The Staatsschauspiel Dresden rediscovers the playwright Georg Kaiser with the “Gas Trilogy”. The topic is surprisingly current.
Between communism, capitalism and gas as religion: Georg Kaiser’s “gas trilogy” Photo: Sebastian Hoppe
George Kaiser, yes. Apparently a young contemporary unknown author, finally, in the stasis of the playwright. He writes cold critiques of capitalism and still has visions. And so updated! Gas as a myth and weapon must always flow, otherwise everyone is unhappy.
Mistake. Yes, Georg Kaiser needs to be rediscovered. In this regard, a Gottingen performance of the gas trilogy in 2015 and now the Dresden version were pioneering acts. But the author began to work already in the last two years of the First World War. At the time, the loner was considered the most interpreted and versatile playwright in Germany and wrote obsessively.
The Nazi ban on performances in 1933 and his death shortly after the war ended may have contributed to his forgetfulness. Born in Magdeburg in 1878, Kaiser grew up not only in class struggles but also in reform efforts that wanted to mitigate radical capitalism. In the Dresden production, however, the expressionist verbal fire of the time only comes into play towards the end.
The trilogy was to have premiered at the Bitterfeld Summer Festival “OSTEN”. However, the project failed due to unclear funding conditions. The Dresden crowd was even more receptive to the premiere last Saturday.
Gas as a symbol
Director Sebastian Baumgarten, welcome to Dresden, places the audience on the main stage. Torn polygonal surfaces form a dome over the approximately 200 spectators. Video walls are used wisely. The stage figure of the “billionaire” initially appears larger than life as a silhouette. The rubble rock lies on the dirty gray playing surface, then the flowers of celestial dreams sprout.
Then as today, gas is synonymous, even metaphorically, of the products of homo faber, of workers, produced by exploiting nature and dependent producers in order to obtain material gains. But what is progress and what do we really need to live? Hasn’t the pseudo-religious worship of technology turned against the believers in materialism for a long time?
Brecht immediately comes to mind. When a schizophrenic “billionaire” in the gas business, who has himself risen out of necessity, oscillates between cold exploiter and social romantic empath, the “good man of Sezuan” is an example.
A doppelganger separates from Kaiser. The exemplary demonstration of capitalist characteristics links both playwrights. No wonder Brecht is said to have seen Kaiser as the brain of the same ideas as him.
Current references are booming
The extensions of the material are somewhat confused in their complexity, which may also be due to the Dresden compressed version. But the scenes speak for themselves in their visual power. The first part recalls an almost communist experiment in social utopias.
However, the capitalist mode of production is not abolished, but made more effective through the participation of workers. In the central part, the current references explode, without being addressed in a specific way. “Gas will never fail”, sounds after the elevation of the energy world to religion.
Faith is followed by a catastrophic disillusionment. A huge explosion paralyzes the gas workshop. The discourse on the consequences lights up in the figure of the engineer. The management, the elite, if you will, is returning in the direction of renaturation, while the workforce, the people, with their unbroken belief in technology, want to continue production as quickly as possible. Somehow you know it from Lusatia a hundred years later.
Seven excellent players move around a lot as a group, but also come out with impressive monologues. Right at the beginning, for example, when the two main laws of thermodynamics are explained. The gas loses its innocence in the last bellicose part, when the engine of prosperity turns into the devastating poison gas.
Discussion on the war in Ukraine
Baumgarten staged the complicated nested material effectively, but without cheap affectation. The public appreciates it and almost everyone hears the discussion that follows. To war, of course, but less linked to the question of natural gas.
“Is there another principle that applies globally?” asks the Minister of Economy of Saxony Martin Dulig (SPD) and calls the appeals of his Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) for a “freeze” of the war “naive”. Philosopher Moritz Rudolph can even discover technological breakthroughs and the possibility of catharsis in any war.
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