“Anything But Easy”

They like to write on the couch, know their way around hotels and have been part of NEW PLAYS FROM EUROPE from the very beginning. A look back with the festival founders Ursula Ehler and Tankred Dorst.

At the opening of the first biennial NEW PLAYS FROM EUROPE in Bonn in the year 1992. The writers Ursula Ehler, Tankred Dorst are chatting with former German president Richard von Weizsäcker. Photo: Thilo Beu

How did you come up with the idea for NEW PLAYS FROM EUROPE?
Dorst: Curiosity. We knew about all the new plays in Paris and London, but no one knew what, for example, was being done in Iceland. We wanted to know what kind of theatre they were doing there. And we didn’t want to force them to adhere to an agenda, we simply wanted to know the truth.
Ehler: Eastern Europe was emerging at that time. And people in Germany were only focusing on spectacular productions. We talked about it and decided we needed an authors’ festival. But we didn’t want to have to have a panel of experts or a jury of critics to judge the plays, we just wanted to convey subjective views.
Dorst: We didn’t want to say, “This is what it’s like in those countries,” but to present what we had found.

Any particular memories come to mind?
Ehler: The bulletproof vest.
Dorst: A bulletproof vest for Croatia was stored in the dramaturgy office in Bonn. But I didn’t wear it, I remained unprotected.

Have the plays changed over time?
Ehler: No, there has always been a wide variety of plays. The ambition to create fanciful potpourris has always stayed the same. However, it has become harder to realize these ideas.
Dorst: The newspapers and critics are always looking for common themes, but it is better for the author to assert his or her qualities as an individual. If everyone is doing one thing, the author should say, “I will do something else, not the same thing the others are doing.”

At this year’s opening event, you stated that authors should always tell their own stories.
Dorst: That does not necessarily mean their own personal histories. But just like anyone else, an author must face up to questions such as “who am I, where am I, why am I here.”

And then there was that symposium about the disappearance of the author 25 years ago.
Dorst: Yes, literature scholars and film people came to it and I remember thinking how odd it was to go to a conference about my own disappearance.

But you went anyway?
Dorst: Yes (laughs). They actually said that authors were beginning to disappear. But they are alive and well, it is just that we might have to redefine what it means to be an author.

How so?
Dorst: In the 1970s, I held a speech in the USA called “The End of Playwriting.” For a while, I had hybrid thoughts about how authors might not be necessary anymore. Theatre is a whore and takes what it needs. This could be newspaper articles, documents or speeches, and the author transforms these fragments of life into a theatrical event.
Ehler: There is a new tendency towards authentic theatre, “Rimini Protokoll” and things like that. We find this idea very interesting, very enriching. But on the other hand, that should not be everything. Theatre is and has always been pretense.

How do you feel about collective playwriting, such as in this year’s contribution from Turkey “The Ugly Human-ling”?
Dorst: Theatre is rich, and it is nice when five authors find a way to tell their story collectively. If I were younger, I might also like to have a group to write and produce plays with. But on the other hand, having an external director brings a different imagination to a preexisting play, and that can be very advantageous.

Where do you like to write?
Ehler: Hotel lounges are a good place.

With a laptop?
Dorst: We don’t have one of those, we’re stuck in the middle ages. But we have pens. We talk to each other and write down what we come up with.

And then you type it up later?
Ehler: We have a transcriber who types it for us. She then gives the text back to us, and it looks completely different, which can be beneficial.
Dorst: It gives us a new perspective.
Ehler: But you can’t spend all your time in hotel lounges, that would be too expensive. So we often write at home.

Do you sit across from each other at your desks?
Dorst: No, my desk is always so full that I can’t sit at it.
Ehler: Yes, it’s terrible. We usually sit together at a table or camp out on the sofa.

Do any particular plays stand out in your mind that simply blew you away?
Ehler: I really liked Katariina Lahti’s “Jerusalem’s Dance” in Finland.
Dorst: That was in Oulu, in northern Finland, and it was about a sect near the Arctic Circle that actually existed. It was performed at the first Biennale.

Which play do you consider the most shocking or surprising?
Dorst: “Bald Brunette” by Dani Gink.
Ehler: Unfortunately, he doesn’t write plays anymore …
Dorst: … because he became an orthodox Jew and never worked in theatre again.

The strangest place you’ve been?
Ehler: Do you remember? Białystok, Wierszalin. We traveled all the way to the Belarusian border, and getting there was anything but easy.
Dorst: We took a train, and then a car, and had to drive through the woods. We arrived at night.
Ehler: The theatre is called Wierszalin, “the center of the world.” But we ended up in the woods and were taken to a sort of hunting lodge. When we came in, they were all lying asleep on the benches – but that was part of the play. Just the idea of naming a remote theatre far away from anything “the center of the world” is priceless!

Your plays cannot be performed at NEW PLAYS FROM EUROPE. Isn’t that similar to participating in a symposium about your own disappearance
Ehler: Exactly. But they sometimes do choose our plays because they think that is the way to keep on our good side.

English translation by Lynnette Polcyn