Dhe stage version of the novel “Johann Holtrop” by Rainald Goetz, produced by the Cologne theater director Stefan Bachmann and his dramaturg Lea Goebel, begins exactly like the book. To be more precise: Stefan Bachmann’s staging of this adaptation, a co-production of the Cologne and Düsseldorf theaters, which has now celebrated its premiere in Cologne and will also be shown in Düsseldorf from March 11th, begins exactly as the author did the beginning of the book in one long interview that Ijoma Mangold and Moritz von Uslar conducted with him for “Zeit”: “It starts with a fairytale sentence, then it starts with the description of this building, and then it goes into a classic Suada, into a suada of accusation.” So it starts several times, with a three-step of incantation, description and curse. A romantic mood is conjured up, an ugly office building swallowing up this mood is described in an industrial park on the outskirts of a small town in East Germany, and the capitalism that produced this ugliness is cursed. With a “how, how, how -” the swearing machine quickly starts to stutter; the narrator can think of no comparison that would be hideous enough. And then? Then he starts again. In the words of the author: “And then the narration begins.” So the actual novel, the account of a succession of events. In the beginning they don’t seem very romantic. Nothing special happens, just the complete opposite. It’s nighttime, and a Subaru is parked in the parking lot in front of the office tower, its windows tinted for no purpose at this time of day. The cleaning team from a company called Clean Impact gets out and, like every night, does their job in chords.
What is happening in the theatre? The cleaning crew in blue overalls sweeps across the stage. The clean impact factor of the subcontractor from the titular hero’s corporate empire is the whirl frequency of the footwork. Each takt time worker may briefly introduce themselves; as in the typical professional ballet company, the proportion of Eastern Europeans is high. At the same time as the colorful cleaning carts, the dance troupe also serves as a choir. The report on the monotonous routines of paper waste disposal is presented as a worker’s chant. So the narration did not end up in the wastepaper basket when it was cut for the stage: the novel as stage text remains a novel.
Doomed to keep dancing
Theodor W. Adorno wrote about Honoré de Balzac: “The slogan get rich makes the characters of Balzac dance.” In Adorno’s picture, the emphasis is on the fact that dancing is a skill that must be learned. The “not yet adapted” to the industrial world provide the staff of Balzac’s novels; According to Adorno, “expansive capitalism” requires “additional energies on the part of individuals” “as long as it is not fully established”. Goetz’s novel, which was published in 2012, is set after the turn of the millennium, between the new economy miracle and the discredit epidemic. Even those who cannot enrich themselves, but are happy if they make the same rounds with the minimum wage, are doomed to keep dancing, left and right, as ordered, clamped in “a system of universal dependencies and communications”, like Adorno characterizes Balzac’s capitalism. Goetz visualizes this system as a spatial unit: the office. On the upper floors, the supposed soloists imagine that their adaptation to the mechanical movement pattern is a lifelong challenge and that capitalism will continue to expand as long as it is still not fully established.