"pedestrian"; "flâneur"; a "gentleman stroller of city streets"; "lounger"; "saunterer"; "loafer"; a "person who walks the city in order to experience it"; an "idle man-about-town"; a "complete philosophical way of living and thinking".
The walls are the desk against which he presses his notebooks; newsstands are his libraries and the terraces of cafés are the balconies from which he looks down on his household after his work is done. -Walter Benjamin,"The Flâneur"
BEN BRYNMOR FOWLER
Currently living in Ebisu, Tokyo. A lover of city living & city walking, cinema, music, fiction, currently writing a PhD on contemporary theatre in Britain and Germany, and developing an intense relationship with apple gadgets.
OTHER HOMES:
http://www.scoop.it/t/british-and-german-theatre-today
Instagram username: IBKHOV
The main focus of my research on German theatre is the work of Thomas Ostermeier at the Schaubühne. In the heart of West Berlin, in Charlottenberg on the famous Ku’Damm, this theatre plays to an audience sort of like the Royal Court in London. It’s young, trendy, well educated, very middle class. And unlike the other big Berlin theatres, there isn’t a proscenium arch in sight. The huge Bauhaus designed former cinema, divided into three spaces, can be completely reconfigured to accommodate any format or design.
The work here is super-cool. It’s tagline is contemporary classics for today. You’re unlikely to see period costume here. The ensemble too is very young, and aesthetically, the work wouldn’t be out of place if it were photographed for the latest art magazines or design catalogues. It has a very seductive surface. The productions, too, are also obsessed with surface detail - very rarely do you see an actor just standing still or sitting centre stage talking. Almost like choreography, the productions keep constantly in motion, the actors following a very physical behavioural score.
The danger is, if the actors focus all their attention on physicality, that the work comes across as hollow and superficial. That’s why certain actors like Lars Eidinger (one of Ostermeier’s muses) really shine in the ensemble. They manage to fill the (gorgeous) form with soul and with life in a way that makes it really exciting when it works.
This week I saw two productions that I already knew well. Hedda Gabler I last watched in 2008 at the Barbican in London (it was created in 05) with the same cast, and Hamlet has been in the repertoire since 08. I was struck by how tightly scored they are. On a first viewing, what seems so improvised and fresh minted is revealed as strictly controlled and tightly rehearsed when you see the production years later follow exactly the same pattern. But I guess that is testament to certain actors ability to really inhabit each moment and make it live in a way that feels spontaneous.
Thematically, the plays performed here attack the hollow existence of the middle classes. They seek to explode the shiny surfaces that mask the despair of the bourgeois existence. There’s a danger they sometimes fall into their own trap of being all style and little substance. You can’t help but feel that the audience will briefly discuss how depressing the world is over their white wine after the show, and then walk back to their beautiful apartments past the Gucci boutiques to continue their beautiful lives as normal. But occasionally a flash of soul breaks through the surface in one of these performances that can be truly revelatory, that really forces you to think, that challenges you to examine how we do live, and aspire towards how we should.
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