Monday 12 March, 2007

Neue Zürcher Zeitung 12.03.2007

Patricia Benecke portrays Caribbean playwright Debbie Tucker Green, whose extra-short plays are being celebrated in London, and will premiere in April at Berlin's Schaubühne theatre. One is called "Generations" and lasts just 20 minutes. In it a cheerful family dialogue is repeated again and again, while "first the two daughters, then the husband, and finally the wife leave the room without a word. Those left behind become increasingly sorrowful, and intersperse comments like 'I miss her' or 'this sickness' into their conversation. In the end, the two grandparents sit demoralised and depressed in the empty kitchen. Instead of lively chatter, their words are no more than a requiem.... Tucker Green's avoidance of the word Aids is an intelligent reflection of how political circles in South Africa long attempted to hush up the epidemic. The evening is a short and power-packed political statement."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 12.03.2007

"This is simply Chekhov at his very best," enthuses Gerhard Stadelmaier about Stephane Braunschweig's staging of "Three Sisters" in Strasbourg. "Chekhov's 'Three Sisters' is a 104-year-old comedy in which nothing happens, aside from the fact that time passes and in the end a shot is fired. For Stephane Braunschweig, one of the cleverest and most interesting young European theatre directors and head of Strasbourg's Theatre National, the play is a huge acid bath. The old photo has been reworked, so that figures that were strangely far away now look oddly young and clear. If this were a fun-fair photo booth, it would be as if Chekhov's characters had stuck their heads through holes in modern figures, except that the historical element doesn't fade out, but shines through ingeniously. The result is one of the funniest and most intellegent Chekhov productions of our time."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 12.03.2007

An exhibition opened yesterday in Berlin's Nikolaikirche, celebrating the 400th birthday of the hymn writer Paul Gerhardt. Arno Widmann recalls Gerhardt, who many Germans consider the first poet period. "They sat as children on the church benches – Protestant and Catholic – and learned from him that joy and time rhymed. They mused about 'Narzissus und die Tulipan' (narcissus and the tulip). They had to wait for the first Latin class dealing with the genitive to finally understand what 'Salomonis Seide' (the silk of Salomon) meant. At the time, they already knew 'Geh aus, mein Herz, und suche Freud' ('go out and look for joy') by heart. They loved the word 'tulip' long before they really knew what it meant."


Saturday 10 March, 2007

Frankfurter Rundschau 10.03.2007

Talking with Stefan Schickhaus, Mainz-based composer Volker David Kirchner settles some old scores with the music industry. "We've become a pure event society, even in the small niche of new music. There's a complete lack of guts, no one's willing to take risks, especially in the opera. As opposed to artistic directors of the past, today's crop will hardly ever take a chance. The problem isn't getting commissions for operas, it's that no opera house is going to put your work on its programme after the premiere. Music today has got to be disposable."


Der Tagesspiegel, 10.03.2007

American author Jonathan Franzen talks in an interview with Sacha Verna, about his fascination with birds, his feeling that he should do something against global warming and his problem with families. "I don't doubt that my problem with birds is related to the fact that I messed up my chance to have children in my long and failed marriage. Now I transfer my paternal instincts to birds. A poor substitute, I admit. The closest family relations I ever had were with my parents. They're both dead. It's strange when the only family ties are to those that are dead. Of course I have Kathy (the writer Kathryn Chetkovich, Franzen's partner) and my two brothers. Nonetheless, I walk around hour on end with the feeling of being intimately tied to the land of the dead."


Die Tageszeitung, 10.03.2007

In an interview, actor and singer Kris Kristofferson talks about his new album "This Old Road," about beards, boxing and drinking to excess. "According to William Blake, 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.' I think what you can learn from heavy drinking is that it causes you to forget. If that's what you want, you'll get it. Unfortunately it doesn't really lead to a long life."