2023-05-08 10:38:00
PAccording to an anecdote, ablo Picasso once drew on a serviette for a fan. “But it only took you a minute for that,” the fan was outraged at the high price that the artist asked for. “No, 40 years,” was the reply. It’s the same with “Tempest Project”, Peter Brook’s last evening at the theatre, which is now at the Ruhr Festival Recklinghausen Germany premiere celebrates: It’s not just 75 minutes of Shakespeare, but 75 years of dealing with Shakespeare – a theatrical event from another dimension that leaves you overwhelmed and stunned. It’s hard to believe that such theater is even possible. And it’s hard to believe what else you get turned on in the theater as such.
When the Hamburg theaters made a deal with the miners in the Ruhr area in the cold winter of 1946 – “coal for art, art for coal”; the Ruhrfestspiele come into being – a young man is already showing his second Shakespeare production, at no less a venue than the Shakespeare Memorial Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon. It is Brook, born in 1925, who will later become world famous – also with his books such as “The Empty Room”. In April of last year, “Tempest Project” premiered at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, shortly afterwards Brook died at the age of 97. He has made several guest appearances with his works at the Ruhr Festival in Recklinghausen – now posthumously for the last time.
Brook appreciated Bertolt Brecht, as did Samuel Beckett, but Shakespeare was always the greatest for him, the inextinguishable fixed star among the stars in the theater sky, which outshines everything. The fact that Brooks’ last work was one on Shakespeare’s last play “The Tempest” can be understood as a cosmic constellation. Brook once wrote, “Shakespeare’s plays are like endlessly circling planets that momentarily approach us, then recede in their orbit.” It’s hard to get as close as The Tempest Project, it’s Brooks legacy. And as pathetic as that sounds, it’s not inappropriate because this masterful evening showcases all of Brooks’ theatrical artistry.
But what is the secret of “Tempest Project”? In short: the simplicity of the means and the magnitude of their effects. Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne show that the real art is in omission, that meaning comes from reduction. Prospero’s island is nothing more than a cone of light on the stage, containing two carpets, a few blocks of wood, a bit of sand with a few sticks. The towering actors don’t raise their voices, attention is drawn through precision, not loudness. Concentration instead of a screaming concert: Breathlessly you follow each of the precisely choreographed movements through the dense network of human and all-too-human relationships
Sometimes it’s nothing more than hints that make the game so rich: a barely noticeable grimace as Ery Nzaramba’s Prospero frees his slave Caliban (Sylvain Levitte, who also plays Ferdinand) from his robs, a little tentative infatuation by Miranda (Paula Luna), that’s all it takes. Marilú Marini as Ariel flutters around as a genie, while Stephano and Trinculo get the genie out of the bottle, embodied with great comedy by the twins Luca and Fabio Maniglio. Every look and every gesture is pure meaning here, which does not hide its game character, but includes the audience as thinking and fantasizing.
Shakespeare’s last work is considered dark and enigmatic, Brook gains a fascinating lightness from the “Storm”. This pure and genuine human theater touches on what Walter Benjamin once called “profane enlightenment”. The spectacular opening night of the Ruhr Festival pales in comparison: “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” by Simon McBurney based on the novel by Olga Tokarczuk, in German “Gesang der Fledermäuse”. It’s a dark and fast-paced evening, a three hour mix of dark fairy tale, animal rights thriller, William Blake adoration and nature hug, driven mostly by the great leading actress Kathryn Hunter, who is also known for her great Shakespeare performances. In June, Tokarczuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, will come to Recklinghausen for a reading.
The opening speech this year was given by Anne Weber (“Annette, a heroine epic”). The writer refers to the motto “Rage and Respect” and after greeting those present with “Dear Individuals” she comes to the present between “global warming and the coldness of capitalism”. The scheme is now well known: you have to tame the angry citizen – also within yourself – in order to become a good citizen. Not the powerful, but everyone bears responsibility. “You are capitalism,” says Weber. In Gelsenkirchen, just a few kilometers away, where almost every second child lives in poverty, one will certainly be relieved to see that. In addition, at a time when conflicts – with war or mass impoverishment – are becoming more tangible again.
Weber manages the feat of invoking the great threats to humanity – “destruction of livelihoods!” – only to end up with the ordinary gestures of attention that make the world a little bit better. It is a pastoral edification speech between fair trade products and mindfulness workshop, which only revolves around itself because of the great romantic accusation of the world. And which somehow seems out of place in a place where the mustache does not yet stand for hipsters, but rather for established social-democratic sentiments, where the trade unions are still co-organizers and the other speeches still end with a strong “Glück auf!” But above all artistically, it is a sensational start to this year’s Ruhr Festival.
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