Master Geschiedenis Duitslandstudies First reader: Dhr. Dr. M.J. Föllmer Second reader: Dhr. Dr. H.J. Jürgens
17 January 2016
Women in
German
theatre
Andrea Breth, Pina
Bausch and Elfriede
Jelinek
Table of contents
Introduction 2
Andrea Breth: A female director in the FRG 4
Of struggles and opportunities 4
Unusual career 7
Identity and art 9
Repertoire and technique 10
Pina Bausch: The creation of a new language 13
Language of emotions 16
Questions without answers 19
Gender in Bausch’s work 21
Elfriede Jelinek: Author of the axe 24
Miracle Child or Nestbeschmutzer? 24
Theatre 26
Autobiographical 28
Politics and History 30
Feminism and Power 31
A place in theatre history 33
Different or similar 35
The second feminist wave 35
Theatre in West Germany and Austria 37
The role of women in plays 38
Show or tell 40
Examples for a new generation 42
Bibliography 45
Introduction
The 1970s were a revolutionary period in both German and Western history. Old values were being overturned by groups of protesters, from students to working-class citizens. The world was rife with slogans against nuclear weapons, war and the older generations. Peace and equality were widely advocated values . Images of the time show young people with long hair and pacifist badges, but also of militant leftist groups like the RAF. Changing society turned out to be more of a process than a revolution and did not happen overnight.
One group of people that had a lot to gain from changing the world was women. Shackled to old ideas, they were still seen as less important than men. Not only were they less visible, they were certainly less engaged in most layers of life. Many of them stayed at home, caring for their husband and children, as the predominant norms dictated. For them the 1970s brought the change many of them had wished for. A new movement, the second feminist wave, tried to ensure their right to equality. One important factor in the emancipation of women was the fact that slowly they were becoming more visible, not only in the streets and workplaces, but also in the arts . One case in point is the theatre.
Like society, theatre had long been conforming to classical standards. Plays by classical playwrights like Shakespeare were recycled over and over again. Theatre was firmly under control of male directors. . And while things were changing in the theatre in general, for instance the inclusion of other disciplines, like music, dance or mime, in classical pieces and the modernisation of the programme on offer, things were also changing for the people working back- and onstage.
The main question of this thesis is: How did women gain ground in West German and Austrian
theatre of the 1970s and 1980s?
To answer this question, this thesis will highlight three women who helped pave the way for women in the theatre and can serve as case studies for the many other women of the time who were struggling to find their way in a man’s world. Although all these women had their distinct style and way of doing things, each was successful in their own right. Andrea Breth was one of the early female directors in West Germany. Pina Bausch became famous with her own style of dance. And Elfriede Jelinek provoked outrage and admiration with daring novels as well as theatre plays.
Especially interviews were an important source to researching the ways in which these women entered a field of work dominated by men. Two of the three theatre makers are still alive today while
Pina Bausch only died a few years ago, so there is much material to be found in the media. All of them have been interviewed, which not only gives insight into the way they work, but also into the extent to which they saw, or didn’t see, themselves as trailblazers for women in theatre. They all experienced their rise to fame very differently and therefore they make such good case studies. However, not all of them are prepared to talk about their own life and experiences; especially Andrea Breth has always been very private and has thus yielded fewer sources, than either of the other two theatre makers. An important aspect in this might also be the fact that Andrea Breth conformed most to the standards of the time and is therefore less interesting to scholars.
It is important to note that during the 1970s there was not a lot of attention to the fact that these theatre makers were women. They were exceptions to a rule and the media then might not have realized how much influence the women’s movement, and women in general, would have on society in the years to come. Therefore there are not many interviews or texts left from the 1970s which deal with women in the theatre. Most of them were written in the years after, when it became clear that women had achieved great successes in their strife for emancipation.
The first three chapters will introduce Andrea Breth, Pina Bausch and Elfriede Jelinek respectively. Their history, the themes in their work and their process. This order will show these three theatre makers from most conforming to most extreme. In the first chapter about Breth there is still a very clear sense of the regular theatre of the time, because her style stays very close to that of her contemporaries, who were mostly men. Pina Bausch is the subject of the second chapter, she created her own form of dance and managed to achieve fame through this new form that was not yet
dominated by men. The third chapter explores the life and work of Elfriede Jelinek, who was the most political of these three women and most engaged in fighting for women’s rights. In the subsequent chapter a comparison between these women will be drawn, as well as some insight into the time they lived in.
The study of these three women provides important insights into theatre in the 1970s, because it allows for a more diverse picture of this particular artistic world. An all-male picture of contemporary theatre is severely one-sided and by offering up the alternative this thesis tries to diversify the knowledge about theatre in the 1970s.
Andrea Breth: A female director in the FRG
In the 1970s there was a big difference between the theatre culture in East and West Germany. The GDR was a place where female directors could thrive and become successful. There were schools for students who wanted to learn how to direct and there were substantially more female directors than in the FRG. A few examples are Ruth Berghaus, Christine Mielitz and Uta Birnbaum.1 Part of this might
have been due to the fact that women in the GDR were expected to work, while in the FRG it was more common for women to stay at home to take care of their children. The rate of working women was higher overall in the GDR. According to the theories of Marx, Engels, Bebel, and the political leaders of the GDR, the emancipation of women would be accomplished when the emancipation of the working class was realized.2 In general women were not hindered in their aspirations because of
their gender.
In the FRG the situation was altogether different. Aspiring directors did not have schools to go to, but were expected to intern with existing companies and directors. Especially women were having a hard time gaining ground in their chosen professions. Only about half of the women in the FRG were part of the workforce and female directors were almost unheard of. One of the women who did break through in the theatre landscape was Andrea Breth, who managed to find a way to fully function and be appreciated as a director regardless of her gender. Her many successful productions and awards stand as proof for this.
Of struggles and opportunities
Andrea Breth was born in Rieden, near Füssen, in 1952. She was raised in Darmstadt, before taking up the study of English and German language and literature in Heidelberg on her parents’ insistence.3
However Breth’s dream was to work in the theatre and her subjects at the university did not manage to capture her attention for long, though she would later use what she had learned during her time at university to analyse theatre texts. When she was younger she briefly considered a career in acting, but realised quickly that she was more gifted at directing plays. At the time there was no school for aspiring directors in the FRG and students could only learn the trade by becoming assistant to a director and working their way up.4 During the last phase of her study at the university of Heidelberg
Breth applied to the Theater Heidelberg and became an assistant there under general director Peter Stoltzenberg, even though she was not yet 21 years of age. It is not entirely clear why Stoltzenberg chose to hire a female assistant, when women in West-German theatre were still few and far
1 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 48.
2 Kranz: Women’s Role in the German Democratic Republic, p. 69-83. 3 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 168.
between, although not unheard of. As assistant Breth was required to work for almost all the subsections of the company, due to the small budget. She was assistant for theatre, opera, ballet, fairy tale productions and more.5 She had to work hard, but gained a lot of experience in different
fields.
When Stoltzenberg moved to a theatre in Bremen in 1973, Breth travelled with him, while acting as his assistant. After working as an assistant to a few directors who came to Bremen as guests, she quickly moved on to staging her own performances from 1975 onwards. This started with a low-budget children’s play named Die verzauberte Brüder, which she got to direct because the original director cancelled. Breth recounts how little time they had to set up, but she managed to use a lot of special effects like smoke and lights; the exciting staging appealed to both children and parents. The play was a success and allowed Breth to further her career as a director. At first she only directed children’s theatre, although she was allowed to choose for herself which plays she wanted to stage. Children’s plays were regarded as fitting for a woman, since the prevalent thought of the day was that women knew more about children than men. To allow a woman to direct a play for adults did not occur to the male managers of theatres. Even though Breth herself did not have much affinity with children, directing these plays convinced her that she had chosen the right career. This was due to the fact that the theatre was mostly full for her productions and reviews were positive, even though she herself did not always feel like the plays were a personal success, as she mentions in her interview with Irene Bazinger.6 Had Breth not fought for her place as a ‘serious’ director, she might have ended
up as an unknown director of children’s plays in a provincial city.
A few years later, after staging many successful performances, Breth started directing plays for the general audience and was invited to direct for other theatres than the ones where she had been previously employed. A reason for her success might have been the fact that her work was popular among audiences and that she thus managed to earn a lot of money for the theatres she worked for. She directed plays in a way that audiences were used to, with clear storylines and classically trained actors. There might certainly have been a financial motive to hiring her as a director. A low point in Breth’s career was her staging of Emilia Galotti at the Freie Volksbühne in Berlin. The play was a creative failure and Breth took time off from her regular engagements to discover a new way of making theatre for herself. On the insistence of Hermann Beil she travelled to Zurich, to teach acting students.
5 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 43. 6 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 47-48.
With these Swiss students she developed new ways of theatre making. They improvised and wrote their own plays which they performed at a tram depot in Zurich.7 Her foray into modernist theatre,
which she had not attempted before, did not last long. After seven months of experimenting Breth returned to the big theatres of Germany. She claims that it took her these seven months to “find her profession again”.8 In the period following her stay in Zurich she mainly directed her own projects
instead of the customary repertoire. These projects were more visual, contrary to her earlier productions which relied heavily on a close reading of (more classical) theatre texts. This focus on more visual and audio-centred plays did not last for the rest of her career. She quickly returned to more classical theatre, keeping in tune with the prevalent way of theatre making and her own tastes and preferences. Like any other director she developed her style through the years but never again did she stage something as drastically different as during her engagement in Zurich and the months that followed her stay in Switzerland. Breth always stayed close to the contemporary popular style of theatre, in the same way many other directors did. She was never afraid, however, to show gruesome realities in her productions. A lot of these have dark undertones, with respect to plays about war and other darker themes, but also in the sets she had her crew design for her.
The experience of teaching acting students in Zurich certainly benefited Breth, as she was hired by the theatre in Freiburg not long after her engagement in Switzerland. In 1985 her career took off in earnest as she won the Deutscher Kritikerpreis9 a year after Luc Bondy, whom Breth admires to this day. It soon became apparent that she did not feel at home in Freiburg, where theatre seemed marginal to the city’s daily life. In her book Frei für den Moment10 she even calls the city “geistlos”.11 In
1986, three years after starting as a director in Freiburg, she moved to the Schauspielhaus Bochum, where she was free to produce many plays of her own choosing. Her time in Bochum ended in 1989, due to problems personal problems between her and the general director Frank-Patrick Steckel. Part of these problems seem to have stemmed from jealousy on Steckel’s part, as Breth’s productions were more popular and she managed to collect more funds for her big stagings.12 Steckel has not
commented on their differences.
From the 1990s onwards Breth worked for many different theatres and even tried her hand at staging operas. She won multiple prizes and is a well-known and loved theatre director in the German-speaking world. Since a few years she is employed at the Burgtheater in Vienna, where she now lives
7 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 75.
8 “[…] weil ich dadurch wieder zu meinem Beruf zurückfinden konnte.” Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 76. 9 German critics prize. A prize that was awarded yearly from 1951 to 2009 in different categories e.g. art disciplines.
10 Breth: Frei für den Moment.
11 A close translation of “geistlos” might be “soulless” or “without a soul”. 12 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 66.
and works. Her standards are very high; in the past she has cancelled plays at the last minute because she did not believe them to be good enough. These insecurities may stem from the feeling that she always had to prove herself to her male colleagues and failure was not an option that was open to her as a director. She does not often speak of her personal life and prefers to leave it out of her work as well.
Unusual career
It was not usual for women in the FRG in the 1970s to become directors. Therefore Breth’s
development from assistant to famous director is all the more remarkable. If women directed at all it was usually children’s theatre, since they were supposed to know a lot about children.13 Breth herself
remarked that for a female director it was harder to be taken seriously in general. She said she had to know more about lighting and theatre technology than her male colleagues from the technical department, or risk having her creative decisions overruled. She always had to be one hundred percent sure of her decisions and could not afford to make any mistakes.14 Her career as a theatre
director therefore has a lot to do with determination and skill, as it takes a great deal of courage to apply for a position that is not usually filled by other women. One could go as far as to say that it would not have occurred to many, because it did not feel like a valid option. A fair amount of luck also played into it. Her luck started when she got hired as an assistant, something that not a lot of women thought of trying. And if it had not been for the guest director cancelling in 1975, Breth might have never proven herself through her last-minute staging of Die verzauberte Brüder. Breth herself remarks that it was her good fortune to be an assistant at a small theatre like the one in Heidelberg. She supposes that, if she had assisted a famous director, she might have been so in awe that she would not have learned new things but instead copied her mentor. According to her the difficulties she faced (as a woman) and working with less-gifted directors made her develop her own personal view on theatre, which allowed her to direct her own productions later on.15
It is therefore all the more remarkable that Breth leans heavily towards the style of many of the men she so admires.16 Apart from a few experimental phases in her career she has done works that seem
to be inspired heavily by her colleagues - or maybe these colleagues were inspired by her. Fact remains that Breth and her colleagues shared a common style, which was realistic with small nods to postmodern theatre. Sometimes including other disciplines, or foregoing words altogether. She claims she learned through other people’s mistakes, namely those of the guest directors who she
13 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 44. 14 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 48. 15 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 44. 16 Finney: Theater before unification, p. 194.
worked for during her time as an assistant, which goes to show that she has a gifted eye for theatre.17
Her financial successes also prove that she had a keen idea of what the audience expected to see and could play to their wishes. Fact remains that unlike the other theatre makers analysed in this thesis, Breth sticks closely to the style of theatre of her time rather than innovate. Still it is true that she can be counted among the group of directors who revolutionized the theatre of the 1970s, a group that is almost completely formed by men, which is in itself a victory for female directors and theatre makers.
Many West German critics believed the 1980s to be a period of crisis and stagnation in the West German theatre, the period when Andrea Breth booked many of her initial successes.18 It cannot be
denied that a lot of money was made on theatre in those years, but real renewal was absent. This is reflected in the career of Andrea Breth, who was experimenting in the 1970s, but returned to her former, classical ways and thereby became a part of the the conventional theatre landscape of the 1980s. At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, when Breth started working for the Schaubühne in Berlin, this trend changed. Carl Weber even called her the “possible exception” to the rule of stagnation and crisis when he visited Berlin in the year 1990.19
Troubles sometimes arose between Breth and her male colleagues, as can be noticed in the problems between her and Frank-Patrick Steckel in Bochum. Afterwards it is difficult to trace the roots of these problems. Were they to be found in jealousy, as Breth claims, or were there other factors that soured the relationship between the two theatre makers? Breth was regarded as a better director, her plays certainly did better at the box office than Steckel’s, and her view is therefore the one more
considered. Steckel did not direct a lot of successful plays after Breth left Bochum for greener pastures, which also contributed to his voice being less heard.
In the 1970s and 1980s Breth was not regarded as a special case for being a female director, even though she felt like she went through a lot of hardship trying to maintain her position as a woman in what was regarded a men’s profession. She was regarded as a director first and a woman second, the fact that she had to work hard for her position was not taken into account. Therefore there are not many contemporary accounts of her work that focus on her as a female director. In a way this is also what Breth envisioned. She was never a director who tried to embody herself through her art; as far as she is concerned her personal life should stay as far away from her productions as possible. Rather she wanted to be someone who was successful at what she did – and successful is what she became.
17 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 41. 18 Weber: German Theatre, p. 46. 19 Weber: German Theatre, p. 46.
Identity and art
Breth’s identity is not something that she uses in her productions, and feminism is a theme she hardly ever addresses. The same goes for her own sexuality, which is something she refuses to talk about in interviews and never uses as a theme in her plays. Where most LGBTQ artists tend to thematise their sexuality, this is not something that was ever an option for Breth.20 It is unclear
whether she fears it would have made it more difficult for her to keep directing, but there is also no evidence that she ever kept it hidden. Another theme she prefers not to speak about is the fact that she has long suffered from depression and had to take some time off to recover. The problems that she faced as a female director, a lesbian or a depressed woman do not come up in her plays in the way personal themes do in the work of other directors. This is a completely different approach than, for example, Elfriede Jelinek takes. Jelinek, who will be discussed later in this thesis, thematises her own identity and history very strongly in her work.
The work of Elfriede Jelinek is does not appeal to Breth at all, though it is unclear to what extent this is due to their very different styles. Breth is not convinced by the texts Jelinek wrote and is not interested in them in the slightest. In Frei für den Moment she admits to not understanding why Jelinek won the Nobel Prize for literature.21 She is, however, interested in Jelineks plays when directed
by people she likes or admires, showing that she is more committed to modern directing than to modern texts. Jelinek is not the only modern writer that Breth struggles to relate to. It is the classic plays that she wants to direct and she seems to show disregard for any modern play. A good example of this is the play Motortown, which she directed. In an interview on it she says: “It is a well-made play and doesn’t allow any in-depth analyses, if you tried you would very quickly find that there is nothing under the surface.”22 When asked if Jelineks plays were too political for her tastes she replies
with: “Ach Quatsch.” However, her other comments on the matter seem to suggest otherwise.
Even though she claims that Jelinek’s works are not too political for her tastes, Breth does see the theatre as completely separate from her own ideas and beliefs. She has never been known for directing critical political plays, although this does not indicate a disinterest in contemporary politics in general. In her interview with Irene Bazinger she very clearly states her hatred of the Austrian right-wing political parties, saying that that is one of the only things she dislikes about living in Vienna. But even this disapproval of a political culture does not bring her to criticize it through her productions. She even mentions that she does not believe that theatre can change anything.23
Political theatre, meant to rebel against the system, is redundant and even impossible in her eyes. As
20 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 65. 21 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 132.
22 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 116. Free translation. 23 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 114.
one of the reasons for this she mentions the fact that people in the west are allowed to say anything they want, and asked why one would use theatre as the medium to express that discontent if this is allowed in public.
This does not mean she is unaware of the political landscape or the problems of the modern world.24
She knows about it, just as she is aware of the way her career was influenced by her gender. The only difference with other directors is that she actively chooses not to utilize it in her work. The
boundaries between herself and her work are very clear, almost methodical, and can be recognized when looking at her productions. The plays Breth directs are meant to offer the audience a good time, by showing them intelligent, in-depth analyses of classical works. How these works relate to the contemporary world is for the audience to decide.
Repertoire and technique
Breth’s productions can often be characterized as classical, even though she herself disagrees with that label.25 Her focus is often on the meticulous analyses of classic playwrights who have long since
been accepted in the canon of theatre plays, like Schiller, Euripides, Tschechow and Shakespeare. The same goes for her opera stagings, where she has a great fondness for Russian realist composers like Tschaikowski or classical masters like Bizet. She is more interested in the way the characters in the plays act and why they act that way, than the message that a certain play could convey to a modern audience.
In the plays she directs she is always looking for a deeper layer of meaning. She is especially
interested in the dark side of life, like violence and death. She is so good at finding this deeper layer that many reviewers call her style metaphysical. Breth herself explains this metaphysical layer as the essence she looks for in a text. She tries to fathom the characters and find out what makes them tick, something she admits she is not very good at in real life.26 And while she is not interested in
contemporary politics, or expressing her own opinions about it, she is interested in the way a play can convey the politics of history and likes it when the play is set in a troubled time and place. Schiller’s Maria Stuart or Don Carlos are good examples of that.27 The manner and morality of the time a play is
set in are more interesting to her than the contemporary political landscape. This attitude towards theatre is prominent when she speaks about her plays. In 1991 she told Theater Heute: “I don’t know how theatre can mirror this reality. Distinctive is that the audience always wants solutions, while I am more interested in asking the right questions.”28 Asking the right questions in this case pertains to her
24 Duesseldorfer Schauspielhaus: Andrea Breth im Gespräch bei Gustaf-TV. 25 Finney: Theater before unification, p. 194.
26 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 140. 27 Breth: Frei für den Moment, p. 130. 28 Breth: Theater Heute, no. 8, p. 3.
analyses of theatre texts and characters. She spends a good deal of time working out the history of these plays, the way a dramaturge would, and shares this information openly with her actors and the audience, just like the reasons for her choices.29
In most instances this deeper layer of the text is found through a close reading of the text and a psychoanalysis of the characters. In Breth’s case this usually leads to a very realistic and sometimes even naturalistic staging. The scene and objects are to be as true to nature as possible.30 Her plays try
to mirror reality and Breth’s directing is heavily supported by her choice for accurate period costumes and detailed sets that preferably hold props that are as authentic as possible, oftentimes antiques or carefully crafted objects from the time-period her play is set in. In her work there is almost no sigh of postmodern elements. This is also one of the reasons that many reviewers see her as the director of classical plays.31
Like most other directors Breth likes working with a somewhat regular group of actors, who understand her thought process. Her method, however, varies from production to production, although she says that this is not something she can predict before rehearsals start.32 In her
explanation of her rehearsal processes there is a very strong sense of approaching different plays in different ways to capture the essence of the story and its characters. Once again the deeper layer of the play takes centre stage and Breth works with her actors to make this layer visible to the audience. Her personal ideas about certain situations or characters in the play do not seem to come up during rehearsals and are not visible in the finished product.
Breth lives for her theatre and her art, something that becomes very apparent when she speaks or writes about it. The plays she directs touch her very deeply and even though she does not connect the staging to her own life, it does influence it. She admits that she has to sacrifice many things in working as much as she does but also says that “Making theatre is not a heavy thing to do for me. It is an immense pleasure and a craving. […] Developing the stage and the costumes – splendid! Opening the door to the rehearsal room – hmmm, amazing! Looking at the actors – delightful!”33
Even though Breth can very easily be compared to her male counterparts of the time, her love for the theatre is no less strong for not showing her own identity through her work. Therefore it may be difficult to determine what she thinks about certain contemporary problems. Interviews give some insight, but even in interviews where she is very open she keeps a great part of herself hidden. She is, however, a master at naturalistic plays that look and feel like they might in real life. This sometimes
29 Duesseldorfer Schauspielhaus: Andrea Breth im Gespräch bei Gustaf-TV. 30 Duesseldorfer Schauspielhaus: Andrea Breth im Gespräch bei Gustaf-TV. 31 Finney: Theater before unification, p. 194.
32 Breth: Frei für den Moment.
provokes outrage, as Breth is not known for softening situations because it might appeal more to an audience. It is even reported that some audience members left performances of Motor Town halfway, because they did not feel comfortable with the gruelling and bordering on realistic murder scene.34
Nowadays, Breth is still a famous director in Germany and Austria, where she continues to stage productions. Famed for her good understanding of her characters and detailed, in-depth plays, although her style can seem very close to that of other directors. Not all theatre makers however stayed so close to the dominant style of theatre.
Pina Bausch: The creation of a new language
Whereas Andrea Breth works in the same style as her mentors and the other established forces in the theatre world, Pina Bausch takes a completely different approach to the art of theatre making. She had her biggest successes the Tanztheater in Wuppertal and even after her death her company and theatre are household names in the world of art and theatre. Through her passion for dance Bausch developed a completely new style of dancing and choreographing that would change the cultural landscape forever. This is not to say she did not face any problems during her career. But because her style was so uniquely her own, she managed to stay true to herself, doing what nobody had done before her. After the initial critical reviews, both critics and audience members became enraptured by the emotions that Bausch and her dancers expressed on stage, emotions that so many could easily relate to.
Bausch never desired a career as a choreographer, but was led by her desire to dance. From the necessity to dance she started creating works that would revolutionize the way we look at dance. Not only her style of performances, but also her way of rehearsing was new. Because Bausch did not feel obstructed by choreographers that came before her, she could experiment more freely. The fact that she was a woman did not seem to influence the reception of her work.
A child’s passion
1940, in the middle of the Second World War, a girl was born in Solingen. Pina Bausch spent the first years of her life in her parents’ inn. She observed the guests who came along and mentioned later that this observing played a big part in stimulating her imagination.35 She was five years old when she
took her first dance classes and was immediately recognized as a talent by her teachers. Bausch danced in some smaller productions in her home town before moving to the Folkwangschule in Essen at fourteen, which had and still has a renowned faculty for dance.36 Important to her education at the
Folkwangschule was the fact that students from many different disciplines studied there. There was a constant exchange of ideas within the faculties of theatre, mime, music and design. This exchange of disciplines greatly influenced Bausch’s look on dance. She would always keep bringing elements of other disciplines into her own work, even after she had left the Folkwangschule behind. “It played a huge role, because I learned so many things and was influenced by so many people. […] The way people worked together made a profound impression on me,” she said in an interview from 2006.37 In
her later work she has often used a combination of dance, theatre, mime and imaginative sets. Her
35 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 20. 36 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 21. 37 Delahaye: Pina Bausch, p. 26.
early encounter with all the different disciplines greatly encouraged her forays into theatre forms beyond mere dance and played a big role in the way she would later stage her most famous pieces.
One of Bausch’s most influential mentors was Kurt Jooss, a modern dance choreographer, whom she assisted while she was studying. He urged her to not only study different styles and techniques, but to find out what she wanted to express as a dancer. In the world of dance it was less uncommon for women to be assistants than in the world of textual theatre. This step in her career was not up to luck, but to her talent as a dancer. Through Jooss Bausch came into contact with other students who would serve as inspiration and sometimes as teachers. She learned a lot about dancing techniques from the dancer Cébron, who taught her that little movements can make a big difference in the way an audience perceives a dancer and that a dancer must think about the movements he or she is about to do, not just perform them.38 In later years she would go on to work with both Jooss and
Cébron.
Bausch stayed at the Folkwangschule for four years, graduating as theatre dancer and dance educator. She also won the prize for extraordinary achievements, an annual prize presented to promising graduates of the school. After her study Bausch came into contact with choreographers from New York during a summer programme and decided to travel to the United States on a scholarship to study at Julliard, then the most important school for modern dance in the world. She stayed in New York for two and a half years and relished the time spent among people from different cultural backgrounds who all employed different styles. This obsession with the combination of different things, be it artistic disciplines, cultures or interests, started at the Folkwangschule in Germany and would last for the rest of her life. It can often be found in her choreographies and performances. During her time in New York Bausch was even engaged as a dancer at the
Metropolitan Opera and at the dance studios of some of her teachers.39 She moved back to Germany
in 1962. The Folkwangschule had gotten its own ballet, consisting of professional dancers and students. Bausch was asked to become a soloist in this ensemble, which was led by Kurt Jooss, her former mentor.
In Essen she once again worked with her mentor, who asked her to act not only as a dancer, but as his assistant. She led many rehearsals, sometimes even overseeing all the rehearsals of a specific (ballet) piece. During the sixties Jooss even gave her and Cébron the chance to choreograph their own pieces, hereby providing Bausch with the space to develop her own dance language.40 Jooss recognized the
talent of his students, which is evident in the fact that he trusted them to create their own
38 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 24. 39 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 29. 40 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 31.
choreographies, instead of hiring guest directors with more experience. “I was so scared of copying someone,” Bausch said in her speech at the Inamori Foundation, “That is how I started searching for something else, because I didn’t want to use the already established vocabulary.”41 In 1969 Bausch’s
typical style transpired for the first time in the piece Im Wind der Zeit.42. This style strongly relies on reflecting emotions and combining different forms of dance and other disciplines. However, it would take many more years for this style to fully develop in what we now know as Tanztheater.
It was Arno Wüstenhöfer who offered her a place in Wuppertal, the town that would become synonymous with the name Pina Bausch. It took some persuasion to get Bausch to work in
Wuppertal, but Wüsterhöfer managed. First Bausch only worked as a guest choreographer, starting with the staging of small ballet pieces, but soon moving up to choreographing the ballets in operas that were performed in Wuppertal. Eventually she moved there and started as dance captain 1973, although her debut was anything but harmonious. Bausch’s first choreographies shocked the audience, even though it was never her intention to be provocative.43 Her choreographies were,
however, more modern than the people of the small city of Wuppertal were used to. Part of the outrage might have come from the fact that the audience had expected a classical ballet piece, but were instead treated to a completely new style of dancing. The criticism became less after Bausch got positive reviews from the press, both foreign and domestic. Audiences relied strongly on theatre critics to decide what shows to see. The positive opinion of critics was important to the people of Wuppertal, who had not had an interesting art scene until that moment. They might have felt that Pina Bausch could put Wuppertal on the map. Soon after starting her new job Bausch renamed the Wuppertaler Ballet, calling it the Tanztheater, a distinction that was very important to her and implicated the changes in style that were to follow in the years after. Ballet, after all, implies classical dance, while Bausch preferred to choreograph modern pieces.44 During her first years in Wuppertal
she was still heavily influenced by her mentors, but slowly but surely she started creating
performances in her own distinct style. This was picked up by critics who recognized her talent, even though some commented in those first few years that she lacked experience in staging.45 This was
probably true, as Bausch had a lot of talent but not a lot of experience in creating complete pieces to accompany an opera or fill a full evening.
The opera Iphigenie auf Tauris was Bausch’s first big success. Both critics and audience were enraptured by the way her dancers embodied the feelings of the characters. Dancers and singers
41 Delahaye: Pina Bausch, p. 27. 42 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 31. 43 Linsel: Pina Bausch. 44 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 36.
were standing side by side, one no more important than the other, which was revolutionary in a theatre that still upheld a clear distinction between opera and ballet. This focus on the contrast between singing and dancing can be explained through Bausch’s own love of differences. This contrast was a conscious decision, which can be found in her oeuvre – not only within one piece, but throughout the whole of her work, in which pieces with different styles follow each other rapidly.46
Despite initial adversity, Bausch and her company kept working on their style and oeuvre, because they had the distinct feeling that they were doing something right.47 This resulted in some of the most
prolific plays in the history of dance, like Frühlingsopfer and Café Müller which premiered in 1975 and 1978 respectively and are now two of the most performed dance pieces in the world. Another one of her successes is Kontakthof, a piece very indicative of her style, which she recreated twice, once with teenagers and once with people over 65, both of whom were living in Wuppertal.
To illustrate this: in Café Müller the audience is looking at a stage covered in chairs. A woman dressed in white and wearing a blindfold is walking in straight lines, while a man tries to shove the chairs aside fast enough so his partner does not run into them. There is a helplessness to watching a person not being able to help herself. Sometimes the female dancers fall and the male dancers catch her, but not always. More and more dancers appear, repeating this same routine. There is a roughness to the movements, which is however very controlled and shows the skill of the dancers. Pina Bausch danced in her own works, taking on the role of the first woman in this piece, which has become prolific characteristic for the work of Pina Bausch.
Language of emotions
Bausch occasionally used texts in her choreographies, but said that this was never about their factual meaning. It was about making people feel something.48 Bausch herself was always a very sensitive
person. In accounts of her childhood she recounted how she would easily be able to feel people out and how she has always had the ability to see what moved them.49 The expression of feelings, her
own or someone else’s, was always very important to Bausch when it came to dancing. In her acceptance speech of the Kyoto price in 2007 she said: “In dance I could express all the feelings I couldn’t bring into words. So many different voices, tones and colours. And that is what it is about: to retain that wealth and not lessen it. To make the different atmospheres visible and able to be
touched. All our feelings are very precise.”50 Through dance and movement, as precise as these
46 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 41. 47 Linsel: Pina Bausch. 48 Wenders: Pina.
49 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 19.
feelings, she managed to express these subtle feelings and make them visible to people who are not as attuned to them as she is. She makes the invisible visible.
“Everything I do, I do as a dancer, absolutely everything.”51 This quote from Bausch is characteristic
for the way she lived and the way she created her performances. A lot of her rich emotional world is expressed in her love of dance. On multiple occasions she emphasizes that her innovative style came from her own desire to dance more, not from the desire to be a choreographer. Everything started with her wanting to dance as much as she could; the rest of her career followed suit. This arguably makes her the most passionate theatre maker discussed in this thesis. Her urge to create led to innovation and success, but never from the desire for money, fame or social change. It was impossible for Bausch not to dance. It is what she did all her life: expressing herself through her dance and giving the audience a glimpse into the reality of other people’s emotions.
Self-expression through dance is a typical German and Western European concept. Bausch, however, combined this with the modern dance that was at the time much more pronounced in the United States. She recognized that all the dancers she admired were teaching in New York and decided that that was where she had to go to be educated. The modern style is American, but the expression of emotions through movements are a strong indicator of Bausch’s German roots.52 Bausch does not see
dance only as an art of gracious beauty, but as the art of freedom.53 It is remarkable, however, that
Bausch’s performances were not always well received in the New York of the 1980s. An article in the New York times even suggested that violence is inherent to the German soul, and that this is what makes Bausch’s work so physical and violent.54 To a European public the piece might not have been so
violent, but once again it was the discrepancy between what an audience expects and the reality of the piece that produced some strong criticisms. This negative press turned around somewhat when Bausch performed in the US a few years later, as the critics knew better what to expect of her work, with a piece that was “more open to humor, less prone to depictions of violence.”55 Accusations of
violent choreographies did not appear in European reviews.
The expression of feelings in her plays resulted in choreographies like Kontakthof. The different age groups with whom she performed the piece went to show that dancing is not solely for the young and gifted but can be used as a method of expression for people from all age groups, even though the mood of the piece changes with the dancers. Her regular ensemble consisted solely of trained dancers, some even with backgrounds in classical ballet. And although Bausch herself was a very
51 Gibiec: Interview Pina Bausch mit Christiane Gibiec. 52 Schulze: Das Tanztheater Pina Bausch, p. 103. 53 Schulze: Das Tanztheater Pina Bausch, p. 53. 54 Kisselgoff: Is Bausch’s vision true to life?
gifted dancer, this was not what her pieces were about. It is interesting to note that talent was never the only basis for recruitingBausch’s dancers. The fact that Kontakthof with older and younger dancers kept making such an impression on audiences56 goes to show that Bausch’s message did not
get any weaker with the passage of time.57
Her style, which relies heavily on emotions, slowly developed during her first years in Wuppertal. It is not so much a technique as it is a certain attitude in and towards society and the world.58 The change
of the company’s name to Tanztheater was reflected in the plays she produced. For example, she made her dancers stand on stage beside singers and actors and sing songs by Kurt Weil.59 One
constant, however, was the fact that Bausch always worked with themes that an audience could relate to. Struggles and problems, like love, grief, doubt, fear and trust, almost universal to every human, play a central role in her choreographies. She asked herself what moves people, instead of what movements they make, which is a very interesting thought for a theatre maker whose art seems to rely solely on the movements that bodies make.60 This focus on motivations is very similar to the
way Breth approaches the pieces she stages, wondering about the inner world of the characters. Apart from this, the styles of Breth and Bausch are fundamentally different in almost every aspect. In Bausch’s pieces there do not seem to be characters: no one is playing a part, the only people on stage are the dancers of her company. Bausch also attempts to present the audience with a mirror of their own lives, not criticizing but watching. This penchant for observation is very clear in the way she worked on her pieces, trying to be as honest and true to the feelings of her dancers as possible. The question of what moves a person can also be called a search for identity.61 That might be what Bausch
was doing with her pieces. She was led by the search for the identity of the individual dancers, of the ensemble, of the audience members, and maybe even society as a whole.
These universal emotions that connect the audience to a piece are also reflected in the physical appearance of the dancers. “They didn't look like athletes, or like highly trained ascetic and idealized super-humans like I always perceived ballet dancers,” Wim Wenders, a long-time friend of Bausch says, “instead, they were old and young, short and tall, skinny and voluptuous; in short, they represented some sort of common humanity, from all over the world.”62
56 The piece went into reprise in 2000 and 2008 respectively 57 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 58-59.
58 Servos: Pina Bausch, p. 6. 59 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 45.
60 At least well-off, west European people, the initial audience of her work. 61 Enright: What the body knows, p. 24-32.
Questions without answers
“Meine Stücke wachsen nicht vom Anfang aufs Ende zu. Sie wachsen von innen nach außen.”63 (My
plays do not develop from the beginning right up to the end. They grow from the inside out.) Bausch said of her rehearsal and choreography process. It is a striking statement that rings very true for her way of working.
From her first engagement in Wuppertal Bausch started to develop a unique process of creating and rehearsing. Part of this process was rooted in her fascination with the expression of emotions, part of it in her own creative intuition. She recognized early on that she had to follow her instincts while rehearsing and not work with a pre-set plan or concept. She did not set the music or the stage before starting on rehearsals, but engaged her dancers in conversations about the theme she was working with. This came with great risks, but also gave her the freedom to create works that would become famous.
The conversations between Bausch and her dancers played a big part in the process of creating new choreographies. The development of this process started with only a few dancers, those dancers that Bausch felt safe with, for it is an intimate process to create a piece from your own emotions and experiences. She called this process a “formal openness”, which meant that she first needed the openness between herself and her dancers to create her a completely choreographed, or ‘formal’, piece.64 In an interview Bausch said that this technique was partly born out of necessity: she often
worked with actors who did not understand the concepts of dance but had to be engaged in another way, in this case by asking them questions pertaining to their own life, emotions and experiences.65 To
create a new piece she needed “[…] feelings. Or questions – I do not have the answers.”66 In this way
we can also say that her pieces do not only come into existence from her conversations with the dancers, but also from a kind of conversation with her audience. This interaction, by which an audience watches and enjoys the freedom to interpret a piece, is what gives the work a soul and a meaning for the people watching it. Bausch tries to tell a universal truth that can be understood by anyone, regardless of emotional state or cultural background. The real emotions and experiences come across strongly, because they originate from the dancers themselves and directly resonate with the inner world of the audience members.
Another defining factor in Bausch’s work and something that always catches the eye of the spectator is the size of the ensemble. Bausch loved ensemble pieces, with many dancers on stage at the same time, dancing as group or individual solos at the same time. In many of her plays it is not possible to
63 Schlicher: Tanz Theater, p. 118. 64 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 48-49.
65 Bausch: Etwas finden, was keiner Frage bedarf. 66 Deuter: Interview Pina Bausch.
see everything at once, the audience only gets to see the one, specific part they happen to be focussing on. Especially in the earlier years, before new dancers were hired for already established roles, the audience could be sure that the things a dancer said or did were in some way related to him or her. This was of course only logical as these texts had been developed by the dancers themselves during the rehearsals.
As her rehearsal methods developed the dancers were not allowed to answer with words anymore. They were encouraged to dance their answers, to show them. These danced answers could not be prefabricated, they were not allowed to be ‘roles’. They had to be honest and personal to the dancers themselves.67 This required a lot of courage and trust, but honesty and trust were the things that
Bausch valued most in her company. Most directors, or in this case choreographers, work with an ever changing cast of performers. Bausch’s method, however, inspired trust and companionship and it is why she managed to rehearse and perform with the same ensemble of actors for many years. Many of the dancers who worked under Bausch are still engaged at the Tanztheater in Wuppertal, many years after Bausch’s death; they have been, and still are, fiercely loyal to her.
The raw material Bausch gathered from these rehearsals consisted of answers from dancers to the many questions Bausch posed them like: “Different ways to say you are fine” and “Things you do when you do not want to think about something”.68 After the first weeks of rehearsals Bausch started
putting these different answers and emotions together into single actions or scenes, using ideas or pieces that were presented to her by her dancers. These scenes could be changed or taken out even shortly before the performance, when Bausch felt that they were no longer relevant or applicable to the piece as a whole. She never started at the beginning of a choreography but arranged and
rearranged sequences until they made sense to her.69 Like a puzzle that she had all the pieces to, only
they had to be put in the right order. This made her works convey the impression of a collage, where small intimate scenes follow on big ensemble dances or singing followed on dancing. One can once again see her love of contrasts in the way she chooses to put together the different scenes.
The result of this working process was never certain in advance and Bausch never knew what kind of piece she would end up with at the end of rehearsals. “Our Tanztheater doesn’t follow a definite pattern […] We try to be open, to express, to feel.”70 Bausch said in an interview from 2000. She tried
to always start from the beginning, without predefined ideas, looking above and beyond clichés. This way she managed to develop a new perspective on every theme she worked with and often
discovered something new along the way.
67 Enright: What the body knows. 68 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 66. 69 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 67. 70 Smidt-Mühlisch: Interview.
Gender in Bausch’s work
Gender definitely plays an important role in many of Bausch’s works. The line between male and female dancers is not always clear. There are many strong women in Bausch’s works, but she refused to be labelled a feminist. As the reason for this, she cited the fact that the word ‘feminist’ has a negative connotation that she did not like. She believed that it sounded like the two genders being in constant rivalry with one another more than being ‘together’.71
Early in her career she staged a performance about the exploitation of women, where she did not focus on societal conditions of abuse, but on the conflict of individual women who have to fight against the oppression of men. In the programme of that same evening in 1974 she let men go on stage dressed as women. This play with gender roles is something we do not see in the works of the other two women in this thesis; Breth tries to make her plays as realistic as possible and Jelinek has very rigid definitions of gender that she does not stray from.
Performances having to do with the position of women and gender roles kept being created by Bausch in the years following this early piece from 1974. There is the piece Komm tanz mit mir for example, in which a woman tries her hardest to appeal to a man, becoming ever more desperate in her attempts until she is completely exhausted. Here Bausch once again played with themes such as longing for love, power struggles and the stereotyping of women. The same goes for a Macbeth adaption Bausch staged in 1978. The adaption Er nimmt sie an der Hand und führt sie in das Schloss. Die anderen folgen72 is once again about power and gender struggles. While it is a line from
Shakespeare’s original play, Bausch makes a strong statement by turning it into the title of her adaption. The man with the power is in charge, the others can do nothing but follow. It is interesting to note that these others are not all women. Power is a theme that is felt throughout the whole of society and not just by women who feel overpowered by the men in their lives.
Because Bausch did not see herself as an activist for women’s rights, she also felt free to play with the ideas of gender in a more comical setting, by exploring love, sexuality and shame of both genders in the piece Arien.73 Still it was not only the oppression of women or the power structures between genders that interested her, it was the differences between men and women. These differences did not always have a negative connotation in Bausch’s work, but could be explored free of judgement. There are also pieces that deal with the problems that men encounter and there is very clear feeling that Bausch is not trying to lecture her audience when she creates a piece about women. She just
71 Hoghe: Pina Bausch.
72 Translation: He takes her by the hand and leads her into the castle. The others follow. 73 Meyer: Pina Bausch, p. 55-56.
shows them how the world looks to different people and leaves her audience free to draw their own conclusions from that.
In contrast to the work of Elfriede Jelinek, which is almost aggressive in its viewpoints, Bausch appeals more to the emotions of the audience than to their intellectual understanding of gender relations. Wim Wenders, director of the film Pina: Tanzt, tantzt anders sind wir verloren describes his first meeting with the work of Pina Bausch as follows: “This woman (yet unknown to me) by the name of Pina Bausch had shown me more about the relationship between men and women than (almost) the entire history of cinema. In two times forty minutes! And without a word! With not much more than bodies and movement. Both stages are so minimal that you can hardly call them "sets." I found that miraculous.”74 That Bausch’s work can appeal to someone who does not like
dance, as Wenders says earlier in the interview, says a lot about the power and universality of her work. The fact that a dance piece about the relationship between men and women manages to make an impression on a man who was unaware of his own privilege before, is something that is rarely found in the theatre, or any other form of art for that matter.
Another interesting aspect of gender in Bausch’s work can be found in the rehearsal process. Bausch’s ensemble consisted of men and women, but she noticed that men answered her questions in a different way than women did. Men look for other ways or forms to answer personal questions, through jokes for example.75 By noticing and incorporating this into her work, a more equal, and
realistic, image was created of the genders, different but equally important. Gone is the stark separation between victim and aggressor, replaced by objective differences between the sexes.
Bausch’s statement against the term feminism is therefore also very visible in the way she staged her pieces. Men and women are not pitted against each other, but only observed in their differences. Judgement came from the audience, but never from Bausch herself. Togetherness may even be the keyword to describe Bausch’ work, ideas and ensemble as a whole.
74 Enright: What the body knows. 75 Fischer: Interview.
Elfriede Jelinek: Author of the axe
Of all the women discussed in this thesis Elfriede Jelinek is the most vocal about her political ideas and her views on womanhood. She utters her opinions not only in her work but outside of it repetition. With her highly provocative work she is not the easiest author to analyse or appreciate, even though a lot of scholars have written about Jelinek and her work in recent years. They argue that she has a keen sense for the themes of her time and a deep interest in new forms and
techniques.76 She often uses autobiographical elements in her work; especially impressions from her
childhood are often thematised, which is the reason that her early years are so extensively explained in this chapter. Understanding Jelinek’s past results in a better understanding of her work.
Her texts are not always appreciated and often even heavily criticized, even more so during the early stages her career than now. She tends to harshly comment on society as a whole and certain groups of people in particular (like men, Jews and Austrians). She is called a Nestbeschmutzer by some, meaning someone who defiles or dirties her own house, or in this case country. This ungentle term is not something that bothers Jelinek greatly. Of herself she says: “I would say that I am certainly not an author of either discretion or suggestion, but the opposite, I am an author of the axe.”77
Miracle Child or Nestbeschmutzer?
Elfriede Jelinek was born to a middle-class family from Vienna. Her mother, wanting her daughter to succeed in Viennese life, where music is an unrivalled status symbol, sent her to music and dance courses from a very young age.78 At thirteen Jelinek became the youngest student at the
Conservatory, studying organ and later also piano and flute. She even ventured into composition for a little while, all the while finishing high school with extra courses. At the conservatory she especially enjoyed playing modern pieces, including by her idol Olivier Messiaen.79 All seemed to be going well
for the busy, young musician. She enjoyed her studies, even though her mother put a lot of pressure on her to work her hardest. Effort and commitment were the only things that counted for Jelinek’s mother, Ilona. But this control eventually resulted in the social isolation of Jelinek, who was
constantly working and was even forbidden by her mother to see her (extended) family at times. This went on to the extent that her teachers started worrying about her workload and her inability to connect to her peers.80
76 Mayer: Elfriede Jelinek. Ein Porträt, p. 9, 17.
77 Bethman: My characters only live insofar as they speak, p. 65. 78 Mayer: Elfriede Jelinek, p. 12-13.
79 Mayer, Elfriede Jelinek, p. 17. 80 Mayer: Elfriede Jelinek, p. 16.
After obtaining her high school degree she became mentally unstable for the first, but not the last, time in her life. Jelinek had visited a psychiatrist before, first in a children’s clinic because she was a hyperactive child; she later identified this as Asperger’s Syndrome, from the autistic spectrum.81 She
visited a psychiatrist once more when she was fourteen and again at seventeen, this time for her anxiety.82 When she finished high school in 1964 all the pressure from earlier years fell from her
shoulders, but instead of this freeing her, it made her more afraid of the future, inducing panic attacks. Scholars blame Jelinek’s anxiety and tendency to self-harm on her strict childhood and the system of reward and punishment she was subjected to.83
She started studying at the University of Vienna, but her illness impeded her ability to attend classes and finish her studies. Instead she started to write poems. She was even invited to the
Österreichische Gesellschaft für Literatur, an influential organisation and one of the only ways to enter the literary circles of Vienna. This was also the time when her first poems got published, at first in small, unknown magazines. After a few years her anxiety attacks and agoraphobia became so severe that in 1968 she stayed indoors for a whole year and gave up her studies. Living together with her mother and her father, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s, was difficult for her, but her illness prevented her from going outside. Only reading and especially writing seemed to be a reprieve. It was something that she had control over and that calmed her. In a text about that time she writes: “I was already accustomed to the use of instruments, but now a new instrument has been added to my repertoire: language, which opens and closes everything and is everything.”84 In 1969, two weeks
before the death of her father, Jelinek slowly started to get better. Her first novel, wir sind lockvögel baby!,85 was published in 1970.
Jelinek was represented by Rowohlt Verlag, a publisher from West-Germany, which caused a scandal by firing their books into the GDR with a cannon. It fitted Jelinek’s new public persona as a flirting, eccentric and sometimes even obscene writer. Her first book, with its interchangeable cover, became a big success. The critically acclaimed literary supplement of the New York Times even called it “a finely-wrought, inventive and sustained piece of writing”.86 The style of wir sind lockvögel baby! Is
characteristic for Jelinek: different voices and characters, the contrast between real and fake, sentences that do not always seem to connect but entail a sharp social critique. Even the lack of capital letters was a way of rebellion against the old systems of language and literature. Besides it also
81 Jelinek: Sturm und Zwang. 82 Mayer: Elfriede Jelinek, p. 31-32. 83 Mayer: Elfriede Jelinek, p. 31.
84 Jelinek: Schreiben müssen. In my own translation. 85 Jelinek: wir sind lockvögel baby!
had an extraordinary black glossy cover. The reader could change the title of the book by replacing the cover card that sat in a clear sleeve.
The social critique she expressed in her novels was important in her life. In the years that followed Jelinek took part in Teach-Ins, discussions and lectures. She moved out of her parents’ house to live in a Wohngemeinschaft. These years following her anxiety and isolation were years of experimenting, when she was loved by the literary scene in Vienna, admired because she got into a West German publishing house and respected for being one of the few female writers in Austria. It was in 1972 that she left Austria to live in Berlin.
Berlin was the place to be for an engaged young writer like Jelinek. It was the city of the
außerparlementarische Opposition87 and the start of the women’s rights movement. However, the first thing Jelinek did upon arrival was go to the theatre.88 Like in Vienna, Jelinek soon began to feel at
home in the literary scene of Berlin, although she would always be an outsider in Germany. After a short trip to Italy with a fellow writer she moved back to Vienna in 1973. She felt she had done what she had set out to do, to free herself from the direct influence of her mother and Austria. Her year abroad had proven to be an important step in her life and her career, although it can be argued that Elfriede Jelinek never managed to completely free herself from the dominant influence of Ilona Jelinek.
In the following years she translated, read and wrote anything from radio plays to essays. She married Gottfried Hüngsberg, a computer scientist, who had worked with Rainer Werner Fassbinder as his sound technician in the previous years. They bought a house in Munich, but the spouses have always had an unconventional long-distance relationship as Jelinek stayed in Vienna most of the time, with her mother, while her husband lived, and still lives, in Germany. Her mother kept on taking a
considerable part in her daughter’s life and work, from donating money for making a movie, to taking care of the cooking and cleaning while Jelinek herself was working.89
Jelinek established herself as a writer after this, even though her books kept being criticized as well as praised. In 2004 she even won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the highest honour that can be given to any writer.
Theatre
Jelinek’s first foray into the realm of theatre came in the shape of radio plays, containing original work but also adaptions of books or plays. In these radio plays we can recognise a lot of the characteristics
87 The opposite party outside of parliament. 88 Mayer: Elfriede Jelinek, p. 62.
of her later theatre plays. The characters, for one, do not seem to have a set identity, they are only represented in what other people say of them. They repeat statements about themselves like puppets. In many later texts by Jelinek there are no clearly defined individuals. Plays and novels are told from a ‘we’ perspective, as opposed to an ‘I’; there seem to be no agents, just passive, nameless bodies. The subjects are a way to express the dialectic of history instead of an individual life, “that is to say, they carry history on their bodies, or express it through their speech.”90 Secondly, like in her
novels, Jelinek plays around with different genres within one play, never sticking to one genre for too long before switching to another. She switches between novel-like sentences to quizzes or interviews, for example.
Soon after this she started working on a documentary. In her own unique style she tried to show the life of women in the Austrian countryside. The film met with a lot of protest, of which Jelinek, exaggerating, said that 500 inhuman farmers tried to stone her to death.91 This first documentary was
followed by a rapt interest in films, for which she had many ideas. Some of these were original stories, but most were adaptions of her previously published books. It was not until 1976/1977 that her first play was performed, a sequel to Ibsen’s Nora, with the name: Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte oder Stützen der Gesellschaften.92 With this play, far less stylized and postmodern than any of her other works, she tries to show that women, no matter how much they protest, are trapped in the tutelage of men. This first play premiered in October 1979, after she had already established her career as a writer. In the years that followed her literary work, both for the theatre and outside of it, would become more explicit. However, Jelinek felt the need to start out with more common pieces to gain some ground in the artistic sector.93
Soon after this first play she wrote more, among others Clara S,94 which was directed by Peter
Eschberg, a German director who was familiar with Jelinek’s work and staged it repeatedly in the following years.95 A notorious play was Burgtheater,96 which premiered almost five years later in
Bonn. The play was based on the ideas brought forward in the book Mephisto, about a German actor during the Third Reich and his rise to fame. She replace the German by an Austrian context, but the main theme stayed the same. She did extensive research into the family she was writing about, namely that of Paula Wessely. Wessely was an actress during the Second World War. Instead of quitting her profession, she worked with the Nazi regime, even appearing in propaganda films. After
90 Bethman: My characters only live insofar as they speak, p. 66. 91 Mayer: Elfriede Jelinek, p. 86.
92 Jelinek: Theaterstücke, p. 7-78. 93 Jelinek: Sturm und Zwang, p. 30. 94 Jelinek: Theaterstücke.
95 Mayer: Elfriede Jelinek, p. 136. 96 Jelinek: Theaterstücke.
