‘Today, we remember the dead.’
2 Schiess, ‘Remembrance Day’. What follows is an unedited reproduction of Mario Schiess, ‘A rehearsal with Dürrenmatt’, 1 September 1979, manuscript, private collection.The most famous Swiss of all times is undoubtedly William Tell whose ‘theatre on the streets’ nearly 700 years ago was almost solely responsible for the founding of the oldest democracy in the world. After that initial historic effort the dramatic instinct of the nation needed a long recovery time but then it re-asserted itself spectacularly by bringing forth two figures of global importance all at once: Max Frisch and Friedrich Dürrenmatt, in their hey-day almost the only significant voices of German theatre writing. Both, in recent years have faded somewhat from the public image, Frisch now doing work removed from the hurly-burly of the stage, Dürrenmatt producing two or three flops which failed on a colossal scale probably because they employed a colossal apparatus. I venture to speculate that had they been small scale works they would have found an audience in the smaller theatres because Dürrenmatt flops are still miles better than most that sees the footlights throughout the world.
For years, ever since I directed my first Dürrenmatt (The Physicists – 1963), I have been an avid admirer of my compatriot (though patriot is about the last thing that Dürrenmatt would like to be known as) and when it became necessary that I visit my former homeland I chanced my arm and asked to see the great man. There were certain circumstances which made me think that maybe I’d be lucky but when the meeting became a reality through the mediating powers of Egon Karter I found myself having a sleepless night turning over in my mind that ½ hour would be nice but twice or three times that time not enough to speak about everything that was on my mind. As it happened I was invited to come to Neuchatel (Switzerland – Dürrenmatt’s hometown) and watch a rehearsal of his new play which he is directing himself for a try-out period in a small theatre in Germany and a world premiere in Vienna.
Much too early I arrived at the Eurotel where rehearsals are held in the Salle Rouge. Karter, who had primed Dürrenmatt, took me in and we were the first to arrive in the large room which housed a large platform on which lay an upturned table encircled by 6 chairs. I recognized it immediately as the setting of his short novel and Radio play, ‘Die Panne’ of which a bad American stage adaptation exists with a singularly unimaginative title of ‘A Deadly Game’. That is in fact his new work: his own adaptation for the stage of this short novel which is one of the most significant and famous pieces of post war literature in the German language. It wouldn’t be Dürrenmatt if he hadn’t extensively revised and recreated it for the new medium, as I was to see shortly.
Slowly the actors arrived, among them the former Intendant Karl-Heinz Stroux who made a great name for himself by his marvelous Ionesco productions in the 1950s and early sixties. Guido Bachmann a new voice in German literature is making some bread by acting and Eleonore Schmid a pretty young actress (who bears an uncanny resemblance to our own actress Sandra Prinsloo). Wolfgang Preiss had been to South Africa and asked me to convey greetings on my return, Heinrich Trimbur looked like the perfect casting for Einstein in ‘The Physicists’ and a few others. Peer Schmidt who plays the lead of Alfredo Traps came late, hence I was not introduced to him. Last of all Dürrenmatt himself shuffled in, not as large as I had thought, sparse white hair and bearing marks of a lost battle with the razor obviously given up in disgust half-way.
After the unusual apparently aimless greetings, mumbles, chats, stubbing out of cigarettes I settled as inconspicuously as possible into my chair and the rehearsal began.
Should have begun, rather. Just before the first text was uttered Peer Schmidt discovered me with my notepad and pen and – ‘the fat was in the fire’.
‘I don’t know who the gentleman is but he’s got his pen at the ready and critics at this stage …’
‘He’s a guy from South America, don’t worry’ Dürrenmatt threw in good-naturedly while I did a double take.
‘South Africa, South Africa’ to the one, ‘I’m a director not a critic’ to the other.
‘South Africa, then, makes no difference let’s go’ said Dürrenmatt while Schmidt launched into an explanation why he had reacted that way and I returned pad and pen to my briefcase lest I found myself out on my ear. Schmidt I classified as a nervous-race-horse-actor and was to be proved right.
The former Intendant Stroux hadn’t got the South African bit.
‘Oh do you know Mr. So and so in Mexico’ he asked.
‘South Africa, South Africa’ I whispered, he formed a soundless ‘Oh’ of understanding and things began to move.
The first scene rehearsed was between Alfredo Traps and Justine, a love scene, a scene in which two comparatively young people express great respect and belief in each other, a scene of great tenderness, and classic beauty set on a garden bench which will probably be lit to simulate the full moon. The Dürrenmatt variable which makes it hilarious in its outrageousness is the fact that both are murderers and that their murders promise to provide the bond which will transport them into ecstasies of erotic love.
The next long scene (earlier in sequence) was one of almost acrobatic movement and incredible verbal virtuosity. Five men in grandiose drunkenness playing the game of human justice and divine indifference. It is a diabolically difficult scene particularly the way Dürrenmatt choreographed it, the actors were nowhere sure of their text and since they are asked to do crazy things tempers were strained, flaring up now and again. I was interested to see how Dürrenmatt would handle it. If he was irked he never showed it. The storm blew up and died on his composure which clearly spelt out that more important things than petty personal squabbles were at stake. He gives much scope to his actors and shows keen appreciation when a spontaneous action of one of them pleases him. So with all the raw nerves that are showing a spirit of camaraderie reigns nevertheless. This way, even the occasional outbursts of the former Intendant stay within acceptable limits.
Fascinating was seeing Dürrenmatt’s creative mind in action. Towards the end of the aforementioned scene four of the five drunken old men stumble into the garden each carrying a pistol with which they intend to execute the sentence that in their game of justice they had dealt. By way of illustration Dürrenmatt said: ‘If I was an extreme director I would now tell you to turn around, and pee. These are old men and old men have to pee if they’ve been boozing all night.’
In the general hilarity that the remark caused, the actors did just that while speaking their text. The result was so comical that it was kept and will now probably appear as an introduction in the printed version which will be out two or three weeks after the premiere.
Why should Dürrenmatt want to direct his own plays? An excerpt from a recent publication is revealing: ‘… His (Brecht’s) plays had been rehearsed through, mine weren’t, mine got stuck in the western theatre system. If they were successful they were chased over many stages, the how was more or less unimportant. Thus, compared to Brecht plays, much in mine has never been solved on the stage, much is even more unskilled (than much is in his). Everything depended on the premieres, the plays which did not pass were left behind, were stigmatized from the beginning, only few theatres played them afterwards (and those did so) without learning from the mistakes that were made during their first productions since they were not documented by anyone. But even of the successful plays I saw only a few good performances. Today I fear nothing more than to see one of my plays performed: I am reproducibly in the theatre only in rare moments of luck born out of grotesque misunderstandings…’
His career as a writer for the theatre began in the early fifties when his first play ‘Es steht geschrieben’ received its world premiere at the Zürich Schauspielhaus (Switzerland) at the end of which he had as he puts it the incredible luck ‘that the people were jeering instead of yawning.’ His concern and curiosity about the craft aspect of his art inevitably drove him to direction. Before tackling his own plays he adapted Shakespeare (‘King John’ and ‘Titus Andronicus’), directed Goethe’s ‘Urfaust’ and brought out his adaptation of Strindberg’s ‘Dance of Death’ under the title of ‘Play Strindberg’, a three-hander that is a lot more Dürrenmatt than Strindberg. It turned out to be a ‘little dance of death’ for Dürrenmatt’s streak, the last of the international stage successes which had begun with ‘The Visit’, continued with ‘The Physicists’, ‘The Meteor’ and made him a world-famous figure of the theatre.
His early essay ‘Theatreproblems’ is surely one of the most important bits of theatrical writing on the theatre of latter years for me more realistic thus more relevant than anything that Brecht wrote. And I like the undogmatic approach that makes him say: I hope that my thoughts about the theatre, should somebody read them, be read correctly: ‘not as the bible of truth, but as a document which a man has written who had to, in his effort of clarifying to himself his role as a writer, think through anew the institution of the theatre and going on from there the human situation. It is self-evident that such a document bears witness to his errors as well as his insights.’
Some of these themes came up during the conversation over lunch at his ‘Stammbeiz’
3 ‘Regular pub’. the Hotel des Roches. Obviously the owner is a good friend and appreciates the qualities of his famous client: The walls are covered with framed drawings which Dürrenmatt produced, probably during some heavy sessions of wine tasting of which he is very fond. They bear witness to his life-long fascination with painting and the graphic arts.
For instance, I mentioned to Dürrenmatt that the English language performances of his plays that I had seen had never been satisfactory. The cause to me, appears to be rooted in the language. The baroque fullness of his imagery clothed in extreme economy of words is difficult to translate and, I suspect, a great deal has to be solved by the playing of the actors.
4 One of Schiess’s many corrections in this document consisted of crossing out the following sentences: ‘This difficulty is not as material in Afrikaans. German translates much easier into another Germanic language.’ In the admittedly few English performances that I had seen the director and actors had tried to express the grotesque by pathos, by latter-day Victoria melodrama, in short by hamming things up and ham in Dürrenmatt is fatal.
It wasn’t news to him. He has liked very few of the performances of his plays in English (few in any language for that matter!) and, he said, the strangest were the Russian productions. Russian actors wallow in their opportunities, his ‘Physicists’ ran for 5 hours in Moscow. The actors did all sorts of things even occasionally speaking some lines – Dürrenmatt mimicked some phantasy-Russian, the accuracy of which I only appreciated in the USA when I heard the recently defected Russian Bolshoi dancer on TV.
To return to the rehearsal which was slowly coming to an end. The final scene was about to be rehearsed. The four old men in the garden now carry out their verdict not by shooting the victim who, in any case has moved elsewhere, but at the stars which represent the old gods Jupiter, Venus, Mercury etc. This scene is in verse and I shall not attempt to describe it. This is ‘urtheater’, theatre in its most basic original form and must be seen and experienced for appreciation. A meaningful re-introduction of ritual on the modern stage more successful than any other attempt I have seen.
For me Dürrenmatt is back in form. It looks as if re-working through his old material that was successful in other media will be the key that will once again unlock the door to the international scene. ‘Die Panne’ has become a play (at least as far as I could judge from the excerpts I saw at mid-rehearsal stage) that much will be heard of in the near future. Like Muhamed Ali used to, Dürrenmatt will be back – and this metaphor is not all that far fetched for he once said: ‘… from my grandfather’s life I know that writing can be a form of fighting.’
1/9/79
Mario Schiess