Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 03.08.2006

Jordanian journalist Fakhri Saleh gathers the voices of Arab intellectuals on the conflict in Lebanon, finding them increasingly critical of Israel after the bombardment of Kana. "In describing Israel as a 'mad state,' the Syrian-Lebanese poet Adonis, one of the best known exponents of Arabic literature, is falling back on the language of Israeli writer and journalist Arieh Shavit. In his contribution to the international daily newspaper Al-Hayat, the poet says: 'Israel only sees the Arab world with eyes of glowing, angry metal, the metal of tanks, bullets or bombers. It sees no history, still less remembrance or the future. It does not see people.' Adonis allows neither Israel not the United States the right to combatterrorist organizations in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories or elsewhere in the Arab world."


Die Zeit, 03.08.2006

Music ethnologist Thomas Burkhalter writes about the effect the war in Lebanon is having on musicians: "'Is war good training for the ears?' I asked a musician just a few days ago. His eyes sparkled when he told me how as a kid he could identify every type of airplane, every bomb, every missile and every calibre just from the sound they made. He knew exactly if it was being fired away from him or at him. 'If a bomb went "ziiisssshhhh", that meant it was flying straight at the house, and you had to get somewhere safe on the double'."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 03.08.2006

Evelyn Annuss recalls the dedication of the Berlin Waldbühne outdoor arena with the premiere of the "Frankenburger Würfelspiel" in August 1936. More than 1,000 lay performers took part in this Nazi mass theatre production. "The original Thingspiel plans involved revolutionary theatre ideas. Formally, the goal was to create a spectacle that gave the mass choir a central role. And so in a sense it broke with the central perspective. The dream was to liberate the German Volk from the supposedly 'characteristic and generic' peep-show type theatre. Because, as Fritz Budde said in 1933, Germans do not see 'the world as milieu, not as a wall bounded by four rooms, but rather as a round cosmos resting in itself, and thereby keeping its own balance. So the box of the French stage cannot represent the world to a German. He needs a round, flowing stage with a spherical boundary.'"


Die Welt, 03.08.2006

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Bertolt Brecht's death, Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer and rock singer Campino from the band Die Toten Hosen will perform Brecht's "Threepenny Opera" in Berlin's Admiralpalast next week. Reinhard Wengierek tells the story of the world premiere: "Rehearsals finally started at the beginning of August, 1928, and continued in utter, hysterical chaos until the premiere on August 28. The entire theatre scene in Berlin joked about the preparations, saying Brecht and crew were 'gearing up for nothing.' Right up to the end the whole cast had a hand in rewriting, rebuilding, changing and cutting. Even satirist Karl Kraus put in his two cents' worth in the theatre canteen. The frenzied dress rehearsal – almost nothing worked – lasted until six o'clock on the morning of the premiere. Elisabeth Hauptmann remembers that the prominent audience was 'peeved' that night, alienated by all the 'anti-illusionist, literary effects' of the new Brechtian style with its sensationalist, barrel-organ, street-ballad feel, its scene changes in the open and projections of scene titles and other images. But that didn't last for long. The brashly comical, saucily aggressive style ('Man's not bad enough for this life') soon had people enthralled, and they lapped up the subversiveness like honey."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 03.08.2006

Oliver Herwig takes us into the world of "Architainment", a "wild marriage of building and entertainment" whose spin-offs, to his horror, penetrate into ever wider spheres. "The day of the entertainment industry flagships like Disney World, Las Vegas or American mega-malls is long over. Dreamworlds are transforming entire cities. Who associates entertainment today with Metzingen, Wertheim, Regensburg or Wolfsburg? And yet these very places are creating a brand, a destination. The Swabian city of Metzingen and Wertheim in Franconia are turning into busy factory outlet centres; Regensburg marketed its medieval city centre as a tourism goal to the point that every last retail store has given over to cafes and gourmet shops, and Wolfsburg has turned into an automobile theme park."


Berliner Zeitung, 03.08.2006

Markus Schneider talked with German vocal artist Jan Delay, who has just put out his new album "Mercedes Dance." Originally the vocalist for the Hamburg-based hiphop band Beginner, Delay had a surprise hit when he went solo in 2001 with his reggae-inspired album "Searching for the Jan Soul Rebels." The new LP does another turnaround with 70s-style disco jazz funk sounds. "The glossy shine is all part of the concept. This time Delay is not throwing stones, but disco mirror balls. The critical twist is still there, but now it's aimed at questions of style. His keynote song is called "Kartoffeln" (potatoes), a vitriolic attack on petty-bourgeois values in which this son of artists from the bourgeois Hamburg district of Eimsbüttel bellyaches about German bad taste. 'What really gets to me is the narrow-minded, fuddy-duddy envy, the cramped ignorance and self-satisfaction. You can't just ignore the potatoes, because otherwise no one would even think to see he's like that himself."