بوب ويلسون
鲍伯·威尔逊
בוב וילסון
ロバート·ウィルソン
밥 윌슨
Боб Уилсон

Bertold Brecht
Kurt Weill
Berliner Ensemble
Die Dreigroschenoper

source: culturenowgr

Ο παγκοσμίως αναγνωρισμένος σκηνοθέτης και πρωτοστάτης του πειραματικού θεάτρου, Robert Wilson δημιουργεί μία παράσταση άψογα σχεδιασμένων σκηνών σε κινηματογραφική ατμόσφαιρα. Η μινιμαλιστική και σαφής προσέγγιση του σκηνοθέτη είναι εκθαμβωτική.

Η πολυπρόσωπη αυτή παραγωγή από την ομάδα Berliner Ensemble, του ιστορικού θεάτρου της Γερμανίας και δημιούργημα του ιδίου του Brecht, αποτελεί ένα μοναδικό θεατρικό γεγονός.
Η παράσταση ανέβηκε αρχικά το Σεπτέμβριο του 2007 στο Theater am Schiffbauerdamm και έχει λάβει διθυραμβικές κριτικές από το Διεθνή Τύπο. Ενώ, μετά τη sold out εμφάνισή τους στο Theatre de la Ville το Σεπτέμβριο 2009, οι παραστάσεις θα επαναληφθούν στο Αμπές τον Απρίλιο του 2010.
Οι Art – Deco φωτισμοί, κομμάτι του δυναμικού οράματος του Robert Wilson και η ανυπέρβλητη ομάδα Berliner Ensemble, μας χαρίζουν μία νέα οπτική της Όπερας της Πεντάρας η οποία εντυπωσιάζει.

Οι χαρακτήρες του έργου βιώνουν μία ιστορία έρωτα και προδοσίας και από το 1928, όταν το έργο παρουσιάστηκε για πρώτη φορά, έχουν καταφέρει να κερδίσουν το παγκόσμιο κοινό σε 18 διαφορετικές γλώσσες. Το έργο αυτό, το οποίο έχει ανέβει 10.000 φορές σημειώνοντας τεράστια επιτυχία, αποτελεί αναμφισβήτητα ορόσημο του 20ου αιώνα.
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source: mrzieg

Um universo separa o teatro épico de Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) daquilo que nos habituamos a reconhecer como “teatro musical”. Construído sobre os pilares da crítica social e política, o teatro do dramaturgo e diretor alemão se caracteriza essencialmente por exigir um posicionamento crítico do ator e do espectador. No teatro épico, a encenação deve revelar o jogo cênico e evitar a catarse, evitar o envolvimento excessivo, lembrando o tempo todo a plateia que aquilo é “apenas teatro”. Os conceitos de “distanciamento” e “estranhamento” são essenciais para compor a linguagem de uma encenação brechtiana: elementos que causam estranhamento na plateia vão exigir que ela se distancie, que rompa com a ilusão da narrativa e tome uma posição crítica em relação ao que está assistindo.

A música, no teatro de Brecht, ocupa a função de quebrar a narrativa. É completamente o oposto do que se espera de uma canção em um musical da Broadway. Se em um musical tradicional a música aparece como uma transição da ação, amplificando o volume das atuações e provocando uma conexão emocional com a plateia, no teatro épico isto é tudo o que não pode acontecer: a ideia é que a música precisa interromper a ação, causando estranhamento, distanciando o ator do personagem e o espectador da narrativa.

Parece complicado? Difícil de fazer? Pois os bem-aventurados que assistiram a montagem d’A Opera dos Três Vinténs, encenada na semana passada pelo Berliner Ensemble em São Paulo, tiveram o privilégio de ver o teatro épico brechtiano em seu esplendor e absoluta contemporaneidade.

A Balada de Mackie Navalha, na encenação do Berliner Ensemble

Obra-prima de Bertolt Brecht (roteiro e letras) e Kurt Weill (música), A Ópera dos Três Vinténs estreou em 1928, em Berlim, e rapidamente ganhou popularidade no mundo. Inspirada em uma ópera inglesa de 1728 (A Ópera dos Mendigos, de John Gay), “…Três Vinténs” é uma crítica contundente ao capitalismo e conta a história de Mackie Navalha, chefe de uma quadrilha que explora assaltos e prostituição em Londres, e seu amor por Polly, a filha do inimigo J.J. Peachum, o Rei dos Mendigos. Traduzida e encenada em mais de 30 países, a peça também ganhou uma célebre adaptação brasileira, a carioquíssima Ópera do Malandro, de Chico Buarque, que transferiu a ação para a Lapa carioca dos anos 40.

Na esplêndida montagem do Berliner Ensemble, dirigida pelo GÊNIO Bob Wilson (desculpem as maiúsculas, não há como evitar a empolgação), as ferramentas de “distanciamento” vão desde o deslumbrante cenário montado com lâmpadas fluorescentes e luzes recortadas, passam por uma partitura corporal e vocal absolutamente limpa, distinta (e não-realista) para cada personagem, até as “máscaras” criadas pela maquiagem branca, que remetem às mascaras teatrais italianas e japonesas. A estes elementos, somam-se uma dilatação do tempo, ora provocando uma sensação de câmera lenta, ora de repetição, e imagens fragmentadas, como uma perna de mulher sem dono, na composição do cenário do bordel.

Mesmo com todo o rigor e controle exigidos pelo autor, a beleza inquestionável das canções de Kurt Weill provoca vários momentos catárticos – tudo o que Brecht não queria. Não à toa, a dupla entrou em conflito diversas vezes e acabou encerrando a parceria porque, segundo Brecht, Weill escrevia músicas “bonitas demais”. Mas, como espectadora, eu agradeço profundamente a existência de canções como Mack The Knife, Seerauber-Jenny (Jenny dos Piratas), Kanonen-Song (A Canção dos Canhões) e Salomon-Song (Canção de Salomão). O diretor Bob Wilson também parece acreditar que a beleza pode ser transformadora e – sem jamais forçar a mão para o emocionalismo – cria momentos lúdicos de alto poder, como a perseguição de Mackie pelo policial, que evoca Chaplin, ou o Mackie que flutua “no amor” de suas duas esposas, durante o Dueto do Ciúme (Das Eifersuchtsduett).

A assombrosa Angela Winkler é Jenny

O elenco é es-pe-ta-cu-lar, um ninho de monstros-operários incansáveis do exercício teatral (falei que estava empolgada). Dentre os maravilhosos monstros, destacam-se o monstruosamente talentoso Christopher Nell, que compôs um Macheath andrógino e escorregadio, e uma das grandes estrelas da companhia, Angela Winkler, no papel da prostituta Jenny.

A companhia Berliner Ensemble foi criada pelo próprio Brecht e por sua mulher, a atriz Helene Weigel, em 1949, em Berlim Oriental, e desde então é uma das a companhia de repertório mais inovadoras e prestigiadas em todo o mundo. Atualmente a companhia apresenta dois espetáculos dirigidos pelo norte-americano Bob Wilson (que é outro monstro que mudou a história do teatro mundial, mas esta matéria tem limite de espaço): a Opera de Trêns Vinténs, da qual estamos falando, e Lulu, de Franz Wedekind e música de Lou Reed, que entra em cartaz esta semana no SESC Pinheiros, em São Paulo. As peças são encenadas em alemão, com legendas.

Zieg Veredito: A Ópera dos Três Vinténs encerrou temporada, mas ainda tem Lulu. Pegue seu carro, pegue um ônibus, pegue um avião e venha assistir.
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source: eventfinder

Revel in this 30-strong ensemble of actors and musicians performing one of the most familiar scores in musical theatre today. Be warned, with a strictly limited engagement in Perth and following sellout seasons in New York, Hong Kong and Berlin, you need to be quick.

In 1928, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill created a masterwork that would change the shape of theatre forever. Eighty-five years later, visionary director Robert Wilson leads Brecht’s own company, the Berliner Ensemble, to perform in Australia for the very first time.

Mack the Knife is the original city crim who’s never met a law, a woman or a cop he couldn’t seduce – but when he challenges the supremacy of the Beggar King and his empire of manufactured woes, the fallout threatens to tear the town apart.
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source: cameronwoodhead

There’s a synergy between avant-garde director Robert Wilson and Bertolt Brecht that makes this Threepenny Opera, performed by Brecht’s own company the Berliner Ensemble, a production of global significance.

Wilson’s method of detaching the visual and aural components of a work and reassembling them in a two-phase rehearsal process marries with and invigorates Brecht’s ideas about creating a distance for the audience to reflect critically on the performance, never losing consciousness of the fact that it is in the theatre, a place where artifice reigns.

All elements of theatrical craft fuse to create an extraordinarily rich and layered experience. The production is set in a floating world – moving from vibrant, cartoonish sequences that bustle with the decadent glamour of Weimar Berlin to poised tableaux inhabited by the chiselled silhouettes of actors; shadows in a world of sickly, cold light.

Most of the set is lighting, which the decorative connotation of all adjectives, from gorgeous upwards, fails adequately to describe. Yes the production is visually beautiful, but that beauty is thoughtfully, deeply integrated with the text in a way that stimulates the imagination.

The opening sequence has Mack the Knife sung as if in imitation of a gramophone recording. Stefan Kurt’s Macheath lures a large cast of gentleman beggars and lingerie-clad prostitutes across the stage in a halting procession, clownish and grotesque and in thrall to this androgynous vision of a criminal sociopath.

Locating Mack the Knife’s charisma in androgyny, in his coiffed blond curls and wrong-footing effeminacy, is a fascinating (and sinister) choice, as is the cheeky idea that this Macheath has the soul of a whore. And the dazzling spectacle of light-bulbs in an abstract encirclement above the action, sometimes blazing at an uncomfortable wattage, completes the parade of damaged glamour.

It gives way to a lunar vision of the sordid businessman Peachum – performed with jowly malignance and perverted wisdom by Jurgen Holtz – and his comically curvaceous wife Celia (Traute Hoess). Their vaudevillian parody of marital discord is a masterstroke.

The production isn’t afraid to let hilarity reign, but the scalpel of satire is never far away. The boorish antics of Macheath’s criminal associates in the wedding scene build a web of physical and verbal humour that’s swept aside by Polly Peachum (Johanna Griebel) singing Pirate Jenny.

The levels of artifice in this rendition of Brecht’s ballad of feminine revenge (the simpering chime of a naïve bourgeois pretending to be a working-class drudge pretending to be a pirate queen) are vocally arresting and moving. Then Macheath dismisses it with a genial but contemptuous: “It’s art – that’s not nice!”

A similar cascade of jarring techniques and emotions influences The Cannon Song, Brecht’s savage parody of camaraderie in war. Macheath and the police chief Brown (Axel Werner) greet each other with an echoed: “Owzitgowan moiite.” (the alien Strine is particularly amusing) and proceed to sing in a cold, affectless way that pierces any Anzac sentimentality we might have about what war really does to people.

And for all the entertainment, capitalism comes in for a roasting. In one scene, Celia Peachum aimlessly shifts portable squares lit by fluorescent lines, as if moving around the bars of cage she doesn’t quite realise she’s in. Her husband’s direly perceptive railing against the criminality of bankers has special resonance today.

The final scene, with Macheath saved from the noose by a figure draped in a red curtain, makes manifest the theatrical artifice that makes this Threepenny so great.

The precision of the satirical, gestural style that the Germans have such a strong tradition of is a delight to behold. We won’t see such a large and accomplished ensemble of actors performing Brecht’s masterwork again in a hurry. And the orchestra plays Weill’s immortal music with a cruelty and seductiveness that augments the performances and feeds off them.

Add to those Wilson’s lighting and brilliantly choreographed movement, attuned to the text’s ironies and the dense web of contradictory feelings it arouses, and you have a production that will never be forgotten by anyone lucky enough to have experienced it.

A still from Robert Wilson’s Threepenny Opera with the Berliner Ensemble.
Robert Wilson’s career spans four decades and the globe. His work – meticulous, formal, abstract, and often epic in scale – defies any easy categorisation but he’s universally acknowledged as one of the greatest practitioners of experimental theatre, and is among the most celebrated theatre directors in the world.

Australia hosts two of his works in 2013. Next month, the Perth Festival has the Australian exclusive of his recent production of Threepenny Opera for the Berliner Ensemble; and a rare revival of Einstein on the Beach, his signature, avant-garde opera, comes to Melbourne’s Arts Centre in July.

Talking with Robert Wilson requires persistence. He is in rehearsal for a new opera opening in New York this week, has skipped his lunch break and worked an hour over time. Now 71, Wilson’s intensive rehearsal process takes its toll. When he finally greets me on the phone, I ask him how it went. Wilson sighs out a double ‘OK’ that suggests doubt and fatigue. He seems glad to think about something else.

Robert Wilson has an easy manner. Not a trace remains of his childhood speech difficulties, one formative experience that inspired him to reorientate the direction of language in the theatre.

His voice now is like honey in the desert, the fluid charm of New York sophistication over the dry Texan vowels of his birthplace. And he speaks around things, tracing circles in words, relaxed and deliberate, lulling the ear; so that when he does raise his voice with histrionic intensity, you get a bit of a shock.

His production of the Brecht/Weill musical Threepenny Opera, with Brecht’s own company, comes with a story that goes back to the start of Wilson’s career. “I made my first play many years ago in the 60s,” he says, “It was silent, 3 hours long and we only did 2 performances. Brecht’s son Stefan came to see it both times.”

“Your way of directing, your aesthetic, your sensibility is just right for my father’s work,” Wilson recalls him saying. He wanted to close an unsatisfactory production of Threepenny on Broadway, and get the young, unknown director to rework it.

Wilson declined. At the time, he knew nothing of Brecht or the theatre, his principal interest lying in painting and architecture. And he didn’t know much more about Brecht in the late 70s, when the experimental German dramatist Heiner Muller remarked on the similarities between Brecht and Wilson’s formal approach to the theatre.

Muller took charge of the Berliner Ensemble in 1992, after German reunification, and asked Wilson to be co-director. Wilson refused again, “I don’t speak German. I wouldn’t be qualified to run a theatre, nor would I want to.”

Wilson and Threepenny finally came together a few years ago, although the production that’s coming to Perth was almost stymied by Brecht’s fearsome daughter Barbara. “The Berliner Ensemble asked me to do it but Barbara Brecht said ‘This is my brother’s idea’ and she didn’t give me the rights. She wanted her daughter to direct it. That didn’t turn out so well. It didn’t work, so the company asked Barbara to reconsider.”

Barbara Brecht relented, and a year later was invited to the premiere. “The theatre was very nervous,” Wilson says, “because she’s famous for closing productions by saying, ‘My father wanted it done like this’ – Wilson’s voice is a caricature of disapproving haughtiness – ‘and I do not approve.’

“So Barbara came to the premiere. She wanted 10 tickets and the theatre said we’ll only give her two. I thought, Oh please! and bought tickets for her. And no one saw her afterwards. So I wrote her a letter, weeks later. ‘Dear Barbara Brecht, I’m very curious. What did you think of my production?’ She wrote back: ‘You respected his work. You have brought new life to it and made it relevant today. Papa would approve.’”

You suspect that if this Threepenny seduced the gargoyle of Brecht’s estate, it can seduce anyone. How did Wilson do it? Well, lighting design, for one thing.

“Light is the most important element of the theatre for me because it’s the element that helps you hear and see,” he says, “There are two types of lines in the world – straight and curved – and I use them in an abstract manner. A lot of the design is drawings in space, with light.”

Wilson illuminates the stage by separating the senses in rehearsal. He treats the visual and aural components of theatre as separate languages, and then merges them.

The technique resonates with Brecht. “In Brecht’s epic theatre,” Wilson says, “all elements are important. The way text is used. The way an image becomes encoded in movement, gesture. Aesthetically we’re very different, but the principles are very, very close to how I think about the theatre.”

So with his formal, ritualistic stagecraft, does Bob Wilson hate naturalism? “I do. I hate…” – his voice becomes an unintelligible, disgruntled murmur – “People acting natural on stage is a lie! I can’t stand it. To me theatre is artificial. The way you speak is artificial. The way you speak on a stage is not same way you speak on the street – it’s a craft, you have to learn it – the way you sit is not the same way you sit on a bus. The light is different, the floor is different. The air is different. If you accept that being on the stage is something artificial, to me that looks more natural.”

And maybe more honest. Intimidatingly, Wilson is on record as saying his work is “not open to interpretation”. What does he mean?

“In formal theatre,” he explains, “there’s a certain distance from the material. So you can present ideas but you don’t try to insist that a person seeing it thinks what you think. The reason one works as an artist is to ask questions, that is to say, ‘What is it?’ and not to define what something is. If you know what it is, then don’t do it. There’s no reason to do it. You can do Hamlet every night but each night you can think about it completely differently. You must stay open. To have an interpretation of Hamlet denies possibilities, all the other ideas. What I do allows the audience to reflect on the situation in multiple ways.”

To anyone with an eye for the Australian festival circuit, one of the highlights of 2013 is the production of Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera from the great dramatist’s own company, the Berliner Ensemble, making its first appearance in Australia under the direction of one of the most celebrated figures in the contemporary theatre, Robert Wilson.

Brecht’s famous Weimar Republic musical, in this production, isn’t set in any time or place, though the imagery suggests the slinky sexed-up world that Threepenny sprang from – the doomed moment between wars that produced Kurt Weill’s music with Mack the Knife and Pirate Jenny, and all that savage, sparkling cabaret we associate with a decadent, anything-goes German world that had no time for the Nazis but seemed to see them like leering shadows on the wall.

Robert Wilson’s production headlines the Perth Festival from February 8 and a lot of people who care about theatre will be off to the city of mining riches to see this devastating, black-hearted musical that Brecht and Weill wrote as a murderous, if hilarious, critique of capitalism and its discontents.

I talked on the phone a week before Christmas to Ann-Kristin Rommen, who is Robert Wilson’s co-ordinating director on this production. Her own voice is soft, alert, very European and correct, but with the dramatic moodiness of a theatre person who has worked with the maestro for 30 years.

“The way of working with Bob Wilson,” she says, “from doing Wagner’s Ring to King Lear and Threepenny Opera, it’s always the same approach. You start by doing it silently, and it’s all about movement. Then we let it rest for a few months and go back to place the text with that movement we created earlier. Wilson wants to be sure the visual book is as strong as the audio – it has to stand on its own.”

“I come back and place the text,” she adds with a wry flourish, “so that it makes sense! It cannot be arbitrary. But what you get when you put them together is a complex truth, a way of moving and speaking that you might not get if you were simply illustrating what you’re saying.”

Rommen says that this process of separating out the elements of a show before recombining them treats every aspect of theatrical craft with equal seriousness, on its own aesthetic terms. It is a more radical imagining than the usual sort of production which just starts with the text.

“Wilson takes light very seriously. Light for him is like an actor. You need the same time and attention as you would with an actor, and because he’s Robert Wilson, because of his history, he gets the time and money to make that happen,” she says, noting that the technicians at the Berliner Ensemble receive their own applause at curtain call.

“Robert Wilson takes light very seriously. Light for him is like an actor.”
This isn’t to say that the words are devalued in this style of theatre. The opposite, in fact. Rommen illustrates the complicated way they’re used in this production: “If I say ‘I’M GOING TO KILL YOU,’ she bellows down the phone in a hostile, boorish way, “that’s one thing. But if I say,” – and here her voice becomes whispery and charming and sinister in tone, like the song of a siren with knife uplifted – “‘I’m going to kill you…’ Well, that’s rather more scary and strange.”

When you put that together with the seriousness with which Wilson illuminates his visual conception of Threepenny, you have a potent method of avoiding the shorthand of the cheaply lifelike, and it does sound very compatible with Brecht’s ideas about alienation techniques and resisting an easy dramatic illusion.

“Brecht always wanted the distance between the actor and the actor looking down at himself acting,” Rommen says, “It’s close to what Wilson always does. He may be the perfect director for Threepenny.” Even Brecht’s daughter reportedly said of this production, “Papa would approve”.

It’s fascinating to wonder how Brecht – the man who is universally acknowledged as the greatest innovator in 20th century theatre but whose work is always shadowed by the intensity of his Marxist politics (and in some sense therefore by yesterday’s politics; he was the theatre magician of communist East Berlin) – will thrive in the hands of the strenuous experimentalist whose tableaux-like work Melbourne audiences have seen in I La Galigo and The Temptation of St Anthony.

Robert Wilson’s Threepenny might be magisterially orchestrated, classical and abstract, but it is all as a way of telling the truth. He also allows more fun by making things so mean. Fun is an interesting concept and a complex one because it allows for the stylisation of satire. So if Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (which Threepenny is a modernist cartoon of) is itself an ‘anti-opera’, is the Brecht/Weill piece an ‘anti-musical’?

“Threepenny was an anti-opera,” Rommen replies, “That’s what it was in the 20s. It used a lot of jazz, folk, music that was not meant to be heard in an opera-house. It was making fun of the operatic structure. But an ‘anti-musical’? I don’t know. Maybe it is like the true form of a musical – it reinforces by music and song things that can’t be said as well in speech. The songs can give another direction to a thought, a different intensity.”

But can this Threepenny be taken from its German context? Well, the production has just toured to Sao Paulo in Brazil where audiences were “laughing their heads off”. “It’s short and tight,” Rommen says, “Our challenge is to make it as precise and perfect in Perth as it is in Berlin.”

What about the suggestion critics have made that Wilson’s version turns the actors into marionettes? Rommen doesn’t like this idea one bit. “This is a criticism that comes up with Wilson all the time,” she says with some asperity, “because his work is formal, abstract. It isn’t naturalistic. What we do is artificial. We don’t try to be natural, we try to be true. It’s all about what’s happening in the moment. The actors don’t feel like they’re puppets, by the way; the process is a great help to them.”

The actors at the Berliner Ensemble have an extraordinary reputation, although Rommen says the Ensemble is not a school, for all its fame. It brings together for instance the broadest range of actors – from veterans who worked with Heiner Muller in the 70s to performers not long out of acting school. They’re united only by supreme talent and a commitment to political theatre broadly considered.

But Rommen points out that it’s marvellous and liberating to work with a theatre that has such a strong tradition. Brecht, after all, established the Berliner with his wife Helene Weigel (the first Mother Courage and an actress of genius) in 1949.

And the mystery of Threepenny Opera, Rommen thinks, is that there’s something about the contrast – the tension between the manner and the method, the elegance and the savagery in this black-hearted work – that touches the audience. Entertaining people is easy with so many landmark songs, but making the audience feel complicit in the work’s arbitrariness and injustice is another matter.

Such are the intimidations and joys for a group of world-renowned theatre progressives bringing this gangster musical to life at a precarious moment in capitalism’s history.

Rommen is right to say of Threepenny that “it was written for this moment”, and it will be interesting to see what happens when it is performed in Perth – the city of Gina Rinehart – a city insulated by distance and flush with the gold of China: one of the more complex tyrannies since Hitler fused capitalism and totalitarianism, only a few years after Brecht saw the shadows of criminals as the world’s true soul, and turned it into song.
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source: rfifr

Que el Berliner Ensemble esté en París es desde ya importante por el sentido simbólico del hecho. La compañía de Bertolt Brecht presentó en 1954, en esta misma sala de lo que hoy es el Théâtre de la Ville, Madre Coraje, obra de Brecht protagonizada por la esposa del dramaturgo, Helene Weigel. Y lo hizo en el marco del Festival Internacional de Arte Dramático, evento que poco después se convertiría en el celebérrimo Teatro de las Naciones. Así, pues, desde ese año 1954, el Berliner Ensemble no actuaba en París, de allí que su sola presencia, con la gran sala llena a más no poder, veinte actores en escena, una orquesta y La ópera de los tres centavos, haya suscitado el máximo interés en el mundo francés de la cultura.

El interés de este acontecimiento teatral no es, sin embargo, sólo simbólico. Es también, y principalmente, un acontecimiento artístico. No se trata de una puesta en escena más de la célebre ópera de los mendigos que Bertolt Brecht y Kurt Weill estrenaron en Berlín en 1928. Se trata de una recreación de la obra realizada por el mago del teatro, Robert Wilson. Es una obra diferente debido a la estética visual tan particular impuesta por el director escénico estadounidense. En esta versión nada es realista. Los actores llevan un maquillaje blanco, como de mimo, y se desplazan en el escenario con movimientos absolutamente reñidos con el naturalismo. Movimientos de muñecos a pilas, de robots o de pantomima. O a veces los cuerpos son sólo sombras que atraviesan los magistrales juegos lumínicos que son el sello autoral de Robert Wilson. Este excelente espectáculo inaugura la parte teatral de la edición 38 del Festival de Otoño de París.
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source: theatrorama

Pour Brecht, « L’opéra de quat’sous » est un premier pas vers l’opéra épique. Il y dénonce la corruption des milieux politiques en établissant un parallèle entre les pratiques de la pègre et celles des capitalistes tout en fustigeant l’hypocrisie de la morale traditionnelle. Kurt Weil imagine un accompagnement musical de plusieurs parties du texte de Brecht avec un humour féroce et une grande dextérité orchestrale. La célèbre ballade de Mackie, fait partie de ces chansons caractéristiques de ce type d’opéra berlinois où les nombreux dialogues parlés s’opposent nettement aux songs. Robert Wilson réalise une mise en lumière absolument exceptionnelle de l’œuvre de Brecht, invitant le spectateur à pénétrer la pègre londonienne, qui intrigue à l’ombre de ses administrés. La finesse et l’élégance de la mise en scène apportent une distanciation supplémentaire au texte et portent les comédiens en gloire dans un halo de lumière qui irradie la malhonnêteté par un ensemble sombre, entre rêve et réalité.

Des portants mobiles sur lesquels s’érigent des barreaux lumineux circonscrivent, tout au long du spectacle, les lieux de la compromission. Robert Wilson joue la carte de la sobriété pour les décors car un jeu de lumière pâle aux allures cinématographiques, habille l’ensemble d’une puissante charge émotionnelle. Les silhouettes se devinent, fendent la semi-obscurité d’un espace suggéré, plongeant la salle dans l’intimité et la proximité d’une bande de malfrats qui fait autorité à Soho. Le spectateur pénètre inopinément la pègre londonienne dont il savoure les écarts de langage au rythme d’un accompagnement musical suave et suggestif en dépit d’une partition cadencée aux accents populaires. Le sexe et l’effroi s’arriment à une succession d’images séquentielles d’où jaillit une galerie de portraits fortement inspirée du cinéma muet expressionniste. Des visages poudrés, dessinés par la noirceur d’un maquillage outrancier, surgissent d’une nuit méphistophélique.

Les comédiens imposent, au regard surpris, une présence captivante, enchaînant les arrêts sur image avec une étonnante précision. Les corps se meuvent et se libèrent du carcan scénographique traditionnel au rythme de l’accent prononcé de la langue allemande que l’orchestre accompagne dans une parfaite symbiose. Veit Schubert incarne un Peachum poignant et caricatural dans sa manière de gérer le vice et la malhonnêteté. Traute Hoess (Celia Peachum) s’approprie l’espace avec une autorité qui fait trembler et s’oppose à la douceur de sa fille Polly (Christina Drechsler), qui, candide et touchante, succombe au terrible Mackie. Stefan Kurt (Mackie) est confondant. Il mène un combat de tous les instants pour interpréter un personnage complexe et séduisant à la fois. La blondeur de sa chevelure et son visage blafard, fendent l’obscurité d’un espace corrompu par le vice. Le Berliner Ensemble est de retour à Paris et crée l’évènement autour d’une pièce maîtresse de Brecht mise en scène de manière magistrale par Robert Wilson.
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source: kommersantru

Так представляет себе смысл театра Роберт Уилсон

Третий Международный театральный фестиваль имени Чехова благополучно перевалил за экватор. И если в первой половине его программы доминировали творцы “новых реальностей”, заявившие о себе сравнительно недавно (Кристоф Марталер, Кристиан Лупа или Петер Лебл), то в ближайший месяц Москву ожидает настоящее нашествие звезд мирового театра. На фестивале ждут Ариану Мнушкину и Теодороса Терзопулоса, Тадаши Сузуки и Деклана Доннеллана. Откроет этот парад знаменитостей самый модный режиссер современного театра Роберт Уилсон. Спектакль “Персефона” миланской компании Change Performing Arts должен стать первой постановкой Уилсона, показанной в России.

Роберт Уилсон, пятидесятипятилетний уроженец штата Техас, оказался востребован в Европе гораздо больше, чем у себя на родине. Старый Свет больше двадцати лет назад впервые испытал на себе наркотический эффект уилсоновского театра и с тех пор прочно “подсел” на Боба (в театральном мире режиссера привыкли называть уменьшительным именем). Его часто упрекают в том, что все его спектакли похожи один на другой. На что Уилсон всегда отвечает одинаково: про Сезанна тоже можно сказать, что он всю жизнь писал одну и ту же картину.

До сих пор похожий на долговязого вундеркинда-компьютерщика, Уилсон сегодня — едва ли не самый плодовитый, удачливый и дорогой (в смысле гонораров) театральный постановщик. Он уже не считается авангардистом-новатором, каким был лет двадцать назад, но еще не перешел в ареопаг ископаемых царствующих классиков, находясь, таким образом, в зените славы и продолжая быть весьма актуальной фигурой.

Уилсону удалось то, что в последние десятилетия не удавалось почти никому. Прославиться и занести свои имена в театральные анналы сумели многие европейские экспериментаторы-шестидесятники, но создать собственный новый театральный язык не получалось почти ни у кого. Кроме Боба. Когда его попросили коротко определить суть его стиля, Уилсон ответил неопределенно, но красиво: театр — это кубик хрусталя в сердцевине спелого яблока.

Аутизм, от которого Уилсон был излечен в детстве, оставил в сознании режиссера стойкое недоверие к литературным текстам. То, как говорится слово, для минималиста Уилсона несравненно важнее того, что оно обозначает. Поэтому и облик вещей в его театре никак не связан с их названием. Уилсон успешно борется с живыми эмоциями на сцене и виртуозно работает с музыкой и светом. Он выстраивает ослепительно красивые статичные композиции и никогда не ошибается в предварительных расчетах. Он ценит европейскую актерскую школу и ненавидит поиски смысла в театре. Вообще, привычное первенство человека на театральных подмостках он отменил.

Все элементы в спектаклях Уилсона равнозначны. Обычный стул или луч света он заставляет “играть” наравне с актером. Архитектор по образованию, он предоставляет слово прежде всего пространству. Соотношение человека и предмета в театре Уилсона все время меняется и зависит от малейшего движения. В приезжающей в Москву “Персефоне” всего один жест — будь то резко отставленная в сторону рука Поэта-рассказчика или безвольно запрокинутая кисть танцовщицы — может оказаться столь значительным, что организует и подчиняет себе все пространство. Кажется, что Уилсон сидит за особым пультом, откуда он незаметным движением фокусирует в любой точке сцены пронизывающие ее невидимые силовые линии.

Уилсоновская “Персефона” иногда напоминает раскрашенную снежную пустыню. Впрочем, по отношению к театру Уилсона аналогии с живой природой не вполне уместны, а может быть, даже обидны. Его сценический мир подчеркнуто сконструирован и нереален, будто вычислен по особой, изощренной математической модели, которая составляет главную профессиональную тайну режиссера. Истинную свободу актер, по Уилсону, обретает только тогда, когда доводит свое поведение на сцене до автоматизма. Чем искусственнее это поведение, тем более естественным и правдоподобным оно кажется. Жизнеподобный, натуралистический театр Роберт Уилсон презирает.

Он удивительным образом избегает присущей театру игровой фальши. У Уилсона никто ничего не изображает. Поэтому, должно быть, и публика чувствует на его спектаклях столь недостающую ей в жизни физическую и эмоциональную свободу. Он знает, что зритель — драматически закомплексованный человек и надо помочь ему медленно и незаметно вплыть в блаженное состояние полной психологической разгрузки.
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source: pamina-magazinde

Diesmal war alles ein wenig anders: Freches Polit-Theater statt glanzvoller Oper gab es in Baden-Baden bei den Herbstfestspielen. Doch Robert Wilsons Inszenierung von Bert Brechts und Kurt Weills “Dreigroschenoper”, die vor zwei Jahren mit dem Berliner Ensemble am Theater am Schiffbauerdamm (der Uraufführungs-Spielstätte) Premiere hatte, zählt zu den besten Deutungen des 80 Jahre alten sozialkritischen Bühnenklassikers.

Die Aktualität schlägt einem beinahe in jeder Szene entgegen. Die Jugend braucht Spaß und tut daher nichts, was „Sinn und Zweck“ hat. In schweren Zeiten wird aus Mitleid Kapital geschlagen, muss jeder zunächst einmal seine eigene Haut retten („erst das Fressen, dann die Moral“). Daraus folgt: Der Einbruch in eine Bank ist nichts gegen die Gründung einer Bank. An dieser Stelle, (es gibt beherzten Szenen-Beifall im Festspielhaus), wird der Spott zur Real-Satire, zumal der Hauptsponsor dieser Veranstaltung eine baden-württembergische Großbank ist.
Gerade weil der gesellschaftspolitische Zündstoff so offensichtlich ist, scheint es verlockend, der „Dreigroschenoper“ einen zeitnahen Bezug überzustülpen. Doch das ist gleichermaßen einfallslos, denn Text und Musik sprechen für sich – hier muss nicht hineininterpretiert, hier muss lediglich ins recht Licht gerückt werden.

Genau an dieser Stelle greift Robert Wilsons magisches Marionettentheater; die Künstlichkeit der bleichen Gesichter, der Licht- und-Schatten-Effekte, der puppenhaften Trippelschrittchen und der dandyhaften Gesten – all das passt zur Halbwelt des Varieté und zu den verklärten goldenen Zwanzigern, es beschwört (zwielichtige) Stummfilm-Atmosphäre und deutet gleichermaßen den Londoner Untergrund an. Dazu setzt das Dreigroschen-Orchester schillernde Akzente mit Kurt Weills schrägem Stilmix aus Jazz, Kirchenmusik, Opern- und Operetten-Karikaturen; manchmal kommentiert gar eine weiche Hawaii-Gitarre das Geschehen auf der Bühne.

Flammende Kreise leuchten in das Dunkel: eine schillernde Jahrmarktsbeleuchtung zur Moritat von Mackie Messer, der man das Knistern einer alten Schellackplatte beigemischt hat. Nahtlos laufen die Bilder ineinander; sie entfalten sich rund um das stilisierte Mobiliar, um Leuchtröhren, die sich entweder in kühler Eleganz zu geometrischen Mustern zusammenfügen oder schlicht als Gefängnisgitter dienen. Wo zu viele Requisiten nur stören würden, da schafft man Bilder durch Geräuschsequenzen wie in einer Hörspielszene: Klimpernde Münzen, klackernde Vorhänge (in Anlehnung an die „Brechtsche Gardine“) werden mit pantomimischen Gesten verbunden. Und wo sich Gesten und Ausstattung dann nochmals mit der Musik verbinden lassen, da wird auch diese Ebene noch genutzt: Mit clownesken Ausfallschritten pointiert Macheath den Rhythmus von Kurt Weills Gassenhauern und fällt damit einen Moment lang auch aus seiner divenhaften Pose heraus. Ein gediegen roter Vorhang umrahmt die Schluss-Szene, wo der rettende Bote zur persiflierten Opernromantik herbeikommt. Bruchlose Übergänge innerhalb der Handlung schafft schließlich eine Stimme aus dem Off (Walter Schmidinger), welche die Zusammenfassungen über den jeweiligen Szenen liest. Nur im ersten Bild lahmt die Regie: Das hysterische Herumschwirren der Frau Peachum, die in Sorge um ihre Tochter ständige „Jesus-Jesus“-Rufe ausstößt, gleicht einer Endlos-Schleife.

Unter der fast klinisch reinen Strenge, die nur andeutet und alles Konkrete beiseite lässt – gerade da entfalten sich auf wunderbare Weise Figuren mit Profil: Macheath, Bandit und Polygamist zugleich (faszinierend in dieser Rolle: Stefan Kurt), trägt Fetisch-Wäsche unter seinem schwarzen Mantel; er bewegt sich damit zwischen beiden Geschlechtern, und das macht ihn erst recht fremd und unberechenbar.

Knorriges Gegenstück dazu ist Veit Schubert als Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, der Chef einer Bettlerplatte, der in seiner kantigen Art die glatt geschliffene Regie unterläuft. Mit seiner schrulligen Frau Celia (herzerfrischend komisch: Traute Hoess) liegt er ständig im Clinch, und deren zur Schau gestellte Rundungen zeigen außerdem, wo es ihr im Zusammensein mit dem Gatten ansonsten an Befriedigung fehlt. Peachum treibt außerdem den korrupten Polizeichef Brown (Axel Werner) in die Enge, und dessen mangelndes Rückgrat zeigt sich auch bildhaft in seiner gekrümmten Haltung.

Ein wenig blass wirkt dagegen Polly Peachum (Christina Drechsler): Die Naivität dieser romantischen Kindfrau ist zu eindimensional, als dass sie den derben, hintergründigen Zügen der „Seeräuber-Jenny“ und des „Barbara-Songs“ facettenreich begegnen könnte. Genial ist dafür Angela Winkler (Spelunken-Jenny), die mit ihrem (gewollt) abgehalfterten Tremolo in der Stimme (beim „Salomon-Song“) und ihrem feuerroten Haar zum weißen Gesicht sämtliche Huren-Klischees bedient.
Es ist ein großartiger Abend voller Zaubertheater, voller Überzeichnungen, mit einem Hauch von Dekadenz.