“Othello” at the Lausitz Festival: Intrigue in Saxony

2024-08-27 15:16:14

Big theater in little Weißwasser: The Lausitz Festival had a successful grand opening for the first time with a spectacular “Othello” production. What does Shakespeare’s play have to do with “Knifemen” and the riots in Great Britain.

“The battle is over!” All Cyprus celebrated. All of Cyprus? Never. There is someone standing in front of the stage who carries anger in his heart. Götz Schubert plays Iago as an old veteran of the Venetian war who is no stranger to any shameful act. He shows the audience in Upper Lusatia the first taste of his cunning: the strong and hard-drinking Cassio, played by Tom Gramenz, is bottled by Iago so that he vomits at the feet of the great general Othello, who reduces him . Ugly.

It was a brilliant start in the early glass works in Weißwasser. “Othello / Strangers” opens this year Lausitz Festivalwhich wants to bring art and culture to an area characterized by the decline of major institutions, such as the Ruhtriennale. In previous years, Shakespeare was on the opening schedule with “Julius Caesar” and “The Merchant of Venice,” but Stefan Pucher’s direction was in color. This year Marcel Kohler, born in 1991, allowed you to participate – lucky brain!

Kohler is best known as an actor. It was highly regarded and gaunt on the stage of the Deutsches Theater Berlin until it moved to the Schaubühne concert in Charlottenburg a year ago. However, anyone who has seen his production of Heiner Müller’s “Philoktet”, a male singer in an iron storm, which he created while still a student, already suspects that Kohler also has great directing talent. In Weißwasser the hunch became certain.

Shakespeare’s “Strangers” is on board

Kohler connects the tragedy of Othello, who goes from slave to military leader and yet is a stranger in the Republic of Venice, with Shakespeare’s fragment “Strangers,” published a few years ago, which pleads for mercy to refugees. . What Kohler does with his version of Wieland’s translation, which is dense in terms of people and text, is amazing: the action is distributed across different spaces and the audience moves around.

After the first scene, in which Cassio is shy and Leonard Burkhardt even tries to play the violin as Othello is incredibly passionate, he goes through a labyrinth of construction walls: attention, military areas! Entering the large factory hall with the unused furnaces, the spectators are divided into three groups, which watch the action in different orders before they gather again for the grand finale – standing between the vehicles the car is broken.

The line of the plot is dispersed and the events are in place. This works perfectly in the mix between science and political thriller like “Othello”, and the actors jump between scenes virtuoso. Little by little, the general picture comes together. So he follows Cassio, who is trying to reform, to Brabantia (instead of Brabantio), the smoking mother of Desdemona (Sina Kießling), who has some illusions about her daughter’s connection to Othello.

Catharsis fails

We continue in a tree with all kinds of antlers and fish leaders, where Cassio meets Emilia, Jago’s wife plays by Dagna Litzenberger Vinet. A number that is difficult to understand and who also says Heiner Müller (“Emilia is Emilia, I stand on the coast and say BLABLA to the wonder, with the ruins of Europe behind me…”). And finally he entered the studio of Desdemona, made by Linn Reusse, a painter with painted arms in front of the canvases, with a bed with curtains in the middle.

“My daughter, my daughter, don’t lie to me. Tell me, where did you sleep last night?” Desdemona sings, but even Kurt Cobain can’t help her anymore. The poison of jealousy and distrust cleverly cultivated by Iago works, Othello attacks the unsuspecting woman with a knife and kills her. But what follows in the original – Othello’s self-conscious pain and suicide, Iago’s arrest and Cassio’s promotion – has been deleted. Tragedy fails catharsis. And instead?

A chorus of angry citizens, led by the town singer from Weißwasser, marches through the hall after the death scene. Masked people jump on cars, Bengalos are on fire, there is an argument. A video shows reminiscent images of riots in Britain after three girls were robbed at a Taylor Swift dance class. The memory of the knife attack in Solingen, where three people were killed and many injured at the “Festival of Diversity” is even closer.

Now Iago celebrates his last important appearance: he, who is sure to cause unhappiness in the first place, now appears as a representative of law, order and order before happy people. Here too, he shows himself to be an intelligent anger manager, a mediator and a ruthless one. He sees it as his business to stir people up against each other. Although society is no longer at war, it is now close to civil war. “Othello” interpretation of the highest locality.

The sky does not want that, the choir sings at the end, it seems to be a question. A red curtain even closes, an almost surreal moment in this harsh industrial environment. Big applause and cheers for the conference and everyone involved. Since the Lausitz Festival has not looked particularly happy in the past, either in terms of its external appearance or in the open productions, one must say this: It is worth going to Weißwasser for this evening.