Berlin’s de-constructivists, Hamlet and the post-dramatic null space in Copenhagen
It is the basic task of contemporary playwriting to understand and challenge modern directors‘ theatre. There is, however, a growing alienation between the two, which leads to an equally great rift between traditional and progressive theatre. If directors’ theatre is deadlocked into interpretations of the classics or into a post-dramatic null space, this impedes the development of the theatre just as much as modern dramatists stuck to hackneyed narrative or the realism of newspaper headlines. It is and remains a dramatist’s prime imperative to write in line with Schiller, Brecht or Marlowe. Just as it is and remains the contemporary director’s prime imperative to firmly position his work in the present, to shape the new classic work with the help of the entire arsenal of imagination, multi-tradition and scenic life which the director’s theatre has to offer.
Ever since the mid-80s, I have been searching for a break in the de-constructivist-movement, searching instead for a reconstruction of genre, tragedy, of great characters, of modern acting. But if I look at the productions shown in Copenhagen, I see the same old separation between classics and new drama; between the side-alley directors who serve new texts without cracking them and the few deeply original directors who are only ever hired to revive the deceased like “Hamlet” or “Kasimir and Karoline”. Or, very rarely, a guest performance by a perished de-constructivist from Berlin, whose ugly post-dramatic show appears more clichéd and rigid to me than the worst American soap opera.
Übersetzung: Elena Krüskemper.
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