School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 2 of 2
-
ItemHeiner Müller and Martin Wuttke: staging new images in a time of change( 2005)During the extended prologue of the Berliner Ensemble’s 1995 production of Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, directed by Heiner Muller, actor Martin Wuttke’s Arturo Ui moves around the stage like a salivating dog. Bare-chested and in military breeches, with white gloves making paws of his hands, and with his tongue stained red and hanging out, Wuttke’s body, is part pointer-dog, part-wolf, panting, impatient and on guard. The following year Müller's final work, Germania 3 Ghosts at Dead Man, is staged at the BE and directed by Wuttke. In the first scene, two male performers in top hats, black T-shirts, jackets with tails and bare feet, enter the stage. They could be clowns or Shakespearian grave diggers. They stare out at the auditorium and deliver the play's opening line – 'The mausoleum of German Socialism. Here is where it's been buried'. This article explores the performative representations of post-reunification German theatre through an analysis of the textual, visual and aural image-making of these two Berliner Ensemble productions. It suggests that the theatrical representation of historical and legendary twentieth century figures, that we find in these performances, such as Hitler and Stalin, old communist leaders and the mythical Erlkönig, form part of the re-mapping and re-configuring of culture that is taking place in contemporary Germany. This is especially so in regard to the inter-relations between the past and the changing political borders in the present that connect with the broader historical transitions affecting ‘east’ and ‘west’ Europe. These include the end of the Cold War, the eastwards expansion of the European Union and the movement into a globalised economy. This article contends that Müller's post-reunification theatrical offerings at the Berliner Ensemble, now separated from the state that funded it, are acutely and tellingly situated at the intersection of culture and politics.
-
ItemHeiner Müller’s Germania 3 Ghosts at Dead Man: atrocity and pain in German history and theatre( 2003)Language that injures and causes pain is embodied in the work of Heiner Müller. In evaluating this type of language, Judith Butler’s enquiry into injurious speech and linguistic vulnerability, applied in a case study of so-called hate-speech, might be usefully applied to theatrical speech:'When we say that an insult strikes like a blow, we imply that our bodies are injured by such speech. And they surely are, but not in the same way as a purely physical injury takes place' (Butler, 1997: 159).Racist, class-based and sexist hate-speech is injurious speech that exposes the linguistic vulnerability of subjects and the power of language to wound like a sword. Applied to Müller’s dramatic texts, I argue that the speeches uttered by various figurations mimic the operations of hate-speech in the social sphere, with the addition that the effects of the speech may also be shown.The question I pose is: Can the discourse of the performance text bear witness to and embody pain as well as demonstrate the violence that is both enacted within and a consequence of speech? I ask with Susan Sontag, What do these imaginary accounts do to the real pain of the victims of war and political struggle and what is the point of their transformation into art given that "the iconography of suffering has a long pedigree" (Sontag, 2003: 40)?