1970-’71 Berlin -Schiller and Brecht

Judit and I arrived in West Berlin. Fall 1970. The City of Brecht, Piscator, Max Reinhardt, all theatre heroes to me at the time. A mere 25 years after the end of WWII, a mere nine years since the construction of the “Antifascistischer Schutzwall”, (antifascist protection wall) as the East Germans designated it, a mere seven years since President Kennedy, next to the Brandenburg gate, just a few feet from the Wall, had proclaimed himself a Berlin jelly donut. (“Ich bin ein Berliner!”) Officially, the city was not a part of West Germany, but divided, according to the Yalta Agreement on the post-war division of Germany, into four administrative sectors occupied by Russian, American, British and French forces.  The Cold War was raging. Around the planet, Communism and Capitalism vying for global hegemony exploiting technology, deviously staged regime changes, bombs and blood.

In a divided Berlin, the battlefield was not the Space Race, or the Arms Race, or a proxy war in Vietnam, the competing ideologies tried to demonstrate their superiority with the Arts Race.

On both sides of the Wall huge sums were invested in culture, especially in theatre, under the tacit maxim that whoever had the better theatre must ipso facto, have the better political system. (In 1970 the West Berlin Opera’s subsidy from the city was greater than the entire Canada Council budget.) The Schiller Theater, where I was to intern, was West Berlin’s flagship in this battle with East Berlin for cultural hegemony, tasked as a Fronttheater (battlefront theatre), to counter the international kudos of Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble and the Deutsches Theater on the other side of the Wall. With enormous subsidies, by Canadian standards, the Schiller employed a permeant company of 80 actors performing in three separate performance spaces. Each venue had its own rotation of plays in repertory. In one month alone, I counted 34 different productions programed in the three venues. In the Sixties, the Schiller had earned a reputation of excellence with translations of Beckett plays directed by Samuel Beckett himself, and with world premieres of plays such as Peter Weiss’, Marat/de Sade.  (This was before Peter Brook, with his jaw-dropping Royal Shakespeare production of the English-language premiere, propelled the play into a major international hit.) Also premiered at the Schiller (1966) was future Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, Gunter Grass’ play, The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising. Hugely controversial, it depicted a fictitious character, the “Chef”, clearly a simulacrum for Bertolt Brecht himself, rehearsing an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in East Berlin during the brief and unsuccessful East German uprising of 17 June 1953. Brecht is shown as a prevaricating ditherer who may preach action in his plays but when it comes to reality, prefers to retire and write poetry. Seen by some critics as Grass’ attempt to climb the ladder of literary hierarchy by denigrating an artist of greater international stature than Grass himself enjoyed at the time. The play infuriated Brecht followers and the Brecht Estate essentially blacklisted any theatre and any artist in West Germany that anything to do with a production of the play.*

 *When the McGill English Department produced the Canadian premiere of the play in 1969, I had the small part of an East German Communist party thug who arrived on the scene to try and persuade the “Chef” to issue an anti-uprising statement on behalf of the government. At the time I had no idea the play was deemed so anti-Brecht and controversial. The only thing I can remember about the production is the young woman who, after seeing the show, remarked I had very sexy teeth, which she had noticed from the back of the house.

Schiller Theatre audiences were mainly the “Abonnenten”, subscribers, good German middle-class burghers for whom Kultur and the need to be seen partaking in Kultur, was socially de rigueur.  A way of confirming to themselves that life and society had returned to some kind of normalcy after the defeat of Hitler. In the Thirties, the Schiller Theater was designated an official state theatre, under the personal authority of Joseph Goebbels, and was renovated in 1938, to include a special Hitler private box, the Führerloge. An RAF bombing raid in 1943 scored a direct hit and destroyed the theatre. (I like to think the Brits were hoping the Führer might be in his loge at the time.) Renovated post-war in 1951 to once again carry the burden of celebrating and showcasing the richness of German culture and the creative depth and theatre-making craft in the capitalism-embracing half of divided Germany. Many of the 1970 subscribers were of an age, and had probably enjoyed productions in the Schiller Theater’s previous incarnation. Dunked into this legacy of past and present, is a kid from Canada, barely out of his teens, blessed with the ignorance of innocence (and some innocence of ignorance) but hungry to learn.  I arrived in town timed to audit the rehearsals for a new production of Shakespeare’s Henry IV in a version that combined Parts One and Two into one evening of theatre. Not the first or the last time such an editing of the Bard has been attempted. Orson Wells, for instance, did it in his film, Falstaff /Chimes at Midnight. The battle in Part One of the play is amalgamated with the battle in Part Two, characters elided and a lot of cuts bring the evening down to 3hrs of theatre. *

*At the Half Moon five years later I tried a similar fusion of the two parts, in a production that explored the use of puppets as a sub-textual elucidation of character motivation. The Falstaff puppet, for instance, hiding behind the actor playing Falstaff, was giving everyone the finger in scenes in which the Falstaff character was kissing royal asses. A universe in which the puppets could see and interact with each other, but the actor’s performed characters were unaware of them.

On the eve of my first day of rehearsal I am given tickets to see a controversial new production of Friedrich Schiller’s romantic anti-royalty tragedy, Kabal und Liebe, (Intrigue and Love) in the 1,100-seat main venue of the Schiller Theater. True love in a fictitious 18th Century German Dukedom is thwarted when the intermarriage of nobility and middleclass is forbidden by strict custom and accepted practice. Although the Duke rules with absolute power of a dictator, and determines the mores of his realm, including the interdiction of class intermarriage, we never see the Duke as a character on stage. An intriguing play, as it were. I sit in the house at the top of the show, in front of me the stage is closed off, by a wall-to-wall grey iron fire curtain.  The standard iron safety curtain which drops automatically to separate stage and auditorium if a fire alarm is triggered. -A regulation in theatres around the world. Love the irony.

In Berlin to see my first piece of theatre and I am looking at an iron curtain. Churchill, anyone?

The houselights go down. With an alarm bell ‘pinging’, similar to a truck backing up, the iron curtain slowly, inch by inch rises. Objects onstage are revealed as the crack of light pouring from inside the stage widens. … Huge shoes with gilded buckles…. Then what look like giant chair legs.  On either side of the four chair legs and the shoes with human ankles and aristocratically-stockinged calves attached, are two brown blobs. The pinging continues, the curtain continues to rise as I (and the rest of the audience) try and fathom what I am looking at. Huge animal paws. What are they? Twenty feet up, giant hands adorned with ornate rings are revealed on the arms of the chair/throne. And flouncy cuffs. The curtain is half-way up before I understand. It is a giant figure of the Duke sitting in his throne/chair. We see up to his torso, his costumes and rich accoutrements, but the head of the giant 30-foot duke figure is behind the proscenium arch, out of sight. Two meticulously life-like hunting dogs sit immobile on either side of the chair/throne, looking with adoration up to the Duke’s not-see-able head.  The action of the five-act play will take place in around and always under the seated dictator of the realm, who determines the action in the play, the fate of the characters, but is never seen. An instant dramatic and original beginning to a classical piece of theatre and a clear, strong, director/designer concept that nails the subtext of the play.

I am in awe of what the next few months might bring. **

 **35 years later in Montreal, directing Trevor Ferguson’s play, Le Pont for the Compagnie Jean Duceppe, I “borrowed” this dramatic opening conceit. With a similar “pinging” the iron fire curtain in the Place des Arts Theatre rose slowly, dramatically, to reveal the stunning vista of the Rockies which Maryse Bienvenu had designed for the production. On some nights, it got a round of applause.

Next morning, as behoves the lowly status of a “Hospitant”, I arrived early, with jitters, for the first day of rehearsal. Call time was 10AM for a table reading on same stage as last night’s play. Greeted with puzzlement by the stage hands who also arrived well before the scheduled start, we dutifully shook hands in traditional German formal fashion, “Guten Morgen.” Actors in the non-speaking roles arrived next, still well before scheduled start time. Each actor shook hands, one by one, with the earlier arrivals. “Guten Morgen, Guten Morgen”, etc. Then came a few of the actors in the smaller roles. Same ritual, handshakes, one by one, a string of Guten Morgens. The three Assistant Directors arrived. Mutely curious about the “Kanadier”, the foreigner, who was going to audit the rehearsals. More handshakes. Now some of the more important actors arrive. More handshakes with each member of the company, one by one. Then the Dramaturge of the theatre, who, at the Schiller, was the equivalent of Deputy Artistic Director. Another curious look at me as we shook hands and I tried to show appropriate respect, “Guten Morgen.” A few minutes before scheduled begin, Thomas Holtzman, leading member of the company, a star for decades of the German theatre, who was playing the title role, enters.  Yes, lots more handshakes. Finally, one minute to ten, with the entire company of stage hands, designers, full cast including the leads and one foreign intern all standing in a horseshoe on the immense stage, Ernst Schröder, the director himself, arrives. Fifty individual handshakes and fifty “Guten Morgen”s as he rounds the assembled humans. (“Ahh, Kanada” he says to me) Then he claps his hands, “So Kinder, jetzt können wir anfangen.” (“Ok, children, now we can start.”)

I was a puzzle to most of the company. A long-haired foreigner who spoke German with little accent. To some I was a curiosity and worth getting to know, and was welcomed generously. To others, usually the older generation, I represented the detested Schlamperei (sloppiness) of the Yankee conquerors’ Hippie youth culture that was infiltrating and destroying traditional German values. In the first week, I happened to encounter Thomas Holtzman in the corridor backstage as I was leaving the Kantine (the theatre canteen.) Shy (yes, I was and am still a shy human being), but also simply intimidated, I neither smiled, nor even looked at him, nor uttered the traditional polite greeting, as we passed each other. Mr. Holtzman immediately swung around and screamed at me, in the voice of a Sgt Major, or that of a Russian hockey coach in the ’72 summit series: “Hier im Hause grüsst man sich!” (Here, in the theatre, we greet each other!) A flare-up of the older generation’s buried anger about the withering away of German traditions.  

Rehearsals were proceeding daily. I sat there quiet as a mouse.

Actors occasionally come to me for help with the pronunciation of the English place names. I had, at the time, not a clue how to pronounce “Glocestershire” or “Worcestershire”. They are surprised at my ignorance and walk away disappointed. The Director of Henry IV , Ernst Schröder is a giant of German theatre both pre- and post-war, known more as an actor than a director. That summer he had been playing the title role in the mediaeval morality play,  Jedermann  (Everyman) in the fabled Salzburg Festival production. The role is generally offered to the acknowledged #1 actor of his age, the Laurence Olivier of German Theatre. In the early 1970’s this is Ernst Schröder. My Omi is in awe that I am working with him. Herr Schröder has the twisted energy of someone who has lived through a hard life.  His focus, his intensity as he works and his serious engagement with quality and craft are infectious. He directs as an actor directing other actors… with respect for their talent, an understanding of their process and a gentle nudging here and there to encourage a deeper look at the text -if they are older. If you are a younger actor, you are treated with curt impatience. I like him. He is the exact age of my mother. He takes a shine to me. I think I am expected to carry his reputation to the English-speaking world. Curious about Kanada and my Jewish girl-friend. He invites us to supper at his place. It is a great honour.

Early in my stay in Berlin, I take the S-Bahn across to East Berlin, to experience Brecht’s theatre company, the Berliner Ensemble. (Pronounced with a touch of French accent, “Angsemble”)

I cross the Wall at Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse, change the obligatory 25 West German Marks for 25 worthless East German Marks and inhale the air polluted with Braunkohle (the cheap brown coal that is used to generate electricity in the German Democratic Republic) as I proceed on the short walk to the Theater Am Schiffbauerdamm. Sitting in the very theatre that housed the premiere of the Dreigroschen Oper in 1929, my heart is in my throat. I look up to where the royal boxes used to be, on either side of the proscenium. And, yes, the original Prussian royal coat of arms is still there, but crossed out with an “X” of red paint. When Brecht and his actors moved into the theatre after the war, at the invitation of the East German government, workers were about to obliterate the Prussian royal coat of arms that still adorned the old private boxes. Brecht insisted they be left in place, but painted over with a big red “X”. —Brilliant! We should consider doing that to some of our past in Canada. Instead of toppling statues of John A. MacDonald, maybe we should simply cross him out with a red painted “X”. 

Many of the productions from the 1950’s, had been kept in repertory even 14 years after Brecht’s demise at the far-too-early age of 58.

The production of Threepenny Opera was, naturally I suppose, a disappointment. The musical is from Brecht’s earlier days, the politics are less overt, and with the company working with/under restraints of severe political correctness laid down by the cultural authorities of the East German regime. (See the Oscar-winning German film Lives Of Others to get a sense of the kind of political blackmail that subjected East German artists to tow the “politically correct” party line.) In this Threepenny production, the main character of MacHeath is not allowed to be portrayed with any charisma or sex appeal. Can’t have attractive gangster capitalists in Communist-run East Germany.  Made for a dull production. Over the next months, I capture much of what is being offered in the repertoire. Other shows, Brecht’s own adaptation of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, for instance, were directed with clarity and energy. It was my first experience watching a revolve stage functioning. Routine German stage technology that adds a huge drive to any show that incorporates it. *  

 *I have used a revolve stage many times in my career. Notably for instance, in the early Eighties, for the Blythe and Toronto Free Theatre productions of Quiet in the Land when, to adhere to the strict Old Order Amish anti-technology precepts, the revolve was pull-turned manually by stage hands dressed as Amish farmers.

On one of my visits, flashing a journalist ID card provided by the Montreal Star, I was given permission to attend a rehearsal with the possibility of interviewing Brecht’s wife, Helene Weigel, the legendary actress who is the Artistic Director of the theatre. (And was too, even when Brecht was still alive.) It is made clear that an interview will depend on Ms. Weigel’s compliance. Brecht’s third play, In the Jungle of The Cites was being readied for a re-opening. I did not know the play. Playing hooky from Henry IV rehearsals one afternoon, I was shown, rather coolly, into the main theatre and seated near the back. Eckard Schall, Brecht’s son-in-law and the leading man of the ensemble, was playing the main role.  A run of the play was in process. In the house the white-coated (yes, like lab technicians) design team sitting in a row behind the design production table were consulting one another. Their discussion was as loud as the actors’ dialogue on stage. The actors seemingly oblivious, continued with the run. Finally, one of the white-coated design assistants goes up on stage, reaches up to Mr. Schall’s face and rips the make-up moustache off. Schall has continued playing the scene, without losing a beat. The technician returns to the design production table, a less heated discussion ensues. Then nods of agreement. The design team have decided collectively that the character Mr. Schall is playing looks better with no mustache. The rehearsal continues. At one point Helene Weigel arrives to oversee what is going on. I stand. Hoping to meet her and suggest an interview. From the filmed version of the Brecht stage adaptation of Maxim Gorki’s The Mother, or the photos in my prized edition of Theaterarbeit, the minutely detailed, annotated photo documentation of six fabled Berliner Ensemble productions, it is clear Helene Weigel was a unique, riveting character actor…hard as nails, with clear, clean, real, lucid delivery of the lines. I am just about shitting my pants in awe as she brushes by me. An assistant points me out to her. She stops. Casts a cold withering look at me.

“Hier können Sie was lernen.” (Here you can learn something.) then proceeds to take a seat right in the middle of the house, deliberately directly behind the production table.

As she sits, she waves her hand gently in the air, like Queen Elizabeth greeting the proletarian multitudes. The white-coated design team jumps up, like flushed game birds and vacates the seats in front of her. Now with an unobstructed view of the stage, Helene Weigel settles in to supervise the rest of the run. Divas exist, even in the communist, “Arbeiter-und-Bauern-Statt” (Worker-and-Farmer-nation) as the East German Democratic Republic refers to itself with Leninist orthodoxy. No interview. Had the fact that I was associated with the Schiller Theater something to do with that? But I was intrigued enough by the play to stage it twice later in my career. (Half Moon Jungle ; Toronto Free Theatre Jungle ) Helene Weigel passed away less than six months after this encounter.

On the whole, my visits to the Berliner Ensemble are a disappointment. Back at the Schiller two of the actors in smaller roles in the Shakespeare rehearsals are former members of Brecht’s company, having crossed over to West Berlin before the construction of the Mauer. They shrug their shoulders quietly when asked about working at the Ensemble. One tells me about his first day of rehearsal for Brecht. He was nervous about trying to deliver the Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt acting concept. (In English usually translated as “alienation effect”.) He asked a colleague, veteran member of Brecht’s company, for help. “Ach”, says the colleague, “dass ist alles Blödsinn, spiel so wie du immer gespielt hasst.” (Ah, that is all bullshit, just act as you have always acted.”)

Theatre in West Germany at the time was undergoing a sea change, the next generation trying to shove the older actors into the dustbin of history. Citizens of West Berlin were not permitted to serve in the West German military, so a generation of pacifist and left-wing sympathizers were migrating to West Berlin to avoid conscription into the West German armed forces. The political and social divide between the young and the old was extreme. Striving to move with the times, West Berlin city authorities had invited a highly-respected left-leaning collective of younger actors, who had created a reputation for imaginative, innovative theatre productions in West Germany, to come to Berlin. The bribe was a generous subsidy and the promise of a rental theatre short term, and serious capital investment into a purpose-built theatre in the long term. The collective accepted. A brilliant propaganda coup for the City of Berlin. This collective eventually metamorphosed into the Schaubühne am Kurfürstendamm, which, in the generally accepted opinion of theatre practitioners around the Globe, would become one of the most exciting/important theatre companies anywhere in the world. In Montreal, we saw them at the Festival des Ameriques a number of times.

In keeping with the agenda of distancing the Schiller Theater from its questionable past, the Intendant had invited a respected Polish director to come and direct a Friedrich Schiller play. When word of this got out in the Kantine, the caldron of rumours and intrigue at the Schiller, as in many other theatres around the world, the whispering and grumbling began. Optimists welcomed the breath of fresh foreign air wafting over the musty Schiller boards. The older guard was outraged, allowing a Polish director to touch Schiller’s work in their theatre! Poland, the country that had annexed East Prussia as war reparation after WW I when the post-war map of Europe was redrawn? I’m sitting in the Kantine, having a beer with some of the younger actors after their first day of rehearsal with the Polish director. They point to the Kabal of older actors at another table plotting, making small side bets as to how quickly they could get rid of the Pole.

After three days of rehearsal, his rehearsals having been deliberately sabotaged, the director headed back to Warsaw.

That’s how you take care of business at the Schiller Theatre.

Henry IV ended with an opulent, but standard production. The high point was Martin Held, another well-known member of the company and truly great actor, playing Falstaff. A huge, kind, floundering, fallen nobleman out of his depth as he tries to inveigle Prince Hal into his fold. Puzzled but blustering when he is rejected by the new king. A performance to equal Orson Wells in the role. On opening night, the reaction at the curtain call is mixed. But when the director, comes out, last, as is the custom, to take his bow, there is a resounding chorus of “Boos”. A contingent of the younger generation have scored opening night tickets and are publically venting on the old guard. Next to me in the wings an aging stage hand just shakes his head. “Wie Kann man einen so grossen Kunstler “boo-en?” (How can one “boo” such a great artist?) Despondent about the mediocre state German theatre, in his mind, had degenerated into, Ernst Schröder retired early from his profession. At 79 he committing suicide by jumping out of his hospital window. Yes, he was deadly serious about his craft.

With rehearsals for Henry IV over, Ernst Schröder did me a huge favour, he went to the Intendant and told them they should hire me on as an Assistant Director. By happy coincidence rehearsals were about to begin for the European premiere of Conor Cruise O’Brien’s play, Murderous Angels. A lumbering but crucial play about the 1959 “Lumumba Crisis” that had got its world premiere at the Mark Taper Forum a year earlier. Patrice Lumumba had been elected the first President of the mineral-rich newly established, de-colonized country, Congo, formerly Belgian Congo. Lumumba was a Communist and his avowed intention was to nationalize the natural resources of his country and bring in Russian help with the building of the country’s infrastructure. The CIA, in cahoots with the Belgian capitalists who “owned” the mines and the mineral rights, promptly arranged to have Patrice Lumumba murdered. When Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish head of the United Nations, tried to object to the actions of the Capitalists, he was promptly murdered too.  As a left-leaning diplomat from the Republic of Ireland, Conor Cruise O’Brien had been seconded to the United Nations mission in the Congo and witnessed the events close hand. His play, Murderous Angels, was a dramatic concordance to the events in the Congo, an attempt to expose the facts behind the Lumumba crisis. The Schiller Theater had programmed the play, I have no doubt, to help demonstrate, yet again, what a progressive, inclusive theatre it had become.

Every available professional Black actor in Germany and even France was flown in for the production. Karl Paryla, a notorious communist artist was hired to direct. And I am hired on as the third Assistant Director. I get to meet and work with Karl Paryla, an almost mythical figure of the German-speaking theatre world. As an actor in the Thirties, because of his strong left-wing convictions, when Hitler took power in 1933, he had fled to Austria. When Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, after being one of the first artists to be interviewed by the Gestapo, Paryla fled to Switzerland and spent the war acting at the Schaupielhaus Zurich, which gave refuge to many left-wing and Jewish artists. There in 1944 he played the role of Schweizer Käse (Swiss Cheese) in the world premiere of Bertolt Brecht’s extraordinary play, Mutter Courage. After the war, he joined the Communist Party and moved to East Berlin working with Brecht for a few years. Before the construction of the Wall he migrated to the West where his talent and track record offered considerably higher remuneration.

As a director, Karl Paryla had a reputation for long, intense, emotionally draining, rehearsals.

Even continuing into the night by candlelight once the lighting crew had gone home. “Wenn die Schauspieler kurz vor dem Nervenzusammenbruch sind, erst dann sind sie richtig gut!” (“When the actors are on the verge of a nervous breakdown, only then are they really good.”) Was his rehearsal mantra. (No, he would not get away with that today.)  I was unaware of the details of his past. The Kantine chatterings filled me in, sort of. A small, wired, stout man with devil’s upturned eyebrows (like my father’s.) In the confused Schiller nexus of intrigue and interwoven past and present history, to which I, as a Kanadier, was obviously an outsider, I quickly became one of his favourites. Thomas Holtzman had been cast as Dag Hammarskjöld, good casting actually, there was a strong resemblance. But Holtzman had no truck with Parlya’s dictatorial directing style. One week in, in mid-rehearsal, Holtzman stormed out. There followed a meltdown from Karl Parlya the likes of which I had never seen before and since. Almost foaming at the mouth, shouting at the top of his voice in the middle of the stage, “Dieses Faschisten theater, dieses braunes theater, dieses Zuckmayer theater… Holl mir den Intendanten!  Sofort!!”  (This fascist theatre…this brown theatre, (the color of the Nazi uniforms) …this Zuckmayer Theatre (the Nazi-sympathizing playwright who was a staple during the war in the Schiller Theater repertoire) Get me the Intendant! Immediately!) In the end a younger actor who was very happy, even honoured, to be working with Parlya took over the part. My good relations with Paryla continued. The production was Brecht/Piscator style epic theatre with lots of news photo projections. When (often) there was a tech problem with these projections, he would order me in front of the whole cast to go and fix it, as his chosen emissary. Praising me in front of the company did not help endear me to the room.

Thanks to my contract, I was able to afford, in a silent auction, a second-hand red VW van, a decommissioned ambulance from the Berlin Fire Department. After rehearsals Parlya would pay me 20 marks gas money to drive him to see his mistress. He himself had a late model white Mercedes coupe, a indice of his status as a famous artist, and he did not want it seen parked in front of his mistress’ place. I liked him so much I tried to refuse his gas money. He insisted. The production was not a hit and didn’t last long in the repertoire. Which is a shame. In my mind it was the overwritten, uncrafted playwriting that was at fault. Perhaps the internal confusion of the Berlin actors also had something to do with it. (A Broadway production, a year later, did not fare much better.)

It was time to move on. Judit and I packed up our new home, the VW van, said goodbye to Omi, and spent three months driving through Europe, taking the long road to London. It was a glorious Spring/Summer trek via France, Spain, Italy and Yugoslavia. (See the poem: Food For Thought)

Continue reading as we move to the London years…