The Berliner Ensemble

Now that I am in theatre, I have an entirely different evaluation of my original time in Berlin. Over the course of ten days, we were bombarded with information and theatrical performances. At least seven of the ten nights featured a trip to one theatre or another. I enjoyed it a great deal, despite not being able to understand the majority of what was being said. One of those trips to the theatre was to see a production of Bertolt Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Uis) by the Berliner Ensemble, the theatre company that Brecht helped to found in 1949.

Strictly speaking, the Berliner Ensemble is just that: the group of actors and designers who collaborate on the shows together. They are merely renting their current home, the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, a neo-baroque (at least on the inside) place built around the turn of the century. The twentieth century. To be clear, it was built in the 1890s. When I think of Brecht and challenging experimental theatre, I have a particular idea of what the stage and the space will be like. It'll be a black box, or a multi-functional space, or anything other than a neo-baroque theatre that feels like a mini opera house. It feels tiny, even though at 738 seats, it has only slightly fewer seats than the Hubbard Theatre at the Alley. It feels crammed in because many of the seats, particularly in the upper reaches of the house don't properly face the stage, wrapping around the wall of the house. That includes the standing room place I watched the show from (a 2.25 hour production with no intermission and minimal air conditioning - good thing I layered). There are mirrors everywhere, walls are practically falling over with sconces, everything is gilded and just gaudy. And on its stage, Brecht and his Ensemble speak truth to power all the time, often in plays about the dirty and the poor, which are all the more powerful for the contradiction and the tension between the building and the work going on inside it. One of my favorite touches in the building is a red X that has been spray painted through the Imperial eagle. According to legend, Brecht climbed a ladder himself to deface it, the only part of the building that is deliberately less pretty than it originally set out to be (these days the building is under Denkmalschutz, so I imagine they could do whatever they want with it, if they phrased it delicately enough to the right people).

Naturally, I gawked at the lights as I was standing around and I couldn't but note some of the more interesting technical elements on display (hey, VL1000s, I know those pieces of junk), including the Niethammer EniZoom.One thing that struck me was that they use a ton of power. I don't think I saw a light with less than a 1000W of output and most of them were at 2000, easily.

There's nothing quite like seeing a Brecht show in his theatre and that made Arturo Ui special. Unfortunately, this time around I was not able to see a Brecht, though in a couple of days (sadly after I leave Berlin) they will mount a production of Mutter Courage. Now THAT would be a show to see in Brecht's theatre. The show that I saw is called Der zerbrochene Krug by Heinrich Kleist. I guess you would translate it into the shattered pitcher or the destroyed ewer or something (no, Wikipedia says it is The Broken Jug, which is nowhere near as evocative to me). It's a very interesting piece for the BE to do. On the face of it, the play is a simple farce about a randy village judge who gets caught by the district inspector. But of course, it's really about corruption and the choices that are necessary in order to stand up to corruption among the powerful. It's also hilarious (I understood 2/3 of it this time, including some of the sarcasm). It was also masterfully performed, which is hard to do when a third of the cast basically doesn't move from their position for half of the show. It is not an easy show for a director to do. I can't really judge the set or the lights since could only see about half of the stage what with the whole standing room thing (but hey, it was five euro, can't beat that). The acting really brought it all together. The Ensemble remains a great company and this production had a great director in Peter Stein. The production I saw featured Klaus Maria Brandauer who most English speaking audiences will know only from Never Say Never Again (he's the bad guy), which is a shame (he's a legend on the German stage and he's Oedipus at Colonus with Peter Stein is supposed to be incredible).  I may not have been able to see Brecht's company do Brecht, but I was very happy to see this show as well. I just wish I had the time and the money to see more of the great theatre that happens here in Berlin.