Among the spikier offerings at this year’s Theatertreffen, the annual festival of drama in Berlin, is a play whose dramatis personae may ring familiar. There is an angry ballet director, a female reviewer who gives his show a critical mauling and an adjacent dachshund. Their paths converge in the same lurid way as happened in real life last year, when the head of Hanover State Opera’s ballet company, Marco Goecke, attacked dance critic Wiebke Hüster with dog excrement in response to a negative review.
Die Hundekot-Attacke (“the dog poop attack”) is conceived by Dutch company Wunderbaum and devised by an actors’ collective from Jena. The play has a plot that features a group of actors from Jena devising a provocative play based on a real-life hundekot-attacke, in a desperate bid to draw critics to their provincial theatre – a big idea from a small-town ensemble.
On the face of it, it is a win for regional drama – Theaterhaus Jena, in the Thuringian province, has never before been selected to feature in the festival’s 10-strong lineup (this year chosen from 690 shows). But given that the programme is compiled by seven leading critics from the German-speaking world, is this a classic case of schadenfreude within the critical industry?
Not exactly. Where the production might have fallen into cheaply capitalising on last year’s controversy, it instead steers an intelligently self-interrogating path, and is entertaining along the way. The thin-skinned creatives of theatre are delightfully pilloried, the rehearsal and writing processes sent up – there is even a mock-audition for a dachshund.
Alongside that is serious commentary on the place of criticism, fragile masculinity, violence against women, the hierarchical structures on which Germany’s theatre industry is built, and the psychological impact of negative criticism on the artist. (One director in the show turns into an almost-stalker of a critic who has given him a terrible review.)
It is a curious turn in the poo-gate drama, and leads to thoughtful reflections. Barbara Behrendt, who reviews theatre for radio broadcaster Deutschlandradio, says that the incident, ironically, became a “welcome starting point” for a bigger discussion, not just about the opinion-shaping power of the critic but also gender dynamics. “A lot of people at the time thought it was a case of a misogynistic asshole attacking a woman, and how the focus should be that, rather than any questioning of what the critic had said in her review,” says Behrendt.
Die Hundekot-Attacke’s director, Walter Bart, feels that while everyone was talking about the real-life incident after it happened, the conversations were not easy or simple, and so “we thought theatre might be the best place for it”. And the company asked themselves some serious questions about whether humour could be inserted into such a story. Goecke was investigated by police on charges of criminal assault; proceedings against him were dropped and he made a payment to a non-profit association. The collective informed both Goecke and Hüster of the project at the outset, but then felt it was important to keep a distance and go their own way creatively, says Bart.
Linde Dercon, who features among the ensemble cast of six, says it was written specifically with the world of dance in mind. There are brief diversions into Black Swan territory, which skim across the abuse of power, but also a longer, fantastically spoofy dance, performed as a play within the play, which brings superb physical comedy at the end.
Anna K Seidel, another cast member, says the play deliberately switches sides conceptually between the artist and the critic, and resists coming down on either one definitively. It does acknowledge the pragmatic necessity of criticism though. The collective in the play need the critics to turn up, and know that negative reviews are part of the metaphorical handshake. Anything, for them, is better than not being talked about.
Perhaps it is the same in life as in art. Shows at Theaterhaus Jena typically attract a couple of local reviewers, says Bart, but this one drew double figures, with critics from far afield turning up to the original run. “Theatre and criticism can’t live without each other,” says Bart, “and a good critic is essential, especially now that [newspaper] reviewing space is getting smaller and smaller.”