widthThere was a sharp shooting in Kabul, and in Berlin they wielded fake rifles frantically and shouted “bumsdi”. The “extra form” they distributed mentioned “53 cannons seized” and “administrative transfer.” In Kabul, they continued to shoot fiercely. Because many people really experienced their “last day” there.
The time when the extravagant Austrian actor and theater producer Paulus Manker started his monumental work Karl Klaus‘Performing “the last days of mankind” in Berlin is risky. A historical drama satirizing the horror of war is staged, and news programs are flooded with images of military machines, which can easily seem out of place.
Feeling of the fire of the world
But it may also accurately hit the feeling of the fire of the world that now touches us in an alienating way: when the seven-hour theater marathon in the spectacular Belgian hall on Gartenfeld Island begins in the evening, urgent news It was reported that the heir to the throne was assassinated, and newspaper vendors walked through the auditorium with historic “extra sheets”, similar to reports of the invasion. Taliban In Kabul, at least at the level of psychological acceptance. It was the shock of the news that shook things up. An incident suddenly became a topic of discussion all over the world. This marked the start of the marathon by Mankel through the most extensive stage production ever. The play of the notorious cynic Karl Krauss was created during the First World War based on a large number of original quotes, aphorisms, and annotations, with 220 scenes and more than 1,000 characters.
As the author himself predicted, a vibrant and frightening dream work “only suitable for Mars Theatre” has made several performance attempts since its completion in 1926 all wrong. Klaus’s greatest fear is that his huge reading drama may become an “entertainment spectacle.” Manker achieved this: For a full midnight, he let 18 naughty actors pass through the rooms of the multi-channel hall cathedral, which was originally transported as trophies from Valenciennes in northern France to Berlin until the turn of the century. , Using production facilities for cables and insulation materials. From the very beginning, the abandoned industrial building provided a thrilling aura of historical testimony and contemporary validity to the bustling theater scene. At first, the audience sat on chairs in the layout of the Vienna cafe, but then they kept moving, following the individual scenes of different groups, wandering from scene to scene, and let the emcee Mank personally drive them out on the open train. Visit the front in the carriage.
“Feuilletongespenst” in front
The “mask” that Adorno recognizes in awe in the angry collage works is particularly bright here: the soldiers make the audience shoot with fake rifles, pant and jump into the sand, and dance—but Only a few steps, the others stood on the sandy hill where the body of their comrades had just been exposed, their faces petrified. A young war correspondent asked her how she felt, praising “the already free humanity”. Its role model is the Austrian-Jewish war correspondent Alice Schalke, who enthusiastically reports on the Southwest Front for the New Freedom News. Klaus made this “feuilleton ghost” appear in the different points of his drama, representing what he hates most: the generation of people who are eager to experience the obsession with disasters, and they dedicate their bodies and souls to monsters they cannot ignore. .
