‘The Plague’ and ‘Dekalog’ Show Innovation in German-Language Theater – The New York Times
When theaters began to shut down in mid-March, many companies worldwide rushed to put their archives online, inundating cyberspace with video recordings that could scarcely do justice to live performance. Several theaters, however, jumped at the opportunity to innovate with fresh online productions.
In the German-speaking world, where contemporary theater is constantly deconstructing itself and redrawing aesthetic boundaries, some directors, not content merely to work at a distance, have taken up new lines of inquiry. What possibilities exist for theater at this moment? Created and consumed by people who never meet face to face, mediated by devices that both engage and distract, how does digital theater resemble analog theater? How can it? Perhaps it makes more sense to think of it as cinema. Or what if it’s a different beast altogether?
Made in various locations around the depopulated city of Oberhausen, the production features specterlike projections of actors who were filmed remotely, then beamed onto surfaces indoors and out, including window shutters, armchairs, blank walls and even weeping willows and reeds, bringing Camus’s pestilence narrative to life. The episodes, each less than half an hour, are available to stream from the German provider 3Sat until November. (The fifth and final episode premieres on Saturday.) Zander effectively crowdsourced the lengthy narration by recruiting dozens of (mostly older) locals who filmed and uploaded their own contributions. Like the theater’s ensemble actors, who inhabit the main roles, the amateurs appear holographically.
No doubt, Zander has found a clever and unusual solution to working within the constraints of social distancing, but how does the mini-series relate to theater? With the low-fi projections, tight editing, use of title cards and arpeggio-heavy soundtrack, “The Plague” has a far greater affinity with film or TV than with the stage. In both aesthetic and tone, it often resembled a police procedural.
The episodes, each roughly half an hour, were streamed over four weeks starting in mid-April. In each, a member of the Schauspielhaus ensemble performed a semi-improvised monologue, trailed by a roving, often hand-held camera on one of the theater’s smaller stages. The actors crawled through eccentric sets designed by Natascha Leonie Simons and Ann-Kathrin Bernstetter, which featured balloons, plants, swings and kitchen appliances. Sparse or cluttered, these installation-like environments framed the performers effectively.
In contrast to the polish of “The Plague,” “Dekalog” was insistently rough around the edges, with room for experimentation and error. Live, unscripted and unedited, it was digital theater without a safety net, and often left the actors exposed. In the eighth episode, “Thou Shalt Not Lie,” Josh Johnson, an American dancer, spent half an hour fielding viewers’ questions in English. “Yeah, I’m extremely nervous,” he answered to the camera at one point. If Johnson was lying, he’s a very good actor.
“Corona put us in a place where we are constantly tested in making decisions for the greater good or our self-gratification,” the director explained. During the livestreams, viewers could vote on what courses of action the characters should take, ranging from seemingly minor choices to full-blown ethical decisions. The interactivity became a way of putting moral responsibility in the audience’s hands.
“‘Dekalog’ is a format for the curious, the treasure hunters and for fans of the incomplete,” he said at the beginning of Episode 2, which bore the modified title “Thou Shalt Not Play God” and starred the excellent Karin Pfammatter as a doctor forced to make a prediction with life-or-death consequences. “Anyone who’s in a less adventurous mood,” Rüping continued, “and wants something more complete and less provisional should turn this off now and watch ‘Stand by Me’ from 1986 — which is a really great film.”
For all their differences, “The Plague” and “Dekalog” shared an insistence on the social aspect of art in performance. At a time when we have been robbed of much of our fundamental human contact, it seems appropriate that directors are finding ways to satisfy our craving for connection. The professional and nonprofessional cast members of “The Plague” have never met, but they were brought together in the artistic world of the project.
Somewhat ironically, working in isolation recalled to Rüping how theater is, on a core level, a communal act: “It’s easy to get caught up in a discourse of aesthetics, of politics, acting methods. You sometimes lose track of the basics,” he said. “With ‘Dekalog,’ I felt the desire to connect with other human beings and understood how a group of strangers can become a community, even a fleeting one. That’s what it’s all about.”