Eva Marburg studied theater and literature in Berlin and New York. After working as a freelance dramaturg and author at the theater, she studied cultural journalism at the UdK in Berlin and has been a specialist editor for theater at SWR2 since 2018. She regularly writes the theater diary for Fridays.
When I sit in a theater premiere as a critic, this is usually noticeable. I have my notebook to take notes during the performance. The quick scratching of the pencil on the paper has brought me a number of exasperated and even angry reactions. A person sitting next to me once hissed at me that I was ruining the whole performance for her by writing. I bought a pencil with an extra soft lead.
Sometimes my writing notebook provokes the statement: “Oh, you’re a theater critic!” Then other people sitting around are informed: “She’s writing a review!” Benevolent nods, interested looks: “May I ask what medium you work for? “
I recently went to the premiere of Brecht’s Life of Galileo at the Schauspielhaus Zurich. Here, thanks to my outfit, I promptly met two Swiss ladies adorned with pearls and diamonds, who immediately spoke to me. After the break we were so familiar with each other that they waved to me and said that they had kept my seat free and that they “had to fight” for it. Then another classic: “Exgüsi, may we find out how you liked it so far?” I said I thought it was very good. But then the conversation took a completely surprising turn.
I don’t remember who coined this wisdom, but there is this theater saying that at least half of the production takes place in the audience’s heads. That is to say, to a certain extent it matters what happens up on the stage, because the audience sits there with their own projections, imaginations and unreliable perceptions that a directing team would never come up with in life.
The two Zurich ladies, it now turned out, also suffered from vivid imaginations. What would I think, they asked conspiratorially, of the director and artistic director taking such center stage here after the debate about the theater? He had no business being on stage; they simply found that “excessive”. I didn’t understand: Had Nicolas Stemann just been on stage during the break? “Not during break, all the time! Well, he’s playing Galilee!” They pointed to the actor Matthias Neukirch, one of the seven actors of the evening. I protested that they were wrong, that it wasn’t Nicolas Stemann. You rolled your eyes. I continued to insist. The two discussed each other briefly, wanted to know again whether I was “completely sure” and then informed those around me that the “theater critic” claimed that it was not the director who was the scientist on stage in the fight for the truth.
How interesting, I thought. The much-noticed debate about the Schauspielhaus Zurich and its artistic and political orientation, which ended with the contract of the artistic director team Stemann/von Blomberg expiring in 2024, manifested itself during the opening premiere in the delusion that the artistic director himself would usurp the leading role. From this you can roughly imagine how conversations in urban society must proceed. Who knows, if it hadn’t been for me, there might even have been a scandal because of it: “Intendant plays the main role – Chasch nöd de Füfer and sWeggli ha!” (Just look it up). The whole thing was cleared up anyway with the applause when the real Nicolas Stemann finally came on stage as director and the two women turned triumphantly to me: the two of them looked incredibly similar! Yes, I said and packed up my pencil, sure.
2023-09-21 02:20:46
#Nicolas #Stemanns #Galilei #Zurich #Üan #Schwützer #Schkandali
