Dhe Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich is usually not a place for risky stage events that actively reflect on social discourse. Here, the Austrian director Joseph Köpplinger usually serves rock-solid, skilfully crafted entertainment goods in a modern, never modernistic guise. But now he has a blackface “scandal.”
Because Köpplinger dared to do something, in two respects. He gave a new chance to Ernst Krenek’s Jonnyspiel auf, which was once unusually successful as a highly topical Zeitoper in the 1920s and has long since faded. And he was brave enough to point out that the piece, which was already controversial at the time, was racistly attacked by the Nazis as early as 1928 in tanned Munich, which was later dubbed the “capital of the movement”. Krenek later had to go into exile in America.
Jonny (Ludwig Mittelhammer) in Munich
Quelle: © Christian POGO Zach
Because this Jonny, that’s a “jazz negro”, a not particularly likeable black musician in a jazz band, who plays violin and saxophone, who seduces women and steals a valuable violin, which he takes with him to the New World at the happy end. With sirens ringing, trains approaching in the station hall, couples who weren’t so particular about loyalty and the then exotic hip personage, Krenek hit the esprit of his epoch; although he didn’t compose any jazz at all, the piece purrs off in a brisk parlando like a slow screwball comedy.
Already at the premiere Jonny was sung by a white baritone painted black. Because, as was customary at the time, no real “jazz nigger” was available, one made up one. Without meaning it as racist as the deliberately derogatory blackface of the American ministrel shows, where the former slaves were now also theatrically humiliated, while at the same time their music was hot. Also in 1928 in Munich there was a colored German on the stage.
With the Düsseldorf show “Degenerate Music” of 1938, “un-German” composers such as Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schönberg and Kurt Weill, but also the “Jewish operetta” and “nigger jazz” were condemned. As a warning synonym for the “cultural Bolshevik” tones, the exhibition brochure showed the title character of Krenek’s opera – with the Jewish star.
“Jonny plays” in Munich’s Gärtnerplatz-Theater
Quelle: © Christian POGO Zach
The Berlin director Peter Lund, known for his sensitively topical, often brilliantly funny, but also bitingly juggling original musicals at the Neukölln Opera, wanted to clearly remind us of this. With the sonorous Jonny actor Ludwig Mittelhammer, also bleached lightly and in a yellow, padded Dick Tracy suit, quickly exaggerated as a comic figure, like all the other charges, having his make-up lightly black in front of the audience’s eyes, as it were entering his historical role. The theater poster hanging all over Munich provokes curiosity with the lettering “WE ARE ENTARTET”; the historic lettering “Die Schnde von München. Judge for yourself” is the reading.
handshake with the leader
And what follows is a parodically exaggerated twenties revue with typical staff moving garishly and motley between black-and-white choir lemurs, who wave a German greeting at the end, while the seemingly innocent white Jonny, who has long since had his make-up removed, seeks to shake hands with their leader. A rather queer, partly colored dance troupe subversively wags all its limbs between the Teutonic rows.
However, that only went well for two performances. The usual shitstorm of well-organized woker activists, who reacted extremely aggressively to the fact of the blackfacing alone, immediately went down in all social media bubbles about the Gärtnerplatztheater. There, of course, people were apparently completely surprised and unprepared. And although the topic and intention of the production were made clear beforehand and are also discussed in detail in the program booklet, it wasn’t enough for the community. In the four performances so far, of course, there have been no protests whatsoever, the alleged racial discourse is apparently completely ignored by the audience.
The theater, which claims to have exchanged views with People of Color about the portrayal of Jonny and had entered the discourse with students months before, rowed back. Since the third performance, Jonny has been completely white again (although that doesn’t match the libretto anymore), the program has been reprinted with fresh photos and apology text. However, a group of students from the vicinity of the Otto Falckenberg School in Munich are still demanding the cancellation of the production.
“Jonny plays” in Munich’s Gärtnerplatz-Theater
Quelle: © Christian POGO Zach
The somewhat tame staging should have been much more aggressive, Grosz and Dix sharpened, more teeth-baring “Cabaret”. And also more embedded in public discussions about it. The well-behaved Gärtnerplatztheater underestimated the controversial potential of what was actually an artistically correct approach. And was intimidated by the threats of the Cancel Culture mobs, hardly anyone saw the performance. Now people are clamoring online, but a censored performance is being applauded. Only three more performances left. You don’t want to continue playing the production afterwards.
No more painted, content-wise challenging black man on the stage. But once again a black day for theatrical art as a game of possibilities, of transformation, of the as-if, for better or for worse. And therefore also of the challenging, to the compelling behavior.
Poster for a National Socialist protest rally against Ernst Krenek’s opera “Johnnyspiel auf”, Vienna, 1928
What: pa/IMAGNO/Austrian Archives/Anonym