Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino: Martin Crimp at the Cutting Edge of Representation

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Notes

1. Martin Crimp in conversation with Dan Rebellato, Dealing with Martin Crimp conference, Royal Court Theatre, London, 12 January 2013. Author’s transcription. This article was partially supported by research funding from the School of English, Drama and American & Canadian Studies, University of Birmingham.

2. Martin Middeke, ‘The Undecidable and the Event: Ethics of Unrest in Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life and debbie tucker green’s truth and reconciliation’, in Ethical Speculations in Contemporary British Theatre, ed. by Mireia Aragay and Enric Monforte (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 96–113 (p. 101).

3. Katie Mitchell, quoted in ‘Regisseurin Katie Mitchell im Gespräch’, Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg Spielzeit 2013–14 (Lüneburg: v. Stern’sche Druckerei, 2013), p. 27. The full quotation is: ‘Ich wollte zunächst ein gut gabautes, tradiertes Stück finden, das Martin hin und her wenden und frei behandeln könnte. Es sollte ein Sprungbrett für ihn sein, von dem aus er sich ins Unbekannte aufmachen kann. Die Texte von Euripides sind mir immer sehr nah gewesen und dieses Stück ist das merkwürdigste und eigenwilligste seiner Werke – ein seltsames Juwel’ (‘Firstly I wanted to find a well-built, traditional [in the sense of passed on from one generation to another] piece, that Martin could turn this way and that and be free with. It should be a springboard for him, from where he could start out towards the unknown. The texts of Euripides have always felt very close to me and this piece is the strangest and most idiosyncratic of his works – a rare jewel’).

4. Ibid.

5. The English title is provided in the German playtext. Like In the Republic of Happiness, this play, too, delves into the intimate worlds of families as conditioning mechanisms and mirrors of society to establish parallels between the private and the public. The thematic correspondences between these two otherwise very different plays came to the foreground for Hamburg audiences all the more intensely, as in the 2013–14 season they had the opportunity to see both plays in major theatres in the city. The Thalia Theater gave In the Republic of Happiness (In der Republik des Glücks) its Hamburg premiere, directed by Anne Lenk, on 19 January 2014 at the Thalia in der Gaußstrasse. Later performance dates included 25 and 28 April 2014. See <http://www.thalia-theater.de/h/repertoire_33_de.php?play=1035> [accessed 6 March 2014]. (The play had already received its German language premiere at Berlin’s Deutsches Theater on 28 November 2013, directed by Rafael Sanchez; see <http://www.deutschestheater.de/kontakt/impressum/republik_des_gluecks/> [accessed 6 March 2014]). The dates for the Thalia Theater production in spring 2014 essentially coincided with the repeat performances of Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino, meaning that Crimp’s work – and importantly new or very recent plays – dominated Hamburg stages. In der Republik des Glücks also continued its run in Berlin into spring 2014, creating the opportunity for audiences to experience Crimp’s work within a broader context, in a way we have not seen in the UK in a singular season, except for cases where translations or versions and adaptations were involved. For more details see Vicky Angelaki, The Plays of Martin Crimp: Making Theatre Strange (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 191–99. The only somewhat comparable instance to the Hamburg/Berlin example in the UK has been the premiere of In the Republic of Happiness followed by the London staging of Written on Skin at the Royal Opera House in the 2012–13 season.

6. The text was translated by Ulrike Syha.

7. As this article was being finalised, three more shows had been added on 26 April, 1 and 17 May 2014, <http://schauspielhaus.de/de_DE/kalender/alles_weitere_kennen_sie_aus_dem_kino.11568542> [accessed 29 March 2014].

8. This was the number on the evening I attended the performance.

9. See Angelaki, The Plays of Martin Crimp.

10. Mitchell cited in ‘Regisseurin Katie Mitchell im Gespräch’, p. 27: ‘Diese Inszenierung wird versuchen, sich auf einer feinen Linie zwischen Naturalismus und Science Fiction zu bewegen’ (‘this staging will attempt to walk a fine line between naturalism and science fiction’).

11. Armgard Seegers, ‘Dunkle Vision eines Terrorstaates als innovatives Theater’, Hamburger Abendblatt, 26 November 2013, <http://www.abendblatt.de/kultur-live/article122262164/Dunkle-Vision-eines-Terrorstaates-als-innovatives-Theater.html> [accessed 17 December 2013].

12. Ibid. See also Andrew Haydon, ‘Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem kino – Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg’, 27 November 2013, <http://postcardsgods.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/alles-weitere-kennen-sie-aus-dem-kino.html> [accessed 17 December 2013].

13. Martin Crimp, Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino, trans. by Ulrike Syha (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Theater Verlag, 2013), pp. 27–29.

14. Even though this kind of almost clinical precision can be directly attributed to Mitchell who relies on such scenic images throughout her work, it also emulates the imagery of the Greek tragedy, particularly when it comes to the Mädchen’s movement. For example, Marylin B. Arthur in ‘The Curse of Civilization: The Choral Odes of the Phoenissae’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, 81 (January 1977), 163–85 (pp. 166–67), characteristically refers to the ‘patterned rhythms of the[ir] ritual dance’ at Delphi, where these women will enter a life of devoted servitude ‘like golden statues’. The latter also reflects the taut movement and perfectly upright posture of the Mädchen throughout the play.

15. Haydon, ‘Alles weitere kennen sie aus dem kino’.

16. I argue that the Mädchen exist on a different ground from the characters of the play, over whose action they exercise authority. Therefore, I do not call the Mädchen ‘characters’, as they are devoid of the distinguishing features of, for example, Iokaste or Antigone.

17. Haydon, ‘Alles weitere kennen sie aus dem kino’.

18. For a detailed analysis of the use of objects in Crimp’s theatre, see recurring references in Angelaki, The Plays of Martin Crimp.

19. For an interesting analysis of the Mädchen’s role see also Jens Fischer, ‘Spielt mir das Lied der Labdakiden’, 24 November 2013, <http://www.nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8791:alles-weitere-kennen-sie-aus-dem-kino-martin-crimp-uebermalt-euripides-katie-mitchell-inszeniert-im-ndr-studio-in-hamburg&catid=38:die-nachtkritik&Itemid=40> [accessed 17 December 2013].

20. In Written on Skin, characters also use third person singular to refer to themselves. In that case, it is the storytelling process that is doubly emphasised, from the personal events to the production of the book.

21. Crimp, Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino, p. 28.

22. Ibid., p. 26.

23. Ibid.

24. In the ancient text, the Chorus serves to ground us into the action, its odes ‘organized in the form of a survey of the history of Thebes which leaves off only as the last chapter is about to be added […] provid[ing] the critical link between the themes of fatherland and family, of the heroics of the past and the disgrace of the present […]’ as Arthur notes in ‘The Curse of Civilization’ (pp. 163–64). In Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino, the Mädchen purposefully obscure meaning by pointing to an absurdist relationship between past and present, individual and history, representation and reality, only teasing at the broken links that must be reconstituted. Even though we go on to learn about the men who have left their mark on Thebes, Crimp’s play is geared towards the city as motherland, rather than fatherland, through its emphasis on female genealogies, roots and perseverance.

25. Crimp, Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino, p. 26.

26. Writing about The Country in ‘Violence, Testimony and Ethics in Martin Crimp’s The Country and The City’, in Ethical Speculations in Contemporary British Theatre, ed. by Mireia Aragay and Enric Monforte (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 25–41 (p. 31), Clara Escoda argues that ‘the play encodes a critique of the late capitalist (male) subject and alerts spectators as to the continuing presence of the seeds of violence and barbarism within late capitalist, “civilized” relationships’. It is a fair observation, which, to an extent could also be applied to Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino. However, Escoda’s subsequent description of Crimp’s female characters as attempting to ‘liberate themselves’ (p. 31) from the male character who represents ‘late capitalist individualism […], which infuses […] the female character’s life with violence’ (p. 33), since the female character is, as Escoda goes on to add, ‘victimized’ (ibid.), invites some consideration. In Crimp’s plays, I argue, the women are equally capable of violence as the men (and not merely as a mode of retort), and, indeed, equally duplicitous; they never appear as oppressed by men, but, rather, by their own choices as they, too, opt for the capitalist model of life and its presumed comforts. For each of Crimp’s female characters, it is herself who is the major antagonist; the male character does not pose any kind of threat that she cannot predict or counteract. Indeed, she avoids the victim label at all costs, as opposed to Escoda’s suggestion that [on the basis of Richard’s example in The Country] the male character has the capacity to cause ‘the women [to] feel victims of a totalitarian type of violence, which prompts them to deliver their testimony to one another and to spectators’ (p. 35). As I will go on to show, when women deliver their monologues in Crimp’s plays this is not an act of self-restitution, but a pre-emptive act of self-defence; a conscious, vigorous effort to articulate the self and guide the action. This is reminiscent of Amelia’s statement in Cruel and Tender ‘[…] I could be mistaken for a victim and that’s not a part […] that I’m prepared to play’, Martin Crimp, Cruel and Tender (London: Faber and Faber, 2004), p. 46.

27. Crimp, Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino, pp. 27–28.

28. Ibid., p. 28.

29. Ibid., p. 29.

30. Crimp in conversation with Rebellato. Author’s transcription.

31. Crimp, Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino, pp. 36–37.

32. Ibid., p. 36.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid., pp. 36–37.

36. Ibid., p. 37.

37. Ibid.

38. Women’s hair emerges as a key point of reference and scenic image throughout the play and even though this is made all the more visually striking through Mitchell’s direction, the relevant references are written into Crimp’s text. In his theatre Crimp has often returned to specific preoccupations, but this emphasis on the female body and mentality through the lens of physical appearance is new. The only comparable instance occurs in Cruel and Tender, where two very different personalities, Amelia and Laela, both undergo a process of exposure to the standards set for women today as the Chorus have been replaced by a team of a housekeeper, a physiotherapist, and a beautician who exert authority over the female protagonists. Amelia’s resistance to the oppressive – to herself – ideal of a thin, immaculate woman as a necessary emblem of social status is noteworthy. The fact that this preoccupation, albeit differently, returns in Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino suggests that Crimp is responding to the original genre of the Greek tragedy, where hair, especially in the context of familial traditions, carries the importance of recognition and belonging. See, for example, Chris Vervain, ‘Performing Ancient Drama in Mask: The Case of Greek Tragedy’, New Theatre Quarterly, 28 (May 2012), 163–81.

39. Crimp, Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino, p. 36.

40. Ibid., p. 58.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., p. 63.

45. Ibid., p. 61.

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid., p. 64.

48. Ibid., p. 26.

49. Laura Mulvey’s seminal essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16 (Autumn 1975), 6–18, uses the term ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ and provides a detailed analysis of the objectification of women serving the male gaze in representation.

50. Crimp, Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino, pp. 67–68.

51. Ibid., p. 64.

52. That this image is reserved for the finale of the play is particularly meaningful – it points to a release of angst for Antigone and connects Crimp’s play to the ancient text since he preserves Antigone’s rebellious form as a subject who feels the feminine and sexual awaken within herself. L. A. Swift, in ‘Sexual and Familial Distortion in Euripides’ Phoenissae’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 139 (Spring 2009), 53–87, characteristically mentions that the ‘loose and flowing hair’ is a major symbol of this (p. 64). Antigone’s words, quoted in Swift’s article, further underline the self-assertion and deviation from decorum that Crimp’s version of Antigone also presents to us: ‘I do not cover up the delicate skin of my cheek, where locks of hair fall, nor do I feel shame because of maidenly modesty when I display the scarlet beneath my eyes, the blush on my face. I rush forward, a Bacchant of the dead, tossing back the veil from my hair, loosening my luxurious saffron robe, an escort of corpses, full of tears’ (ibid.). In Crimp’s play the rite of passage into adulthood is predominantly political, but it is still executed through the physical transition to womanhood and the awkwardness of that process. There is also evidence of an aesthetic sensibility of Crimp’s: referring to a production of Attempts on Her Life, he characteristically mentions the moment when, in the finale, the show ‘releas[ed] feeling’ as the female performers removed the wigs they had worn throughout ‘and their natural hair revealed their individuality. [… S]imple and beautiful’. See Martin Crimp, ‘Martin Crimp in Conversation with Aleks Sierz: The Question Is the Ultimate in Disc-omfort’, New Theatre Quarterly, 22.4 (2006), 352–60 (p. 360).

53. Crimp, Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino, p. 26.

54. Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, members of the Pussy Riot collective, which has combined music with political activism, were arrested in 2012, following a protest event they staged in a Moscow cathedral, and subsequently imprisoned. Samutsevich was released in October 2012, while Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova were released in December 2013, an event which, like their arrest, attracted widespread media coverage, also in terms of their criticism of the penal system as they experienced it. Anna Nemtsova and Shaun Walker provide Alyokhina’s account of her time in prison as one of ‘“endless humiliations”, including forced gynaecological examinations almost every day for three weeks’; see Anna Nemtsova and Shaun Walker, ‘Freed Pussy Riot Members Say Prison Was Time of “Endless Humiliations”’, Guardian, 23 December 2013, <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/23/freed-pussy-riot-amnesty-prison-putin-humiliation> [accessed 7 March 2014]. See also Miriam Elder, ‘Pussy Riot Sentenced to Two Years in Prison Colony over Anti-Putin Protest’, Guardian, 17 August 2012, <http://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/aug/17/pussy-riot-sentenced-prison-putin> [accessed 7 March 2014].

55. Crimp, Alles Weitere kennen Sie aus dem Kino, p. 48.

56. Ibid., p. 35.