Dramaturgs and the Classics

Dramaturgs and the ClassicsLaurence Romero

As post-war German theater assumed the task of providing itspublic with a reunified and "secure cultural heritage,"! it turned in-creasingly to the classics which provided a framework for theelaboration of the "past significance / present meaning" dialectic",It was this important socio-cultural project that gave rise to thecontroversial debate still raging in Germany today, the so-calledKlassiker Pflege, or cultivation of the classics. Should the theaterproduce them unchanged, as museum pieces, under the assump-tion that they embody "timeless truths?" Or rather use the classicsas a springboard for a reflection on the past and its connection toour present?

Most prominent theaters in East and West Germany have optedfor the latter position and the debate now rages not on the principlebut on its application. In deciding to stage the classics regularly ininterpretations that both respected and challenged tradition, Ger-man theaters needed a clear dramaturgical strategy. As the criticand dramaturg, Volker Canaris has written: "The dramaturgbecame the director's most important theoretical collaborator.Dramaturgy in Brecht's sense comprises the entire conceptualpreparation of a production, from its inception to its realization.Accordingly it is the task of dramaturgy to clarify the political andhistorical, as well as the aesthetic and formal aspects of a play andto convey the scientifically researched material to the other par-ticipants: it must give the director, the designers and the actors thenecessary 'data' to put the work on stage; it controls the scenic illu-sion by relating it to an empirically conceived reality - and bymaking this reality accessible, it stimulates the imagination."!

Since 1960, German theater has been committed to developingnew rapports between the past and present and between dramaticliterature and the public. This commitment is based on a presup-position - theater's declaration of independence - that at a cer-tain level of cultural/historical investigation, theater loses its in- Cover of program book for the Frankfurt Antigone.

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Antigone directed by Christof Nel, Frankfurt.

nocence and every interpretation is a manifest taking of a position.To this end, some of the most celebrated directors in Germanyhave collaborated with dramaturgs: Peter Stein / Dieter Sturm(Berlin), Claus Peymann / Hermann Beil, Herbert Gamper, VeraSturm (Bochum), Hansgiinter Heyme / Peter Kleinschmidt, Giin-ther Erken (Stuttgart), Peter Zadek / Gottfried Greiffenhagen(earlier in Bochum), Luc Bondy / Horst Laube (earlier inFrankfurt), Peter Palitzsch / Horst Laube (Frankfurt), JiirgenFlimm / Volker Canaris (Cologne), Hans Neuenfels / Jiirgen

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Fischer (Frankfurt). (In this age of travelling directors,dramaturgs also tend to move freely, so pairing of this kind issomewhat venturesome.)

As far as the spectator and the critic are concerned, thedramaturgs work is known primarily through his programs. TheProgrammheft in many German theaters are substantial notebooksthat provide a great deal of information and unique insights intothe ensemble's thinking and work. Since the entire question of in-terpretation is most perplexing in the classics, it is on Klassiker-inszenierungen that the dramaturg works the hardest and has poten-tially the greatest opportunity for influencing stagings. Whatfollows are summary investigations into their contributions to two Irecent interpretations of classical plays, one Greek and the other areworking from Greek sources.

At the end of every theater season, a jury of critics selects tenoutstanding productions and invites the director and company tothe pan-German Theatertreffen in Berlin. At the May 1979 theaterfestival, three out of the ten entries were versions of Sophocles'Antigone, all in Holderlin's famous translation. While the themes ofthe Greek play are of contemporary interest, the decision to stagethese productions can also be attributed to the German theater'sfascination for the great romantic poet, Friedrich Holderlin(1770-1843). In Germany's politically conscious theater, Holderlinis considered the consummate revolutionary artist, at once guar-dian and antagonist -of the national Geist, the enduring malcontentwho contested the spirit of his age while Schiller and especiallyGoethe were partisans of a more naive, bourgeois ideal ofoptimistic humanism. Moreover, Holderlin's translations from theGreek are masterful, the mature achievement of an accomplishedHellenist. A fragmentary quality in Holderlin's German, a highlypoetic and suggestive, syntactically dislocated idiom manages tosuggest the ambiguity and mystery of the original. Sensitive to therole he had assigned to himself, Holderlin used Antigone to express,in the endless reverberations of stylized, splintered expression, hisown nineteenth-century ideals and frustrations. Consequently,contemporary directors are drawn to Holderlin's Antigone becauseit is both Greek and German, classic and modern.

During the single theater season, 1978-79, at least four majorproductions of the Sophocles/Holderlin Antigone were staged byGerman directors: Valentin Jeker in Stuttgart, Christof Nel inFrankfurt, Ernst Wendt in Bremen, and Niels-Peter Rudolph inBerlin. In part, this obsession with Antigone was not mere chance,for it came at a time of fear, confusion and anxiety caused byintense terrorist activity and brutal retaliation by the Germanpolice. Of the four stagings, the one from Frankfurt offers theclearest example of how a classic can be brought directly into thecontext of current events and emotions'.

With director Christof Nel and his dramaturg, U rs Troller, theKonzeption imposed itself unambiguously: they would relate theirinterpretation directly to the agressive violence in the country andspecifically to the brutal confrontations at the burials of three of thehard-core Baader-Meinhof terrorists the previous Autumn inStuttgart. The dramaturg, Urs Troller, is known to have argued infavor of modifications in the script to guarantee that all possible"archaeological" elements would be eliminated and the links to thepresent made manifest. Thus, players wore undistinguishedmodern clothes, Creon became aprovincial tyrant, and a numberof vulgar contemporary jokes exchanged by riff-raff were insertedinto the action. One more important point of interpretation:Antigone would resemble the terrorist, Gudrun Ensslin. This cen-tral figure would represent not only the German revolutionary,but in a larger sense, all repressed women in an abusive, male-dominated society.

Urs Troller then made available to the company documents,articles, newspaper clippings, interviews and other materialsrelating to terrorist activities and police suppression. In thesubstantial program for the production, Troller printed nothingabout the Antigone text; instead there were "Four Dialogues on theState, Violence, and the Law." Interspersed with these interviewsand articles, were citations from Holderlin's Hyperion critical of theGerman political mentality, from Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin,Ulrike Meinhof and others, along with many graphic photographsdepicting the controversial burials in Stuttgart with the ominouspresence of heavily armed, mounted police, bloody streetdemonstrations, etc. In the prog~am, Troller argues that just asthe deus absconditus left behind an empty temple, a mere form, so dotexts from antiquity come to us primarily as form, a vestigialcarapace of impressions, associations, and assumptions from thedistant past. We today can provide some of the content to thisshell; its very emptiness solicits as much. But we must be careful,for just as the empty form beckons, so at the same time does itresist appropriated content. From this contradiction there resultsan inchoate form which, because of the contrary nature of its com-ponent parts, remains ambiguous, capable only of questions, notanswers. The text "is like Antigone: asking questions, not givinganswers. It evokes reminiscences, similar in that to dream,reminiscences on our present; a long, dreamy reflection on theedges of life. What remains, perhaps? A 'Because' from our days aschildren. And sometimes, from the depths of fear, a girl sings asong of freedom to the dead.?'

Now lest you think all of this unrelated to real life, consider thefollowing notice from the September 1979 issue of Theater heute:"Contents of a Theater Program 'Ambiguous': The DistrictAttorney for the city of Frankfurt has initiated investigative

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Alexander Wagner as Kreon.

proceedings against the directors of the Frankfurt MunicipalTheater . . . under suspicion of having glorified terror andviolence in a 174 page theater program for the production of theSophoclesl Holderlin Antigone . . ."

During. Claus Peymann's tenure as Senior Producer at the statetheater in Stuttgart (1974-79), his company was regarded as one ofthe best in Germany. Part of their strength was a brilliantDramaturgie which included Hermann Beil, Herbert Gamper, UweJensJensens, Vera Sturm. Beil is the most experienced and expan-sive, and through interviews and publications he has made it clear

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that, along with Peymann's strong temperament, the dramaturgshave their say. In the last few years, Beil has devoted himself toworking closely with the actors, improving relations with the Stutt-gart public (now Bochum), and writing the theater's substantialprograms - the Stuttgart Programmbiicher were justly famous andoften went out of print shortly after the show's run.

The most famous of all theater programs of the past decade isBeil's contribution to the Claus PeymannlAchim Freyer 1978 pro-duction of Goethe's Faust, parts I and II, a staggering, five-volumework. Hermann Beil once suggested that an ideal theater programmight be in the form of a logbook charting the evolution of theensemble's work on the production from the beginning to openingnight. That is exactly what the dramaturg, Vera Sturm, providedfor Claus Peymann's Stuttgart staging of Goethe's Iphigenia inTauris (1977). This fascinating program-cum-Iogbook records howdramaturg and players, working closely together, met with adesperate dilemma: what is an ensemble to do when, far intorehearsals, it discovers that it does not like the play, or at least findsit inappropriate to the climate of the time? Goethe's play presents aheroine imbued with optimism, hope, and a modest character whotriumphs over Thoas, the so-called barbarian king, preciselybecause of these qualities. Outside, in the streets of Stuttgart, thereare violent confrontations between the police and demonstrators:the meek, clearly, were not inheriting the earth. Soon events out-side will invade the theater itself. In the program, along withPeymann's adjusted text, is Vera Sturm's "Little Diary," plottingschematically the progress of the ensemble's work and the events ofthat difficult autumn.

In mid-August, early in rehearsals, this entry in the diary: "Ourquestion: what is human? Where are the contradictions ofhumanity? One always knows better what inhuman is. Is this playand our work a contribution to the debate on violence andhumaneness?"5 Later in the month, Peymann suggests that theGoethe story is in part "the humanizing of a stage figure." A fewdays later, one of the main actors, Martin Schwab, complains thatthe company has not yet made much progress in bringing theinterpretation together. "Could it be that we still don't know whywe want this play?"

In early September, the Peymann-tooth affair explodes. Power-ful politicians in the provincial government demand Peyrnann'simmedate resignation or ouster for having solicited and collected amodest sum of money in the theater to help pay for dental workneeded by one of the women terrorists being held in a nearbyprison. For eighteen months Peymann survived repeated calls forhis resignation, boycotts of his theater, physical threats and endlessacrimonious debates. (Embittered by these events, he and hisentire company left Stuttgart for Bochum in the summer of 1979.)

This chaos, now in the theater, disrupted work and caused theensemble to rethink their entire relationship to Goethe's idyllic"fable." In early September, Vera Sturm consulted with her co-workers about the program she was preparing: "It is planned thatthere will be no compilation of texts on the themes of Classics andHumanity. The program has the chance to ascertain how realitycan overtake theater work, suddenly illuminate unclear points,shift accents; also, how reality makes theater work almost impossi-ble." At this meeting it was also agreed that these notes would bepart of the program so that the audiences would have someappreciation of how circumstances had shaded the interpretaion ofthe play. The director, dramaturg and entire ensemble wanted tomake sure that, after the performances, spectators did not returnhome with banal, pre-packaged notions on humanity and charity,but rather, that they understood both the play and the productionas "a contribution to the deb.ate on humaneness, violence, andreason."

In the actual staging, the most difficult problem to solve as theopening approached was how to make Iphigenia more prob-lematic, less simple and appeasing, and what to do with her un-complicated return to Greece. Vera Sturm would have liked to seean ambiguous woman at the end, aligning herself with neitherThoas nor the Greeks. In this posture the heroine would retain hercharacter as a woman alone and thereby represent those smallerqualities of the unsure person, living her uncertainties, and suffer-ing inevitable abuses. From that point of view, the play would nolonger represent the victory of humanity over barbarism, butrather "how humanity is possible under different conditions." Still,at the eleventh hour, in early November, some members of thecompany could not make themselves believe Goethe's "fairy tale,"especially the happy ending which struck them as completely out oftouch with their reality. Their strong reluctance to accept the play'sdenouement persisted to the last days of rehearsals. These remarksare from the final discussions on 4 and 5 November: "could one ac-tually refuse to play the text to the end, that is, to express our ques-tioning attitude about the play and its contents in such a way as torefuse to bring the story, according to plan, to its Happy-End?" Tothe distress of some spectators and critics, this production ofIphigenia did end ambiguously, disorienting those who tookGoethe's story only literally and refused to open the classic to otherpossiblities.

"Wir reiben uns im Prozess," said someone, imitatingHolderlin. That is what Peymann, Vera Sturm, and theensemble's experience with Iphigenia had been: a kind of rubbing,grating, against time, events. The dialogue with Goethe, withthemselves, and history forced out all kinds of contradictions, ten-sions, doubts, and in the process a classic became a modern play.

Goethe's optimism, our skepticism, past significance~ presentmeaning. Real classics and good theaters survive these confronta-tions and are enhanced by them.

NOTES1 Volker Canaris, "Style and the Director," in The German Theater, R. Hayman,

ed. (London, 1975), p. 248.2 Robert Weimann, Literaturgeschichte und Mythologie (Berlin, 1974), pp. 431-452.3 Canaris, op.'cit., p. 250.4 Sophocles/Holderlin, Antigone, Schauspielhaus Frankfort, Programmheft 66

(1978), p. 9.5 Goethe, lphigenie auf Tauris, Staatstheater Stuttgart, Programmbuch # 30

(1977), p. 199. All subsequent citations are from this program, pp. 200-335.All translations from the German are the author's.

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