“Einsiedler Welttheater”: Lukas Bärfuss asks about the human being
Published: Wednesday, Jun 5th 2024, 11:02
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In 1924, "Das Grosse Welttheater" by the Spanish baroque poet Calderón was performed for the first time in Einsiedeln. One hundred years later, the 17th performance is taking place - in Lukas Bärfuss' adaptation. For his "Einsiedeln World Theater", the Büchner Prize winner finds a convincing combination of baroque and modern.
The Einsiedeln theater stage is colossal. The imposing monastery and the vast space in front of it command the respect of a playwright. Back in 2017, Lukas Bärfuss said at a press conference that everything was so huge and actually impossible to perform on. Nevertheless, he took the risk.
Bärfuss' skepticism has rubbed off on the character of the author in the play. "No show today", he announces at the beginning in many languages. "There is nothing here. Vete a casa." Two characters, Pablo and Emanuela in the role of the "unborn children", rebel against this rejection. "Ich wott spile, begrifsch?", the girl insists and finally prevails with a triple "Ich wott!". The play opens.
In the Baroque tradition, world theater does not feature psychologized figures, but typified ones, such as the king, the rich or the poor, who stand for parts of society. In addition, the world, beauty or reason are also characters in the play, and thus representatives who together make up the world, its values and functions.
The children's performance
Bärfuss sets a strong accent with the appearance of the children. The children also provide the renewing power for the world theater, while the "hundred-year-old" allegorical figures stand silently at the edge of the stage like pillar saints.
What is the human being? What role do they play and what do they do with their lives? With these fundamental questions, Lukas Bärfuss updates a core Baroque theme. Where Calderón's characters fit into their intended roles, Bärfuss brings man onto the stage as a searching, rebellious individual. With a discreet reminder of Max Frisch, Emanuela holds it up to the author: "With Figure häsch grächnet. But I pay as a monk."
There is a rebellious spirit in the girl who becomes a woman in the course of the play. Emanuela resists the humility imposed on her. In Calderón's play, the law of grace repeatedly prompts: "Do right - God above you." With Bärfuss, this law no longer plays a role, because a law does not play, it governs. Emanuela rebels precisely "against the law / where few are given much, / and many are given little".
Man in revolt
The existentialist Albert Camus once wrote in his essay "Man in Revolt" that there are only two worlds for man: the sacred or revolt. But revolt, he continues, is borne by solidarity. With it, the sacred does not abdicate, but takes on a different form. Where religion fails in the modern age, solidarity can help out as a force. Bärfuss seems to have based his adaptation on this.
And that's what Emanuela is fighting for in the world theater. "We're taking back the game!" she shouts defiantly, "with our own rules! / For justice!" She plays all the allegorical roles herself and then puts them down again - most recently that of Beauty, as she has now become an old woman. "The beauty ghat! / You and the spil / You are finished!" proclaims the "Welt". The theater is over.
Exuberance and humility
The Baroque era stands for an exuberant celebration of life as well as humility before fate and death. This existential tension also worries modern man, even if he insures himself against the vicissitudes of fate. "It goes on without you" - that remains the core of the Einsiedeln World Theater.
Lukas Bärfuss waxes lyrical to the Keystone-SDA news agency. He is fascinated by "the question of truth and appearance". He adds: "What could be more topical", and what more political? At the same time, he is fascinated by the onomatopoeia of the Spanish original, which reminds him of the modern poetry of Tristan Tzara, for example.
Linguistically, Bärfuss therefore stimulates his play with short, pointed dialogues that make use of the spatial sound of the wide space and keep the action on stage moving. The seriousness also meets the mischievousness. And two "moonlifters" frame the play with a slapstick interlude that creates pure poetry at the end.
A piece for everyone
Lukas Bärfuss' world theater remains connected to the historical model in spirit and meaning. He has tried, he confirms, to create a play for all classes and ages, "so that everyone can simply enjoy it - playing and watching". He has greatly diversified the number of roles so that the world can appear with a colorful procession of "miracles", with winds and waves in its wake, but also with plagues and epidemics.
"Which role is yours?" asks the "Welt" of Calderón. With Lukas Bärfuss, human existence oscillates between revolt and transience. He stages the play in a way that is as lively as it is rebellious - and has found his role as an author.
One hundred years after the first performance and 24 years after the refreshment by the author Thomas Hürlimann, Lukas Bärfuss continues the Einsiedeln tradition. At the heart of the "largest theater company in the world", the church, as he writes in the epilogue, the enthusiasm of the "play people in Einsiedeln" should live on.
*This text by Beat Mazenauer, Keystone-SDA, was realized with the help of the Gottlieb and Hans Vogt Foundation
https://www.welttheatereinsiedeln.ch
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