The synthetic dragon spits hearth | EUROtoday

Am Freitag, als wir die erste Pressevorstellung der neuen Kollektivkreation des Pariser Théâtre du Soleil besuchten, regnete Feuer vom Himmel auf Anto­niwka herab, auf Krywyj Rih, Saporischschja und andere Orte in der Ukraine. Den dafür verantwortlichen Drachen zeigt Ariane Mnouchkine den Zuschauern am Beginn von „Ici sont les Dragons“: Wladimir Putin. Der vom Internationalen Strafgerichtshof gesuchte mutmaßliche Kriegsverbrecher rechtfertigt da in einem Fernsehauftritt vom 24. Februar 2022 die der Russischen Föderation angeblich aufgezwungene „militärische Spezialoperation“.

„Was ist das? Mach das aus! Halt die Fresse!“ geht eine Figur namens Cornélia sogleich auf die den ganzen Bühnenhintergrund einnehmende Videoprojektion los. Hélène Cinque spielte schon in „Une Chambre en Inde“ (2016) und „L’Île d’or“ (2021) dieses szenische Alter Ego der Regisseurin und Truppenchefin Mnouchkine: eine Heulsuse hart am Rande des Nervenzusammenbruchs, die schwerlich zur Sympathieträgerin taugt. Selbst Putin wirkt durch Cornélias Gekeife indisponiert – sein Gesicht zerfließt in Zeitlupe wie das einer Wachsfigur, seine Stimme wird immer tiefer, bis sie im Infrabass verblubbert.

Da huschen drei „Babayagas“ über die Bühne, nennen wir sie mit Shakespeare „Hexen“ oder mit Wagner „Nornen“, und raunen im Vorbeischwanken Dunkel-Orakelhaftes, was sie das ganze Stück über periodisch tun werden. Flugs landen wir 1916 irgendwo im Pas-de-Calais mit Winston Churchill an einer Schneewehe. Der damalige Kommandeur des 6. Bataillons der Royal Scots Fusiliers trägt kluge Gedanken vor, die er seinem Tagebuch anvertraut. Ähnliche Auftritte haben später – abzüglich der klugen Gedanken – der junge Gefreite Adolf Hitler und der Studienanfänger Joseph Goebbels.

Nach über sechs Minuten kommen wir endlich zur Sache: Russland in den zehn Monaten zwischen Februarrevolution 1917 und dem Ende der ephemeren Demokratieblüte Anfang 1918. „Ici sont les Dragons“, begreift man im Rückblick, sucht Putins Versuche seit 2014, die Ukraine in Teilen zu annektieren und in Gänze zu terrorisieren, mittels einer gut hundert Jahre umspannenden Geschichtslektion zu beleuchten. Eine zweite Episode soll so nächstes Jahr bis 1945 führen, weitere Folgen dürften, so der (allzu?) ambitiöse Vorsatz, die acht Jahrzehnte bis heute abdecken.

What emerges is a wood, static historic define that may finest be described as a free chain of dramatized e-book reviews. Here, “dramatized” solely means the preparation for the theater stage, not the strain, the potential for battle, the scenic spark – these are fully lacking from the manufacturing. The members of the Théâtre du Soleil have processed their intensive readings as regards to the “Russian Revolution” within the type of easily polished improvisations, most of that are monological in nature.

Speeches are given, poems are recited, letters and books are learn aloud, newspaper articles are recited throughout four-hand writing, songs are sung, jokes are uttered and occasions are described in off-screen voices – however there are virtually no dramatic interactions. Even the place characters with completely different opinions meet, comparable to Mensheviks and Bolsheviks or residents loyal to the Tsar and mutinous troopers, everybody simply presents their viewpoint with out shifting anybody to do something. The most necessary driving pressure of theater is sort of fully lacking: that phrases provoke actions or are themselves brokers of motion. Mnouchkine’s theater is, the longer, the extra, one which tells: a three-dimensional e-book with colourful, shifting photographs.

These photographs are as spectacular as ever, from the looks of the soon-to-be ex-tsar in a white uniform on a mechanical horse out of the darkness to the October Revolution, the place St. Petersburg residents look out over a bay with a pointillist sea with their backs to the viewers, whereas Lenin’s speeches are heard within the distance, to Trotsky and others. But the splendor of “Ici sont les Dragons” can’t disguise the truth that the piece not solely strings collectively tableaux which can be shifting in kind however don’t have any motion by way of content material, however that it additionally distrusts typical theater speech. The fixed use of alienation results and finesse of the narrative gadget implies that the protagonists are solely skilled as ciphers, as summary standard-bearers of a celebration or thought.

Firstly, it seems like simply as a lot Russian is spoken as French, plus some German and English, which can seemingly draw most viewers’ eyes away from the actors and in the direction of the subtitles. Secondly, a lot of the actors put on lifelike masks, which makes facial expressions unimaginable, and all however Hélène Cinque as Cornélia are “synchronized” utilizing recorded recordings of overseas voices. Thirdly and eventually, methods like theater within the theater or movie within the theater result in the meta degree – epic artifice as an alternative of dramatic directness.

Ariane Mnouchkine is likely one of the nice, maybe the best, activists within the theater world. Over the course of the 60-year historical past of the Théâtre du Soleil, which was based in 1964, she and its members have campaigned for conscientious objectors and unlawful immigrants, for occupied Tibet and attacked Bosnia. She denounced the hazards of Islamism at an early stage and immediately on the similar time castigates the “fascists mafia theocrats of the Netanyahu government” and the “pornographically nefarious monsters of Hamas”. Their dedication to the martyred Ukraine – within the restaurant room, which smells of borscht and pierogies, there are donation containers for the acquisition of drone detectors – is a part of the lengthy listing of their fights for primary democratic values.

But the primary episode of “Ici sont les Dragons” lacks each urgency and focus. The piece resembles an elaborately manufactured synthetic kite that breathes hearth and sprays brimstone whereas respiration closely, however by no means takes off with its stubby wings.