Stream review | Theatertreffen opening
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At least share time, if not space
05/14/21 | 8:10 am
The Berlin Theatertreffen opened with “Simply the End of the World”. Christopher Rüping’s family drama is a set and drama event that shows both strengths and weaknesses of the theater live stream as a medium. By Fabian Wallmeier
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Benjamin (Benjamin Lillie) is seriously ill, he will soon die. Twelve years ago he left the constricting environment of his village childhood as a young, artistically inclined gay man. Now he is returning to his family to say goodbye.
Christopher Rüping gutted the successful French play “Simply the End of the World” by Jean-Luc Lagarce at the Schauspielhaus Zürich together with his ensemble and wrote it over it. His production, streamed live from Zurich, opened the Berlin Theatertreffen on Thursday evening, which is also purely digital this year.
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For the pure play scenes in the stream, Rüping and his team decided against a recording with multiple cameras and live cut images, as will be seen a few more times during the Theatertreffen. Instead, only a “radically subjective hand-held camera”, as Rüping said in his introduction, films what is happening on stage. She is not a supposedly objective observer, but rather an acting partner for the actors and a representative of the audience.
Right at the beginning, for example, the main character Benjamin speaks directly into the camera at close range. He speaks to the audience and asks them to close their eyes before telling them about his fatal illness. And because he can’t rely on them to actually do that, he covers the lens with his hand.
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Lavishly furnished interior
The first part of the evening in particular is so cinematic that it also works perfectly in the stream. Benjamin films the lavishly furnished interior of his parents’ house for almost half an hour, recreated from his memory. The video camera captures the old VHS tapes, the vaccination card, the old yellow push-button telephone, the dried flowers, the ready meals in the refrigerator, the mother’s clam collection in a mason jar, the hair in the brush, the porno magazines in Benjamin’s nursery.
He doesn’t comment on that. The stunning richness of detail in the stage design and props (which, by the way, can be accessed virtually on the Berliner Festspiele website) speaks for itself. Together with a few fragments of hits from the 1990s (Cher’s “Believe”, “Scrubs” by TLC or “Narcotic” by Liquido) waving through the soundscapes of musician and live drummer Matze Prollöchs, this creates a comprehensive painting of the times.
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Benjamine Lillie stands in front of the other actors in the ensemble, camera in hand. Suddenly the bare nothing
How the turning point between the first and second part has to work in the theater, however, can only be partially felt in the stream: Benjamin actually returns to his real parents’ home in the second part – but the audience sees when they meet the family instead of the lavishly decorated childhood memories : Nothing. Because during the break, the stagehands disassembled everything, pushed it aside and carried it out. Reality now gapes as a cold nothing in contrast to the memory, which has certainly also been transfigured.
The audience that was allowed to be in the hall at previous screenings in Zurich, on the other hand, as could be read in reviews, had the choice of whether or not to stay during the break. One can only envy the lucky few who were able to be there in person for the performance of the shock that comes when entering the auditorium again at the sight of the large, bare, gaping stage.
How big and dark the Zurich shipbuilding stage must appear at this moment can only be guessed at when the camera films over Lillie’s shoulder in the far left corner, from which Benjamin’s little sister appears. How far Wiebke Mollenhauer has to run to get to him.
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Well-established regular ensemble
In addition to the inclusion of the stage and the props, the ensemble is the second major event in the staging. Rüping loves to work with the same people over and over again. “Simply the end of the world” brings together actors who have been on the cast lists of his productions for years: Wiebke Mollenhaueer, Maja Beckmann, Nils Kahnwald and musician Matze Pröllochs were among others in “Dionysos Stadt”, Benjamin Lillie in Rüping productions at the Berlin DT.
This familiarity pays off again when in the second part you jump into all the abysses that open up when a dysfunctional family tries to express its conflicts. The seamless, always cooperative interlocking of the ensemble instead of gala solos, the common understanding of an always slightly exaggerated conversational tone, which can suddenly turn into hysterics, but also into deeply sadness, mainly support the extended second part of the evening.
Lillie gives the hyper-nervous and deeply injured homecomer with an enormous emotional range, with full steam and room for dignity. Mollenhauer equips the little sister, who once adored her big brother, with delicate vulnerability. Beckmann babbles himself with subtle comedy as a somewhat simple-minded, housewarming patente, sister-in-law to head and neck to cover up the conflicts of the others, which she never quite sees through. As a stoically embittered brother, Kahnwald is the passive-aggressive seething core of the rest of the family. Ulrike Krumbiegel as a real-life, exaggerated mother also fits in well with the well-established ensemble.
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From the digital back to the analog
Christopher Rüping was one of the first directors in the first lockdown to make a virtue out of necessity and devote himself to the live stream theater with all his might. In “Dekalog” he streamed small monologues live from Zurich about a year ago with changing actors. The format evolved from evening to evening. This created a fleeting, open stream theater laboratory, which indicated a departure into new theater concepts.
“Simply the end of the world”, meanwhile, emerged again as an analogue theater evening, in front of 50 spectators * who were again admitted to the theater in Zurich in autumn. The live stream version was not created for the Theatertreffen. It had already been featured in the Zurich Schauspielhaus digital program from time to time.
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At least share the time
The contrast to Rüping’s previous guest appearance at the Theatertreffen couldn’t be greater: “Dionysus City”, a ten-hour evocation of antiquity, was a theatrical frenzy two years ago that could not even be imagined as a stream. Spending a whole day in the theater, with vodka and the dance floor in the breaks, with stage diving and the euphoria of what has been experienced and achieved together, cannot be re-enacted or adapted in accordance with the corona.
Fortunately, things are different with “Simply the End of the World” – the evening can all in all be convincingly implemented as a live stream. The second purely digital Theatertreffen was opened with dignity – with a livestream adaptation that knows how to use the strengths of the medium – and at the same time shows its limits in comparison to analog theater. “If we can’t share the space, we can at least share the time,” said Rüping, summarizing the compromise that makes a live stream theater. At the next Theatertreffen opening, then again, time and space, with an audience in the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.
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Broadcast: Inforadio, May 14th, 2021, 6:55 a.m.
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