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An Experiment with an air pump

by SHELAGH STEPHENSON

A social drama, a science play, a thriller

Something revolutionary is happening at the Fenwicks’, while there’s trouble in the air at Ellen and Tom’s. Fenwick is taking science to dizzying heights, his assistant is after the maid and a mob is rioting at the front door. Ellen, a geneticist, has moral qualms about a job offer and Tom is unemployed. The Fenwicks are living in 1799, Ellen and Tom in 1999 – in the same house. There’s a body in the basement. Who buried it there 200 years ago?

Shelagh Stephenson explores the question of how much morality science can take – and how much it needs – with two compelling examples from two different times in history. To what lengths should the study of anatomy go to procure cadavers at the end of the 18th century? And how far should genetics go at the beginning of the 21st century?

What is good and what is evil science? Shelagh Stephenson projects this question further back in time than most do. Academic debate on the ethical limits to scientific research often focuses on the atomic bomb and unscrupulous Nazi researchers. However, the long period in which body snatching was commonplace for the study of anatomy goes back 150 years before then and is a dark chapter in the history of colonial England between Newton and Darwin.
Modern genetics is constantly forced to deal with the heatedly debated social relevance of its work and results. Genomic research will soon be able to decode our entire genetic make-up at little expense. Will we soon find out in the neighbourhood “Gene Shop” that we are particularly susceptible to alcoholism, cancer, or Alzheimer? Is that something to take seriously? And is it something that we want to know? Who else might want to know, and why?

An Experiment With an Air Pump was the second production in our Science & Theatre program.

Supported by Druck

Shelagh Stephenson was born in Northumberland and read drama at Manchester University. Her first play, The Memory of Water (1995) was a huge success and won her an Olivier Award for Best Comedy; her second one, An Experiment with an Air Pump (1998) was equally sucessful and won the Peggy Ramsay Memorial Award. Other plays are Ancient Lights (2000), Mappa Mundi (2002), and Enlightenment (2005). Her latest one is A Northern Odyssey (2010) about American painter Winslow Homer´s two-year visit to Northumberland in the early 1880s. She has also written numerous radio plays and TV scripts. The Memory of Water was made into a film called Before You Go (2002) starring Julie Walters and Tom Wilkinson and directed by Lewis Gilbert.

pics: Christian Jungeblodt

DEEP WIVES, SHALLOW ANIMALS

by Howard Barker

“By dignity I mean the prospect of a terrible indecency” Howard Barker

On House arrest in her own home, once magnificent but now ravaged by a mysterious change whose the destructive impact continues to be felt, the Countess Strassa is now subject to the authority of those who, until recently, were her servants. We will never know the exact nature of the event which has produced such a change; at best can we measure the effects. The question posed by the new situation is not about the reversal of power relations – it‟s already done – but of exceeding them, that is to say the appropriation of the other, body of the other, that Howard Barker defines in bluntly erotic terms: what is required of Strassa is that she consents to be owned by the husband of her former maid. Abject perspective in the physical absence of the husband that makes the two women create a strange relationship of antipathy, rivalry, but also unexpected complicity, and gives rise to a tense dialogue, powerful, sharp as a razor, which opened excavation at the heart of the human and uncovers what makes it beat: desire, frustration, thirst for dignity.

“I’ve always been attracted by the plays of Howard Barker. His more abstract world, more dreamlike than his English contemporaries, fascinates me. His baroque side also, that exceeds the narrow confines of our time. Natasha’s proposal was an opportunity to move to act: to finally stage a piece of him with a couple of excellent actresses. And the choice has logically focused on “deep spouses, shallow animals” For it concerns two women here. In a climate of an upheaval. A Coup. Two women in a time when power relations are reversed. Where the one which reigned will eat dust. And the one that was invisible will be able to shine in the light. Where the one who had everything, now doesn‟t have anything and the one who had nothing, now possesses all thing. Two women in a permanent relationship of domination and submission which reminds of “The Maids” by Jean Genet. But if the Barker play is inspired by it, that is just to better project it in the heart of the preoccupations of our time, playing continuously on the fear of a world that is on the road to ruin and on the need for real and concrete links (even violent) in a more and more virtual world: as in a video game where one chooses his clothes, the color of his hair, his car, his house…Here it‟s about choosing the manner in which one of the two women will be raped. Under the pretext of power inversion (the mistress becomes the slave of her servant) the two women are playing themselves a dangerous game that keeps their senses awake even if a priori, all is dead around them. Apart from this mechanical dog, ersatz of Japanese robots that is constantly coming to collect its share of the spoils: a piece of the dress of the mistress being more and more laid bare. Because what remains of power without the attributes of power? And even further in this game of reversed mirror: what remains of desire without the attributes of power? In this dance where you never really know who leads the game, it is an entire pursuit of desire which is unfolding before our eyes, combining abandonment and revolt of bodies subject to the tyranny of the learned thought.” Patrick Verschueren

Squatters

by Joshua Crone

After a few drinks in a downtown bar, he takes her home to his squat – an abandoned flat in a building overlooking Ground Zero. Is this a one-night stand, or have they met before?

International theatre company Axis Mundi takes a darkly comic look at the mass hysteria that swept America and the world in the wake of the September 11th attacks, with asides on the geopolitical ramifications of bad sex, the art of tactical bed-making and the occult significance of sharing a hairbrush.

Private Fears in Public Places

by Alan Ayckbourn

Six people in a big city. All of them are in search of a home, a niche or a relationship.

No catastrophes take place, and no one is evil, yet they all fail in their quest and eventually end up alone. That´s just how it is – shit happens. A chain of wasted chances – a comedy of failures.

For example: the first meeting of an internet date starts out embarrassingly – and ends in desaster. The longer the evening, the more alcohol gets drunk, and the sadder and more touching the meeting becomes. The very next day Dan, flowers in hand, goes to meet her again in a café. His former girl friend happens to be sitting in the same café and as they greet each other, his date misconstrues their tête-à-tête and walks away, disillusioned.

“Any idiot can face a crisis. It’s the day-to-day living that wears you out.” Anton Chekhov

PrivateFearsGruppeFarbe In fifty-four scenes – some of them just short clips – Alan Ayckbourn masterfully creates an atmosphere of exquisite melancholy and grotesque failure. His sympathetic view of the characters keeps schadenfreude and black humour at bay and instead makes us grin at the all-too-familiar situations from our own lives. With a keen humane eye, Ayckbourn finds a universal language for the impossible dream of fulfilled desires.

For his cinematic adaptation of the play, French director Alain Resnais transferred the story to Paris and through the title Coeurs offers a very simple idea of what the play is all about: the hearts are beating but the rhythm isn´t quite right….

We present the play in its English-language original and set it in Berlin as the new international metropolis – whose neuroses, however, remain global.privatefearsgruppefarbe

“In all this, nothing is ever wholly tragic or totally comical. The comedy, like the intelligent directing, remains unflustered, unagitated. The characters’ loneliness and their lamentable failure in matters of love require no dramatic embellishment. It’s no more than is to be expected in the life of a typical big-city single. Yet the acting is so close to life itself that one develops a real affection for this sextet and feels sad to have to leave them after 100 minutes in their company.” Berliner Morgenpost

Lovepuke

by Duncan Sarkies

(Girl) I want hold him
(Boy) I want to sleep with her
(Girl) I want to kiss him
(Boy) I want to sleep with her
(Girl) I want to have his babies
(Boy) I want to sleep with her

Everyone knows it. Everyone’s been there.

The trouble is, everyone has a different set of rules.

But what’s it all about anyway? Aren’t all modern day relationships a dysfunctional battlefield? A series of mind games? A struggle for status?

lovepuke_website Oh, I know yours isn’t – but I bet you know of someone’s who’s is!

If so then come and chuckle contentedly at eight people who aren’t you make a mess of their lives in love

Love.

Or more precisely, the Game of Love: ‘Making the move’, ‘Elation’, ‘Sex’, ‘Argument’ then ‘Depression’. Sound familiar? Of course it does.

Image: Clare Molloy

Bei mir bist du Strange

English Theatre Berlin’s first ever 10-minute play competition was on the theme ENGLISH IN DAILY GERMAN LIFE:

You can hardly overestimate the influence the English language has in German life today: in public spaces, on the street, over the internet and on TV.

But – what influence does English have on the way we live our daily lives? How can Grandma Erna possibly understand what she see in shop windows? Does Coffee To Go really come from Togo? And what about the confusion native English speakers experience when they see words used that apparently are English but which make absolutely no sense to them?

The winners:

In Other Words by Joshua Crone

The Exam by Joshua S. Horowitz

Ten Minutes with Günther by Sonny Hayes

Bombay an der Spree by Kevin McAleer

Hooray for Hollywood by Rich Rubin

Photo: Doris Spiekermann-Klaas/DerTagesspiegel

A Number

by Caryl Churchill

“Walk round the corner and see yourself you could get a heart attack. Because if that´s me over there who am I?”

A man uses his money to commission a clone: his contractors seize their chance to create twenty more. The talk is of paternal love, and of science, and of good intentions. But who will have to live with the consequences? And who will have to die?

“A taut, chilling two-man work about a desperate father who seeks to duplicate his lost son” – “enormously powerful” – “outstandingly well acted and staged” – “real and truthful in every moment” – “a maelstrom of deep, dark emotions laced with subtle sarcasm and ending with a hint of hope” – “an absolute must-see” – “Science&Theatre, a successful coproduction” (from the reviews in ExBerliner, Die Zeit Online, Neues Deutschland)

Caryl Churchill’s compelling thought-experiment has a single, simple premise: humans have been cloned. In one hour of ferociously intense tragicomedy, she digs down to the roots of personal identity, exposing the hard but brittle bond between fathers and sons and the ultimate cost of evasion. The past can be buried, but it won’t stay down.

A Number was the first production in English Theatre Berlin´s Science & Theatre program .

Supported by

Buried Child

by Sam Shepard

A quirky, often frightening family of antagonists in a claustrophobic farmhouse somewhere in the American Midwest

Buried Child is a macabre look at an American Midwestern family with a dark, terrible secret. The father stopped planting crops in his fields and took to smoking, drinking and watching TV. His wife, apparently seeking salvation, turned to religion. Her son went insane with guilt and grief, spent time in jail and only recently returned to the farm, perhaps to set everything right. With the arrival of the estranged grandson and his girlfriend, Shelly, the secret is drawn out into the light of day, and the family curse apparently lifted…

With its lower-class, sometimes humorous, recognizable characters and dialogue, Buried Child resembles the mid-century American realism and grotesquerie of Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams. However, its roots in ritual and its approach to monumental, timeless themes of human suffering – incest, murder, deceit and rebirth – resemble the destruction wreaked by the heroes of Greek tragedy. The play contains many of Shepard’s favorite motifs: a quirky, often frightening family of antagonists in a claustrophobic farmhouse somewhere in the American Midwest.

“We don´t know each other in America. It starts on the family level, and there are certain areas in the country like in the west and in the south where `family´ is very strong, and there are other areas where it doesn´t even exist! People don´t have any connection whatsoever to each other, to their siblings, or know who their father is or their mother, they´re just wild.

I´m haunted by that character. The American character is more about that than anything else, more than success, more than power and strength and all the other things that we present ourselves to be. It´s more about the strange, strange lack of identity. We don´t really know who we are, we never have known who we are. We’ve invented it! We don´t have a clue! We´re like wandering vagabonds!” Sam Shepard

Sam Shepard is one of America’s most prolific playwrights and actors of our time. Famous for his acting roles in such movies as The Right Stuff, Homo Faber, Black Hawk Down and The Assassination of Jesse James, he made a name for himself very early as a writer of plays such as True West and Fool for Love. For Buried Child he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama in 1979. He also wrote numerous movie scripts, two of them for German director Wim Wenders (Paris Texas and Don´t Come Knocking). In his plays Shepard dissects the rituals, the vernacular and the moral codes of the American lower class with a crude mixture of action, sarcastic humour and bone-dry realism.

Veronika Nowag-Jones has directed numerous plays by Brecht, Tabori, Shepard, Euripides and others for theatres in Berlin, New York City (NY), Louisville (KY), Philadelphia (PA), and Atlanta (GA).

English Theatre Berlin presents Buried Child as a Germany premiere in collaboration wth 7 Stages Theatre Atlanta.

Shenanigans

by Stephen Don

“The family that has no skeleton in a cupboard has buried it instead.”

A small village in rural Ireland: the local Public House is a resting place for men and women from the surrounding communities, and the local barman is considered a sort of modern day Ganesha, a knower of all that is important to the lost and a lover of every man and woman who is willing to spend their well-earned wages on a pint of stout. But fact is much stranger than fiction, and your best friend can sometimes become your worst enemy in the blink of of an eye…

The Mooonshot Tape

by Lanford Wilson

moonshot-website Having come home to visit her mother who has been placed in a nursing home, Diane, now a well-known writer, is being interviewed for the local newspaper. Her remarks are an answer to questions such as where she gets the ideas for her stories, whether her youth in Mountain Grove influenced her work and why she decided to leave home. At first obliging and matter-of-fact, Diane gradually reveals more than her interviewer might have bargained for a childhood marred by the loss of her father and her mother´s coldness; the promiscuity which she was driven to in search of the love and concern which were denied her at home; and, most devastating of all, the molestation by her stepfather which shaped her character indelibly – and led to the harrowing event which she describes at the end.

To the world at large Diane is someone who has shaken off the dust of Mountain Grove and has gone on to bigger and better things. To herself, however, it is painfully clear that what she is is what her earlier life ordained – because no one ever really leaves the place from which they came.

Lanford Wilson, born 1937 in Missouri, is one of America´s most courageous and innovative playwrights and is considered one of the founders of the Off-Off-Broadway movement starting out in the gay community in New York´s Greenwich Village. He has written numerous plays, and in 1980 received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Talley´s Folly.

Natalia Maskevich was born in Russia and moved with her family to Brussels, Belgium where she studied dramatic arts at the Conservatoire Royal. Throughout her international career in film, TV and theater she has performed in four different languages. In 2004 she moved to Paris starring in the TV series Plus Belle La Vie. She has since worked on many theatre pieces.