the girl upends.
f comes out of the house and gives e such a kick that he is upended.
f stamps e’s head to a pulp; goes back inside.
a struggles to rise.
g arrives, approaches a.
g prepares to ask a question. that is to say his jaw gapes.
a knocks him down.
a motorcar drives down the street. a rams the bar into the radiator. d has now got up behind a and is knocked down as a pulls the bar out of the radiator with a swing which goes on to hit the driver who is about to get out. another moment and he would have been out! a grabs them both and throws them into the back seat stuffing them in carelessly as if they were wrapping paper. then he jumps behind the wheel and drives over the girl, then back over again. then exits as he drives over the girl a third time.
she stands up, whimpering and groaning from her upper body; her abdomen hangs lifeless behind her.
a policeman comes running up and with a spring into a flying blow gives her a colossal kick in the teeth so that blood gushes out. the motorcar appears in reverse and backs over the policeman.
a wrests the revolver from the dead policeman’s holster and fires at the policeman’s corpse and at the girl’s corpse.
continuous firing.
exit a.
enter a with a lawnmower. he drives over the corpses. he tears them to pieces.
exit a.
enter a with a paper sack. he collects the pieces of flesh and throws them carelessly into a paper bag. he drops the paper bag carelessly and leaves.
enter a with an almost assembled machine and a few spare parts. he assembles the machine carelessly. he never looks over the edge of the stage. his eyes are dull.
if something doesn’t work at once, a kicks the machine firmly but totally without expression. each time the machine starts up at once, unimpressed, a carries on working.
suddenly a human-like creature shows up on one side.
although a is apparently not looking, he rushes over and kicks the chap from the stage with enormous agility, and totally without expression.
a will from now on always appear totally expressionless, but will act quite spontaneously when necessary!
a takes the bag and empties it into the machine.
then he attaches an enormous crank. and starts to turn it. mince comes out of the mincer. a scrapes the meat from the ground and makes dumplings. he does this without expression. he scoffs the dumplings. he scrambles up onto the machine and shits into it.
brown dumplings come out. a bolts down the brown dumplings.
a girl walks past.
a regurgitates in an arc covering her from head to foot. directly after gobbling them down he has to regurgitate. there is no break! the girl has to be coming by just at that moment.
the girl sobs. he slaps her loud in the face and mounts her. he ejaculates without batting an eyelid and gets up with a spring without batting an eyelid and goes, not too fast and not too slow and most of all totally without expression, to the motorcar, gets in, starts the motor, not too fast and not too slow and most of all without expression and runs her over.
she regains her senses and whimpers. she is severed at the foot. a goes up to her and tears off her foot. the girl whimpers. then he stuffs the foot down her throat. she throws up; even her own foot.
he is suddenly overcome by a wild frenzy. he rages, viciously pushing her bloody and now vomited on foot back between her teeth, and he pushes with all his might, his eyes shine, the veins stand out on his head, and he pushes the foot into her gob, assisting with his foot, stamps down, then he bends over and shoves his fist in, up to the elbow, and once again, and again and again. then he straightens up, his eyes are non-expressive, he carelessly smears the blood down his suit and jumps on her stomach. he grabs the mono-footed girl and stuffs her into the machine. he turns the crank. a red, bloody dumpling plops out. a bolts it, chewing and shoving out his jaw.
f rushes out of the house at a, an enormous hammer in his fists.
f hastily takes a stance, positions his feet, one leg in front, and swings the hammer over his head. unimpressed, not too fast and not too slow, but most of all without expression, a unbuttons his trousers, pulls out his member and with a high spurt pisses in the face of the hammer-swinging f.
f checks the hammer’s swing and wipes his face, without expression. a woman above opens a window and rolls an enormous stone onto f.
f is mush.
quickly but without expression a aims the revolver and shoots the woman down from the window. that was quick work! after pulling the trigger, a lets the weapon fall from his hand and turns eagerly but without expression to other activities. once again he is quite captivated.
the woman falls slowly from the window. there is a crash on the paving stones.
a: theatre is a pile of shit.
art is a pile of shit.
science is a pile of shit.
philosophy is a pile of shit.
religion is a pile of shit.
politics is a pile of shit.
the state is a pile of shit.
the community is a pile of shit.
compassion is a pile of shit.
coarseness is a pile of shit.
upbringing is a pile of shit.
love is a pile of shit.
pride is a pile of shit.
fidelity is a pile of shit.
honour is a pile of shit.
infidelity is a pile of shit
eroticism is a pile of shit.
sexuality is a pile of shit.
friendship is a pile of shit.
hope is a pile of shit.
despair is a pile of shit.
fear is a pile of shit.
courage is a pile of shit.
the economy is a pile of shit.
chaos is a pile of shit.
nature is a pile of shit.
knowledge is a pile of shit.
rage is a pile of shit.
equanimity is a pile of shit.
beauty is a pile of shit.
ugliness is a pile of shit.
silence is a pile of shit.
indifference is a pile of shit.
every judgement is a pile of shit.
abstinence is a pile of shit.
desire is a pile of shit.
giving is a pile of shit.
taking is a pile of shit.
walking is a pile of shit.
staying is a pile of shit.
hearing is a pile of shit.
seeing is a pile of shit.
pleasure is a pile of shit.
feelings are a pile of shit.
thinking is a pile of shit.
vanity is a pile of shit.
luxury is a pile of shit.
poverty is a pile of shit.
idealism is a pile of shit.
materialism is a pile of shit.
stupidity is a pile of shit.
laziness is a pile of shit.
industriousness is a pile of shit.
ambition is a pile of shit.
wood is a pile of shit.
electricity is a pile of shit.
the earth’s gravitational attraction is a pile of shit.
all attraction is a pile of shit.
the planetary system is a pile of shit.
leap years are a pile of shit.
human needs are a pile of shit.
enjoyment is a pile of shit.
extremes are a pile of shit.
the mean is a pile of shit.
life is a pile of shit.
death is a pile of shit.
the day is a pile of shit.
the night is a pile of shit.
the man: brother.
a: you cunt.
a: work is a pile of shit.
illusion is a pile of shit.
individualism is a pile of shit.
common sense is a pile of shit.
the mind is a pile of shit.
free will is a pile of shit.
fate is a pile of shit.
reason is a pile of shit.
the subconscious is a pile of shit.
ethics are a pile of shit.
lack of ethics is also a pile of shit.
only justice
miserliness
independence
and noise are left.
the man: brother!
a: you cunt.
(pause.)
i am just. that is clear.
i am stingy with everything.
i am independent.
i am loud.
i am an idiot. being an idiot means being for oneself.
(the man applauds.)
a: you cunt.
fuck off.
(the man stays.)
a: that was stupid of me. of course he hasn’t disappeared. he is there, that’s it.
a (roars): it’s unfair. did i give you my permission to stand there in front of me? no. i don’t want to talk to myself! it’s unfair, you want to force me to see you, you want to force me to hear you. i have to see you, i have to hear you when you stand around there, and you are standing around there. that’s it. pile of shit. you want to gallop with the individual components of your deconstructed anatomical whole down the rays of light into my eyes. you want to trot into my ears on the sound waves, and you do so. it's unfair.
(the man turns round.)
a: oh oh not enough, not enough. the other side too, maybe lift up the soles of your feet as well, chase around the sounds of your intestines, show your tongue, want to cut yourself open, show your innards, oh oh enough. give the pretence of totality, du schwein. you want to force me to close my eyes, stick my fingers in my ears. as if that would help. to sleep maybe. du schwein du schwein, du niederträchtiges schwein, you want to force me to sleep. and i would wake again, and have to see you and hear you and so on and who knows what else. it's unfair. you want me to kill myself. murderer malefactor schwein! i don’t want to talk to myself. i can only talk to myself. because you cannot understand what i say just as i cannot understand what you say. i can extract something for my own understanding and with said extract construct an entirely alien picture book and then following this construction suck the book down in to the wet depths of my gut like so many cold sausages du schwein. i don’t want to talk to myself, you are the reason why i talk to myself. you may or may not be the right occasion for me to talk to myself, for i am speaking for myself. when i speak to myself you or something or other can get in the way, yes, but that is just an accident, isn’t that right? i’m talking to myself! pile of shit. this accident is the rule. there’s so much standing and wandering about here. when i talk to myself something gets in the way, which is alright with me, then that’s the rule. just don’t lose one’s head and get everything in a muddle. i am speaking to myself and only myself. don’t allow your face to turn into a metaphorical ear, du schwein. have i allowed you to take even one comma from my talking so that you might patch together some sort of understanding? schwein. affe, ziegenbock!
how he wants to understand me, this rhinoceros, this pile of shit. it's unfair. if you could understand me, i wouldn’t bother to speak for my own noise. i’m too miserly to give you anything. go, go. i don’t even want to take anything. not a comma, not a full stop, nothing absolutely nothing, i give nothing, i take nothing, i need nothing and nothing, that’s what i am, me. oh but how he keeps thinking, thinking, this skunk. he thinks the thinkable. and what is that? that is that which is not, which is impossible, because it’s not, because it’s thinkable, he’s thinking his thoughts, this schwein, this stinking schwein. oh, I’m suffocating. du schwein you want to drive me into the claws of science, you want to utilise physics, you want to invent physics just so that i have to see you, hear you, acknowledge you. oh, there you are.
(a strikes the man)
you bastard you want to keep yourself here with the aid of gravity! i’ll GIVE you a centre to be grave about! (kicks him to the floor). oh, pile of shit, i’ve given something, assisted in altering his centre of gravity, me helped. i caused something, oh woe, woe, the wrath, the wrathful pile of shit, oh woe, such emotion, woe!
(the man gets up)
the man: you should...
a: shut your face, there’s no should about it, i am not destined for anything. i shall guard against building a future for myself. the future is an unattainable paradise, reeking priest, what i do happens, but there’s no SHOULD about it. it happens. i could not, no, i can. for what i could, i can’t, or else i’d have done it. now. it's stupid to say, do that, for if i do it, i do it, and if i don't do it, then i don’t do it, that is to say i can’t do it either, i couldn’t have done it. don’t tell me my lot, you lying pig, swinish liar, you can have your lies and keep them, because you are your own living lie, perhaps, i don’t know anything about you and don’t want to, that is to say i can’t get to know you for there is ein unüberbrückbarer abgrund des unverständnisses. i don’t want waste, what am i saying to myself? i’m not in the future. i’m here, here. what a pile of shit. i’m rabbiting to myself. piggish wretch. what are you trying to do there, you’re trying to build a bridge. it’s awful. i can’t even tell you that it’s all in vain, is not on, you can’t understand me. you hear SOMETHING OR OTHER and get up to mischief with it, cunt, cunt, i’ll stamp you flat .
the man: seek your true self, stop hiding yourself behind such ghastliness.
a: swindler, i’m trying to snare myself. careful, watch out, me for myself. i want to trap myself! pile of shit. that's treachery. i would betray myself if i tried to seek myself. i would be beside myself. but i am here, here. (strikes himself like an orangutang). that’s me, my true self, me, me! what i shall be, i shall be. i am what i am, that’s it. i am i. that’s the truth, which is a pile of shit. there’s nothing that i should be, for i can do what i can and nothing more, why should i allow myself to be tyrannised by a ghost, by a pile of shit, by a future. a joke of myself. i’m no joke, i am i. in no way. now! that’s just not possible. what a pile of shit. it is as it is. possible or impossible what’s it matter. to say nothing is impossible would prove that you wanted to negate the possible that’s standing right there. don’t be a dreamer, pile of shit shut your face! this might be bad; but might i just say, i should have something better and could have if i just wanted? what a pile of shit! i’ve just got that which i can have and that’s what i’ve got, and that’s what i am and so on. pile of shit! what i have, am, is the only possible! shit accident! i am talking to myself.
idiot
[konrad bayer]
performance text
a human-like creature is waiting at a street corner. let’s call it a man and give him a name: a. he walks back and forth.
a (to himself): damn it.
b (passes by): shut your face!
a falls silent, feeling hurt.
b looks back again threateningly. a bows down, shaken. exit b. enter c.
you can see from a’s face that he wants to ask c something. his muscles move! a does not leave the spot. c goes up to a and kicks him. exit c.
d enters hand in hand with a girl. they must be lovers!
a goes up to the pair, clears his throat, coughs and prepares to give a speech. that is to say he opens his gob.
d gives him a hook to the chin. the girl goes up to the collapsed man and kicks him in the kidney. a writhes and groans. then the girl picks up a bar from the ground and hits d over the head. d upends.
e comes from the other side, looks at the girl, twists her arm, tears it off and hits her over the head with it. the girl upends.
f comes out of the house and gives e such a kick that he is upended.
f stamps e’s head to a pulp; goes back inside.
a struggles to rise.
g arrives, approaches a.
g prepares to ask a question. that is to say his jaw gapes.
a knocks him down.
a motorcar drives down the street. a rams the bar into the radiator. d has now got up behind a and is knocked down as a pulls the bar out of the radiator with a swing which goes on to hit the driver who is about to get out. another moment and he would have been out! a grabs them both and throws them into the back seat stuffing them in carelessly as if they were wrapping paper. then he jumps behind the wheel and drives over the girl, then back over again. then exits as he drives over the girl a third time.
she stands up, whimpering and groaning from her upper body; her abdomen hangs lifeless behind her.
a policeman comes running up and with a spring into a flying blow gives her a colossal kick in the teeth so that blood gushes out. the motorcar appears in reverse and backs over the policeman.
a wrests the revolver from the dead policeman’s holster and fires at the policeman’s corpse and at the girl’s corpse.
continuous firing.
exit a.
enter a with a lawnmower. he drives over the corpses. he tears them to pieces.
exit a.
enter a with a paper sack. he collects the pieces of flesh and throws them carelessly into a paper bag. he drops the paper bag carelessly and leaves.
enter a with an almost assembled machine and a few spare parts. he assembles the machine carelessly. he never looks over the edge of the stage. his eyes are dull.
if something doesn’t work at once, a kicks the machine firmly but totally without expression. each time the machine starts up at once, unimpressed, a carries on working.
suddenly a human-like creature shows up on one side.
although a is apparently not looking, he rushes over and kicks the chap from the stage with enormous agility, and totally without expression.
a will from now on always appear totally expressionless, but will act quite spontaneously when necessary!
a takes the bag and empties it into the machine.
then he attaches an enormous crank. and starts to turn it. mince comes out of the mincer. a scrapes the meat from the ground and makes dumplings. he does this without expression. he scoffs the dumplings. he scrambles up onto the machine and shits into it.
brown dumplings come out. a bolts down the brown dumplings.
a girl walks past.
a regurgitates in an arc covering her from head to foot. directly after gobbling them down he has to regurgitate. there is no break! the girl has to be coming by just at that moment.
the girl sobs. he slaps her loud in the face and mounts her. he ejaculates without batting an eyelid and gets up with a spring without batting an eyelid and goes, not too fast and not too slow and most of all totally without expression, to the motorcar, gets in, starts the motor, not too fast and not too slow and most of all without expression and runs her over.
she regains her senses and whimpers. she is severed at the foot. a goes up to her and tears off her foot. the girl whimpers. then he stuffs the foot down her throat. she throws up; even her own foot.
he is suddenly overcome by a wild frenzy. he rages, viciously pushing her bloody and now vomited on foot back between her teeth, and he pushes with all his might, his eyes shine, the veins stand out on his head, and he pushes the foot into her gob, assisting with his foot, stamps down, then he bends over and shoves his fist in, up to the elbow, and once again, and again and again. then he straightens up, his eyes are non-expressive, he carelessly smears the blood down his suit and jumps on her stomach. he grabs the mono-footed girl and stuffs her into the machine. he turns the crank. a red, bloody dumpling plops out. a bolts it, chewing and shoving out his jaw.
f rushes out of the house at a, an enormous hammer in his fists.
f hastily takes a stance, positions his feet, one leg in front, and swings the hammer over his head. unimpressed, not too fast and not too slow, but most of all without expression, a unbuttons his trousers, pulls out his member and with a high spurt pisses in the face of the hammer-swinging f.
f checks the hammer’s swing and wipes his face, without expression. a woman above opens a window and rolls an enormous stone onto f.
f is mush.
quickly but without expression a aims the revolver and shoots the woman down from the window. that was quick work! after pulling the trigger, a lets the weapon fall from his hand and turns eagerly but without expression to other activities. once again he is quite captivated.
the woman falls slowly from the window. there is a crash on the paving stones.
a: theatre is a pile of shit.
art is a pile of shit.
science is a pile of shit.
philosophy is a pile of shit.
religion is a pile of shit.
politics is a pile of shit.
the state is a pile of shit.
the community is a pile of shit.
compassion is a pile of shit.
coarseness is a pile of shit.
upbringing is a pile of shit.
love is a pile of shit.
pride is a pile of shit.
fidelity is a pile of shit.
honour is a pile of shit.
infidelity is a pile of shit
eroticism is a pile of shit.
sexuality is a pile of shit.
friendship is a pile of shit.
hope is a pile of shit.
despair is a pile of shit.
fear is a pile of shit.
courage is a pile of shit.
the economy is a pile of shit.
chaos is a pile of shit.
nature is a pile of shit.
knowledge is a pile of shit.
rage is a pile of shit.
equanimity is a pile of shit.
beauty is a pile of shit.
ugliness is a pile of shit.
silence is a pile of shit.
indifference is a pile of shit.
every judgement is a pile of shit.
abstinence is a pile of shit.
desire is a pile of shit.
giving is a pile of shit.
taking is a pile of shit.
walking is a pile of shit.
staying is a pile of shit.
hearing is a pile of shit.
seeing is a pile of shit.
pleasure is a pile of shit.
feelings are a pile of shit.
thinking is a pile of shit.
vanity is a pile of shit.
luxury is a pile of shit.
poverty is a pile of shit.
idealism is a pile of shit.
materialism is a pile of shit.
stupidity is a pile of shit.
laziness is a pile of shit.
industriousness is a pile of shit.
ambition is a pile of shit.
wood is a pile of shit.
electricity is a pile of shit.
the earth’s gravitational attraction is a pile of shit.
all attraction is a pile of shit.
the planetary system is a pile of shit.
leap years are a pile of shit.
human needs are a pile of shit.
enjoyment is a pile of shit.
extremes are a pile of shit.
the mean is a pile of shit.
life is a pile of shit.
death is a pile of shit.
the day is a pile of shit.
the night is a pile of shit.
the man: brother.
a: you cunt.
a: work is a pile of shit.
illusion is a pile of shit.
individualism is a pile of shit.
common sense is a pile of shit.
the mind is a pile of shit.
free will is a pile of shit.
fate is a pile of shit.
reason is a pile of shit.
the subconscious is a pile of shit.
ethics are a pile of shit.
lack of ethics is also a pile of shit.
only justice
miserliness
independence
and noise are left.
the man: brother!
a: you cunt.
(pause.)
i am just. that is clear.
i am stingy with everything.
i am independent.
i am loud.
i am an idiot. being an idiot means being for oneself.
(the man applauds.)
a: you cunt.
fuck off.
(the man stays.)
a: that was stupid of me. of course he hasn’t disappeared. he is there, that’s it.
a (roars): it’s unfair. did i give you my permission to stand there in front of me? no. i don’t want to talk to myself! it’s unfair, you want to force me to see you, you want to force me to hear you. i have to see you, i have to hear you when you stand around there, and you are standing around there. that’s it. pile of shit. you want to gallop with the individual components of your deconstructed anatomical whole down the rays of light into my eyes. you want to trot into my ears on the sound waves, and you do so. it's unfair.
(the man turns round.)
a: oh oh not enough, not enough. the other side too, maybe lift up the soles of your feet as well, chase around the sounds of your intestines, show your tongue, want to cut yourself open, show your innards, oh oh enough. give the pretence of totality, du schwein. you want to force me to close my eyes, stick my fingers in my ears. as if that would help. to sleep maybe. du schwein du schwein, du niederträchtiges schwein, you want to force me to sleep. and i would wake again, and have to see you and hear you and so on and who knows what else. it's unfair. you want me to kill myself. murderer malefactor schwein! i don’t want to talk to myself. i can only talk to myself. because you cannot understand what i say just as i cannot understand what you say. i can extract something for my own understanding and with said extract construct an entirely alien picture book and then following this construction suck the book down in to the wet depths of my gut like so many cold sausages du schwein. i don’t want to talk to myself, you are the reason why i talk to myself. you may or may not be the right occasion for me to talk to myself, for i am speaking for myself. when i speak to myself you or something or other can get in the way, yes, but that is just an accident, isn’t that right? i’m talking to myself! pile of shit. this accident is the rule. there’s so much standing and wandering about here. when i talk to myself something gets in the way, which is alright with me, then that’s the rule. just don’t lose one’s head and get everything in a muddle. i am speaking to myself and only myself. don’t allow your face to turn into a metaphorical ear, du schwein. have i allowed you to take even one comma from my talking so that you might patch together some sort of understanding? schwein. affe, ziegenbock!
how he wants to understand me, this rhinoceros, this pile of shit. it's unfair. if you could understand me, i wouldn’t bother to speak for my own noise. i’m too miserly to give you anything. go, go. i don’t even want to take anything. not a comma, not a full stop, nothing absolutely nothing, i give nothing, i take nothing, i need nothing and nothing, that’s what i am, me. oh but how he keeps thinking, thinking, this skunk. he thinks the thinkable. and what is that? that is that which is not, which is impossible, because it’s not, because it’s thinkable, he’s thinking his thoughts, this schwein, this stinking schwein. oh, I’m suffocating. du schwein you want to drive me into the claws of science, you want to utilise physics, you want to invent physics just so that i have to see you, hear you, acknowledge you. oh, there you are.
(a strikes the man)
you bastard you want to keep yourself here with the aid of gravity! i’ll GIVE you a centre to be grave about! (kicks him to the floor). oh, pile of shit, i’ve given something, assisted in altering his centre of gravity, me helped. i caused something, oh woe, woe, the wrath, the wrathful pile of shit, oh woe, such emotion, woe!
(the man gets up)
the man: you should...
a: shut your face, there’s no should about it, i am not destined for anything. i shall guard against building a future for myself. the future is an unattainable paradise, reeking priest, what i do happens, but there’s no SHOULD about it. it happens. i could not, no, i can. for what i could, i can’t, or else i’d have done it. now. it's stupid to say, do that, for if i do it, i do it, and if i don't do it, then i don’t do it, that is to say i can’t do it either, i couldn’t have done it. don’t tell me my lot, you lying pig, swinish liar, you can have your lies and keep them, because you are your own living lie, perhaps, i don’t know anything about you and don’t want to, that is to say i can’t get to know you for there is ein unüberbrückbarer abgrund des unverständnisses. i don’t want waste, what am i saying to myself? i’m not in the future. i’m here, here. what a pile of shit. i’m rabbiting to myself. piggish wretch. what are you trying to do there, you’re trying to build a bridge. it’s awful. i can’t even tell you that it’s all in vain, is not on, you can’t understand me. you hear SOMETHING OR OTHER and get up to mischief with it, cunt, cunt, i’ll stamp you flat .
the man: seek your true self, stop hiding yourself behind such ghastliness.
a: swindler, i’m trying to snare myself. careful, watch out, me for myself. i want to trap myself! pile of shit. that's treachery. i would betray myself if i tried to seek myself. i would be beside myself. but i am here, here. (strikes himself like an orangutang). that’s me, my true self, me, me! what i shall be, i shall be. i am what i am, that’s it. i am i. that’s the truth, which is a pile of shit. there’s nothing that i should be, for i can do what i can and nothing more, why should i allow myself to be tyrannised by a ghost, by a pile of shit, by a future. a joke of myself. i’m no joke, i am i. in no way. now! that’s just not possible. what a pile of shit. it is as it is. possible or impossible what’s it matter. to say nothing is impossible would prove that you wanted to negate the possible that’s standing right there. don’t be a dreamer, pile of shit shut your face! this might be bad; but might i just say, i should have something better and could have if i just wanted? what a pile of shit! i’ve just got that which i can have and that’s what i’ve got, and that’s what i am and so on. pile of shit! what i have, am, is the only possible! shit accident! i am talking to myself.
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
theatre/literature of cruelty, in some ways
Last summer I first came across Rainer Maria Rilke's short story “Frau Blahas Magd” (1899) and immediately felt it contained more (about) theatre than most 'theatre productions'. So it's not surprising that although it is not very well known, Frank Castorf (the artistic director of the Volksbühne http://www.volksbuehne-berlin.de/) has apparently repeatedly used it as material for his productions. This is perhaps beside the point, but as the German media keep slagging off his productions for being simultaneously "worse than those in the 90s" and "exactly the same as in the 90s", I wanted do drop in his name positively - his new production of Friedrich von Gagern's trash-piece "Ozean" is definitely not rubbish, or perhaps it is rubbish burned live, releasing huge amounts of energy into the audience.
Back to "Frau Blaha's Magd" - a little translator's preface: on a linguistic level, the story reads very strangely and I had trouble with the translation as the tenses and aspects of the verbs sometimes change within a sentence; particularly the long descriptions of habitual action (“every day, every now and then, she would do this...”) are awkward in German and even more so in English. So while the story seems like an old-fashioned straightforward narrative at first sight, some of its sentences are internally fragmented in a subtly untranslatable way or an untranslatably subtle way – and sometimes it seems just as if Rilke had never proofread it. My initial plan was to send this translation to various friends (probably including YOU) as a Christmas present, but because of my problems with the translation and because the idea suddenly seemed more narcissistic than generous, I decided to publish it here instead.
I'd still greatly appreciate any response (particularly concerning mistakes/clumsy expressions; or if you know of a previous English translation) and hope the story will give some of you a Christmas-puppet-theatre-blank-faced-morbid-or-other form of pleasure or sadness.
P.s.: The German version can be found here: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/?id=5&xid=2252&kapitel=1#gb_found (or in the insel-edition of Rilke's Erzählungen).
Frau Blaha's Maid
Every summer, Frau Blaha, married to the minor Turnau Rail officer Wenzel Blaha, went to her hometown for a few weeks. It is a town in flat and miry Bohemia in the area of Nimburg and rather poor and insignificant. When Frau Blaha, who regarded herself as somewhat urban already, saw all the small miserable houses again, she believed herself capable of an attempt to do good. She went to see a peasant's wife with whom she was acquainted and whose daughter she wanted to take into her service in the city. She would pay her a small and modest wage, and, moreover, the girl would have the advantage of being in the city and learning many a thing there. (What exactly she might learn there wasn't fully clear to Frau Blaha herself.) The peasant's wife discussed the matter with her husband who kept squinting; his only immediate reaction was to spit on the ground. After half an hour, he came back into the room and asked: “Well, and does the woman know that Anna is like this?”, swaying his brown wrinkled hand back and forth in front of his forehead like a dry chestnut leaf. “Fool” – made the peasant's wife, – “obviously we won't!...”
That's how Anna came to the Blahas. Most of the time, she would spend the whole day on her own. Wenzel Blaha was in the office while his wife was out sewing, and there were no children. Anna would sit in the small dark kitchen with a window into the courtyard and would wait for the organ grinder to come. This happened every day before dusk. Then she would lean far forward into the small window; her pale hair would hang in the wind and she would dance on the inside until she became so dizzy that the high and dirty walls were swaying towards each other precariously. Frightened, she would begin walking through the whole building – down the dark and dirty stairs into the smoky tavern where every now and then someone was singing in the onset of drunkenness. On her way, she would find herself among the children running around in the courtyard for days without anyone missing them; oddly, the children always wanted her to tell them stories. Sometimes they would even follow her into the kitchen. But then Anna would sit down at the stove, covering her empty pale face with her hands and say: “Must think.” And the children would be patient for a while. But when Annushka kept thinking and the dark kitchen became all quiet and frightening, the children would run away and not see the girl tenderly and dolefully beginning to cry and becoming tiny and helpless from being so homesick. What it was she longed for is uncertain. Perhaps also a bit for the spankings. But most of the time for something undefinable which had existed at some point or which might just have been a dream. With the children demanding so much thinking from her, she slowly began remembering. First red, red, and then many people. And then a bell, a loud bell, and then: a king – and a peasant and a tower. And they speak. “Dear king”, says the peasant …. “Yes”, replies the king with a very proud voice: “I know.” And, indeed, how should a king not know everything a peasant has to tell him. –
Shortly thereafter, the woman once took the girl to the shops with her. As it was an evening in Christmastime, the shop windows were brightly-lit and filled exuberantly. In a toy shop, Anna suddenly saw what she had remembered. The king, the peasant, the tower … Oh and her heart beat more loudly than her steps sounded. But she quickly looked away and walked on beside Frau Blaha. She had a feeling as if she mustn't give anything away. And so the puppet theatre remained behind them, as if unseen; Frau Blaha, childless, hadn't taken notice of it at all. – Shortly after this, Anna had her Sunday off. She didn't return that evening. A man whom she had previously seen in the tavern below joined her; she couldn't remember exactly where he had led her. It seemed to her as if she had been away for a year. When on Monday morning, she came back to the kitchen, tired, everything was even colder and greyer than usually. On this day she broke a soup terrine and was severely scolded for this. Frau Blaha hadn't even noticed that she had stayed out that night. Roughly until New Year's, she stayed out three more nights. Then she suddenly stopped walking around the building and started locking the flat anxiously; she would no longer come to the window every time the organ grinder was playing.
Thus, winter passed into a pale, timid spring. In the courtyards, it is a season of its own. The buildings are black and damp, and the air is light, like often-washed linen. The badly-cleaned windows twitch and glow and various small pieces of rubbish dance in the wind, past the various floors. The sounds of the whole building are more clearly audible, the bowls clank differently, more brightly, higher-pitched, and the knives and spoons clatter differently.
Around this time, Annushka gave birth to a child. It came completely unexpected to her. After she had felt bulky and heavy for weeks, it suddenly emerged from within her one morning and was part of the world, God knows where from. This happened on a Sunday, and everyone else in the building was still asleep. She looked at it for a while without her face changing in any way. The child hardly moved, but suddenly a very high voice started from within the small chest, and at the same time Frau Blaha shouted and a bed cracked in the living room. At this point, Annushka grabbed her blue apron hanging close to the bed, tied its strap around the small neck and put the whole blue bundle into the bottom of her suitcase. Then she went into the living room, opened the curtains and began making coffee. On one of the following days, Annushka counted the wages she had received so far. They came to fifteen guilders. Then she locked up the door, opened the suitcase and put the blue apron, which was heavy and motionless, onto the kitchen table. She slowly untied it, looked at the child and measured its length from head to foot with a tape measure. Then she ordered everything else as before and went out. But, unfortunately, the king, the peasant and the tower were much smaller. She still took them and some other puppets with her. That is: a princess with red round dots on the cheeks, an old man, another old man who had a cross on his breast and looked like St. Nicholas because of his beard, and two or three others which weren't as beautiful or important. A theatre as well – the curtain of which could be raised and lowered so that the garden behind would emerge and disappear.
Now Annushka had something for the loneliness. Where had the homesickness gone? She set up the big beautiful theatre (it had cost twelve guilders) and positioned herself, as one is supposed to, behind it. But sometimes, when the curtain was open, she would quickly run to the front, and now she would look into gardens and the whole grey kitchen disappeared behind the high magnificent trees. Then she would step back and take two or three figures and let them speak their minds. It never developed into an actual piece; but there was speech and response; it also happened that two puppets would suddenly bow to each other as if frightened. Or both would bow to the old man who couldn't do it himself as he was completely made of wood. From gratitude, he fell over each time.
The children rumoured about Annushka's playing. And since then, at first suspicious and then increasingly trusting, the children of the neighbourhood would gather in the Blahas' kitchen and stand there when dusk fell in the corners, keeping their eyes glued to the beautiful puppets which always spoke the same. Once Annushka's cheeks were all hot and she said: “I also have a very big puppet.” The children trembled with impatience. But Annushka seemed to have forgotten it again. She placed all figures into her garden and leaned those that didn't remain upright against the scenery on the sides. Among the others, a kind of harlequin which the children couldn't remember emerged; he had a huge round face. Increasingly excited by all the splendour, the children asked for the “very big one”. Just once, the “very big one”. Just for a moment: the “very big one”.
Annushka went to her suitcase in the back. It was already getting dark. The children and the puppets stood opposite each other, inanimate and similar to each other. But from the wide-open eyes of the harlequin which looked like they expected something dreadful, such fear burst upon the children that, without exception, they suddenly ran away screaming.
With the big blue one in her hands, Annushka returned. Suddenly her hands were trembling. After the children had left, the kitchen had become so quiet and so empty. Annushka wasn't scared. She laughed quietly and knocked over the theatre with her feet and stepped on the individual thin boards which signified the garden, making them split in half. And then, when it was already completely dark in the kitchen, she went around and clove in two the heads of all puppets, including that of the big blue one.
Back to "Frau Blaha's Magd" - a little translator's preface: on a linguistic level, the story reads very strangely and I had trouble with the translation as the tenses and aspects of the verbs sometimes change within a sentence; particularly the long descriptions of habitual action (“every day, every now and then, she would do this...”) are awkward in German and even more so in English. So while the story seems like an old-fashioned straightforward narrative at first sight, some of its sentences are internally fragmented in a subtly untranslatable way or an untranslatably subtle way – and sometimes it seems just as if Rilke had never proofread it. My initial plan was to send this translation to various friends (probably including YOU) as a Christmas present, but because of my problems with the translation and because the idea suddenly seemed more narcissistic than generous, I decided to publish it here instead.
I'd still greatly appreciate any response (particularly concerning mistakes/clumsy expressions; or if you know of a previous English translation) and hope the story will give some of you a Christmas-puppet-theatre-blank-faced-morbid-or-other form of pleasure or sadness.
P.s.: The German version can be found here: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/?id=5&xid=2252&kapitel=1#gb_found (or in the insel-edition of Rilke's Erzählungen).
Frau Blaha's Maid
Every summer, Frau Blaha, married to the minor Turnau Rail officer Wenzel Blaha, went to her hometown for a few weeks. It is a town in flat and miry Bohemia in the area of Nimburg and rather poor and insignificant. When Frau Blaha, who regarded herself as somewhat urban already, saw all the small miserable houses again, she believed herself capable of an attempt to do good. She went to see a peasant's wife with whom she was acquainted and whose daughter she wanted to take into her service in the city. She would pay her a small and modest wage, and, moreover, the girl would have the advantage of being in the city and learning many a thing there. (What exactly she might learn there wasn't fully clear to Frau Blaha herself.) The peasant's wife discussed the matter with her husband who kept squinting; his only immediate reaction was to spit on the ground. After half an hour, he came back into the room and asked: “Well, and does the woman know that Anna is like this?”, swaying his brown wrinkled hand back and forth in front of his forehead like a dry chestnut leaf. “Fool” – made the peasant's wife, – “obviously we won't!...”
That's how Anna came to the Blahas. Most of the time, she would spend the whole day on her own. Wenzel Blaha was in the office while his wife was out sewing, and there were no children. Anna would sit in the small dark kitchen with a window into the courtyard and would wait for the organ grinder to come. This happened every day before dusk. Then she would lean far forward into the small window; her pale hair would hang in the wind and she would dance on the inside until she became so dizzy that the high and dirty walls were swaying towards each other precariously. Frightened, she would begin walking through the whole building – down the dark and dirty stairs into the smoky tavern where every now and then someone was singing in the onset of drunkenness. On her way, she would find herself among the children running around in the courtyard for days without anyone missing them; oddly, the children always wanted her to tell them stories. Sometimes they would even follow her into the kitchen. But then Anna would sit down at the stove, covering her empty pale face with her hands and say: “Must think.” And the children would be patient for a while. But when Annushka kept thinking and the dark kitchen became all quiet and frightening, the children would run away and not see the girl tenderly and dolefully beginning to cry and becoming tiny and helpless from being so homesick. What it was she longed for is uncertain. Perhaps also a bit for the spankings. But most of the time for something undefinable which had existed at some point or which might just have been a dream. With the children demanding so much thinking from her, she slowly began remembering. First red, red, and then many people. And then a bell, a loud bell, and then: a king – and a peasant and a tower. And they speak. “Dear king”, says the peasant …. “Yes”, replies the king with a very proud voice: “I know.” And, indeed, how should a king not know everything a peasant has to tell him. –
Shortly thereafter, the woman once took the girl to the shops with her. As it was an evening in Christmastime, the shop windows were brightly-lit and filled exuberantly. In a toy shop, Anna suddenly saw what she had remembered. The king, the peasant, the tower … Oh and her heart beat more loudly than her steps sounded. But she quickly looked away and walked on beside Frau Blaha. She had a feeling as if she mustn't give anything away. And so the puppet theatre remained behind them, as if unseen; Frau Blaha, childless, hadn't taken notice of it at all. – Shortly after this, Anna had her Sunday off. She didn't return that evening. A man whom she had previously seen in the tavern below joined her; she couldn't remember exactly where he had led her. It seemed to her as if she had been away for a year. When on Monday morning, she came back to the kitchen, tired, everything was even colder and greyer than usually. On this day she broke a soup terrine and was severely scolded for this. Frau Blaha hadn't even noticed that she had stayed out that night. Roughly until New Year's, she stayed out three more nights. Then she suddenly stopped walking around the building and started locking the flat anxiously; she would no longer come to the window every time the organ grinder was playing.
Thus, winter passed into a pale, timid spring. In the courtyards, it is a season of its own. The buildings are black and damp, and the air is light, like often-washed linen. The badly-cleaned windows twitch and glow and various small pieces of rubbish dance in the wind, past the various floors. The sounds of the whole building are more clearly audible, the bowls clank differently, more brightly, higher-pitched, and the knives and spoons clatter differently.
Around this time, Annushka gave birth to a child. It came completely unexpected to her. After she had felt bulky and heavy for weeks, it suddenly emerged from within her one morning and was part of the world, God knows where from. This happened on a Sunday, and everyone else in the building was still asleep. She looked at it for a while without her face changing in any way. The child hardly moved, but suddenly a very high voice started from within the small chest, and at the same time Frau Blaha shouted and a bed cracked in the living room. At this point, Annushka grabbed her blue apron hanging close to the bed, tied its strap around the small neck and put the whole blue bundle into the bottom of her suitcase. Then she went into the living room, opened the curtains and began making coffee. On one of the following days, Annushka counted the wages she had received so far. They came to fifteen guilders. Then she locked up the door, opened the suitcase and put the blue apron, which was heavy and motionless, onto the kitchen table. She slowly untied it, looked at the child and measured its length from head to foot with a tape measure. Then she ordered everything else as before and went out. But, unfortunately, the king, the peasant and the tower were much smaller. She still took them and some other puppets with her. That is: a princess with red round dots on the cheeks, an old man, another old man who had a cross on his breast and looked like St. Nicholas because of his beard, and two or three others which weren't as beautiful or important. A theatre as well – the curtain of which could be raised and lowered so that the garden behind would emerge and disappear.
Now Annushka had something for the loneliness. Where had the homesickness gone? She set up the big beautiful theatre (it had cost twelve guilders) and positioned herself, as one is supposed to, behind it. But sometimes, when the curtain was open, she would quickly run to the front, and now she would look into gardens and the whole grey kitchen disappeared behind the high magnificent trees. Then she would step back and take two or three figures and let them speak their minds. It never developed into an actual piece; but there was speech and response; it also happened that two puppets would suddenly bow to each other as if frightened. Or both would bow to the old man who couldn't do it himself as he was completely made of wood. From gratitude, he fell over each time.
The children rumoured about Annushka's playing. And since then, at first suspicious and then increasingly trusting, the children of the neighbourhood would gather in the Blahas' kitchen and stand there when dusk fell in the corners, keeping their eyes glued to the beautiful puppets which always spoke the same. Once Annushka's cheeks were all hot and she said: “I also have a very big puppet.” The children trembled with impatience. But Annushka seemed to have forgotten it again. She placed all figures into her garden and leaned those that didn't remain upright against the scenery on the sides. Among the others, a kind of harlequin which the children couldn't remember emerged; he had a huge round face. Increasingly excited by all the splendour, the children asked for the “very big one”. Just once, the “very big one”. Just for a moment: the “very big one”.
Annushka went to her suitcase in the back. It was already getting dark. The children and the puppets stood opposite each other, inanimate and similar to each other. But from the wide-open eyes of the harlequin which looked like they expected something dreadful, such fear burst upon the children that, without exception, they suddenly ran away screaming.
With the big blue one in her hands, Annushka returned. Suddenly her hands were trembling. After the children had left, the kitchen had become so quiet and so empty. Annushka wasn't scared. She laughed quietly and knocked over the theatre with her feet and stepped on the individual thin boards which signified the garden, making them split in half. And then, when it was already completely dark in the kitchen, she went around and clove in two the heads of all puppets, including that of the big blue one.
Thursday, 10 December 2009
The Quest(ion) of Elitism
If Beckett's Endgame was performed in a two-performer version among the crowd of protesters at the Copenhagen Climate Summit, which performance would seem more silly/embarrassing by comparison: Endgame? Or the demonstrations?
"Discuss."
"Discuss."
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