Berlin

Tonight, I am going to see something from my homeland: the production of Summerfolk/Vasarnieki by director Alvis Hermanis and stage designer Kristine Jurjane.

About a dozen members of the audience leave during the intermission, but those who stay follow the play very attentively and, at the end, call the actors back on stage a number of times with loud applause. My Diena colleague, the critic Normunds Naumanis, was right: if you do not understand the language, it is impossible to judge the production. The material made up of words/subtext/language and body language is so densely woven that you can only enjoy the score of the performance like the façade of a beautiful building. Yet, the milieu of the protagonists of Summerfolk is not at all beautiful in the classical sense. Hermanis and Jurjane “blended” memories of youthful grandeur with an almost contemporary camp for the homeless. Estate owners as squatters? It is fascinating to observe how a number of aesthetic codes from various phases of Hermanis’s work run through the production. Much from the first productions by the director are included in this play. For example, the aesthetically clever and erotically charged beginning of his work from Marquise de Sade, when his name was still unknown on European stages.

I urgently need to work on my German self-study textbooks! In the theatre (as much as the literary story was pushed into the background), unless it is Chinese shadow theatre or modern dance, words truly are important.

A few remarks on the differences with regard to audience rituals: If you enter the Schaubühne café about an hour before the performance, it smells of sausages and cabbage. The people are drinking beer, some wine, but by all means it is a relaxed atmosphere. An unprepared Latvian would think he was in the wrong place and would ask the way to the theatre. At least if he did not plan to visit one of the independent, alternative theatres. Most theatregoers arrive in the large academic theatres in Latvia in fancy dress. During the intermission they go to the theatre café, where they usually order coffee, Riga black balsam (a Latvian herbal alcoholic beverage), sparkling wine or cake, if they are hungrier perhaps a salad or a salty pirogue. For the middle-aged and older generations, the theatre is still enshrouded in a ceremonial festive atmosphere. The roots of this lie in the Soviet era, when the theatre was a sacred place for Latvians, a church – a rare place where Latvian was spoken: “in Aesop’s language,” also of the idea of the freedom of Latvia. Peter Brook’s term “sacred theatre” suits this context perfectly. In Latvia, going to the theatre is part of “fine manners,” which is why one sometimes discovers gentlemen who were dragged there by force snoring obediently at their wives’ sides or following the goings-on on stage without the slightest interest.

The cloakroom at the Schaubühne – individual, lockable, heavy iron cabinets – lends a bit of an underground railway atmosphere to it all. But, I have a good feeling – light and open.




More entries from Undīne Adamaite’s Berlin Journal:

Berlin, 5.1.2013: Neither a False Tourist Nor Truly a Local
Berlin, 6.1.2013: Sunday Rest in the City
Berlin, 7.1.2013: The Berliners’ Lightness of Being
Berlin, 8.1.2013: At the Tagesspiegel
Berlin, 9.1.2013: A Monthly Portion of Courtesy
Berlin, 12.1.2013: At the Theatre in Knitted Caps
Berlin, 13.1.2013: An Intermediate Summary
Berlin, 16.1.2013: Fired with Premium Fuel
Berlin, 19.1.2013: Blind Date
Berlin, 21.1.2013: Old Fashioned and In Demand
Berlin, 26.1.2013: Čus, Berlin!