It will end as quickly as it began. The DRITTE DEGENERATION OST begins rehearsals at its last stop across the old federal states. This time with a proper pause for reflection between venues. What do you do now?
Economically, it would be to say: ‘So! Two months to take care of the next project!’ Or: go on holiday!
Not so with DRITTE DEGENERATION. Immediately after the premiere in Gelsenkirchen, when the project still had a good deal of residual heat, the final conception phase of the production continued. Always with the question in mind: What could be better?
In my opinion, there is no such thing as a finished work in the theatre. What’s more. The moment of supposed completion throws all the participants into the orcus. Where something ‘sits’, boredom takes over. If at all. If the whole chair doesn’t tip over and take all the participants with it. It’s not for nothing that a good dress rehearsal is a bad omen.
Even worse are those who claim that a piece would have been better with one, two or three working days. Then it would have been good – so it could have been finished before the premiere. A directorial mistake that assumes you have something to do with the success of an evening. A ‘wonderfully staged’ play fails because of bored actors, over-sung voices and over-worked technical staff. Whereas any weakness in a production can be made up for by the work of those actually involved.
The director should realise that as the time to the premiere diminishes, their own importance and potential decreases exponentially. You may still be the actual artistic director at the concept rehearsal. The very next morning, you only own half of it at most. And the very next day, you can only hope for good luck that someone is still listening to you.
This makes it all the more important to prepare for this ‘empty time’ of diminishing sovereignty of vision by strengthening the beginning, i.e. the concept.
So the work continued!
An important point was, also precisely for this reason, the strengthening of characters, roles, personal dimensions that can be achieved on stage. The material that is handed to the players, with which they can independently take the evening to the agreed development stage. If you continue with the same score, who should develop it further if not the performers themselves? Developing should then perhaps also mean developing ‘US’ from our last month’s DEVELOPMENTS in terms of personnel, art and budget.
But we won’t leave the score completely untouched either, with a text change here and there, one or two scenes shifted, swapped and condensed. The normal viewer may hardly notice the level of detail that has been tweaked, but for us the most important points have been reset. A more gradual introduction of the characters, which, through a simple scenic twist in the first act, tells the entire narrative more stringently as the inner journey of our protagonist, as a psychological condensation of his perception of the world.
At least that’s what we’re hoping for.
We’ll see if our regular audience (yes, there is such a thing!) likes it.
Now it’s back to rehearsals.
And then perhaps it will be the last time: OPER OTZE AXT.
