Welcome to the Stud Garden

"Wir haben ein bisschen schnell versucht die Welt zu verändern. Wir sollten damit beginnen, sie genauer zu interpretieren . . ."

-Danton

"We tried to change the world a little too quickly. We should begin by interpreting it more precisely . . ."


Note: the header quote, as well as subsequent quotes at the top of each entry are from Büchner's play, Danton's Death. Also, be on the look out for links sprinkled throughout the blog, including this entry. I've decided that is the most reasonable way to throw in extra pics & info for those who are interested, without overloading the casual blog reader. Enjoy! Viel Spaß!

Ja, meine Damen und Herren, wilkommen in Stuttgart! Founded in 950 A.D. as a stud farm, it grew quickly and by the 14th century had become one of the most prominent cities in Germany. The 19th century brought tons of technical innovation, and the 20th century saw the rise of Porsche and Mercedes, both Stuttgart companies. It also brought the second world war, in which Stuttgart was pretty much leveled. And after being painstakingly reconstructed, it has now reclaimed its place as an industrial powerhouse and the cultural capitol of southwest Germany.

And what better time for me to show up! I somehow convinced the Goethe Institute to throw some money my way and hook me up with the Staatstheater Stuttgart (one of the largest, and best theaters in the country) to assist on a production of Danton's Death, by Georg Büchner. Dantons Tod, is a play which takes place in the French Revolution, but is really about all of the revolutionary stirrings in Germany in the mid-1800's, as well as having deeper political reverberations through to the present . . .

But that can all wait. First, let's talk about how amazing this city is! And what a wild ride the last week has been.

I departed Chicago on a Friday, and took the overnight flight with KLM Royal Dutch airlines. This is the third time I've flown with KLM and I must take a moment to enthusiastically recommend them. The seats are comfie (even for someone of my stature), you get your own personal tv screen with tons of movies/tv shows/radio stations, and they bring by those little hot towels every thirty minutes, just for no reason at all. Lovely.

I arrived in Amsterdam and spent my two hour layover eating a sandwich and drinking an excellent cup of coffee . . . and then ZOOM! To Stuttgart!

Where I was met by Janek Liebetruth, the assistant director of Danton's Death, and my direct point of contact at the theater. We had already been communicating for a few weeks via Facebook, and inside the first ten minutes were chatting in German and getting along famously. He was also picking up another director at the airport that morning, who was coming in from Barcelona. The director, Josep, arrived twenty minutes later and we quickly figured out that he did not speak any German, so we all switched over to English. This was the first of these language shifts that day, but certainly not the last.

So the three of us grabbed the next train into the city and after getting each of us settled in our respective hotels and apartments, Janek took us to the theater to get acquainted with the facilities.

It goes without saying that a city like Stuttgart, which has been around for 1,000 years, has had some time to invest in their cultural institutions. It should come as no surprise then when the Staatstheater (state theater) looks like an encyclopedia entry for Beautiful Neo-Classical Buildings:




Ah yes! The statues! The Ionic columns! The prestige and beauty of aesthetic proportions!



But of course, as luck would have it this year the building is being renovated. For the entire season. So we basically have nothing to do with this place. Le sigh. So it goes. But hey, it probably would have just ruined me for other theaters anyway. No my friends, we are currently situated here:









Two subway stations further north than the original theater, in an old Mercedes building that has been completely retrofitted for the theater's use. And I mean COMPLETELY. Like, they stripped the place and built three brand new theater space in there. A 450 seater, a 250 seater, and a 100-seat black box. Not to mention a huge foyer (ca. 10,000 sq. ft.) with a full bar, and a side cabaret-dance floor area too. Just for good measure. Every one of these theaters are pretty spare and have kind of an industrial feel, but are all still gorgeous and would be the envy of any theater company in Chicago or here for that matter. Did I mention being spoiled?

So we got the full tour and checked the place out. Then we went and strolled around the center of Stuttgart for a few hours to take in the scenery:


I mean, not too shabby, right?

Then it was back to the theater to meet up with Christian Holtzhauer, who is one of the dramaturgs. They were prepping for the premiere that evening of The Good Person of Sezuan, which we all had tickets to as well. By this time I was getting pretty punchy, since I had been up for something like 27 hours without a nap. As I started to fade at the table Christian suggested I go upstairs to his office and take a nap on his couch. Great idea. Two hours passed like a a drop in a bucket and before I knew it, Christian was shaking me awake. It was time for the show.

Upon my (groggy) arrival downstairs, the once-empty foyer was now teeming with over five hundred people. I got my ticket and headed into the sold-out performance. It took place in the biggest of the three theaters, the Arena, which is a converted warehouse space--and its HUGE! Usually the set designer does everything they can to narrow it down, but this time they had taken a different approach: namely to open it up and use the entire thing. So the whole stage was littered with plants and a boxing ring and two full sized monkey cages like you see at the zoo, and tents and lockers and a couple of small houses and a workout area . . . it went on and on. And the actors strode out in tight pleather pant suits and tore into the text. They used a live camera to do close-ups on the action that was too far away to see clearly and rocked out a 3-hour long super-contemporary post-dramatic version of Brecht's famous script. As soon as I saw the stimulus-overload set and the skin-tight pleather costumes I thought: Yep, Welcome to Germany.



The piece was well done and the audience seemed to really like it. As always there was something like fifteen curtain calls (the Europeans are not afraid to show you that they like something) and some hisses and boos at times too (also not afraid to do the opposite). It was a great way to end my first night in Stuttgart.

At the premiere party afterward I was talking to Jörg, the Chief Dramaturg at the theater. He asked how I had found everything so far, and I was gushing about how nice the facilities were. He smiled knowingly and agreed. When asked what would become of this theater when the season was over and they moved back into the renovated original building, Jörg replied:

"Oh, they will destroy this building. A French company owns it, and they want to build something new. So these theaters will disappear."

(excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the ground.)

Three state of the art theaters, offices, foyer, cabaret club, workshops, all built for a single year then torn down. What theater company can afford to throw that up and then let it go in one season? We are seriously playing on a different level here.

I don't remember much about the next day, Sunday, other than Janek waking me up at 3:00 pm to say that breakfast was ready. I had crashed his couch after the premiere party. We feasted and then hung out and watched tv for a few hours before he took me over to the apartment where I would be renting a room from Rahel Ohm, one of the actors in the ensemble.





It turns out Rahel is an original Berliner, and we have tons in common including former colleagues, friends, and even having lived in the same street in Berlin and reminiscing about the bookshop there in the Winsstraße. Yesterday I showed her how to check out the 'street view' function on Google Maps and she thought it was the coolest thing she'd ever seen. We're getting on quite well.

Its also really crazy how all of my technical gadgets know immediately that I'm in Deutschland. Google is auf Deutsch, all the ads and pop-ups too, only Facebook seems not to have gotten the memo. Turns out Pandora does not work outside the US. And a lot of video content on YouTube is also not available. I guess the Germans are coming down a lot harder on copyright stuff, or maybe the companies have just figured out better ways to block it here.

Monday brought the beginning of the rehearsal process. The rehearsal space is in yet another part of town (this time all the way on the northern edge of the city), and was also built brand new this year. The rehearsal space however, is not going anywhere at the end of this season. Its a keeper. And it should go without saying by now, that it is huge, luxurious and completely state-of-the-art. There are six rehearsal halls, one of which is also used as a performance space (bringing the total number of performance spaces for this theater to five. In three separate districts of the city). The place is simply massive.

For Danton's Death, we are situated in Probebühne 1 (rehearsal hall 1), which is where our rehearsals will take place until we move into the theater in late February. As we began this process last week, I assumed the first two weeks would be tablework. Sitting around the table, reading the play, talking about the play, reading the play some more, talking some more. We are at the top of an eight week rehearsal process, which is something like triple the amount of time that we usually rehearse in the states. So one would figure it would be a while before anything really interesting happened.

Wrong. WRONG!! Oh how wrong you would be!

We started off the Konzeptionsprobe (conceptual rehearsal) with a table read, yes. And the whole design team was present, as well as the artistic director and dramaturgs and even an acting class from the Stuttgart Acting School that had come to watch the first rehearsal.



But then, after our director Nuran had talked about his concept and we heard the play read out loud, all those extraneous folks left and the fun began. Instead of continuing with table work, Nuran had the sound designer throw on some atmospheric music ('This is the End', The Doors), the lighting designer dimmed everything to a soft glow with lots of shadows, and the video designer put a live camera on stage that the actors could play with. And then, the actors began to improvise while the prompter shouted their text to them and they just started playing within the atmosphere created. Nuran would bounce around the entire time, shouting direction, sometimes whispering, sometimes jumping up on a table and playing with the actors. This went on for a couple of hours, and continued to be the norm for the rest of the week. We come in each day, talk about the scene that Nuran wants to work on, then approximate it with lights/sound/video/costumes and the actors just start trying stuff out.

Its been the most exciting, challenging, crazy, wild, interesting, mind-blowing start to a rehearsal process I've ever had. Ever. Like, in my entire life. SO exciting!

I have so many more stories to tell, but that will have to do for now. Tune in next week for a more elaborate discussion of the rehearsal process, stories of Brian the action-cameraman, and spontaneous blowpipe construction. These and more coming at you very soon.

Till then, I'm rehearsing,


Brian


"If you don't go, you'll never know."

-Robert DeNiro