Director’s Note from Sarah Montague of One Fewer Night in Baghdad
I was drawn to Pedro M. Víllora’s One Fewer Night in Baghdad because of its elegance and concision. It presents us with an existential dilemma: the world’s most fabled storyteller, Scheherazade, is herself out of stories. In only a few minutes, we are taken on a tense confessional journey into the heart of entropy—the world has disappeared all around her, and around the Caliph she has captivated for so long. And the play is also a love story, with an arc from demand to desire to disbelief to desperation. Its emotional possibilities were beautifully realized by Mahira Kakkar and Arian Moyaed.
My other challenge, as an audio producer and director, was to find the sound that best matched Víllora’s concept, and I decided early on that the approach should be spare—the Baghdad of the title would not be the city itself, but its representation in Scheherazade’s stories. Under the surface of the play, in Matt Fidler’s subtle sound design, we hear these stories read by a cadre of actors, overlapping and enfolding us until, like the city, they finally disappear into the sand.
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Translator’s Note from Charlotte Collins of Anaesthesia
Anaesthesia was originally commissioned for the 35th anniversary of the Stückemarkt forum that promotes new plays and playwrights as part of Berlin’s annual Theatertreffen. In 2013, to celebrate the anniversary, 30 former participants who had gone on to establish themselves as prominent German-language dramatists were asked to write a short piece on the subject “Decline and Downfall of Western Civilisation.”
Author Albert Ostermaier elected to portray the downfall of a specific individual: a singer injured in a car accident on her way to a performance. As the anaesthetic is administered, the patient struggles to work out what has happened to her. An internal monologue, Anaesthesia is a tautly constructed, intimate, dreamlike stream of consciousness. Ostermaier uses a strict, lyrical form with short, broken lines to physically create a sense of breathlessness, confusion, and rising panic. Images and sounds–actual, recollected, or imagined–shift and merge in a vivid depiction of the speaker’s fading consciousness.
The juxtaposition of fragmented words and phrases and lack of punctuation mean lines can often be interpreted in multiple ways. Here an actor may be required to make choices, but on the page these interpretations exist simultaneously in a multilayered text that rewards close and repeated reading.
Anaesthesia incorporates fragments of quotations from the German Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin, specifically the epistolary novel Hyperion. The original play was given a staged reading at the Stückemarkt in Berlin on May 10, 2013.
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Interviews with Carmen-Francesca Banciu and Elena Mancini of It’s Cold and It’s Getting So Dark
(Interviewed by Anne Posten)
ANNE: You’re most well known for your fiction and journalism. What do you find special about writing for the radio, and why did you choose this medium to tell this story?
CARMEN-FRANCESCA: I’ve always been interested in theater, and particularly in radio plays. In communist Romania there was a very colorful radio drama program called Teatru radiofonic. Mostly the pieces were adaptations of famous plays from the international canon, and they were performed by the country’s best actors. As long as the play wasn’t explicitly ideologically dangerous, the actors, director, and sound designers could go wild artistically, despite the strict censors. They could experiment. They turned texts into theater with their wonderful artistic ability, inspiration, inventiveness, improvisational skill, and cleverness. The program was very popular, and you can still find episodes on YouTube. These productions, which still hold up against today’s artistic standards, had a great influence on me as an author. Theater, and audio drama in particular, is a compact and very precise, challenging form. Writing for radio to some extent works according to different rules than writing for the stage. There’s a reason it’s referred to in Germany as “theater for the ears.” Or “mind cinema.” You don’t see anything, you only hear. So much happens in the mind of the listener. Radio is a strong, powerful instrument, an unbelievably complex medium. Audio drama lacks the spontaneity of the stage, but it offers rich design possibilities; it has inexhaustible potential for experimentation. Germany has a great tradition of audio drama. Famous writers, including Ingeborg Bachmann, Günther Eich, Ilse Aichinger, and Helmuth Heißenbüttel wrote for the form and raised it to an art. I was inspired to try my hand and see how I measured up against these poetic masters. I also think that my writing generally has filmic and dramatic qualities—because of the way I allow the characters in my books to come alive through selected moments in their lives, which have the quality of scenes. In my writing I try, among other things, to approach material objectively and from a variety of perspectives—to express objectivity in a subjective, artistic way. Additionally, I often include exemplary moments that come directly out of reality. Moments from the lives of my characters, who are usually also connected to an exemplary historical-political moment and are the expression of a given time. Or rather: the choice of moments turns them into exemplary characters. I don’t narrate. Or perhaps it’s a kind of narration that pulls the past into the present through a series of scenes. I recreate a successive present. And this creates tension. Drama. Ultimately, it’s not much different than a play.
ANNE: Much of your fiction draws on your own life experience, yet It’s Cold and It’s Getting So Dark tells a very different story: one that is very intimate, yet deeply affected by recent German history. How did the idea develop in your mind, and what was your writing process like?
CARMEN-FRANCESCA: It goes back to the idea of the exemplary. I’ve written autobiographical novels, or novels that are autobiographically influenced, choosing moments from my biography that could also be exemplary for a generation, a society, a time. So it’s not about my personal biography, but rather the expression of a time. It’s a kind of aid or bridge that helps us think about and understand, for example, the era of communism from various perspectives. Everything that I write is fed by my life experiences, even if it also includes the life experiences of others. Renders. Integrates. As far as the origin of this radio piece: there really was a Deborah, whose experience I sublimate here. Of course, Deborah wasn’t her name. My stories can’t be understood one to one. But when I invent something in a text, I do it in the spirit of the person who inspired the character. Or in the spirit of what happened. The invented stories cohere with the story of that person. Even when I write surreal stories, which I like to do very much, there’s a level on which it’s authentic, and connected to reality. The fall of the Wall, which had so many consequences politically and on the history of Europe and the world—and of course also on my own personal history—still means a lot to me. You could say I’m obsessed with it. I took the story of Deborah’s life, which is rooted in the GDR and was dramatically altered by the fall of the Wall, as an invitation to engage with this theme artistically. In addition, I was inspired by Deborah’s fate, connected as it is with the fate of her country, which has also become my country, my adopted home. I grew close to Deborah through the shared experience of communism. But the play’s most important theme is really the farewell. The letting go and leaving of life with courage, immeasurable dignity, and generosity. It was a great challenge to express this without becoming melodramatic, even though death is a frequent theme in my writing.
ANNE: Do you often listen to radio plays in German? Are there particular Hörspiel writers (either contemporary or classic) who have inspired you?
CARMEN-FRANCESCA: My love for and my work with radio began in Romania and has lasted to the present day. It’s grown, in fact. I like making work for the radio. But Germany is a land of passionate radio listeners. Even though one might think that the golden age of radio drama is past. Nowadays there are not only mystery shows and the like but also very interesting experimental and minimalist sound works. Radio art is an important part of German culture and is celebrated and presented at festivals. There are also the genres of documentary audio plays and features. Sometimes the lines between the forms are blurry. That’s one of the fascinating things about work for the radio. And I also have a desire to work more with sound and words, and to create my own sound pieces.
(Translated from the German by Anne Posten)
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ANNE: You’ve translated a lot of Carmen-Francesca’s work. What draws you to her writing?
ELENA: Where to begin…? Most striking to me was the freshness and robustness of her voice. It has this ability to articulate emotion with a boldness and sense of immediacy that draws you in. This, coupled with her way of critically deconstructing those very emotions as having the distinction of feeding different parts of the self—the need to emotionally identify and feel recognized as well as one’s rational skepticism. The honesty with which Banciu gives voice to emotion, while childlike in its relentlessness and simplicity of language and expression, never indulges in beguiling naiveté. Rather, coherently uncompromising and unsparing, the honesty in Banciu’s prose often takes aim at her narrator or protagonist, which in many instances coincides with the author herself. Thus, her writing offers a unique blend of intensity of feeling and hard-fought detachedness. Banciu’s choice of imagery is also fascinating. She has a knack for elevating what is seemingly mundane and everyday, at times rendering it surreal, and she demystifies and lends earthiness to ideals and concepts which seem lofty and out of reach. Finally, her musical style, repetition, variation on a theme, introductions of new motifs and reintroducing them at a fevered pitch is distinct and bewitching.
ANNE: As I understand it, there are multiple versions or drafts of the play. What was your process like in crafting this English version? Do you work closely with Carmen-Francesca, or is the process more independent?
ELENA: It’s a collaborative process and we re-work and revisit things collaboratively over time. I see it as a unique privilege to be able to go directly to the author and ask for clarifications and elaborations of terms, idioms, and turns of phrases that may not immediately be accessible to me. Oftentimes these questions lead to a deeper understanding of the culture of origin. In the case of Carmen-Francesca Banciu, it’s doubly enriching because of the multiplicity of her cultures and languages of reference. It’s an unmitigated privilege to have these discussions with the author.
ANNE: As a translator, how important do you find the cultural and historical context to an understanding of this work? How did this affect your translation?
ELENA: It’s extremely important. The beauty of literature in translation is that it allows one to widen their cultural horizons, to begin to filter universal problems and experiences through different cultural lenses. Some would articulate this as an educative purpose—I don’t think it’s necessary to adopt didactic terms since I see cultural enlightenment and stimulation as intrinsically pleasurable. Nevertheless, I see it as my duty as a literary translator not only to be curious about the culture of origin of the works I translate, but to endeavor as much as possible to understand them from the inside.
ANNE: In addition to being a translator, you are also a scholar. How do you see these two roles interacting? Are they complementary, or entirely separate?
ELENA: They are certainly becoming more and more complementary. I am almost always tempted to teach and write about what I translate. My commitment to writing, teaching, and translation are animated by my love and thirst for powerful and original literary voices and my desire to make them known to a broader international audience. Whether I am translating, teaching, or performing literary criticism, a strong literary voice is always a focal point and a center of gravity and will determine how I organize these activities.
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An interview with Tereza Semotamová and Barbora Růžičková of Please Enter Destination
(Interviewed by Jen Zoble)
JEN: Tell us about your collaboration. How did you end up working together, and what was the process like?
BARBORA: It all started when I found out about the Play for Voices contest. I loved the idea of a non-English radio play produced for an English-speaking audience, so I decided to give the competition a try and started researching possible translation candidates. I was quite adamant about translating the work of a contemporary writer, ideally a play addressing a current topic or, at the very least, set in the present.
I soon realized that Czech radio plays are a world unto themselves, one that I’ll need help navigating, so I started asking around for recommendations–and finally, a producer from a publishing house I work with (Větrné mlýny) introduced me to Tereza. We exchanged a few emails, I listened to as many of her plays as I could (or read the script where the recording was unavailable), and after settling on a few final candidates, selected Please Enter Destination. I believe that was actually the most difficult part of the process! After that, during the translation phase, we continued to talk mainly through email, and met in person a few months later.
JEN: What kinds of considerations, challenges, opportunities does the audio medium present for you as a writer, Tereza? And for you as a translator, Barbora?
TEREZA: Radio is my passion. I have a degree in radio and television dramaturgy and screenwriting from the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno, a study field founded by Czech translator and playwright Antonín Přidal. Přidal wrote for the radio throughout his life, and as his student, I inherited his (rather obscure) appreciation for this (rather obscure) medium. I love sounds and the images we create on their basis. Connect a sound to a word, and voilà, a picture in your head! Sometimes sound is the only thing you need; at times, mere silence is enough.
It’s also true, however, that a writer writes for those who embrace their work–and the world of the radio welcomed mine, so before I knew it, I had written over ten radio plays. (Had, say, Hollywood producers been interested in my work, I would have ended up writing screenplays, though I would have written for the radio on the side anyway!)
As for the specific challenges presented by the audio medium, radio plays are all about the story and the search for the best means of expression in the context of the radio. In Please Enter Destination, this was the GPS system, which never ceases to fascinate me. Sometimes I go on road trips with a friend who can drive, and we always have a chat with the navigation system at one point or the other. It’s great fun!
For some time now, I have been toying with the idea of a radio play pieced together from audio messages. I have a friend with whom I communicate mainly through audio messages on WhatsApp, and I love the background noise, the intonation, the sighs, the slips of the tongue. I’ve also been thinking about a play set in the inner courtyard of a city block–a place where so many things happen at once. Where people argue, fall in love, die, water their plants, sit waiting…or listen to the radio (on radio).
BARBORA: Please Enter Destination was the first radio play I had ever translated, so for me, a major challenge was discovering the differences between a play created for the radio and a play written for the stage (or screen). The greatest of these turned out to be the need to consider the reference framework (or, the common knowledge) of the target listener. As Tereza mentions above, the audio medium requires us to create images on the basis of sounds; these images may, however, differ for audiences in the source and target culture. A listener who grew up in the Czech Republic will surely imagine different things than a listener from the States! A film or staged play will unify these images with a visual track, a novel can describe them in detail, but a radio play has none of these options. What will the listener see? Is it what the author had intended them to imagine? Those were the questions I found myself evaluating over and over during the translation process and, even more importantly, in the revision phase.
What I love most about translating plays in general (and this applies to radio plays as well) is that they always favor the target audience. It’s vitally important that the translation comes across as an original text, that everything the characters–and later actors–utter feels as natural as possible. Whenever I am translating a play, I always read the finished text out loud, ideally more than once, and try to put myself in the actors’ shoes–even more so in the case of Please Enter Destination, where I knew the translation would have to stand on its own without any visual aid.
JEN: The increasingly absurd news reports that appear throughout the play, and the pessimism expressed by certain characters, suggest a Czech Republic fraught with political stagnation and corruption. Could you provide some context for listeners who might not be familiar with contemporary Czech politics?
BARBORA: I’ll start with a brief overview of the current political climate in the Czech Republic–though I’m hardly a political scientist, so I can only offer the personal opinion of someone who does their best to follow daily news.
Following the fall of the Communist regime, the rather young country was faced with the necessity to establish some sort of new political balance within a rather tight timeframe. There was a lot of experimenting in the nineties, with high expectations and varying results, leading to a general feeling of disillusion that seems prevalent today. This disillusion manifests itself in a long-term general distrust towards the political establishment, and in a divided society with opposing opinions about specific individuals in positions of power (at the moment, the president, and the former finance minister, whom Forbes calls “the Czech Republic’s version of Donald Trump”; the two are adored by one half of the country and despised by the other). The uneasy climate in Europe, especially in connection with the refugee crisis, is not much help either, contributing to an atmosphere fraught with anxiety and occasional outbursts on both sides.
Considering the situation, it’s not surprising most people will come across as pessimists. Thankfully, all political and societal clashes usually only take place on a theoretical level, so if you’re not interested in politics, you can get on with your daily life without any interference whatsoever. It’s not as if there were riots or anything–mostly it’s peaceful demonstrations or people complaining in pubs!
Personally, I remain optimistic–however depressing the situation may feel, there is an ongoing lively public debate, a fight against corruption, and many political parties that are actively trying to make a difference. Finally, there’s always the consolation that whatever happens here will hardly extend beyond the border–the Czech Republic is not the US and on an international scale, our president’s decisions shouldn’t impact anything except the country’s reputation.
TEREZA: I wrote the play back in 2012. A peaceful year, when compared to the times we live in now, both in Europe and in the States. In 2012, I was living in Germany and telling everyone that I wouldn’t be coming back until we had a new president (back then it was Václav Klaus). Hah! Miloš Zeman, who succeeded him, was hardly better. In the end, however, I decided to come back anyway and leave my German life behind, because I just really like it here.
The bizarre news reports in the play are partly based on reality. The phrase “according to the new Civil Law, animals are now defined as objects rather than as living, breathing creatures” did actually appear on radio after the new law came into effect. The part about using animals as fuel is a reference to a Czech political party, TOP09. Today, I think it’s one of the few parties that still manage to maintain at least some dignity, but back in 2012, I found them extremely irritating. In Czech, the word “top” has various meanings–it can mean “stoking” a fire so you can keep yourself warm, “drowning” someone with the intention of killing them, and also being “top” at something. Unfortunately, this particular reference doesn’t translate well into English.
Finally, the main thing I wanted to explore was the atmosphere of activism on an ordinary Sunday afternoon outing–coming to terms with something that bothers you, or fighting it as much as you can.
JEN: Could you talk about the choice to feature the song “Včera neděle byla” (“One More Weekend is Over”)? What is its cultural significance, and how do you view its role in the play?
TEREZA: Sunday–a beautiful day, but for me personally often filled with melancholy. It’s a day to be filled in, a day to be lived out, and, oh, those Sunday evenings…. That’s a completely different story. For me, “Včera neděle byla” describes an ideal Sunday, probably one that doesn’t even exist, or at least one that I’ve never experienced myself. I’m still waiting…. The world is changing, I’ve fallen in love….
Anyway, in the context of the play, the song forms a stark contrast to everything that is actually going on. All those typical things we do on Sundays that are, however, far from ideal–going on trips, having serious talks about our relationships, discussing ethics and current events. I really like “Včera neděle byla,” mainly because of the directness of the singer, Pavlína Filipovská. Its inclusion in the play was born of pure irony. After all, songs play an important role in radio plays, often acting as some sort of shield which helps form the atmosphere of the play from the very beginning. You can play around with the lyrics, use them with an ironic twist, interject them in the play, use them to give the plot rhythm, or use them in the play’s finale.
BARBORA: As for the cultural significance of the song, “Včera neděle byla” is a pop song written by Czech composer and musician Jiří Šlitr and songwriter Jiří Suchý in the 1960s. The famous duo composed it for the Semafor theatre, which would generally put on short comedy sketches and scenes, and host many up-and-coming Czech pop singers (most of whom would later become quite famous).
Most Czechs would recognize the song (or even know a few verses by heart); many songs by Suchý & Šlitr are part of music books that are used in compulsory music classes in primary schools. In addition, the song “Včera neděle byla” appears on radio from time to time, usually inspiring a feeling of nostalgia.
JEN: Tell us about the current audio drama landscape in the Czech Republic. Who comprises the audience for your work?
TEREZA: In the Czech Republic, radio plays have a long tradition. In general, the only organization that commissions them is Czech Radio, the national broadcasting company. Its several specialized channels often air shows focusing on literature or drama. You can even study radio dramaturgy at two Czech universities–the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno and Palacký University in Olomouc.
As for the audience, I believe–based on the responses I have received–that radio plays have retained their traditional listeners. Radio shows on literature and culture are hardly mainstream, so their audience will always lean towards the slightly unusual–hipsters, older people, truckers, ambulance drivers, people with impaired vision, people who want to listen to something while cooking, knitting, or making pickles, or bookworms hunting for something interesting to listen to at work.
Finally, the greatest measure of success for me is when someone uploads one of my plays to a file-sharing server and makes it freely available.
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An interview with Ana Cândida Carneiro of That Deep Ocean…
(Interviewed by Katrin Redfern)
ANA: This play was a commission by the Mexican composer, Javier Torres Maldonado, who’s a very good friend of mine in Italy. I was living in Italy and he asked me to come up with an idea for a radio play and I already had this idea in mind, in my notebook. I have this huge notebook of ideas and sometimes someone asks me something and I go there and grab something…but it was my first experience of writing for sound, because he’s a composer and I had to create a dialogue with music. It was challenging and it was a very important experience for me, professionally, because it did change the way that I conceived playwriting, writing for the stage too. So, I worked with the composer. We met a few times and he shared with me some of his musical ideas. I built the play on his musical ideas, on the structure that he gave me but I wanted to write a play that was going to be independent of that specific production. I wrote the play and the version that was produced in France was actually an adaptation of the version that is being produced now, which is the full version, and it is also very, very different musically. The music has a very, very important place in that first production and so, with that experience, I discovered this whole new space of writing for the ear, that allows you so much. You really have to conceive writing for an acoustic space, which is different, so the words and sound of the words and the images that come from the combination of the sounds of the words. It’s a different space to work in but very enriching, and I think that this experience did change my writing for the stage, also, because you do start to pay a lot more attention to the musical qualities that words have and the impact that that musicality has on the audience. So, yeah, that was my first encounter with radio, and I’m really excited about this production and I’m really curious about how’s it going to come out, this full version of my initial acoustic idea. I think radio plays are acoustic objects, acoustic objects of art, and it’s exciting when you have other people involved in creating this and to give the listener an acoustic experience that hopefully is going to ring a bell inside and it’s going to be changing somehow.
KATRIN: What language did you write the play in?
ANA: I wrote this one in Italian, and then it was translated into French for the first production. The it was translated into English by Stephen Pidcock, who is an amazing translator, and he maintained the qualities of the play but also was very, very sensitive to the musicality. It’s very difficult, the process of translating the radio play, because you have to think about the whole acoustic architecture in a different language and it can be a recreation even. So he was really very good.
KATRIN: I love the animal element, tell us about that.
ANA: Yeah, I love the animal element and I do believe in a future of playwriting that is post-anthropocentric somehow…. When I was writing this play, it was not conscious all the time, but I think it’s my first play where the animal element gains an important dimension and I do believe that the future is a post-anthropocentric future, where nature becomes a character, where human beings are really put into relation to this bigger element we are inserted in which is the environment and the problems that environment has today.
KATRIN: Does the play speak to specific cultural themes?
ANA: There are some aspects of the play that are connected to Italian reality, some aspects related to the female, to the woman in the workplace, which is problematic in Italy. So, for this character, she’s dealing with easing to short-term contracts, something that young Italians are having difficulty in renewing, and they are usually just three or six months. It’s difficult to build a life on such unstable ground. Also, this woman has the problem of invisibility, of being constantly challenged by the boss. The problems for women in the work place is another theme I wanted to touch on.
KATRIN: Is it set in England? Some of the word choices, and mentioning the Council made me think it was set in London.
ANA: That’s because the translator is British. It’s not set in a specific time. I had Milan in mind because I was living in Milan but it’s not the setting. It’s written in a way that could be a big city, where there’s this feeling of anonymity somehow. The director, Sarah Montague, decided to keep some of the British words. But I think it speaks to an American audience.
KATRIN: Tell us about the structure of the play, how it developed. Did the composer have the music written already when he came to you, or did the text come first.
ANA: He didn’t have the music before. He gave me the structure. He had a musical idea. He works with Fibonacci numbers and he had a specific…he wanted to work with the alternation of musical environment. So I wanted to build a story where there was this clear alternation of very different environments. That’s when the Squid came into place. He actually composed the music over that structure with the text already written.
KATRIN: Did you find writing for an auditory medium freed you in some way?
ANA: Yeah. I love the way audio frees you up. If you think, “What would the corollary be on stage for this play?” You have the Squid who’s serving as the Narrator. How would you transfer that to a physical stage?” You can do it many ways. It can be multimedia and maybe have a screen, and voiceover…. But it’s just a beautiful thing about audio plays. You are just free to…your pot is much bigger because you are not limited by the physicality of, “How will I actually get this up there?”
KATRIN: And you can call more freely on the audience’s imagination.
ANA: Yeah, the most exciting thing about radio plays is that you work with suggestion. So you can suggest images in the listener’s imagination. That really opens up so much. You can really tell the craziest stories. You can jump from one thing to the other. It really gives you this freedom. I think that every playwright should have an experience of writing for audio because it gives you that boldness…sometimes when you’re writing a play for the stage you’re always thinking, “How am I going to do this, how is the director going to do this?”
KATRIN: And the tendency is to be more realistic.
ANA: Yes, and how do you escape realist and push the language of playwriting beyond what it is. It is very important to see those openings. I think writing for the radio gives you that…really opens you up. You realize that you can transfer some of those techniques to the stage. I always think when I write for the stage about a sentence from Heiner Müller, the German playwright who said, “Literature has to make resistance to theater. What you create, what you write has to make resistance to the stage.” That means that you don’t write easy things that are just illustrative. Be bold. Explore language, structures. Challenge your audience, challenge the theater makers that are working with you. Write the unstageable play so that the director will have to find new ways to stage that play. This pushes theater, the language of theater further and the language of playwriting further. I think one of the problems of theater in America, is that it’s still very, very realistic. Realism is really very established, it needs to be problematized. There are very bold American playwrights that I admire very much. If you go to the predominant scene, even in New York it’s still very realistic even in the staging. You’ll see, oh my God, I’ve found myself looking at productions and thinking, “Why do they have to build this house on stage?” Why did they have to make that? Find other solutions.
KATRIN: Especially with the quintessential “American family drama.” You get to the theater and you think, “Once again there’s the life-sized house they built onstage, complete with full-sized staircases! Is this an architectural program or a theater?”
ANA: Yes, and the writing has to challenge that because if you have a very traditional type of playwriting it becomes illustrative. Let’s write the unstageable play. Let’s tell other stories that are not family stories. Let’s create crazy things. You don’t need to think about the easy solution of building the house onstage or having the real chicken on the table. Why do you have to…the fake chicken, it’s a chicken! Let’s think about taking this a little further. I think radio, audio, is a great way for the writer to learn this. To learn that you can be completely free from conventions. I think those are my key worries as a playwright, to push every play I write. I want it to be a different device. I don’t want it to be predictable. I want to reinvent drama every time. I want to reinvent writing for the theater every time. Let’s go beyond what we know. Not only the stories we tell but also the way we tell them.
KATRIN: Sometimes though I worry that we task ourselves with too much, this idea of constant reinvention. I think its inherent to academia, what gets funded and so forth. There’s an obsession with innovation. And ultimately how can you really do something differently with drama, an act that was part of the birth of human culture. We’ve been standing up in front of other people to reenact a story for 200,000 years, maybe more. The pressure for newness can seem laughable sometimes. In other fields as well…researchers are always carving out some new tiny corner of their field and defending it aggressively, so they get the funding…. “It’s has to be new, it’s has to push what came before!” And that’s a difficult thing to do honestly, without getting into weird machinations trying to manipulate the form, etc.
ANA: I think you touched on a very interesting point because there’s also the “dictatorship of the new.” We have to escape from that also. I am not like…I do like what’s called Postdramatic theater. I also like good dramatic theater sometimes. I think as a playwright, the most important thing is to find authenticity without being self indulgent. Without letting yourself be in the comfort zone. Like you said, there is a tension. It’s not good if you’re always, “I want to be original.” What does that mean? What does “original” mean? No, you have to be authentic, which is different than original. It’s important to think about your own writing practice and to make it problematic, for yourself and for the audience. That doesn’t mean that we’re going to completely reinvent drama. There is a tension that’s fertile. Because there’s also a lot of avant-garde that you go to and you say, “What is this?” It seems that it’s a reproduction of empty forms. We don’t want this. We want authenticity. Even talking about realism…it’s not that realism has to be banished. Just to be very clear. In some situations…for example what in America is called Black Theater…realism is used as a tool for telling untold stories. So realism doesn’t have to be banished. I think it’s how aware you are when you use a form. Being aware of what parts of it you want to use. Yeah. I think it’s that.