THEATRE IS MORE BEAUTIFUL THANWAR: GERMAN STAGE DIRECTING INTHE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY. ByMarvin Carlson. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009; pp. vii + 224. $42.95 cloth,$29.95 e-book.
The inimitable Marvin Carlson adds to his already-impressive oeuvre with a text focusing onthe German stage of the last forty years and on therole of the director. American scholars often romanticizethe contemporary German stage; this is, after all, the period of the famous Regietheater (director’s theatre), supplemented by government funds and supported by the public despite, or perhaps because of, an experimentation that would be “unimaginable in the more conservative English or American theatre traditions” (xi). Carlson examines the work of nine major German directors in order to offer a corrective to this romantic image and leave the reader
with a very specific picture of each director’s unique vision for the German theatre. Readers will benefit from Carlson’s firsthand experiences with this theatre,as such an insider’s perspective has not been previously available in English.Carlson organizes his book into three sections,with three chapters per section that are essentially monographic studies of a particular director. The first three directors, Peter Stein, Peter Zadek, and Claus Peymann, are classified as “The Old Masters”; the next three, Andrea Breth, Frank Castorf, and Christoph Marthaler, are classified as “The Successors”;and the last three, Michael Thalheimer,Thomas Ostermeier, and Stefan Pucher, Carlson calls “The Next Generation.” In each chapter, Carlson describes individual productions in great detail,including the press around the productions.
Central to his analysis is the question of which productions get invited to the annual Theatertreffen in Berlin, which is designed to recognize the ten best productions in Germany that year. The comparative approach is useful, but troubling because it engenders issues of chronology that could have been fixed by a simple table or appendix listing the productions selected each year for the festival. The book is organized chronologically, but very loosely. The Old Masters’ earliest productions take place in the late 1960s, and the Next Generation’s productions begin in the mid-1990s, but the directors featured in the book were still alive at the time of Carlson’s writing (Zadek died in 2009), and, in many cases,were still producing theatre. The result of this is that many of the productions covered in individual chapters were produced concurrently, or went to the Theatertreffen in the same year, but Carlson does not help the reader follow these potential comparisons by noting when this happens. Nonetheless, the book is an invaluable addition to our understanding of the German theatre. In the first three chapters, Carlson introduces the concept of the Regietheater primarily through the work of Stein, but Zadek and Peymann also feature prominently.
Regietheater means that the director’s (as opposed to the playwright’s) vision of a given play prevails.
For the first group of directors, this practice led them to re-envision classic plays by, among others,Goethe, Shakespeare, and Chekhov, in an overtly political fashion. Perhaps most importantly, these new productions were fueled by innovative director’s concepts and radical scenic designs. In fact,Carlson notes that the director/designer relationship is central to the director’s work, with directors and designers often working together for many years or even over a lifetime (he makes a similar point about dramaturgs). Nevertheless, this is a book about German directing, and so, while innovations in design clearly typify the production style that Carlson sees
as central to German theatre of last forty years, he credits the directors with fueling that style.
In the second section, Carlson foregrounds East German director Frank Castorf, who was a central figure in the era of “The Successors.” The inclusion of Andrea Breth in this section seems almost like an afterthought—perhaps because Carlson sees her as the theatre establishment’s token “female director,”as opposed to a director in her own right. For example,he describes her selection as the first recipient of the prestigious Fritz Kortner Prize as “strange”(79), given the prestige of her male peers, particularly the obvious choice for the award in his opinion,Peter Stein. Carlson calls attention to the focus of the German media on her gender, commenting that her Kortner Prize “owed at least as much to the sexual politics of the late 1980s in Germany as to her actual ability” (79).
In opposition to this, Carlson argues that Castorf’s fame was garnered mostly for his edgy and hugely popular work in East Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Carlson claims that Castorf was able to attain the level of audience engagement that Brecht envisioned for the Epic theatre in productions that found skinheads and conservative elites alike shouting at the stage and occasionally even erupting into physical violence. This potential for violence solidified the public’s fascination with Castorf’s work, in Carlson’s opinion. His theatre also introduces the frequent use of the video projection in contemporary theatre, a feature that dominates the next section of the book.In the final section of his book, Carlson points to the Next Generation of great German directors,all very active in contemporary Germany. (Thesechapters are notably shorter, reflecting the directors’relative youth.) These directors have come full-circle back to the classics; while they do direct new plays,their best-known productions are of Ibsen, Shakespeare,and Chekhov. Their designs, which feature abstract or postmodern scenery, often rely for their effect on multimedia technologies.
In his conclusion, Carlson leaves the reader witha word of caution, perhaps aimed at the American romance with German experimentation. While it is true that German theatre enjoys a higher level of public funding than US theatres, he warns that experimentation
in the theatre is not directly related to public funding. In fact, the German theatre is facing a major economic crisis, resulting in a return to minimalist—though still experimental—productions rather than large-scale spectacle. Carlson’s predictions for the future of German theatre remind us of the challenges facing all theatre in a harsh economic climate.
This book, which describes the recent past and speculates on the future of German theatre, offers scholars a rich and honest perspective on the situation of the contemporary German stage.
KELLY J. G. BREMNER
Emory and Henry College
