Through hell with Dante and Danger Dan

So we meet again. For two years the Berliner Theatertreffen could only put on digital magic, now we have a full festival hall again. Some wear masks, others sit with open visors. Anticipation on the opening evening, which starts like a family celebration. Familiar faces, refreshed feelings.

But what’s the point of this irritating festival email: “Treat other visitors, festival staff and service staff as you would like to be treated yourself. It is important to us that everyone involved is treated fairly, politely and with respect. The Theatertreffen does not tolerate any discrimination against people or groups based on gender, ethnicity, religion, origin, skin color, religious belief, sexuality, gender identity, socio-economic class, disability or age.”

Sermon to the Converts

Aren’t theaters “places of freedom”, as Yvonne Büdenholzer, the outgoing director of the Theatertreffen, emphasized in her welcome address? And one also wonders: Don’t we always preach to the converts at a festival like this? She is aware of the “enormous privilege” in which we live and work here, says Yvonne Büdenholzer and recalls the cultural mediator Osman Kavala, who was sentenced to life imprisonment under stricter conditions in Turkey – for nothing. There is talk of the war in Ukraine and of doubts as to what theater can actually be. It reflects “what keeps humanity alive,” hopes Büdenholzer.

She shaped the Theatertreffen for a good ten years and sees it as a “discourse accelerator”.

Yvonne Büdenholzer does not reveal where she is going. But she gets huge praise from her follow-up speaker. Claudia Roth speaks on this stage for the first time and really gets going. For the Green Minister of State for Culture, the arts of the stage are “a driving force of democratic culture of debate”, even more: “Theater is a staple food” and – the highest award from the mouth of a politician – “systemically relevant”. Claudia Roth shovels a lot of emphasis and phrases into the audience. This feels good at first, but quickly wears off in its effect.

The same applies to “The New Life. Where do we go from here”, the opening production of the Schauspielhaus Bochum. A post-lockdown work, as director Christopher Nübling explains at the award ceremony. You wanted to do something that gives comfort. A rehearsal mood prevails on the stage, which is empty except for a few strange contraptions. The four actors – William Cooper, Anna Drexler, Damian Rebgetz and Anne Rietmeijer – do not yet know what they want and should do. It’s about love, unfulfilled love, about love in thoughts.

Dangerous earwigs

Dante’s poems to the distant Beatrice provide a kind of canvas and frame for this. Literally and chronologically, this is very far-reaching – and is countered with pop songs, initially hesitantly and increasingly self-confidently. Britney Spears, Meat Loaf, dangerous catchy tunes, performed a cappella. The quartet looks like teenagers who fall in love with a picture, a star cut, sometimes defiant, sometimes snotty, with charm, but also harmless and well-behaved. The performance consists of solo numbers, watching and waiting and getting on the microphone. The karaoke competition is accompanied by a self-playing piano that has its own ideas.

Virgil, as the instrument is called, a nice idea, after all the Roman poet leads the pilgrim Dante through Inferno and Purgatorio. A 700-year-old poem that offers comfort? Dante’s world literature also tells of the plague. One can read this, like Boccaccio, who lived a little later than Dante, in parallel with the Covid pandemic. Consolation does not wait there. Especially not when Dante is treated like an older colleague of Danger Dan, who gets his respects at the end (“I have good news and bad news too”). Everyone is looking for themselves, except for a kissing number – is that the pandemic isolation (“My loneliness is killing me”) or just thin directing?

People sing, monsters crawl

Hell translates into a swinging lamp over the circles on the ground, then the singing people are silent and turn into crawling monsters that nobody is afraid of. And then a surprising twist: A cloaked figure appears. It’s the dead Beatrice. Viviane De Muynck, the grande dame of European avant-garde theatre, appears late, but how! She has a few things to say about life from the realm of shadows to the not-so-young people who talk too much and love too little.

The text remains flat and general here, too. But it was a pleasure to see Viviane De Muynck again. And all the others in the long queue at the bar.

consolation is good. But nothing against anger! And please not system relevant. It’s better if the theater can’t be harnessed at all. Only then can it be free.