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Food for Thought
 

Were you familiar with contemporary German theatre before being invited/having your work translated there?
What was the most interesting part of your experience?
Were you surprised by which of your plays was chosen to be staged in Germany?
How did you react to your play being transposed into German, by the translation, possible adaptations, staged readings and performances?
What good ideas did you “dig up” in Germany for promoting contemporary playwrights?
Were you asked to work with the translator, the dramatist, the actors or the director?
How was your work perceived?
Do they still think contemporary French plays are too “wordy” in Germany?
Did anyone make any remarks about a “French identity” in your plays? Is this notion of “identity” still a valid one?
Did your work in Germany have any effect on the play you’re currently writing?


Language levels are an issue in translating
Denise Chalem

I attended a staged reading of Dis à ma fille que je pars en voyage in early 2004 at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin. Hearing your own work in a language you don’t understand is a strange experience. Somehow you feel it inside and can tell instinctively if the actors’ energy and intentions are appropriate or forced, or if they’re deviating from the true meaning. You can also learn a lot from audience reactions compared to the way a French audience would react. You feel relieved –happy even– when they laugh or react in the same places.
I was not particularly surprised by which plays were chosen to be translated into German. On the other hand my play La Nuit de cristal, written in 1982 and awarded the Fondation de la Vocation Prize, has never been staged in France, but was translated and read in Germany in 1984 as well as at Ubu Repertory Theatre in the United States where they found the play quite moving.
Language levels are an issue in translating. There is an inevitable loss when dealing with slang or familiar language, less with more literary writing. Sometimes people ask questions about my work that seem obvious to me but pose a problem for the foreign translator or director. Certain cuts in my plays–where I would have made other suggestions–have struck me as inappropriate, taking the text in a different direction. Generally speaking, the work with the translator ought to be simpler, more direct. They work alone too much.
The intense audience discussion was the most enriching part of my experience in Germany. It is a culture where they value debate, respect what the playwright has tried to express, and want to understand his intentions in detail. I am far from knowing everything about my characters; and certain questions and interpretations of the play left me rather puzzled. At times they seemed to focus a bit too much on the cerebral side and dissecting everything.
I would have thought working with the actors and director was crucial. I could have arrived the night before, but according to them there was no point. I regretted it somewhat after the performance. There was a real problem with timing; everything was flat, too realistic and overstaged, with not enough emphasis on silence, ellipsis and imagination.
My work gets across well in emotional scenes between characters, and less well when it involves humour and reserve.
The Germans find us too “wordy” because they tend to get tangled up in lines that we wouldn’t say as intensely. Musical notes don’t all have the same value.
I don’t believe in the idea of a “French identity”. There are as many identities as playwrights in France. A play either moves you or it doesn’t; and that’s what makes it universal.

Theatre go-betweens need a deep understanding of the culture and language in both countries
Emmanuel Darley

First, the translation. Working long-distance via e-mail on a text that has necessarily turned into a detached object for me, something so personal yet also foreign. Distant. Working on making it even more distant in an unknown language you can’t understand. Having to go over it again, or rather like you never have before, questioning it, pummelling it until it gives in. Answering Reinhardt Palm’s questions about form, meaning and language. This is the unusual part because the play was written in French, but in quite wacky French, a private language with elisions, silences and suspensions that sometimes have to be explained; and what’s there to say in that case? There aren’t always answers other than–who knows?–sinking back into the shrink’s couch. And once the text has been transposed and rewritten, despite not being able to understand the language you try to grasp the re-transcribed rhythm and music. Is the result plain German or some Germanized Darley language?
Why this play? Perhaps there’s something intentionally “universal” in it, the issues of space and time remaining purposefully open here. Is it really French, wordy and self-absorbed? Or do we not really give a damn, the only border being the language? And once the translation has been launched, what borders remain? What makes up this or that country’s specificity, its identity? It’s French in language, but other than that…?
The French Theatre Office in Berlin has undertaken a laborious job. I follow the long series of events once again from a distance, by stops and starts. It seems rather vague–the relationship between them and my agent and between them and the theatre. It’s hard to know, hard to understand or intervene. It’s a problem of distance and of language, not of borders. And when it finally happens and you’re there in Berlin, something seems to be missing in order to get a full grasp of the inside story. The main thing is the play and what course it takes. That’s the main thing–the questions about the plays and the deep knowledge of the two cultures required of those ferrying them back and forth, since they also have to know which ones are likely to find an audience. Is it the more “universal” work, or the sufficiently “German” parts of the play, or again what is most “French”, spoken in French to appeal to people here?
In this case it’s a different culture, a different system, different theatres and ways of promoting plays that are light years from our companies, our national theatres and our good old debate about private versus subsidized theatre. Things here seem robust and full of life, quite rich, teeming with productions of German and foreign plays, and contemporary playwrights seem to be truly present; but, who knows, it could be an illusion, the grass being always greener on the other side.
Between dramatists and directors, who does what and who are the true creators? Here again lines are blurred at the outset, but afterwards there’s the pleasure of the performance, the inventive staging, and another reading. Then there’s that language you keep getting lost in, finding and losing all over again, meeting up at certain points, forgetting about yourself and just listening and being amazed at people laughing, in German. It works here too, in the same places, but transposed.
Finally, there is the encounter with the audience, the questions–not too different from the ones in France, although a strange relationship to the text comes out in Berlin that is specific to the city. It’s a new reading that was brought up by the actors, the dramatist and the director: these two characters from Pas Bouger, this A who is moving and this B who is motionless, are like symbols (?) of East and West Berlin, like the “tourist’s” image of a pedestrian stoplight with the green man walking and the red one standing still for such a long time. Of course I never thought of that while writing. I was far from that idea when
writing. Everyone sees what he wants, and this collective vision is a real pleasure which strengthens convictions and a lasting desire to leave the text open, to leave it intentionally vague about the place, characters and period of time. In order to give everyone a chance to make the text his own, to nurture it and give it life, beyond questions of language culture or identity.

“The Poetics of Translation”
Claudine Galea

I was surprised when attending readings in German–although I don’t speak the language–at the common musicality and intonations that exist on a rhythmic and sensorial level between German, French and English. I reacted to the musical qualities expressing similar emotional states through linguistic differences.
When Les Idiots was translated, I had no contact with the translator. It was surprising because questions inevitably arise–issues involving meaning, syntactic, metric, linguistic, rhythmic and prosodic choices, slang/familiar/poetic/everyday levels of language, etc.–requiring a dialogue between the playwright and the translator. I tried to contact her, but she didn’t seem interested until she sent me the finished translation. I asked a translator from the Maison Antoine Vitez to have a look at it. Laurent Muhleisen, who knew the French text, read it and pointed out certain problems and changes. Then Barbara Engelhardt took over, to my great relief. She went over the translation and asked me to clarify the meaning and usage of certain prickly language questions. Coming as it did after the first layer of work, it felt like being translated and retranslated, or rather “fixed up”, “corrected”, “caught on the wing”. Barbara, whom I met, didn’t deny the added difficulty in rewriting a text from a first translation. Her clarity and support were invaluable.
I had the opportunity to work once before with an American translator and dramatist in London. We confronted our respective positions (without always agreeing) on the use of (spoken and written) linguistic systems, which operate differently from language to language, from country to country, and from culture to culture. They can, for example, change the point of view–and give a different, even opposite, direction to a character–depending on whether nouns or verbs are stronger in a particular language, whether repetition is effective or not, etc.
This perspective is particularly noticeable and acute in the theatre, where words are spoken and perceived in an active immediacy, which propels them into an action, situation or state captured just as it is being expressed.
Working together on a translation is fascinating because it evoke the origins of your own language, its habits and the ways in which thoughts fit together or not within a language learned–and within the “foreign” one. Translation is a second sensory experience of language. Depending on how attentive one is to this question, the text and style may be transferred into a different type of thought and scansion, or be reduced, distorted, diverted, undone. Translation always involves passing through.
There is a “Poetics of translation” as Henri Meschonnic says. Like the poetics of writing. In order to find a language’s exact mood, it is not unheard of for the playwright to change the original text, since one language can never be superimposed on another.
I would prefer this kind of work always–the effort of testing the exactitude of an intention or desire in a new form so that it may be recreated in the new language, rather than neglect, abandonment and renunciation, which are deadly. A play can be killed, and the rest of the playwright’s work along with it. Languages involve birth and death. Writing means giving birth to talking complexities. There is a part of the text that is irreducible–in both meaning and form. An approximate, hasty translation might kill these essentials, this vital spirit and organic whole which are immediately perceptible on stage. Translating means recreating this all over again.
I am always drawn to cultures and languages that are totally foreign to me (ones I’ve never learned). For me, the readings and staging of my work in Germany was like an invitation to come back. I’d especially like to go to Berlin. It’s a city that really interests me, a place where I’d like to stay a while and write.

The advantages of calculated promotion?
Koffi Kwahulé

I admit, to my great shame, that I used to know nothing about contemporary German playwrights. Is it because contacts with these and other contemporary European playwrights takes place through relatively “official” channels? The “state-controlled” nature of these contacts inhibits all feelings of curiosity in my case. I feel– probably wrongly–as if I were taking part in an artistic transaction regarding contractual terms and conditions between institutions from different countries. On that subject, I have noticed that very few “officially” translated German plays ever make it to the stage (this is also true for translations in the other direction). That said, I must admit that without such calculated promotion my knowledge of contemporary German playwrights would amount to naught. Yet–and here I have only myself to blame–I have become accustomed to the idea that these institutions choose what I should be curious about.
What stands out in my mind from my various visits to Germany is the German actors, who seem to have a more forceful presence. I think the German system of permanent companies, which enables actors to perfect their craft, has a great deal to do with it. Whereas a thirty-year-old German actor has already played ten parts, a French actor is still doing his first walk-on parts–fortunately, not always. In the theatre, as elsewhere, the longer the tea steeps the stronger it gets.
I was truly amazed by the plays the Germans chose to translate, particularly since my first play to be translated and staged there was Bintou, in which the main theme is excision–not really a big concern for German society in my view. But while attending the opening of the play directed by Annegret Hahn at the Thalia Theater in Halle, I realised that her way of staging it focused mainly on the amputation of desire for young people who had learned to love the world reflected in a blade. The fact that all the actors were white made it possible to expand upon the issue of excision and open the play up to matters of concern to all human beings. My other discovery was what you might call–without the slightest pejorative connotation–the joy of my exchanges with the translator, or translators to be more precise, as Bintou was translated twice in Germany. The first translation was by Oliver Ess (staged reading at the Baracke in Berlin, then staged in Halle), the second one by Johannes Westphalen (staged reading at the Theater Zerbrochene in Berlin). In discussions I had with both of them, I had the impression that they didn’t speak the same German, even though they were both from Berlin. This double experience helped me subsequently to “free myself” from translations, or at least to be less finicky about them to the extent that a translation is in fact a form of commentary on a play.
Indeed, contemporary French playwrights are often perceived in Germany, as in other European countries and in America, as being too “wordy”, rhetorical, hovering indulgently over their language and ignoring dramaturgical issues. If you are at all familiar with the range of contemporary French playwriting styles–and I’m deliberately stressing the plural here–such remarks are obviously exaggerated. So how can you explain the “short-sightedness” of these “Foreigners”, albeit in good faith, with regard to our plays? Perhaps they only have access to French plays that have been recognized by institutions. This undoubtedly raises the issue of “contemporary French taste”, or more prosaically of the contemporary French vibe, of what is chosen to be promoted in the name of France. Does “this” represent all the various flavours, sounds and fragrances in contemporary French playwriting? Haven’t we tended to promote a certain kind of playwriting that has–already!–been adopted as part of our heritage?

There is a kind of music in Berlin, and it’s a kind of home for me…
Fabrice Melquiot

I knew little about current German theatre other than a few directors (Castorf, Ostermeier, Marthaler) and playwrights (Mayenburg, Goetz, etc).
In Berlin I met Liliane Schaus, whose collaboration has been invaluable. Liliane Schaus has been a faithful and committed interlocutor, an assiduous reader, and a theatre-lover who knows how to communicate her passions. I could say the same for Andreas Beck at the Burgtheater in Vienna.
I saw Les Divans in Berlin staged by Michel Dydim–for which I wrote the monologue L’Actrice empruntée. I attended a reading of Percolateur Blues in Mainz, and another one of Le Laveur de visages in Düsseldorf.
I had lunch at the Berliner Ensemble’s canteen; even coffee tasted good.
Perlino Comment has also been translated.
There is talk of Bouli Miro to be produced during the next season at the Halle Theatre and of a radio station doing a broadcast of Le Laveur de visages.
I found the stage direction during the readings pertinent, and the work on the text precise. The actors did a good job getting the play across to the audience.
As the German language is quite a mystery to me, I don’t know what to say about the translations. I thought they “sounded” good. Not bad for starters. My German-speaking publisher, L’Arche, and German actors and directors have all assured me of the quality of the various translations. I was able to dialogue with each of the translators, which was invaluable. Passages were often cut out during the staged readings; and I accepted them willingly.
But I undoubtedly feel more patently French in Germany than anywhere else. I’ll say no more.
I was not required to be involved in any particular way. I accompanied the translating work and participated in the public discussions. I think people perceived the clashing ice floes in my writing: the prosaic next to the poetic, the trivial with the romantic. At times they even found me funny.
I write to foreign music, creating native music from that.
When I write to native music, I go far away to write.
So that this life pulse, this outward bound drumbeat will run through every play.
There is a kind of music in Berlin, and it’s a kind of home for me.
Later on we’ll see what course it takes.
What’s left to write about–and what could come of it–is the important thing for me now.

Irredeemable German theatre staging
Véronique Olmi

Although my first theatrical publisher, l’Arche, was German, I really discovered Thomas Bernhard, Botho Strauss, Heiner Müller, Elfriede Jelineck, Fassbinder and Peter Handke through readings and productions of their work in French theatres–always in translation, which automatically leaves you with a feeling of loss or just plain frustration.
Hearing my play in a different voice–hearing the actors without trying to understand the words, but rather following the underlying meaning in its pure embodiment–was a very enriching experience. Since I don’t speak German, I had to follow the actors’ mental and physical impulses in order to keep up with the text. That way I could tell if their presence was “real”–to quote an expression used in the Christian tradition. It’s impossible to cheat, like in silent films where the actor’s presence alone conveys a feeling. I can’t proceed as with my plays heard/listened to in French, where I feel a kind of weird schizophrenia in being both spectator and critic of my own text, both inside and outside, wounded and revealed. Hearing your own text in a language you don’t understand gives you a new understanding of it, because you grasp it without going through the narcissistic filter of your own words. Being knocked off balance can be quite a motivating force.
One of my play most often staged in Germany is La Jouissance du scorpion, and I can’t help thinking they really enjoy this text… about fascism as an international defect. Numéro Six, my novel which is a best seller there (but not in France), speaks of childhood and also of the First World War. I’ve had the unique reward of often hearing letters written by my grandfather (a character in the book) read in German at various conferences–some of the finest moments in my career as a writer.
German stages seem to me to be filled with great violence. Certain performances of my plays in German have given me nightmares. There is something so frontal and irredeemable in them. It’s very raw.
But people there generally perceive my writing as violent too. And they always try to find a connection, a “resemblance”, between the characters and the playwright. Fortunately, they’ve never found one!
My collaboration on translations has mainly involved titles. It’s such a headache that, in order to avoid having to face it again, I named my last play Mathilde, banishing all puns, playful constructions and attempts at humour. But, while Mathilde has been “sold” to a number of countries, to date none of the German offers have been satisfying. A twist of fate!
I am always surprised by the questions that dramatists ask. I find them either too simplistic or overly complicated; and in both cases I feel like it’s my fault when I can’t understand their queries. But I never “think up” what I write. I hear it. How can you explain something you hear?
Generally speaking, I arrive after the actors have already done their work. I feel paralyzed by their expectations about my opinions and approval, and this inevitably spoils the performance for me. But when they really “find” the character, what a joy to give them a big hug!!!
I tend to be wary of directors who speak too finely about my plays. Modest, reserved directors, perhaps even overly protective of their work, are often the most talented ones. They feel no need to justify themselves. They just do it.
What really amazed me in Germany was that every theatre has its own company. There is something compartmentalized about a multitude of official theatre troupes–like small-scale versions of the Comédie-Française–that removes some of the risk-taking element for the actors, which is kind of a pity. One Land, one city, one theatre, one troupe. The advantage of course is the breathing room it provides–impossible in France–of having your play staged in several theatres at the same time, and knowing that it won’t be “thrown away” after being produced, that “openings” don’t automatically lead to “closings”.
Why should my work in Germany have an effect on what I’m writing now? That would be terrible. Having your work staged is enriching, nurturing and rewarding. But my course remains the same. Naturally.

The advantages of permanent theatre companies
Christophe Pellet

I wasn’t familiar with the theatre scene in Germany, having only seen two productions there–which I thought were really good–at the Halle Theater where Le Garçon giraffe is being staged this year.
I am as impressed as everyone else by the quality of German theatre, by the number of important directors, for instance, and by their efficient institutions. They have a really strong theatre tradition. Every region has its own theatre with its own permanent company of actors who perform in a number of different productions during the season, similar to the way the Comédie-Française operates. I was familiar with several contemporary playwrights from my generation whose plays are published by l’Arche, such as Marius von Mayenburg, Dea Loher and Roland Schimmelpfennig. I feel quite close to their worlds, to their formalism for instance, even though it is usually associated with fables, narratives and the notion of characters, which isn’t necessarily the case in France. In that sense, German playwriting is close to the English model.
Regarding translation, the secret lies not so much in knowledge of one’s own language as in an aptitude for foreign ones.
I was really struck by go-betweens such as the French Theatre Office in Berlin, which has done excellent work finding plays and getting artists connected. Liliane Schaus was really involved in the production of my play there. The French Theatre Office initiated a real partnership with Halle, which will host a French Theatre Week with readings and staged readings of plays.
During the work process I didn’t notice any differences with other countries–not with England or France at any rate. When people are genuinely passionate about what they’re doing–which is usually the case, especially when producing a living playwright’s work–they get equally involved in it, whatever the country. I was particularly moved by the German staging of my play and by director Carlos Manuel’s really subtle and intelligent reading of it. I think it’s the production that comes closest to my world, where the play was staged just as I would have done it. I was struck by the scenography, by its beauty, by how well it works and its intelligence in that area too... as well as by the acting–by the acting company I should say. Perhaps that’s what makes the difference with other countries. I don’t feel that my plays have a French identity. In London as in Germany, it’s the actors–more than the staging–who give the play its “identity”. And the play then goes beyond borders; the “French town” evoked early in the play becomes a German one, and the European capital later on in the text becomes the capital of whatever country the play is being performed in. With respect to Germany, people are very reserved there, so I don’t really know what they thought of the play. I was struck by the professionalism of their theatre critics. Through the direct contact I had with Germans, a diffuse specificity emerged which changed my perception of the performances, and thus of the play. This strange phenomenon of appropriating another world is what I find so moving when my work is produced abroad. One young actor in Germany reacted by saying how sorry he was to express certain feelings explored in my play in German. He felt that only the French language could get close enough to them, as if the German language had a tendency to distance itself from lightness. Undoubtedly this language of great poets and thinkers (Hölderlin, Schopenhauer, etc.) is imbued with “the metaphysics of love and death” and the weight of its own history too.

Paradoxical stubbornness, which ends up producing “results”
Noëlle Renaude

I was already familiar with contemporary German theatre before being invited to Germany and having my work translated. I found specific, recognizable dramaturgical customs there, whereby themes and meaning were overvalued and little interest was shown in implied content or questions of form.
Several of my plays have been selected to be published, performed and broadcast in Germany. I just finished answering a questionnaire about French-Spanish relations, and what amazes me is that, no matter what the country, the same plays are always translated and published. I think there are institutions in France that select plays to be promoted in other countries with certain–in my opinion, not necessarily accurate–ideas about what will “appeal” to people abroad.
I have five German translators. Only two of them have felt the need to contact me with questions. Although my German isn’t great, I am capable of working with a translator. Yet, despite our epistolary exchanges involving suggestions and counter-suggestions, I’ve noticed the text getting duller, which is only natural (it’s true in all languages), and showing exaggerated concern over meaning but carelessness about sound (indifference regarding punctuation), etc.
My plays “broke in” slowly and with difficulty in Germany. People there didn’t seem very interested in a certain type of “French” playwriting (to be direct, the kind that doesn’t correspond to the dominant Anglo-Saxon model followed in England, the United States and Scandinavia). This is not the case for Spain and certain Eastern European countries. Despite their difficulty in appreciating such plays, the Germans are stubbornly persistent in getting them onto German stages one way or another. They decided that there was no audience for such work and, paradoxically, their stubbornness ended up producing results. Indeed, things have opened up and there are some noticeable changes in dramaturgical ideology. For instance, I’ve just finished giving a workshop on my plays in the directing department of the Ernst Bush Schule with Robert Cantarella, who noticed a great difference in the students’ attitude about this kind of playwriting–considered “difficult” in Germany (such as Vinaver, Lagarce, Minyana, Gabily, myself, etc.) You encounter fewer patent refusals, more questions and signs of interest.
I have no idea where this stubbornness comes from. The work undertaken by the French Theatre Office in Berlin probably has something to do with it. In my case what “increased” –rather than renewed–interest in my plays was the reception given the French production of Madame Ka at the Bonn Biennial. The play had to be staged à la française before my German agent and other foreign agents decided to “promote” my plays in Germany. But according to the director staging Madame Ka in Kassel, the battle isn’t over yet.
Another German specificity is the vitality of their radio broadcasts. Several of my plays have long-standing directors, producers and listeners (and rebroadcasts are common).
In my view, the best way to promote contemporary playwriting in Germany and elsewhere is through training, such as in schools like BAT where Cantarella taught, and by highlighting these workshops, supporting them, expanding them, and establishing connections between German and French schools (even though, unfortunately, this kind of work can only be done with plays that have already been translated).
In Germany, as in France, connections are made and lost. In the case of the BAT workshop, it’s clear that it should be pursued for another year in order to keep alive this new interest in (or questions about) certain kinds of playwriting that have been little appreciated or read until now.
As for the French institutions, I’m sure they could take more risks by proposing a playwright’s most characteristic work abroad rather than promoting plays that are likely to appeal to “local” tastes (I find it very disturbing, for instance, that Ma Solange has never been translated into any language, whereas Blanche, Aurore, Céleste is my most successful play all over the world.)
My plays have been given a varied reception in Germany. For Ostermeier, for example, my writing is outside the box because it doesn’t focus on plot, it’s sterile, etc. For others, it’s hard to grasp, or even funny. In fact, it’s a bit like in France.
Contemporary French plays have often been called “wordy”. That isn’t as true nowadays, and “wordy” isn’t really the right word anyway; it more like “fussy”. Of course it doesn’t concern all French theatre–only the kind that doesn’t correspond to the norms I mentioned earlier.
The idea of a “French identity” is pejorative. But you can’t incriminate the Germans (or anyone else) for not being interested in our specificity. I think there’s a kind of systematic devaluation of French art that actually comes from within France. It’s no secret that our constant self-flagellation has obvious repercussions abroad. Why should they love your work elsewhere when they love it so sparingly at home. Just walk through a contemporary art museum in Germany. What museum in France would dare to exhibit a French Anselm Kieffer? An artist’s German identity is not a problem there. A student in the BAT workshop told me my plays were “very French”. My first reaction was shame at having allowed my “Frenchness” to show. Then I bounced back. Joyce was very Irish, Soseki very Japanese, Dostoïevsky very Russian, and Bernhard very Austrian. So what? It hasn’t stopped anyone from reading and understanding their work, even if it’s only 80% of it. I don’t think you could criticize a German artist for being “very German”. My initial reaction is symptomatic. Why should I have felt a twinge of shame about my identity?

The Importance of Dramatists
Lionel Spycher

Apart from “classics” like Brecht, Fassbinder, Martin Speer etc., I wasn’t too familiar with new German playwrights. Then I met them in Berlin and Hamburg. It’s true that in1998 (when my first play was translated and performed in Germany), Mayenburg, René Pollesch, and Schimmelpfennig weren’t “fashionable” in France yet.
I think what playwrights want most is to have their work performed. My plays are frequently staged in Germany; in fact that’s where the most productions have been done of my work. My three plays have been translated and performed there in the chronological order in which they were written.
Take Pit-Bull (my first play, and to date the one most often staged in Germany). The German productions have been very different. Pit-Bull was performed in Berlin (at the Baracke) in a a very energetic production where the text was sometimes switched around, not to mention the time warps; it was also performed in Karlsruhe with lots of video effects; Stefan Kimmig’s staging in Stuttgart was more traditional, relying more heavily on the text. Those are the three productions of Pit-Bull that I’ve seen, and they are very different. Personally I love to be surprised by performances of my work. Well, in Germany I certainly got what I wanted!
I have an agent in Germany (from Felix Bloch Erben Verlag) who promotes my plays. He knows which theatres and directors might be interested. His work is invaluable, producing frequent results. The French Theatre Office in Berlin helped publish 9 mm in “Scène”. Plays are rarely published in Germany. They are passed around among professionals in manuscript form. So I think “Scène” is a really interesting phenomenon because it publishes playwrights with and without agents. So it provides the Germans with a chance to read plays that haven’t been selected by agents and are therefore read by few people–or none at all.
Dramatists appear to be the surest route to go through in promoting a play in Germany. Whether plays are sent to them by the French Theatre Office or by an agent, they is the ones to read and make selections for the director(s) attached to the theatres where they work. I find this a very interesting function–not specific to Germany, but not very widespread in France. It is one of the reasons for the profusion of new productions of work by living playwrights in Germany. It is much better than having a reading committee. Dramatists are professionals who understand directors’ needs and know which plays to choose for them. A good dramatist is also well-informed about what’s going on elsewhere (in Germany and abroad). During the creative process he may ask the director questions and nurture the actors in their work. The lack of training is the main problem in creating this kind of position in France, and it can’t be remedied overnight. A dramatist is neither a playwright nor a director nor an actor, and even less a theatre administrator, which is why he can be objective.
As in France, my involvement in the work around my plays is quite variable. It depends on the director. Stefan Kimmig in Stuttgart is the only one I met with before he began staging the play. Sometimes I answer questions from the dramatist, and at times my translator (Uli Aumüller) asks questions while in the process of translating. I worked a bit with actors from the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg for a reading of 9mm. But that’s all. I’ve never taken part in any rehearsals. And I don’t go to all performances of my plays.
I’m in regular contact with my agent of course, as well as with Andreas Beck, whom I met at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1998. He was working as a dramatist in Stuttgart when Pit Bull was staged there. Later asked me to be playwright in residence (Haus Autor) at the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg when he was appointed dramatist there. He works in Vienna now and we talk and see each other on a regular basis.
Marius von Mayenburg was working at the Baracke when Ostermeier was the director, and I met him during the staging of Pit-Bull. We run into each other in Berlin and Paris now and then. I asked Laurent Mülheisen to translate his latest play (L’Enfant froid), which I did a staged reading of last year at the Comédie de Reims.
I am also in frequent contact with Liliane Schaus from the French Theatre Office. I’m working on a project to stage my latest play in a swimming pool. Laurence Lochu from the Institut français in Magdebourg put me in touch with the Thalia Theatre in Halle and is helping me to bring the project to fruition.
You still hear people say: “contemporary French plays are too wordy”, although it isn’t always meant to be critical. I think monologues are the hardest thing for German actors to deal with. They often overact, and rarely perform them in a “simple” way. I’ve often been asked to whom these monologues were addressed and what the actor was meant to do while performing one.
My play most recent, La Suspension du plongeur, was commissioned by the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. I lived in Hamburg for several months, although I was fond of slipping off to Berlin and Poland. The play is about a German businessman who is about to open some car dealerships in Eastern Europe. So, in a way, you could say that my stay in Germany did influence my latest play.