Physical Dramaturgy: Ein (neuer) Trend?

Dramaturgie im zeitgenössischen Tanz ist ? positiv gemeint ? ein heißes Eisen. Idealerweise sind Dramaturginnen und Dramaturgen während der Erarbeitung eines Stücks die besten Freunde der Choreografen. more more

GoetheInstitute

15/03/2006

From the Feuilletons is a weekly overview of what's been happening in the German-language cultural pages and appears every Friday at 3 pm. CET.. Here a key to the German newspapers.

Berliner Zeitung, 15.03.2006

Michaela Schlagenwerth portrays Berlin director Neco Celik: "He is a committed Muslim and director of a number of offbeat underground films, which landed him the reputation of being the Spike Lee of Kreuzberg." Celik is now directing Turkish writer Feridun Zaimoglu's play "Black Virgins" in the HAU theatre in Berlin, which Zaimoglu collaged from interviews with Muslim women about their religion and also about sex. "Neco Celik finds it 'fantastic' the way the characters have found their own ways of balancing belief and sex. He agreed to direct the play 'just because it was Feridun's' (this is the first time he has tried his hand at theatre directing) before he had even read the script. 'The first reading was a shock.' Because Muslims never normally talk like this about sex, and particularly not girls. 'Feridun has taken on a huge responsibility here.' The characters launch a full-force attack on the clichees that beset them and their positions forcefully undermine all popular images about Muslim women." See our feature by Feridun Zaimoglu "From Turkish boy to German writer".


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 15.03.06


The FAZ literary supplement also celebrates Feridun Zaimoglu and his ambitious novel, 'Leyla'. Through the eyes of a young Turkish girl, it offers the reader a fascinating and horrifying introduction into the world of Turkish women. "To understand the situation of Turks living in Germany, you need to understand where they have come from. Zaimoglu's extensive research, speaking at length with his family, with aunts, relatives and friends in Germany and in Turkey, helped him painstakingly and lovingly to reconstruct this world. He depicts the women's sewing in minute detail and how Leyla, stricken with shame and panic deals with her first period – her older sister Yasmin directing her from behind a closed bathroom door on how to loop and knot the piece of cotton. Zaimoglu effortlessly slips into the skin of a child or bride, who is only told about the rituals by her friends the day before her wedding and feels like she might fall unconscious from her chair, like her sister Selda did."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 15.03.2006


After decades of neglect, Tangier is undergoing thorough renovation, reports Alfred Hackensberger, and this is attracting foreigners to the city. "Among them are also famous names like Bernard-Henri Levy, the French philosopher, who has bought himself an extravagant multi-million villa directly by the sea. Or Francois-Olivier Rousseau, a French writer, who recently arrived from Marrakesh which has lost its 'exotic flair' now that so many foreigners live there. 'It is significant', says Khalid Amine from the university of Tetouan, 'that the more Moroccans strive for modernity, the more Europeans strive for tradition. They live in the old city, and the Moroccans move out to the new part of town.' As a result, property prices in the 'Kasbah' where the old houses afford wonderful views over the Straits of Gibralta, have rocketed in the last two or three years. "


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15.03.2006


As part of her "Love Project" researching human relationships in 2006, Sonja Zekri trawled through a number of related books and websites. Among them was what she termed an "encyclopaedia of reproduction", a book called "Minimum" by publisher and editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frank Schirrmacher, which follows up on the successes of his "Methusala Conspiracy" about the problems of an ageing society. "Minimum" describes the "biological worse case scenario" as the consequence of "society's failed breeding programme", which Zekri writes, follows the "fundamentalist ideal of the family idyll" which never truly existed. "And his argument assigns women the role of the devoted seamstress whose selflessness alone can rescue the nation from the brink of the abyss. This makes even the post-war years look rosy by comparison. At least in those days the so-called rubble women could prove themselves with muscle power, organisational talent and a few other skills."


Die Welt, 15,03.06

Matthias Heine applauds Mel Brooks' remake of "The Producers" as "a real encyclopaedia of wicked jokes about all manner of people who are normally easily offended: Jews, gays, lesbians, Germans (and not just Nazis), blondes and sex-obsessed grannies." Heine believes the film has a diplomatic duty. "The film should be shown in as many Islamic countries as possible. It illustrates the American and European sense of humour much better than any number of intercultural dialogues could. He impressively rejects the argument often circulated by Muslims that the western world has a so-called taboo on jokes. Even more than its predecessor in 1968, the remake strives after a utopia, the final variation on the good old American melting pot theme: It's the strength of the wicked humour and greed for money that reconciles the Jews, Nazis, gays and Swedes."

Get the signandsight newsletter for regular updates on feature articles.
signandsight.com - let's talk european.

 
More articles

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 11 - 17 December, 2010

A clutch of German newspapers launch an appeal against the criminalisation of Wikileaks. Vera Lengsfeld remembers GDR dissident Jürgen Fuchs and how he met death in his cell. All the papers were bowled over Xavier Beauvois' film "Of Gods and Men." The FR enjoys a joke but not a picnic at a staging of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" in Berlin. Gustav Seibt provides a lurid description of Napoleonic soap in the SZ. German-Turkish Dogan Akhanli author explains what it feels like to be Josef K.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 December

Colombian writer Hector Abad defends Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa against European Latin-America romantics. Wikileaks dissident Daniel Domscheit-Berg criticises the new publication policy of his former employer. The Sprengel Museum has put on a show of child nudes by die Brücke artists. The SZ takes a walk through the Internet woods with FAZ prophet of doom Frank Schirrmacher. The FAZ is troubled by Christian Thielemann's unstable tempo in the Beethoven cycle. And the FR meets China Free Press publisher, Bao Pu.
read more

From the feuilletons

Saturday 27 November - Friday 3 December

Danish author Frederik Stjernfelt explains how the Left got its culturist ideas. Slavenka Draculic writes about censoring Angelina Jolie who wanted to make a film in Bosnia. Daniel Cohn-Bendit talks   about his friendship, falling out and reconciliation with Jean-Luc Godard. Wikileaks has caused an embarrassed silence in the Arab world, where not even al-Jazeera reported on the what the sheiks really think. Alan Posener calls for the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden to be shut down.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 20 - Friday 26 November, 2010

The theatre event of the week came in a twin pack: Roland Schimmelpfennig's new play, a post-colonial "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" opened at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Thalia in Hamburg. The anarchist pamphlet "The Coming Insurrection" has at last been translated into German and has ignited the revolutionary sympathies of at least two leading German broadsheets, the FAZ and the SZ. But the taz, Germany's left-wing daily, says the pamphlet is strongly right-wing. What's left and right anyway? came the reply.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 13 - Friday 19 November, 2010

Dieter Schlesak levels grave accusations against his former friend and colleague, Oskar Pastior, who spied on him for the Securitate. Banat-Swabian author and vice chairman of the Oskar Pastior Foundation, Ernest Wichner, turns on Schlesak for spreading malicious rumours. Die Zeit portrays the Berlin rapper Harris, and the moment he knew he was German. Dutch author Cees Nooteboom meditates on the near lust for physical torture in the paintings of Francisco de Zurburan. An exhibition in Mannheim displays the dream house photography of Julius Schulman.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 6 - Friday 12 November, 2010

The NZZ asks why banks invest in art. The FAZ gawps at the unnatural stack of stomach muscles in Michelangelo's drawings. The taz witnesses a giant step for the "Yugo palaver". Bernard-Henri Levy describes Sakineh Ashtiani's impending execution as a test for Iran and the west. Journalist Michael Anti talks about the healthy relationship between the net and the Chinese media. Literary academic Helmut Lethen describes how Ernst Jünger stripped the worker of all organic substances.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 30 October - Friday 5 November, 2010

Now that German TV has just beatified Pope Pius XII, Rolf Hochmuth tells die Welt where he got the idea for his play "The Deputy". The FR celebrates Elfriede Jelinek's "brilliantly malicious" farce about the collapse of the Cologne City Archive. "Carlos" director Olivier Assayas makes it clear that the revolutionary subject is a figment of the imagination. The SZ returns from the Shanghai Expo with a cloying after-taste of sweet 'n' sour. And historian Wang Hui tells the NZZ that China's intellectuals have plenty of freedom to pose critical questions.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 23 - Friday 29 October, 2010

Author Doron Rabinovici protests against the concessions of moderate Austrian politicians to the FPÖ: recently in Vienna, children were sent back to Kosovo at gunpoint. Ian McEwan wonders why major German novelists didn't mention the Wall. The NZZ looks through the Priz Goncourt shortlist and finds plenty of writers with more bite than Houellebecq. The FAZ outs two of Germany's leading journalists who fiercely guarded the German Foreign Ministry's Nazi past. Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt analyse the symptoms of culturalism, left and right. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht demonstratively yawns at German debate.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 16 - Friday 22 October, 2010

A new book chronicles the revolt of revolting "third persons" at Suhrkamp publishers in the wild days of 1968. Necla Kelek is appalled by the speech of the very Christian Christian Wulff, the German president, in Turkey. The taz met a new faction of hardcore Palestinians who are fighting for separate sex hairdressing in Gaza. Sinologist Andreas Schlieker reports on the new Chinese willingness to restructure the heart. And the Cologne band Erdmöbel celebrate the famous halo around the frying pan.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 9 - Friday 15 October, 2010

The FR laps up the muscular male bodies and bellies at the Michelangelo exhibition in the Viennese Albertina. The same paper is outraged by the cowardice of the Berlin exhibition "Hitler and the Germans". Mario Vargas-Llosa remembers a bad line from Sweden. Theologist Friedrich Wilhelm Graf makes it very clear that Western values are not Judaeo-Christian values. The Achse des Guten is annoyed by the attempts of the mainstream media to dismiss Mario Vargas-Llosa. The NZZ celebrates the tireless self-demolition of Polish writer and satirist Slawomir Mrozek.
read more

From the feuilletons

Saturday 2 - Friday 8 October, 2010

Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare explains why his country has become uninhabitable. German Book Prize winner Melinda Nadj Abonji says Switzerland only pretends to be liberal. German author Monika Maron is not sure that Islam really does belong to Germany. Russian writer Oleg Yuriev explains the disastrous effects of postmodernism on the Petersburg Hermitage. Argentinian author Martin Caparros describes how the Kirchners have co-opted the country's revolutionary history. And publisher Damian Tabarovsky explains why 2001 was such an explosively creative year for Argentina.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 25 September - Friday 1 October

Three East German theatre directors talk about the trauma of reunification. In the FAZ, Thilo Sarrazin denies accusations that his book propagates eugenics: "I am interested in the interplay of nature and nurture." Polemics are being drowned out by blaring lullabies, author Thea Dorn despairs. Author Iris Radisch is dismayed by the state of the German novel - too much idle chatter, not enough literary clout. Der Spiegel posts its interview with the German WikiLeaks spokesman, Daniel Schmitt. And Vaclav Havel's appeal to award the Nobel prize to Liu Xiabobo has the Chinese authorities pulling out their hair.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 18 - Friday 24 September, 2010

Herta Müller's response to the news that poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant was one of overwhelming grief: "When he returned home from the gulag he was everybody's game." Theatre director Luk Perceval talks about the veiled depression in his theatre. Cartoonist Molly Norris has disappeared after receiving death threats for her "Everybody Draw Mohammed" campaign. The Berliner Zeitung approves of the mellowing in Pierre Boulez' music. And Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, allowed to leave China for the first time, explains why schnapps is his most important writing tool.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 10 - Friday 17 September, 2010

The poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant, the historian Stefan Sienerth has discovered. Biologist Veronika Lipphardt dismisses Thilo Sarrazin's incendiary intelligence theories as a load of codswallop. A number of prominent Muslim intellectuals in Germany have written an open letter to President Christian Wulff, calling for him to "make a stand for a democratic culture based on mutual respect." And a Shell study has revealed that Germany's youth aspire to be just like their parents.
read more

From the Feuilletons

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 September, 2010

Thilo Sarrazin has buckled under the stress of the past two weeks and resigned from the board of the Central Bank. His book, "Germany is abolishing itself", however, continues to keep Germany locked in a debate about education and immigration and intelligence. Also this week, Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has been awarded the M100 prize for defending freedom of opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech at the award ceremony: "The secret of freedom is courage". The FAZ interviewed Westergaard, who expressed his disappointment that the only people who had shown him no support were those of his own class.
read more