Performing New German Realities: Turkish-German Scripts of Postmigration 3030698475, 9783030698478

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CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE INTERACTIONS SERIES EDITORS: ELAINE ASTON · BRIAN SINGLETON

Performing New German Realities Turkish-German Scripts of Postmigration Lizzie Stewart

Contemporary Performance InterActions

Series Editors Elaine Aston, Lancaster University, Lancaster, Lancashire, UK Brian Singleton, Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

Theatre’s performative InterActions with the politics of sex, race and class, with questions of social and political justice, form the focus of the Contemporary Performance InterActions series. Performative InterActions are those that aspire to affect, contest or transform. International in scope, CPI publishes monographs and edited collections dedicated to the InterActions of contemporary practitioners, performances and theatres located in any world context. Advisory Board Khalid Amine (Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Morocco) Bishnupriya Dutt (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India) Mark Fleishman (University of Cape Town, South Africa) Janelle Reinelt (University of Warwick, UK) Freddie Rokem (Tel Aviv University, Israel) Joanne Tompkins (University of Queensland, Australia) Harvey Young (Northwestern University, USA)

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14918

Lizzie Stewart

Performing New German Realities Turkish-German Scripts of Postmigration

Lizzie Stewart King’s College London London, UK

ISSN 2634-5870 ISSN 2634-5889 (electronic) Contemporary Performance InterActions ISBN 978-3-030-69847-8 ISBN 978-3-030-69848-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69848-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Elmira Bahrami as Perikızı in Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Perikızı, dir. by Michael Ronen (Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Berlin 2011). Copyright Ute Langkafel/Maifoto This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To my mum, Claire Stewart. Thank you for everything. To the artists, practitioners, thinkers, and friends who I got to spend time with in writing this book and whose work changes worlds. Thanks also for changing mine!

Preface

A note on spelling and translation. The spelling of Turkish names and titles is sometimes Germanised in Germany through loss of diacritics. This can represent a spectrum of positionings from disregard for or ignorance of the information carried in Turkish spelling, to linguistic assimilation via older print technology norms in Germany, to an active political assertion of German belonging on the part of the individual involved. While it can be difficult to determine which positioning is at work, here I aim to use the variant which appears to be actively preferred or repeatedly and actively used by the person in question. Thus I refer to Feridun Zaimoglu rather than Feridun Zaimo˘glu, for example, and Shermin Langhoff rather than Sermin ¸ Langhoff, but Neco Çelik, not Neco Celik. The exception to this rule is when I am quoting another’s work there I maintain the spelling used in the source quotation. Unless otherwise stated all translations from the German here are my own. The German original is included in footnotes for multilingual readers. London, UK

Lizzie Stewart

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Acknowledgements

If making theatre is a collaborative process, so too is researching it, and I am incredibly grateful to all those authors, theatre practitioners and administrators who gave up their time and energy by making themselves available to interview, or assisting me with access to sources. First and foremost, my thanks go to Emine Sevgi Özdamar for our conversations and for access to some of the sources used in this study. The pleasure her work gives me is immense and I do hope I have done this some form of justice here. My thanks also to Feridun Zaimoglu for allowing me to visit him at home for a fascinating conversation in Kiel. I am particularly grateful to both authors for agreeing to speak to me for this project despite their personal differences. My sincere thanks also go to my other interview partners throughout the project for racking their memories of past productions and answering my questions with such generosity of spirit: Nora Bussenius, Neco Çelik, Axel Gade, Stefan Nagel, Luk Perceval, Michael Ronen, Christian Scholze, Lars-Ole Walburg, Ingo Waszerka and Anja Wedig. I am grateful to the following archives and archivists for access to many of the materials in this book: Ann Kersting-Meuleman of the Abteilung Musik, Theater, Film at the Universitätsbibliothek J. C. Senckenberg, Goethe Universität Frankfurt; Carsten Niemann of the Theatermuseum Hannover and the staff of the Münchner Stadtarchiv; the Deutsches Theatermuseum. Special thanks also go to the very helpful Thomas

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Maagh of Theater der Autoren and Tanja Müller of the Rowohlt Theaterverlag. I am also very grateful to all of the administrators and theatre practitioners who turned archivist for me, giving me access to materials otherwise unavailable. In addition to those already named above, these include: Isabelle Yeginar, Stefan A. Schulz, Sophie Fleckenstein, Sabrina Schmidt, Flori Gugger, Maike Lautenschütz, Thile von Quist, Christina Ratka, Felix Mannheim, Monica Marotta, Chantel Kohler, Tunçay Kulao˘glu, Eva Linke, Osman Tok, Sarah Reimann, Lutz Knospe, Insa Popken, Jenny Flügge, Verena Schimpf and Julia Mayr. The late Fereidoun Ettehad was particularly helpful and deserves special mention here. Finally, a thank you to Tu˘gsal Mo˘gul, who introduced me to Herr Ettehad and sneaked me in to see Verrücktes Blut in 2011. Images used in this book are subject to copyright and are reproduced here with the kind permission of Emine Sevgi Özdamar; Stefan A. Schultz; Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt a.M., Archiv Schauspiel Frankfurt; Münchner Kammerspiele; Andreas Pohlmann; Ute Langkafel / Maifoto Berlin; Ballhaus Naunynstraße; Maxim Gorki Theater; Sandra Then-Friedrich; raumlaborberlin; Matthias Horn; Christian Nielinger / www.nielinger.de; Ulrich Greb / Schlosstheater Moers. Quotations from unpublished scripts are with kind permission of the authors, Verlag der Autoren and Rowohlt Theater Verlag. The research presented here began as a Ph.D. funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) and also benefitted significantly from additional funding for research trips in Germany provided by the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) and the AGS (Association for German Studies, UK). The research and writing of that thesis would not have been possible without this financial support. Thanks also go to my Doktormütter Laura Bradley and Frauke Matthes—I am extremely grateful to them both for guiding me so expertly, so elegantly, and so very patiently through the Ph.D.. Special thanks also go to my examiners, Margaret Littler, Moray McGowan and Peter Davies for their feedback, to Sarah Colvin for encouragement to do postgrad study, and to Izzy Madgwick, who, during our Erasmus year in Heidelberg, took me both to the theatre for the first time and to a class on Interkulturelle Germanistik—opportunities which would not have been possible for me without the Erasmus scheme the UK may soon leave. In writing the thesis which led to this book, the University of Edinburgh German department and the LLC postgraduate community were a constant source of stimulation and support, particularly Muireann

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Crowley, Joanna Neilly, Dora Osborne, Mikey Wood, Laura Chapot, Lila Matsumoto, Hannah Lena Hagemann, Majied Robinson and Yusef Hamdan. In trips to Berlin, so were Dieuwke Borsma, Hanna Wolf, Nina, Rose Mallard, Sandra Dinter, Ninnette Poetzsch, Neco and Nermin Çelik, and Dilan Gülmez. In terms of further academic support, I would also like to thank Christel Weiler for hosting me during my DAAD fellowship at the Freies Universität Berlin. Two postgraduate summer schools/workshops and the people I met there were also of particular influence: the University of Utrecht School of Critical Theory’s Intensive Programme on G-local Cosmopolitanism and the Transnational German Studies workshop organised between the Universities of Warwick, Michigan and the Humboldt, Berlin in 2013. Although the Ph.D. was completed in 2014, reworking this into the book has taken quite a while longer. In the interim, earlier versions of some material in this book were published in articles and book chapters. Some paragraphs on postmigration in the chapter “Scripts of Migration: Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Early Plays (1982–2000)” first appeared in: Lizzie Stewart. 2017. “Postmigrant theatre: the Ballhaus Naunynstraße takes on sexual nationalism”. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 9 (2): 56–68. Sections of the performance analysis and history which form part of the chapter “Zaimoglu/Senkel/Shakespeare: Othello (2003) and the Turkish-German Rewrite” were first published in the following two articles: Lizzie Stewart. 2017. “Countermemory and the (Turkish-)German Theatrical Archive: Reading the Documentary Remains of Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Karagöz in Alamania (1986)”. Transit 8 (2): 1–22. http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/0fq2m874; Lizzie Stewart. 2016. “Ümmü in Alamania? Female Voice and Song in the Premiere Production of Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Karagöz in Alamania (1986)”. Oxford German Studies 45 (3): 254–74. An earlier version of the chapter “The “Neo-Muslima” Enters the Scene: Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins (2006) and the Postmigrant Theatre” appeared as Lizzie Stewart. 2014. “Black Virgins, Close Encounters: Re-Examining the ‘Semi-Documentary’ in Postmigrant Theatre”. Türkisch-deutsche Studien 5: 81–102. Some paragraphs in the chapters “Scripts of Migration: Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Early Plays (1982–2000)”, “Performing Institutional Change: New Faces, Shadow Voices (2008)”, and “Celebrating the New “Normal”? Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Perikızı and the Festival Context” also appear in: Lizzie Stewart. 2018. “‘The Future Market and the Current Reality’: Interculturalism in the German Context”.

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In Interculturalism and Performance Now, ed. by Charlotte MacIvor and Jason King. A paragraph in the conclusion first appeared in Lizzie Stewart/Frauke Matthes. 2016. “Ümmü in Alamania? Female Voice and Song in the Premiere Production of Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Karagöz in Alamania (1986)”. Oxford German Studies, 45 (3): 254–74. My thanks to the publishers of the above for permission to republish this material in revised form here as part of a broader argument. Research by other scholars in this area has been growing rapidly since the completion of the thesis with which this book began, and I have tried to be thorough in incorporating more recent relevant publications into the finished version of the book. However, it may be that some newer pieces published during the final stages of work on this manuscript, when access to resources was limited by coronavirus restrictions, are omitted—for this my apologies. Between the Ph.D. and the book, I held a series of short-term teaching positions at University of Edinburgh, University of St Andrews and University of Cambridge, before being given a permanent position at King’s College London. If job insecurity and lots of teaching made it difficult for me personally to focus on the bigger picture required for the book, I am nonetheless hugely grateful to the wonderful colleagues from each these departments which supported me financially, intellectually, and emotionally to further develop the research into the form presented in this book. Especial thanks for the emotional at this stage to Cathy Barbour, Ina Linge, Marie Kolkenbrock, Erica Wickerson, Katharina Kärcher and Manu Cusin. This book would also not be what it is without the series of conferences run by the research group on postmigration led by Moritz Schramm et al in Denmark, two conferences on theatre and interculturalism at University of Galway run by Charlotte McIvor and her fantastic colleagues there, or the GSA seminar on “(Post)Migrant Theater: Past, Present, and Future” in 2017, nor without pushes (big and small) provided by Onur Nobrega, Charlotte McIvor, Vicky Angelacki, Moritz Schramm, Azadeh Sharifi, Áine McMurty, Ben Schofield. The group from King’s. Amherst, and Michigan at the 2019 Transnational German Studies Workshop in Amherst gave valuable input on the initial draft of the introduction and preface. I am grateful to King’s College London for financial support from the Arts and Humanities Faculty Publication Subsidy fund and to the fantastic Annegret Maerten for her work as research assistant in securing permissions to reproduce images and unpublished materials. Finally, my thanks to the anonymous reviewers

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of the manuscript and to my editors at Palgrave for their patience and support. On a final, personal note, I would like to thank my mum, Claire, and my sister Jennifer, for helping me understand and have faith in the process. My thanks and love to them, my sister Megan, my dad, Dougal, and to his wife, Sine also, who we lost in 2018. And a special thanks and love to Bella Adey and to James Leveque, who have been there all the way. I have thanked a lot of people here—all errors remain, of course, my very own.

Contents

Prelude: Scenes from the New Germany

1

Introduction: Turkish-German Scripts of Postmigration

11

Scripts of Migration: Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Early Plays (1982–2000)

61

Zaimoglu/Senkel/Shakespeare: Othello (2003) and the Turkish-German Rewrite

107

The “Neo-Muslima” Enters the Scene: Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins (2006) and the Postmigrant Theatre

149

Performing Institutional Change: New Faces, Shadow Voices (2008)

185

Celebrating the New “Normal”? Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Perikızı and the Festival Context

225

Conclusion: Scripting New Realities

269

Works Cited

283

Index

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List of Figures

Scripts of Migration: Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Early Plays (1982–2000) Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Mise-en-scène at close of Karagöz in Alamania, dir. by Emine Sevgi Özdamar (1986). Still from unpublished audiovisual recording Poster for the premiere of Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Karagöz in Alamania (1986), featuring Tuncel Kurtiz as Karagöz. Courtesy of Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt a.M., Archiv Schauspiel Frankfurt, Saison 1985/1986 Volker Spengler as the Intellectual with typewriter in bathtub plus live donkey in background. In Karagöz in Alamania, dir. by Emine Sevgi Özdamar (1986). Still from unpublished audiovisual recording Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Keloglan in Alamania, dir. by Murat Yeginer (2000). Photograph by Stefan A. Schulz

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Zaimoglu/Senkel/Shakespeare: Othello (2003) and the Turkish-German Rewrite Fig. 1

Othello, in a version by Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel, dir by Luk Perceval (2003) (Stage Design by Katrin Brack. Photograph © Andreas Pohlmann)

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Fig. 3

LIST OF FIGURES

Thomas Thieme as Othello embraces Julia Jentsch as Desdemona, to the exclusion of Wolfgang Pregler’s Iago. In Othello, in a version by Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel, dir by Luk Perceval (2003). Photograph © Andreas Pohlmann Thomas Thieme as Othello embraces Wolfgang Pregler’s Iago. In Othello, in a version by Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel, dir by Luk Perceval (2003). Photograph © Andreas Pohlmann

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The “Neo-Muslima” Enters the Scene: Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins (2006) and the Postmigrant Theatre Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3 Fig. 4

Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel’s Black Virgins, dir. by Neco Çelik (2006). Photograph © Ute Langkafel Maifoto Berlin Opening sequence of Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel’s Black Virgins, dir. by Neco Çelik (2006). Set of three stills from unpublished audiovisual recording Alien Communication Scene in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Alien Arrival in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

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Performing Institutional Change: New Faces, Shadow Voices (2008) Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Full cast on-stage in Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel’s Shadow Voices dir. by Nora Bussenius (2008). Photograph © Sandra Then-Friedrich Patrick Gusset as “the Dealer” in Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel’s Shadow Voices dir. by Nora Bussenius (2008). Photograph © Sandra Then-Friedrich Andreas Grötzinger as “the Moroccan” in Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel’s Shadow Voices dir. by Nora Bussenius (2008). Photograph © Sandra Then-Friedrich Vernesa Berbo, Michael Wenzlaff, Murat Seven and Aloysius Itoka as unnamed characters in Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel, Shadow Voices dir. by Nurkan Erpulat (2008). Photograph © David Baltzer/bildbuehne.de

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LIST OF FIGURES

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Celebrating the New “Normal”? Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Perikızı and the Festival Context Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4 Fig. 5

The map of the Ruhr area created by raumlaborberlin for Odyssee Europa audience members. Image © raumlaborberlin Katja Stockhausen as Perikızı, and Holger Stolz, in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Perikızı, dir. by Ulrich Greb (2010). Photograph © Christian Nielinger/www.nielinger.de Scene with marching hens and APE van in Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Perikızı, dir. by Ulrich Greb (2010). Still from audiovisual recording Audience movement in Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Perikızı, dir. by Ulrich Greb (2010). Still from audiovisual recording Publicity Flyer advertising production of Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Perikızı, dir. by Michael Ronen as part of the Almancı programme (2011)

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Prelude: Scenes from the New Germany

¨ Scene 1: West Germany 1991/the Heiner Muller Archive, 1997/A Stage in North-East Germany, 2000 a rehearsal of “Madame Butterfly” is taking place; after some time it is interrupted by a shout of “break”. Everyone goes to the canteen. […] Kelkari in a Madame Butterfly mask, wig and costume, polishes the stage with a floor-polishing machine. (Özdamar 1991, 2–7)1

In the turmoil of post-unification Germany, the Turkish-born, Germanresident actress, director and playwright, Emine Sevgi Özdamar sends her new play manuscript, Keloglan in Alamania (Keloglan in Germanie),2 to her colleague, the renowned East German director and playwright Heiner Müller. Following his death it lands in his archive in the German Academy of the Arts as object “Müller-Heiner 8744”. A metatheatrical piece, the manuscript opens by imagining the means of entry into the German theatrical landscape available to a fictional Turkish-origin artist, Kelkari, in 1 “Auf der Bühne findet eine Probe der ‘Butterfly’ statt, die nach einiger Zeit durch den Ruf ‘Pause’ abgebrochen wird. Alle gehen in die Kantine. […] Kelkari in MadameButterfly-Maske, Perücke und Kostüm bohnert mit einer Bohnermaschine die Bühne.” 2 “Alamania” is a slightly distorted spelling of “Almanya”, the Turkish word for “Germany”. Kelo˘glan is a character from Turkish children’s literature.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. Stewart, Performing New German Realities, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69848-5_1

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the 1990s. Nine years later, as the reunified Germany formally acknowledges itself as a country of immigration, the play script finds its first full production: Kelkari: Do I disturb you if I polish here? I – I am the cleaning lady, what else would I be doing if I wasn’t cleaning here? Ah, in my country I was an opera singer. Ah, with this wig and mask I sang the Madame Butterfly. (ibid., 7)3

Apart from when she gets her hands dirty performing work useful to the broader production, the character Kelkari is unable to find space on stage as artist in Germany: her fate appears to presage that of the play she appears in. While part of the archive of political theatre which spans the former East and West German states as script, as performance this play has long to wait to find its way in between other, more canonical, spectacles. As Berlin-based actor and theatre organiser Mürtüz Yolcu notes sardonically: “the Turk did not come to theatre to play theatre, after all” (quoted in Boran 2004: 79).4

Scene 2: Moers Schlosstheater, North-Rhein Westphalia 2011/Istanbul, Turkey Late 1960s Ten years later in our off-stage timeline, the early 2010s finds Özdamar’s work on-stage in a small town in North-West Germany. This time the play, Perikızı, named for its main character,5 takes us back in time to Istanbul and the late 1960s Istanbul. Here a father warns his daughter against pursuing a career as an actress in Germany:

3 “Störe ich Sie, wenn ich hier bohnere? Ach, ich bin die Putzfrau, was soll ich denn sonst tun, wenn ich hier nicht putze. Ach, in meinem Land war ich Opernsängerin. Ach, mit dieser Perücke und Maske habe ich die Madame Butterfly gesungen.” 4 “schließlich ist der Türke ja auch nicht nach Deutschland gekommen, um Theater zu spielen.” 5 The name is drawn from the Turkish for “fairy” and “girl”.

PRELUDE: SCENES FROM THE NEW GERMANY

3

on a European stage a Turkish woman is a Turkish woman and a Turkish woman is a cleaning lady. That is the daily reality and in the theatre it becomes the nightly reality. (Özdamar 2010, 290)6

A few months pass in both timelines and this same daughter is on stage, transformed via a new actress and some in-house additions to the script, at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße theatre in Berlin Kreuzberg,7 in a production directed by Michael Ronen. Swinging high above the audience on a trapeze, she declares “I want respect, I want recognition, I want applause! For my abilities! For the thing I can really do! Acting! […] You think you have paid for the show and can expect a performance? […] I shit on your theatre tickets” (Ronen 2011).8 Refusing to reinforce the daily reality in the mode of consumable spectacle, this agile artiste scatters scatological scorn on iconicity, demanding acknowledgement of her playful skill both within and beyond the world of the play.

Scene 3: The Main Stage & Foyer of the HAU Theatre: Berlin, 2006 Rewind a few years, to a time when the Ballhaus Naunynstraße has yet to open as a venue demanding a shift in the ways in which artists with a personal or family history of migration are positioned in Germany. It is 2006, Berlin, and a group of artists soon to be closely involved in the Ballhaus are experimenting with theatrical interventions as part of a small festival held at the HAU (Hebbel am Ufer) theatre.9 Critical attention is hooked by one play in particular, Black Virgins (Schwarze Jungfrauen), written by literary provocateur Feridun Zaimoglu with his 6 “auf einer europäischen Bühne ist eine türkische Frau eine türkische Frau und eine türkische Frau ist eine Putzfrau. Das ist die tägliche Realität und am Theater wird es nächtliche Realität.” 7 Kreuzberg is well-known as a “Turkish” district in Berlin. The place of the Ballhaus Naunynstraße within the theatrical landscape of Berlin will be outlined in more detail in the chapter “The ‘Neo-Muslima’ Enters the Scene: Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins (2006) and the Postmigrant Theatre”. 8 “Ich will Respekt, ich will Anerkennung, ich will Applaus! Für meine Fähigkeiten! Für das, was ich wirklich kann! Schauspielern! […] Ihr denkt, ihr habt für die Show bezahlt und erwartet eine Leistung? […] Ich scheiße auf eure Eintrittskarten.” 9 The place of the HAU within the theatrical landscape of Berlin will be outlined in the chapter on “Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins (2006) and the Postmigrant Theatre”.

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colleague Günter Senkel , which promises an evening based on interviews with Muslim women living in Germany. As the audience settle into their seats, an otherworldly blue light fills the gaze. Offset by the digital tones of a Sci-fi classic, a body-suited, bald-capped figure steps forward and declares: What kind of cheap game am I playing here? I do know that I’m pitting impertinence against assumption. You think you know how I am and I address you to prove the opposite – to leave a really vulgar impression. But that is really how I am and everything is true. Almost everything is true.10 (Zaimoglu and Senkel 2006, 37)

At the end of the performance, a group of audience members who have come to hear the perspectives of young Muslim women in Germany gather in the space where the stage ends and the real world begins, confused about the distinction between the two. Waiting for clarity, as the actresses enter the foyer in their own clothes, none visibly marked as Muslim, a murmur of relief escapes. The director, Neco Çelik, looks on amazed: “The fact that these women were just not perceived as actors, that was the crazy thing for me” (Çelik 2012).11

Scene 4: The Sony Centre, Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, 2011 Back to the future, we return to the early 2010s. A pistol-wielding teacher, Sonja, faces off against a teenage pupil, Hasan. In her other hand the cheap yellow Reclam edition, familiar to any schoolchild in Germany, of Schiller’s An Aesthetic Education. At gun point she forces Hasan to perform the role of Franz in Schiller’s drama The Robbers , correcting his pronunciation until it meets her standards of German.

10 “Was treibe ich hier für ein billiges Spiel? Ich weiss [sic] doch, dass ich Zumutung gegen Vermutung setze. Ihr glaubt zu wissen, wie ich bin[,] und ich rede dagegen an – um einen richtig vulgären Eindruck zu hinterlassen. Aber ich bin tatsächlich so und alles ist wahr. Fast alles ist wahr.” 11 “Dass man diese Frauen nicht mal als Schauspielerinnen wahrgenommen hat, das war für mich [das Verrückte].”

PRELUDE: SCENES FROM THE NEW GERMANY

5

HASAN: Innallec SONIA: Intellect. HASAN: Innallec SONIA Intellect. Who’s supposed to believe that you’re not apes when you can’t even pronounce this word correctly: Intellect. (Erpulat and Hillje [2010] 2014, 27)12

If “man is only man when he plays” (Schiller 1793/1794), here racialized language combines with a reading of any non-standard performance as “failure” to deny humanity to the character of Hasan. Several scenes later, Hasan, the teenager has gained control of the gun from his teacher and turns it on the audience. Oscillating between Schiller’s text and the role of actor with a background of migration, “Hasan” exclaims: HASAN: And I’ll play Franz. I’m Franz and I’ll stay Franz… “I have every right to be angry at nature. Why did nature give me this ugliness? These Hottentot’s eyes?” What do you see in me? An actor or a Kanake?13 Still? […] We act. But what’s going to happen to me when this is over? Become an established secondary-school teacher like you Miss Kelich? A real model Kanake? Or commit an honor killing on a TV show. Hmm, sorry, we’ve reached our capacity for model Kanakes, the role of the Kanake inspector on the detective show has already been filled. How many model Kanakes will our country tolerate anyway?14 (Erpulat and Hillje [2010] 2014, 67–68)

12 Translation by Priscilla Layne. 13 “Kanak” is a common pejorative word for a Turkish person in Germany and often

also applied to other people of colour there (on the colonial roots of the term used as hate speech see Seidel-Arpacý [2003, 206]; on its broader usage see El-Tayeb [2016, 65–68]). 14 “HASAN: Und ich werde Franz spielen. Ich bin Franz und ich bleibe Franz… /Ich habe große Rechte über die Natur ungehalten zu sein… Warum musste sie mir diese Hässlichkeit aufladen? Gerade mir diese Hottentottenaugen? / Was seht ihr in mir? Einen Schauspieler oder einen Kanaken? Immer noch? […] Wir spielen Theater. Aber was wird aus mir, wenn das hier zu Ende ist? Oberstudienrat, wie Sie, Frau Kelich? Ein echter Erfolgskanake? /Oder Ehrenmörder in Alarm bei Cobra 11. Tja, tut uns leid, aber Erfolgskanakenkapazität ist gerade zu Ende. Der Kanakentatortkommissar ist schon besetzt. / Wie viele Erfolgskanaken erträgt das Land?”

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Via the character of Hasan, a critique of the violence which has often been at work in policies of social and cultural integration in Germany becomes connected to a critique of the career opportunities for the actor who plays him. The play this scene takes place in, Crazy Blood (Verrücktes Blut ), is live-streamed during the 2011 Berliner Theatertreffen onto the screens of the Sony-centre, a building built in the space formerly occupied by the Berlin wall. This critique becomes briefly situated at the literal and symbolic centre of the post-unification Berlin Republic.

Scene 5: Heidelberg, the Same Year The director of the production in scene four above, Turkish-born and -educated, Berlin-based director Nurkan Erpulat, is himself asked to perform in a Q&A at a well-known theatre festival in South-West Germany. Answering the question of what making theatre with “his background” means, he explains: Making theatre with my background […]. That means that many people really do see me as a Turk rather than as a director[…]. That means that when I thematise a love story, for example, it tends to be pigeon-holed as a migration story. And it means that […] when I send this actor or the other on stage – black-haired, black-eyes – and I let them run riot in some way, […] it is immediately understood as authentic.15 (Linders et al. 2011; my transcription & translation)

In the discussion, further issues raised include clichéd casting practices, audience expectations surrounding the type of German accent they encounter on the German stage, the lack of Turkish-German presence in administrative and production roles in the German theatrical landscape, and the lack of interest and determination until recently in engaging with theatre as a means not just to mirror society but also to thematise and challenge established ways of seeing or habits of viewing (Linders et al. 2011). While in the political sphere, the Federal Republic of Germany was 15 “mit meinem Hintergrund Theater zu machen. […] Das bedeutet, dass viele Leute

in mir tatsächlich eher einen Türken sehen als Regisseur. […] Das bedeutet, wenn ich irgendwie eine Liebesgeschichte thematisiere, es eher als Migrationsgeschichte eingeordnet wird. […] Und das bedeutet […], wenn ich irgendwelche Schauspieler auf die Bühne schicke, schwarz-haarig, schwarz-augig, und ich [sie] irgendwelche Randale machen lasse […], [es] sofort als authentisch begriffen wird.”

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marking the fiftieth anniversary of the recruitment agreements which led to large-scale Turkish migration to Germany by celebrating and debating the “success” of the integration of its Turkish population, Erpulat’s comments and the scenes sketched above raise serious questions about the performances demanded of migrantized actors in Germany both onand off-stage.

Scene 6: The Weekly Column of the Maxim Gorki Theatre, Berlin (2019)/A Desk in London (2020) Almost sixty years after Turkish labour migration to Germany first began, thirty years after German unification, twenty years after Germany’s recognition of itself as a country of immigration, and nearly ten years after scenes 4 and 5, many of the directors and playwrights mentioned here have gone on to find a theatrical home at the Maxim Gorki theatre in Berlin. One of the key state-funded theatres in Berlin, albeit the smallest, arrival there can to some degree be read as arrival at the centre of the theatrical establishment. Mely Kiyak, journalist, author, writer of a fortnightly theatre column for the Gorki theatre and of her own play Aufstand: Monolog eines wütenden Künstlers (Uprising: monologue of a furious artist, 2014) reflects back on the new position occupied by theatre practitioners with a background of migration in Germany: I cannot really answer the question of whether – from my perspective – things are getting better or worse. Because I think that in the past twenty years alone a great deal of progress has been made in Germany. At the same time, it was very stressful and came at a high price. There was also never the time to pause internally for a few years and enjoy the ground won. Everything is always a battle. […] This theatre really is the theatre of my dreams. Who gets to say that their cultural political demands have been fulfilled in the space of only a few years? […] But – and this is the other side of things – this institution is constantly threatened, cannot concentrate solely on its art, but must justify itself and its existence again and again. This is a noticeably different form of theatre-making than in Stuttgart, or Frankfurt or Vienna. It does make a difference whether as a theatre maker you are adopting a position on behalf of a third person or always also for

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yourself. Therefore, no, things are not getting better. On the contrary, the better things get, the worse they are. (Kiyak 2019)16

What changed between the failed dreams of the fictional Kelkari and the establishment of Kiyak’s dream theatre? Which battles were fought by and around theatre practitioners with a background of migration? How do the stresses and ambivalences Kiyak relates here map onto and intervene in shifts in the self-understanding of Germany as cultural political entity? Which new realities have been scripted in the theatrical sphere—in the imaginations of playwrights, readers, audience members; in the enactment and direction of such scripts on stage; in the performance of new institutional cultural politics? This book aims to respond to the questions raised by these scenes— which thematise Turkish-German discontent with the on- and offstage roles migrantised theatre practitioners have been asked to play in Germany—but also to the gaps which exist between these scenes. It does so from the perspective of a researcher based in another country, the UK, where different migration histories and cultural politics have formed the dominant norms and built their own blind spots: my hope is that looking to the German context here also helps us look to ourselves anew. As in this prelude, this distance both makes possible and limits the dialogue with cultural practice throughout the book. This book is also written by an individual who has not been subject to the migrantized misrecognition the scenes above register,17 but who was struck by this work, and

16 “Trotzdem kann ich die Frage, ob etwas – aus meiner Sicht – besser oder schlechter wird, nicht recht beantworten. Denn ich finde, dass sich allein in den vergangenen zwanzig Jahren in Deutschland ein großer Fortschritt vollzogen hat. Gleichzeitig war es auch sehr anstrengend und hat einen hohen Preis gekostet. Auch war nie Zeit, ein paar Jahre innezuhalten und die Errungenschaften zu genießen. Es ist ja immer alles Kampf […] Dieses Theater ist wirklich das Theater meiner Träume. Wer kann von sich behaupten, dass sich seine kulturpolitische Forderung innerhalb von nur wenigen Jahren erfüllt hat? […] Aber – und das ist eben die andere Seite – diese Institution wird ständig bedroht, kann sich nicht nur auf seine Kunst konzentrieren, sondern muss sich und seine Existenz immer wieder rechtfertigen. Das ist eine deutlich andere Form des Theatermachens als in Stuttgart, Frankfurt oder Wien. Es macht nämlich einen Unterschied, ob man als Theatermacher für jemanden Dritten Position bezieht oder immer auch für sich selbst. Deshalb, nein, es wird nicht besser. Im Gegenteil, je besser es wird, desto schlechter wird es.” 17 Having moved around a lot as a child I grew up with the “wrong” accent, an English accent in Scotland. While what my tongue said about me to others often didn’t

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then stuck to it in her own. I rehash the scenes in written form and in an academic context in the hope that this secondary engagement continues to draw attention to the important work of the real experts, the practitioners and playwrights at the heart of this study, after the theatrical moment has passed.

Works Cited Boran, Erol M. 2004. “Eine Geschichte des türkisch-deutschen Theaters und Kabaretts.” PhD diss, Ohio State University. Accessed May 1, 2010. http:// etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?osu1095620178. Çelik, Neco. 2012. Personal Interview. Berlin, May 23. El-Tayeb, Fatima. 2016. Undeutsch: Die Konstruktion des Anderen in der postmigrantischen Gesellschaft. Bielefeld: transcript. Erpulat, Nurkan, and Hillje, Jens. [2010] 2014. “Crazy Blood.” Translated by Priscilla Layne. The Mercurian 5 (1): 8–68. Kiyak, Mely. 2019. “Je besser es wird, desto schlechter wird es.” Kiyaks Theaterkolumne. http://kolumne.gorki.de/kolumne-101/. Linders, Jan, Nurkan Erpulat, Jens Hillje, Tu˘gsal Mo˘gul, and Aljoscha Begrich. 2011. “Jenseits von Identität – Postmigrantische Kultur: Diskussion mit Autoren und Theatermachern.” Unpublished audiovisual recording of public discussion at Heidelberger Stückemarkt, Heidelberg, June 4. Accessed thanks to Jenny Flügge/Heidelberger Stückemarkt. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 1991. Keloglan in Alamania Oder die Versöhnung von Schwein und Lamm. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Autoren. Reprinted in Die deutsche Bühne, 71 (10) (2000): 3–37. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 2010. “Perikızı.” In Theater Theater: Odyssee Europa, aktuelle Stücke 20/10, edited by RUHR, et al., 271–333. Fischer: Frankfurt am Main. Ronen, Michael (dir.). 2011. Perikızı. Written by Emine Sevgi Özdamar. Adapted by Michael Ronen and Tunçay Kulao˘glu. Unpublished Audiovisual Recording, Ballhaus Naunynstraße. Berlin. Accessed thanks to Chantal Kohler/Ballhaus Naunynstraße.

match my own lived experiences or senses of affiliation, the historical power relations between England and Scotland are very different to those between Turkey and Germany and neither structural nor racial discrimination have been part of my experience.

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Seidel-Arpacý, Annette. 2003. “Kant in ‘Deutsch-Samoa’ und Gollwitz: ‘Hospitalität’ und Selbst-Positionierung in einem deutschen Kontext.” In Spricht die Subalterne deutsch? Migration und postkoloniale Kritik, edited by Hito Steyerl and Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 195–212. Münster: UNRAST. Zaimoglu, Feridun, and Senkel, Günter. 2006. Schwarze Jungfrauen. Reinbek: Rowohlt Theater Verlag.

Introduction: Turkish-German Scripts of Postmigration

In the wake of the so-called refugee crisis which peaked in 2015, a strong association seems to be forming in English-language theatre scholarship between German-language theatre and engagement with migration.1 However, little attention has been paid to the pre-history of often embattled and marginalized work by earlier migrantized theatre practitioners in the Federal Republic of Germany and their work in forging networks and spaces within the German theatrical establishment. Indeed, while “one of the lead actors in the drama of globalisation in the twentieth century is the immigrant labourer” (Mani 2007, 50)— classically exemplified through the figure of the Turkish guest worker in Germany—this drama and the Turkish-German actor, playwright, director or dramaturge long seemed notably absent from the actual theatrical spaces of the Federal Republic. As late as 2004, Erol Boran, one of the few scholars to have carried out detailed initial research in this area, argued that theatre by Turkish-German actors, directors, ensembles and playwrights was left to take place on the margins of the theatre industry,

1 The number of papers which focused on or mentioned German-language theatre, and stagings of Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Schutzbefohlenen (Charges [The Supplicants]) in particular, at the 2018 IFTR conference on Theatre and Migration in Belgrade in July 2018 was striking.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. Stewart, Performing New German Realities, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69848-5_2

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far from the national stages, mainstream audiences and critical attention (78). Since the mid-2000s, however, theatre by first-, second- and third-generation Turkish-German artists has begun to make its mark, slowly becoming a more consistent feature on Germany’s influential state-subsidised stages. In 2006, Black Virgins (Schwarze Jungfrauen), an initially controversial play on Muslim female sexuality and political positions including Islamic extremism, written by Turkish-German writer Feridun Zaimoglu and his co-dramatist Günter Senkel, became the first play written and directed by Turkish-German artists to be the main feature on the front cover of the influential German theatre magazine Theater heute (Theatre Today). In 2008, the Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Berlin, opened as the country’s first forum for “postmigrant theatre”, creating an important space for both established and emerging artists. Then, in 2011, Nurkan Erpulat became the first Turkish-German director to be invited to present a production at the prestigious annual theatre festival, the Berlin Theatertreffen, resulting in the live-streamed scenes outlined in the prelude to this book. While the FRG officially accepted its role as a country of immigration in 2000, a decade later this shift appeared to be gradually effecting substantial change within the state-subsidised theatrical landscape. This study takes the relationship between theatre and migration in contemporary Germany as its focus, and in doing so aims to draw further attention to one vital aspect of this history: that of theatrical production arising from scripts by German-language playwrights of Turkish origin. Focusing on the fascinating fates of five plays by two Turkish-German playwrights who are already well known for their award-winning prose work—Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Feridun Zaimoglu, who writes for the stage with Günter Senkel—this study asks where, when, why and how plays engaging with the reality of Germany as a country of immigration have been performed. Large-scale immigration to the FRG in the twentieth and twenty-first century has occurred from a variety of contexts including Turkey, Italy, Morocco, Vietnam and the former USSR: at the last census, almost one in four people living in Germany today were considered to have what is termed there a “Migrationshintergrund” or “background of migration” (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung 2019), and the FRG is home to ca. 2.8 million residents of Turkish origin (Harper 2011, 21). National discussions of citizenship,

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integration, assimilation, multiculturalism and interculturalism have therefore frequently been conducted around, and with, Turkish-born and Turkish-origin residents and citizens of Germany (cf. Mandel 2008). In the wake of the success of the theatrical work at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße, postmigration has been added to these discussions as an alternative term which aims to centre migration and “New Germans” as constitutive of contemporary German realities (cf. E. Yildiz 2014; Römhild 2014, 2017). For sociologist Erol Yildiz, on one level postmigration “has to do with the new narration of the migration history of the so-called guest-workers […] [who are] actually pioneers of a transnationalisation”, and with a non-reductive repositioning of subsequent generations “who do not have the same experiences of migration as their parents or grandparents” (E. Yildiz 2014, 22).2 But, on another, he argues, it also has to do with a broader accompanying epistemological shift: one in which migration is recognised both academically and publicly as a central constitutive element of society rather than as exception or aberration (ibid.). In the theatrical sphere, which popularised the usage of the term significantly, “postmigration” has been defined variously. For Deniz Utlu, an author associated with the Ballhaus, postmigrant theatre emerges as a “label under which political theatre is made by theatre practitioners ‘of colour’”, while for researcher Azadeh Sharifi, it means “making political theatre under postmigrant conditions. That means telling stories from the margins, from the periphery, and still knowing the centre” (Sharifi 2013, 104).3 Shermin Langhoff, the artistic director with whom the term is most closely associated, has recently highlighted the close connection of Özdamar’s and Zaimoglu’s literary work to the development of her concept of postmigration: In these years [the early 2000s] I first came across the possibility of using this term in connection with Anglo-Saxon literary studies, when I read 2 Es “geht […] um die Neuerzählung der Migrationsgeschichte der sogenannten Gastarbeiter […] eigentlich Pioniere einer Transnationalisierung […] Zweitens geht es um die Nachfolgegenerationen der Gastarbeiter, die nicht über die gleichen Migrationserfahrungen verfügen wie ihre Eltern oder Großeltern.”. 3 “Label, unter der von den Theatermacher_innen ‘of Color’ politisch Theater gemacht wird”; “Politisch Theater machen unter postmigrantischen Konditionen. Das bedeutet von den Rändern, von der Peripherie aus Geschichten zu erzählen und trotzdem das Zentrum zu kennen.”

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an interview, in which the question was raised within the context of a comparative literature seminar whether the literature of Zaimoglu could be understood in comparison to that of Özdamar and others of the first generation as literature “after migration”. This question of writing, of narration “after migration” tripped a decisive switch in my self-understanding and my understanding of art.4 (Langhoff 2018, 304)

In the literary sphere, both authors are also known for the “performative” and disruptive nature of their writing. Özdamar’s training and work as a theatre practitioner in both Turkey and Germany are key subjects in the semi-autobiographical novels and short stories for which she is best known.5 This is reflected in a focus on the role of mimicry and theatrical intertexts in the reception of her prose work.6 Similarly, Zaimoglu’s almost legendary reading tours of his first prose success Kanak Sprak and his frequent and energetic media appearances have also been the impetus for many readings of his novels, his prose collections and his authorial persona, as performative (cf. Cheesman and Ye¸silada 2012, 4; Minnaard 2003; Schmidt 2008). While the question of narration after migration led 4 “Auf die Möglichkeit der Anwendung dieses Begriffs kam ich in diesen Jahren erstmals im Zusammenhang mit angelsächsischer Literaturforschung, als ich ein Interview las, indem in einem Seminar der Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft die Frage erörtert wurde, ob die Literatur von Zaimoˇglu im Vergleich zu Özdamar und anderen der ersten Generation, als Literatur ‘nach der Migration’ aufgefasst werden könnte. Mit dieser Frage des Schreibens, des Erzählens ‘nach der Migration’ legte sich in meinem Selbst- und Kunstverständnis ein entscheidender Hebel um.” The original German uses the imagery of a lever shifting, highlighting more strongly the concept as tool for changing understandings and gaining leverage. Kevin Robins and Asu Aksoy also highlight both Langhoff and Özdamar as artists whose work is exemplary of the “postmigrant perspective” on transnationalism and the “enlargement of social and cultural meaning in the European context” (158), which they argue is also present in or characteristic of the reflections of their interview partners and focus groups: people of Turkish origin living in London and Berlin who are not artists by profession (see Robins and Aksoy 2016, 163–70). 5 This is particularly the case with the semi-autobiographical novels The Bridge of the Golden Horn (2007; Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn 1998) and Strange Stars Stare at the Earth (Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde 2003), in which the protagonist “Sevgi” trains as an actress and works at the Volksbühne. For an analysis of the semi-autobiographical nature of these works, see, for example, Boa (2006); Bradley (2007). 6 This point is also made by Karin Lornsen amongst others (2009, 205). I will discuss aspects of this secondary literature in more detail in the later chapters “Scripts of Migration: Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Early Plays (1982–2000)” and “Celebrating the New “Normal”? Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Perikızı and the Festival Context”, which focus on Özdamar.

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to conceptual innovation for Langhoff, this study explores what happens to that writing when it is intended for the theatre—and in several cases how its conceptualisation as postmigrant theatre under Langhoff helped facilitate that cross-media move. In this book, I follow these playwrights’ scripts in their journeys into publishers’ catalogues, into the hands of directors, dramaturges, scenographers and actors, and into performance. In the process, I connect these scripts to the institutional changes performed around them, i.e. the institutional rescripting which accompanies them. As theatrical production in Germany is a process which tends to take the play out of the playwright’s hands, a key focus is to unpack the artistic relationships surrounding each production and explore the negotiations at work between text and performance, writer and director, ensemble and audience, conception and reception. Given the symbolic position of theatre in each of the multiple incarnations of the German nation-state, and the delayed self-conception of the contemporary Federal Republic as a country characterised by immigration, I am also interested in the ways in which stagings of plays by these artists might become caught up in, co-opted to or used to critique discourses on ethnicity, racialized perception and the politics of belonging in the Federal Republic of Germany. Put more simply, when were these plays staged and by whom? How were migration and migrantized figures represented within them? How were they received? And what does this have to tell us about cultural production and aesthetics within the very particular circumstances of twentieth-century Turkish migrations to Germany? Following these scripts creates a necessarily uneven trajectory across some thirty years, spanning the early 1980s to the present day. This has been a period of transition not only for what could be termed “Turkish-German theatre”—a term I will return to shortly—but also for the Turkish population/s in Germany: a population often positioned as broadly homogenous in German discourse but in fact including, and not limited to, Kurds, Armenians, Turkish nationalists, communists, Muslims, secularists, i.e. a highly diverse set of ethnic, religious and political positions and experiences (see Mandel 2008).7 During these years, the Federal 7 Labour migration generally occurred from more rural areas of Turkey, with families joining workers several years later as a result of family reunification measures. However, following the worsening political situation in Turkey in the 1970s and the military putsch in 1980, a number of Turkish intellectuals, artists, activists, and members of persecuted

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Republic of Germany radically altered as a space to live in due to unification with the former German Democratic Republic, the increasing influence of the EU, changing citizenship laws and its late acceptance of itself as a “country of immigration”. At the same time, the Turkish population expanded from one of primarily first-generation immigrants to third-generation residents and/or citizens.8 Following the attacks of 11th September 2001 in the USA, and the subsequent bombings in European capitals by so-called “home-grown Islamic terrorists”, the “drama of globalisation” came to play in another way as in media discourse the Turkish-German population increasingly came to be perceived as “Muslim” (see Y. Yildiz 2009, 465–81). Rather than attempting to fit an uneven development to a tidy historical overview of these years, I read the unevenness of the history traced by these scripts as telling in itself. Many academic accounts of Turkish cultural production in Germany begin with a lack, an empty space. Leslie A. Adelson’s entry “Migrants and Muses” in David Wellbery’s A New History of German Literature is subtitled as follows: “1979: Güney Dal’s first novel attracts little attention when published in German translation” (2004, 912). Curiosity about a similar empty space or lack of attention surrounding productions of Turkish-German theatre is what drew me to look at plays by Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel when I began to do so back in 2010. In following the trajectories their plays trace, I believe the spaces between performances are as important to analyse, and as revealing, as the points at which these plays become successes. Adopting a historicising approach to performance analysis throughout thus allows connections to be made between the performances as historical events taking place within an institutional context, as outcomes of off-stage practices both artistic and social, and as aesthetic instances. In doing so, this study explores the relationship between the behavioural scripts a society often expects its migrantized subjects to follow, the literal scripts produced by those subjects and the multiple ways in which the productions of plays arising from these scripts

minorities also came to Germany seeking exile. Migration to and from Turkey and Germany has also continued throughout this period, making it more sensible to speak of Turkish migrations to Germany in the plural. 8 A form of jus soli was only introduced in the FRG in 2000. As a result, there still exists a significant disjunction between birth and socialisation in Germany, and citizenship of the country.

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can themselves help create new realities within and beyond the theatrical sphere.

Turkish-German Theatre: From the Wings to Centre Stage As Denise Varney highlights, to an extent “the German stage bears a metonymic relation to the nation-state, which subsidises it, as in the part for the whole” (2005, 2). The close relation between German stage and German state dates back to the eighteenth century when statements such as Friedrich Schiller’s “if we could witness the birth of our own national theater, then we would truly become a nation” (1784, 218),9 provided rallying points for the construction of an “imagined community” (Anderson 1983) called “Germany”. As in many European countries, the nation-building role of theatre in the newly-created German state was continued into the twentieth century via strict censorship of the stage in World Wars I and II (Hortmann and Hamburger 1998, 2). Individual artists of the avant-garde in Germany have focused on creating a theatre of dissent rather than consensus throughout the twentieth century. However, following the country’s post-war division, a plentiful state funding system in both East and West Germany also “aligned theatre with the discourses of democratic sovereignty in the two states” (Sieg 2008, 314). Within this broader alignment, the legacy of particularisation and decentralisation created a theatrical system characterised by strong regional centres: the majority of funding for theatre today comes from the budgets of the Länder (regional states), the local authorities or municipalities, with a relatively small amount under the control of national funding schemes (Weiler 2014). Although the state theatre systems experienced significant financial upheaval in the initial years following reunification, this was mainly the result of the difficulties inherent in absorbing a socialist system into the capitalist economy of West Germany and could be seen as part of a broader process of consolidating, rather than opening up, ethnically defined notions of Germanness. It was thus only in May 2011 that the Dramaturgische Gesellschaft felt the need to ask itself “Who are we?” and take “the intercultural society”

9 Translation here by Sigerson and Chambless.

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as the theme for its annual conference (see Dramaturgische Gesellschaft 2011).10 What prompted this shift? The introduction of European Union funding for projects with specific remits intended to promote diversity on the stage seems in part to have functioned to disrupt the close relationship between the German theatre and nation, “forc[ing] open the demographic structure of the institution [… and] achiev[ing] what a century of feminist complaints and several decades of immigrant activism have not been able to accomplish” (Sieg 2008, 319). The routes through which this funding and EU cultural policy feed into and alongside the German system are complex, though. Banu Karaca notes for this reason, “EU-related culture and arts support frequently plays a more supplementary role” for both organisations and individual artists in Germany, but “have nonetheless contributed to the reconfiguration of the way in which national funding is framed, and thus has impacted how arts institutions represent their work” (2010, 122). As the research in this book will show, when exploring the German funding context, it therefore remains important to also highlight the ways in which alterations to immigration and integration policies on a national level have affected the cultural sphere and its funding. Here, notable instances are the alteration of German Citizenship Law in 2000, the Immigration Law (Zuwanderungsgesetz) of 2005 in which “measures for the integration of immigrants with legal long-term residence in Germany were anchored in law for the first time” (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge n. dat.),11 and the introduction of a subsequent National Integration Plan by the Federal Government of Germany (cf. Sharifi 2017, 336). These have all had their effect, it seems, on the subsequent adoptions of “intercultural action plans” (“Interkulturelle Handlungskonzepte”) by cultural senates and institutions in Germany (cf. Stewart 2019).12 Certainly, the support (both financial and critical) which greeted “postmigrant theatre” in the mid-2000s marked a stark change from a previous reluctance to stage and engage stories of migration by or with migrantized artists within the Federal Republic of Germany, particularly when it comes to those of Turkish heritage. Erol Boran, one of the few scholars to 10 “Wer ist wir?”; “die interkulturelle Gesellschaft”. 11 “Mit diesem Gesetz […] werden erstmals Maßnahmen zur Integration der auf Dauer

rechtmäßig in Deutschland lebenden Zuwanderer gesetzlich verankert.” 12 This will be discussed in more detail in the later chapter “Performing Institutional Change: New Faces, Shadow Voices (2008)”.

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have worked on providing an initial systematic overview of this area of cultural production, engaged in a combination of archival work and extended fieldwork in his doctoral thesis (2004) to trace a history of what he terms “Turkish-German theatre”. He begins with the arrival of the first Gastarbeiter (guest workers) in 1961, some of whom were greeted on arrival in Germany by the young Turkish student and future dramatist Yüksel Pazarkaya. The third chapter of Boran’s thesis (2004) focuses on this theatre and details the development of both amateur and off-scene Turkish theatre groups in the FRG.13 These range from Pazarkaya’s “Turkish Theatre Group”14 in Stuttgart in the years 1965– 68 to West Berlin-based groups in the 1970s and 1980s such as the ˙ sçi Tiyatrosu (est. 1974), and Vasıf workers’ theatre group Halkevi I¸ Öngören’s Birlik Tiyatrosu (“Kollektiv-Theater”) which he established as an exile to Germany in 1980. They also encompass temporary groups with institutional connections such as the so-called “Turkish Project” at the Schaubühne Berlin run by Meray Ülgen and Beklan Algan between 1979 and 1984 (101–09), and the founding of independent theatres such as the Berlin Tiyatrom (“My theatre”) in 1984 and the Arkada¸s (“Friendship”) Theater in Cologne (92–135). This history also traces the repeated interruptions to attempts at establishing permanent theatre groups with continued institutional recognition or funding within West Germany.15 According to Boran, such attempts were characterised both by disagreements amongst the artists involved over the function of the theatre in question and by a sense of “cultural isolation” resulting to a degree from failings on the part of the German state’s role in facilitating engagement with Turkish-German ensembles or theatre artists (78; 104). As Sven Sappelt points out, for a long time the 13 Other chapters focus on laying the theoretical and methodological groundwork of the approach, outlining the history of theatrical practice in Turkey and on Turkish-Germany comedic performance (stand-up and cabaret). Boran’s PhD was never published but was made available freely online, and so has been drawn on by most scholars engaging with Turkish-German theatre. This history as per Boran is also outlined in Nobrega (2014), Sharifi (2017), Gezen (2018), for example. While there are necessarily limitations in the analytical complexity and scope of the chapter on Turkish-German theatre history, it remains a crucial source and has laid much factual groundwork. 14 “Türkische Theatergruppe”. 15 East Germany is not addressed here as the East German state did not engage in large-

scale recruitment from Turkey, although, as the outline of Özdamar’s theatrical biography which follows shortly will show, East German theatre also has a role to play here.

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German government had no cultural policy in place for a group it had never expected and was not keen to encourage to stay (2000, 277; Boran 2004, 97). Where policy concerns did begin to emerge, these tended to focus on “preserving the connection with cultural traditions ‘back home’” in the mid-80s (Kosnick 2004, 4), and then later on the “preservation of distinctive cultural traditions […] now linked to ethnic identity politics in a multicultural framework” (ibid, 5). As a result, prior to 2000, funding for Turkish-German theatre was frequently low, drawn from social funds rather than cultural budgets, and rarely continuous in nature, consisting rather of short-term, project-based subsidies (Boran 2004, 79; 158; 186).16 This in particular hindered rather than promoting the development of existing theatre groups (Sappelt 2000, 283; cf. Boran 2004, 199) and, as Kira Kosnick highlights, created a divide between “high cultural” work and the “socio-cultural” work expected of Turkish-origin artists (2004, 12). This suggests that theatre labelled Turkish or Turkish-German in Germany has followed a very different path of development and recognition from that of Turkish-German literature or even film. Disagreements over the aim of the art form, or the way in which it should be received, as well as a lack of institutional acknowledgement of its aesthetic value, are also characteristic of the history of Turkish-German literature and affected both this literature’s dissemination and reception (see Cheesman 2007, 82–97). Tom Cheesman’s detailed work highlights a reception history which has often projected its own progression in sophistication or quality onto the literature, for example (ibid., 138; 2006). However, it seems that these factors did not affect the production of literary works in quite the same way as these circumstances would act negatively on theatre—an art form yet more dependent on access to professional training and spaces, funding and collaboration amongst a large group of individuals invested in the value of a project. What is more, in text-based theatre of the type primarily explored in this study, “[t]he playwright’s creative labour ends with the completion of the script, but the work itself is located with the performance event” (Kidnie 2009, 15). The playwright’s name may stand on the programme or published text, but collaboration is key in the creation of a performance

16 Boran names the Tiyatrom theatre in Berlin as the main exception here.

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of the dramatic text.17 The director’s artistic concept, the dramaturge’s reworking and cutting of the script, the scenographer’s visual framing, and the actors’ bodies and voices therefore all contribute to the transformation of the writer’s words into the theatrical work itself. Within the German theatrical tradition in particular, with its emphasis from the 1970s onwards on director’s theatre and on what Hans-This Lehmann terms postdramatic performance, it has far longer been the case that “the director claims the authorial function” than in the UK (Bradby and Williams 1988, 1; see also Lehmann 2005). As a result, it is much more established there that the director’s artistic vision generally takes priority over that of the dramatist and dramatic texts are frequently used as “raw material” to be reshaped and reworked as relevant rather than as blueprints to be realised. It is important to remember then that: [t]he identity of the work of dramatic art […] is not limited by a supposed originary moment of publication, either theatrical or textual, but continually constructed in response to production by users as varied as theatrical practitioners, spectators and readers, and publishers and editors. (Kidnie 2009, 32)

My research shows that this is no less the case with the work of Özdamar and of Zaimoglu/Senkel. While some of the play-texts have been published, others are held by the publishers and are only available on request. As a result, often the only version of “the play” an audience has access to is that given in performance. The image of these works will thus be shaped as much by the advertising of these performances, the cutting and interpretation of the play by the theatrical team involved in producing it, and an audience member’s memories combined with the record of the play provided in reviews. Equally, where the play-text is published, it rarely corresponds directly to the often heavily edited script which was used as the basis for a performance. In highlighting the challenges which Turkish and Turkish-origin theatre practitioners faced in Germany prior to 2004, Boran effectively denaturalises the lack of prominent Turkish-German theatre and theatre practitioners on German state stages at that time. This is a move since

17 While literary products such as books, magazines and online writings are produced in particular contexts and systems, their multiple circulations mean that as both artefact and artwork they can be considered to have independent afterlives.

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taken further by Mark Terkessidis, who argues that many state-funded institutions, including theatres, still function to serve the ethnically defined “Volk” (people) rather than the diverse and actually existent “Bevölkerung” (population) of the Federal Republic of Germany (2010, 108). I aim to build on these denaturalising and historicising moves by highlighting that the more recent mainstream success of artists with this background reflects a significantly changed production and reception context. The usage of the label or term “Turkish-German” within this study is therefore intended to contextualise the reception and institutional positioning of theatrical work undertaken by migrantized practitioners, and thus the material conditions for this cultural production, rather than to suggest or search for an essentialist connection between the aesthetics or content of this work and a specific national or cultural identity.18 The processual term, “racialization” indicates that race is not a real, biological category, but that racialized groups are constructed in a society to fulfil certain ends which do have material negative effect on the racialized individual and group. Similarly, here also refers to the way in which individuals with transnational ties are consistently made to “migrants” who can never arrive, irrespective of their own personal experience of migration, or their citizenship status (cf. Tudor 2018, 1057).19 This others, externalises and thus excludes particular population groups who are viewed through the lens of their “background of migration” in Germany: (cf. El Tayeb 2016, 18 Similarly, Tom Cheesman and B. Venkat Mani consider the literary texts they deal with, which in each case include literary works by Özdamar and Zaimoglu, to be “TurkishGerman” literature in the sense of literature whose production, themes or reception have been marked by the specific historical situation of Turks in the FRG (cf. Cheesman 2007, 3). This focus does mean that this study is unable to engage systematically with the work of other migrantized or racialized playwrights and practitioners in Germany, although the new postmigrant theatre, while initiating from a network consisting of practitioners often of Turkish origin, aims to a large degree to refuse essentialist divisions. However, here I would direct readers to excellent new work coming from Jamele Watkins, Priscilla Layne and Damani Partridge, which addresses contemporary Black performance in Germany, including within the postmigrant theatre movement, as well as to Jonas Tinius’ extensive recent work on Theater an der Ruhr. 19 Tudor uses the term “migratisation” rather than “migrantization”, to describe “(the ascription of migration) as performative practice that repeatedly re-stages a sending-off to an elsewhere and works in close interaction with racialisation” (2018, 1057). I use the spelling “migrantization” here as this appears to be the more frequent usage in the German and English-language contexts (see, for example, E. Yildiz 2014, 22), but highlight Tudor’s discussion of the process and its relation to racialization as particularly helpful.

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146; Gezen 2018, 12). The two terms, although not synonymous, are also closely connected in Germany where it tends to be individuals of colour whose migration background is made visible (El Tayeb 2016, 65; 146–47; Tudor 2018). In referring to “migrantized” artistic practitioners, I therefore refer to artists whose work tends to be perceived or positioned in relation to their ethnicity in ways which do not in fact acknowledge but rather often elide difference and specificity of experience, to exclusionary effect.20 The playwrights at the heart of this study, Özdamar and Zaimoglu/Senkel, for example, not only have very different histories of migration, but also of engagement with the theatrical sphere. Born in 1946 in Malatya, Özdamar grew up in post-war Turkey, moving to West Germany first temporarily aged nineteen as part of the early wave of labour migration to the FRG.21 She then returned to Turkey where she trained as an actress, before political violence there led her to move to Berlin in the late 1970s. During her initial temporary two-year stay, Özdamar, who had already developed an interest in acting through roles in Turkey, came into contact with Vasıf Öngören, a Turkish director studying at the Berliner Ensemble in East Berlin.22 While in Berlin,

20 Erol Yildiz also argues for the potential of “postmigration” as term that can work against such othering: “The “postmigrant” thus understands itself as a polemical term positioned against the “migrantization” and marginalization of people who see themselves as an integral component of society, against a public discourse which treats migration histories as specific historical exceptions and which differentiates between native normality and problems which have migrated in” (“Das ‘Postmigrantische’ versteht sich dann als ein Kampfbegriff gegen ‘Migrantisierung’ und Marginalisierung von Menschen, die sich als integraler Bestandteil der Gesellschaft sehen, gegen einen öffentlichen Diskurs, der Migrationsgeschichten weiterhin als spezifische historische Ausnahmeerscheinungen behandelt und in dem zwischen einheimischer Normalität und eingewanderten Problemen unterschieden wird.” E. Yildiz 2014, 22). 21 Although Özdamar first came to Germany as a Gastarbeiterin, her reasons for doing so were slightly different from the usually cited economic push-and-pull factors. She and her mother were not getting on well and as a result of the bilateral recruitment agreements “the door to Germany was suddenly open” ([d]ie Tür nach Deutschland war plötzlich offen; Özdamar, quoted in von Saalfeld 1998, 165). 22 As Boran highlights, this encounter was rewritten in fictive form in Özdamar’s 1998

novel Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (2004, 112–14). For more on Öngören, see Stenzaly (1984, 133), Sappelt, (2000, 67) and Gezen (2018). Öngören would later ground the influential Birlik Tiyatrosu [‘Kollektiv-Theater’] in Turkey, a project he continued in political exile in the 1980s in West Berlin and then Amsterdam. As Boran notes, Öngören directed several of his own plays in West Berlin, including one in a German translation

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Özdamar also took German-language classes at the Goethe Institute and spent a semester at the Fritz Kirchhoff Schauspielschule in West Berlin. On returning to Turkey, she enrolled in the prestigious LCC theatre school in Istanbul,23 and then took her first professional theatrical roles in Öngören’s Ankara-based theatre as the Widow Begbick in Mann ist Mann by Brecht and Charlotte Corday in Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss. The 1971 military putsch in Turkey made life and work increasingly difficult for Özdamar, however, and in 1976, she returned to Germany to work with the acclaimed Swiss director Benno Besson—a former collaborator of Brecht—at the Volksbühne in East Berlin. When Besson left Germany for Paris in 1978, Özdamar followed him as director’s assistant.24 Following this engagement, Özdamar returned to Germany to join Claus Peymann’s “Bochumer Ensemble” at the Schauspielhaus Bochum in 1979.25 There, as at the Volksbühne, Özdamar worked with Manfred Karge and Matthias Langhoff, some of the leading theatre artists of the day.26 While in the 1980s Özdamar was best known for this

during this period (2004, 113). For Boran, “the example of Öngören additionally highlights […] how difficult it was at the start of the 1980s to get a foot in the door of the German theatre scene as a Turkish theatre practitioner – even for someone with a reputation like Öngören’s” (“das Beispiel Öngörens aber zudem verdeutlicht […] wie schwierig es zu Beginn der achtziger Jahre war als türkischer Theatermacher – selbst mit einem Renommee wie dem Öngörens – in der deutschen Theaterszene Fuß zu fassen”: 114). 23 Language and Culture Center/Lisan ve Kültür Merkezi T.C., Istanbul, directed by Beklan Algan from 1966 . Algan also worked at the Schaubühne in West Berlin in the early 1980s. Gezen also locates this as the LCC. 24 During that time, Özdamar was registered as a postgraduate student studying theatre in Paris. 25 See also the detailed overview of Özdamar’s theatrical training and career provided by Boran (2004, 136–39). According to Boran, Özdamar was also briefly involved in assisting Beklan Algan with the Türkische Ensemble der Schaubühne Berlin (2004, 105). Boran highlights many practitioners’ view that “Turkish theatre could have had the unique opportunity back then to establish itself in the German theatrical landscape”, but that in practice the ensemble’s work was characterized by “quite bloody battles” between those involved: (“Das türkische Theater […] hätte damals die einmalige Gelegenheit gehabt, sich in der deutschen Theaterlandschaft zu etablieren”; “ganz blutige Kämpfe”; 2004, 103–04). 26 At Bochum, she is credited as directorial/dramaturgical assistant on productions such as Marie.Woyzeck (15/11/1980), for example. As documented in the 1986 volume edited by Beil et al. which documented the work of the Bochumer Ensemble, she also appeared playing a Turkish cleaning woman in Lieber Georg (2/2/1980; 520), shared the role of

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theatrical work and for her film roles, in the early 1990s, she began to publish prose fiction. In 1991, Özdamar was famously awarded the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, the renowned prize for the best new Germanlanguage writing, for an extract from her first novel, Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei (Life is a Caravanserai) and she has since been the recipient of a steady stream of literary prizes including Berlin’s prestigious Fontane Prize for literature.27 As will be seen within this study, the syncretic work Özdamar was engaged in was actively discouraged in German cultural policy in the 1980s,28 meaning that younger artists such as Zaimoglu were unlikely to come into contact with the direct legacies of these methods.29 Instead, Zaimoglu, who was born in Turkey but has lived in the FRG since early childhood and associates himself more with the so-called “second” and “third” generation was brought up in a Turkish-German working-class household with little interest in the theatre. Known for his controversial literary work, which had been part of a drive for more political recognition of second- and third-generation migrants as Germans in the mid-1990s, he began to gain popularity first as a prose writer and activist and then took on the additional role of dramatist when invited to be writer in residence for a number of theatres (cf. Solmaz 2010). While initially invited as a solo playwright, Zaimoglu primarily writes for the theatre with his co-dramatist and friend, Günter Senkel. Senkel, who appears to have no personal experience of migration, runs a bookshop in Kiel, in North Germany, in addition to joining Zaimoglu in his

Lydia Antonowa with Gabriele Gysi in Karge and Langhoff’s production of Brecht’s The Mother (Die Mutter 2/10/1983; 594), and played a “Turkish singer” in Heiner Müller’s own production of The Task (Der Auftrag 13/2/1982; 563). In 1984, Özdamar left Bochum but continued her work as an actress in theatrical productions in Germany and France (Lennartz 2000, 29). She is also known as “the Mother of all film Turks” for her roles in films such as Hark Bohm’s Yasemin (1988) and Doris Dörrie’s Happy Birthday, Turk (Happy Birthday, Türke 1992) (die Mutter aller Filmtürken; Laudenbach 2002). 27 See also Boran (2004, 136–37). On the reception of Life is a Caravanserai see

Jankowsky (1997); Gramling, (2010). 28 Loren Kruger identifies Özdamar as a playwright who has “begun to explore the possibilities of syncretic theatre in Germany” (2004, 327–28). 29 For a detailed overview of Turkish-German theatre in this period, see Boran (2004, 75–200). On the negative effects of cultural policy on Turkish-German theatre, see also Sharifi (2011, 36).

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writing for the theatre.30 The process of their collaboration is described by Zaimoglu as follows: I am the extremist, I’m responsible for the language and the ideas. I slip into the roles. My tasks are feelings and affects. Günter is the technician who considers: the affects, ideas, and the language – do they work?! Does the story function?! (Solmaz 2010, n. pag.)31

The lack of attention given to Senkel’s background in the existing scholarship, as well as in theatre reviews, and interviews is indicative of the way in which both authorship and migrantization work in contemporary Germany32 : notably even in the theatrical sphere, where collaborative practice is more common, an emphasis on the author’s background as heuristic device appears only in relation to Zaimoglu. Similarly, situating the plays as products of successful literary authors does mean that Senkel recedes into the background in this story. This is not intended to obscure Senkel’s contribution to his and Zaimoglu’s plays, but simply reflects the fact that he, unlike Zaimoglu, is not known as an author in his own right. The very brief outline of the theatrical biographies of the playwrights central to this study illustrates that the new “postmigrant” theatre does not necessarily constitute a continuation or validation of earlier instances of “syncretic” theatre often practised by the first generation or Turkish theatre makers in Germany and epitomised here by the work of Özdamar. Rather, they stand in a “broken” relation to one another,33 linked rather by the degree to which gaps and breaks in theatrical projects can be considered a constitutive part of the history of “Turkish-German theatre”. At the same time, new funding for and interest in “postmigrant” theatre— theatre by and with postmigrant artists which aims to bring a postmigrant perspective into the theatrical sphere—is also slowly creating forums in 30 An author biography for Senkel is provided in Schütt (2011, 85). 31 “Ich bin der Extremist, bin fur die Sprache und Ideen zuständig. Ich schlüpfe in

die Rollen […] Meine Aufgabe[n] sind Gefühle und Affekte. Günther [sic] ist der Techniker, der sich überlegt: Die Affekte, Ideen und die Sprache – geht das überhaupt auf?! Funktioniert die Geschichte?!” 32 Contributions by Senkel have been included in two recent edited volumes dedicated to Zaimoglu’s work: see Senkel (2011; 2012). Zaimoglu discusses the duo’s working partnership in Solmaz (2010), Tiedke (2004b), and Gräff (2010). 33 Analogous to Derek Paget’s understanding of documentary theatre as a “broken tradition” (2009).

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which these distinctly developed ways of working are coming together and interacting further. The Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Berlin, is an important theatre to name here. As will be seen throughout the chapters to come, the Ballhaus is an institution which has functioned to bring together those who have long been active in the Turkish-German independent theatre scene with theatre practitioners experienced within Germany’s state-funded stage system, and with newer emerging practitioners. In other parts of the country, and most particularly in the former West Germany, such approaches have also increasingly being taken up by key theatres in the state-funded theatrical landscape: references to particular directors and theatres such as Schauspiel Köln and Karin Beier, or Schauspiel Hannover and Luk Perceval will therefore also recur throughout this study. This marks a stark change from a previous reluctance to stage stories of migration by or with migrantized artists within the Federal Republic of Germany. The historical overview briefly sketched here highlights that the metonymic relationship between stage and state noted at the beginning of this section thus also reflects a long existent lack of acceptance of the Turkish presence in the FRG on an institutional level and a hesitancy when it comes to offering migrantized playwrights, actors and directors a stake in the theatrical imaginary. Situating the Script This hesitation is also reflected in the academic sphere. While much scholarship in recent years has focused on Turkish-German literature and film, little research until very recently has been carried out into theatre by Turkish-German practitioners.34 Many cross-media studies omit theatre altogether (see, for example, Wagner-Egelhaaf et al. 2007), and newer cross-media studies tend to focus on individual instances of theatre which

34 A range of both Zaimoglu/Senkel and Özdamar’s theatrical work has begun to attract critical attention from scholars. However, this has thus far resulted in several separate articles rather than a broader overview and interest has mainly stemmed from scholars familiar with their prose writing. With the exception of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins , which has been the focus of some performance analysis, analysis of their plays in production, or as theatrical events, is largely absent. Those analyses of Özdamar’s theatrical work which do exist, for example, tend to be brief, embedded in a wider discussion of her other work or of a broader concept, and based primarily on a reading of the dramatic text, rather than the corresponding performance texts.

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have emerged as part of the postmigrant theatre movement. Meanwhile, in medium-specific studies focused on theatre in Germany, such as Matthew Cornish’s Performing Unification: History and Nation in German Theater after 1989, consideration of “Turkish-German theatre” finds space in the epilogue rather than being seen as central to questions of either history or nationhood (2015). For a long time, the most signifi˙ siro˘glu’s cant exceptions were Erol Boran’s 2004 doctoral thesis, Zehra Ip¸ reflections on her work between Turkey and Germany (2008) and a study carried out in the early 1980s by Manfred Brauneck et al. on “Foreigner’s theatre” (“Ausländertheater”) in the FRG and West Berlin (1983). The findings from this report which relate directly to TurkishGerman theatre at that time are summarised in Stenzaly (1984). More recently, Katrin Sieg has explored works by Turkish-German practitioners as part of her broader study of Ethnic Drag (2002, 2010, 2011), Azadeh Sharifi has provided a historical outline of the place of migration in the theatrical institutions of Germany as part of a broader consideration of the European context (2017, 334–39), while Onur Kömürcü Nobrega has engaged in extensive and compelling ethnographic analysis of the “working and living conditions of Turkish German artists throughout the institutionalisation of postmigrant theatre and the implementation of cultural diversity in the arts policies in Berlin’s cultural landscape” (2014).35 Elsewhere, Misha Hadar (2019) has engaged in initial archival work to reassess the work of the Schaubühne’s Turkish Ensemble, and Ela Gezen (2018, 2019) has provided detailed insight into the place of Aras Ören and Vasif Öngören within this history, helping shift “attention away from thinking about Turkish writers in Germany purely through the lens of labor migration, instead construing their work as a continued exchange in the realm of theatre” (Gezen 2018, 106).36 This sudden upsurge in academic engagement stands in stark contrast to the level of scholarly attention paid over several decades to other forms of cultural production by Turkish-origin artistic practitioners in Germany, or even to performance or performative events in which

35 Nora Haakh also has a book forthcoming on postmigrant theatre which readers can look forward to. 36 In this study, Gezen uses an engagement with Özdamar’s theatrical background to read her literary work but not her theatre plays.

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Turkish-Germans may choose to participate.37 To a degree, this reflects the long-standing lack of plays present on the larger and more influential German national stages which are either by Turkish-German writers and directors or which thematise the Turkish-German relationship. However, beyond these stages, such work does have a longer history than often assumed: writing in Die Zeit in 1982, Danja Antonovic highlighted the existence of “theatre, literature, music: guestworker culture – culture, that nobody wants” (1982).38 While academic studies have focused on the literature and music referred to as equal partners by Antonovic, this theatre has largely been written out of history and is only now in the process of being recovered. This is partly due to what could be considered a double minoritisation within the academic sphere, in which the frequent association of literary products of Turkish-German authors with a “minor literature” (Amodeo 1996; Littler 2007) might combine with an understanding of theatre as a “minor” art form and theatrical theory as a minor field of study (Pavis 1992, 75–98). Amodeo, Littler and Pavis use “minor” in the sense established by Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze here, i.e. to indicate not merely a marginalized position within a larger matrix but also the ethical action of “becoming-minor”. However, it is that position at the margins that is often used to designate such work “unimportant” or “insignificant”: a designation this study contests. This situation may also be exacerbated by the perception that the ephemeral nature of theatre makes past productions inaccessible (cf. Balme 2008, 132).39 The “traces” or “artefacts” which may remain of a piece of theatre, however, are multiple, including the dramaturgical department’s cut of the scripts, rehearsal and production photographs, video and audio recordings, programmes, publicity materials, reviews, rehearsal recordings, notes and anecdotes of post-show discussions, and interviews. As Ric Knowles puts it, drawing on such sources “can not

37 Detailed research had previously been done on events such as the annual Karneval der Kulturen in Berlin, for example (see Sieg 2008, 321–22). 38 “Theater, Literatur, Musik: Gastarbeiterkultur – Kultur, die keiner haben will.” 39 Thus, Hannah Voss, whose 2014 book explores “the reflection of ethnic iden-

tity(ascriptions) in contemporary German theatre” explicitly concentrates “solely on the aesthetic product, that is the theatre production”, arguing that this focus is due “amongst other things, due to material available to me” (“allein auf das ästhetische Produkt, sprich auf die Theateraufführung”; dies “ist under anderem auch dem mir vorliegenden Material geschuldet”; 2014, 22).

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only contribute to the fully contextualized performance analysis of particular productions at their moment of reception, but can also complicate, intersect with, and enrich historical and historicized analysis that takes a longer, diachronic view” (2004: 204). Although a script plus audiovisual recording might seem sufficient as a basis for exploring the theatre addressed in this study then, triangulation between sources is used to allow a richer picture to develop the performances at work both onstage and offstage.40 I also therefore examine programmes and, where possible, marketing materials, for example, as these help shape audience expectations and the frames against which the play will be read. Reviews also have a role to play here, not only as evidence of one type of reception—the “meanings and specific responses that specific performances in particular locations made available” (Knowles 2004, 21) to a particular set of individuals who help constitute the German theatrical establishment— but also as a form of marketing which may influence the expectations a post-premiere audience brings with them into the theatre. For each production examined here then, my aim was to find sufficient materials to allow the negotiations leading up to a performance, the publicity surrounding it, the aesthetics of the mise-en-scène and its public reception to be considered through a form of thick description in which productions are described “in rich and fully contextualized detail, taking their larger function within their own culture [here theatrical culture as located in Germany] into account” (Knowles 2004, 12).41

40 This is important from a methodological perspective: such triangulated work also acknowledges that the audiovisual recordings can be of variable quality and show only one instance of the play in production. This is partly because the audiovisual recordings accessed were mainly for the theatres’ or directors’ own internal uses and records. While the lighting, blocking, costume, sound and scenery—i.e. the components which makeup the mise-en-scène—are more “constant” elements of a production and are therefore relatively accessible for analysis (Balme 2008, 133–34; Pavis 1998, 363–68), as many theatre scholars have highlighted, each theatrical happening is unique: actors play slightly differently on different nights, a production may develop or stagnate over time, and the audience and experiences they bring with them into the theatre may change. The methodological approach taken here is also indebted to the work of Laura Bradley (2006). 41 Knowles draws here on Clifford Geertz (1973, 10–30). This involves “(re)constructing the performance, translating it into the frame of another discourse and rendering it legible (‘readable’) and mobile – allowing it to travel beyond its originary context as a ‘theoretical object ’” (de Marinis 1993, 48; quoted in Knowles 2004, 12, emphasis in orig.).

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In doing so, I turn where I can to the archive—that is, to records, accounts and material remains of the productions.42 This in itself has been a revelatory process. The productions I will examine here took place over thirty years and were accompanied by varying degrees of success, attracting different amounts of archival attention. My experience researching for this project shows that outside of the larger and most significant German theatre houses, the degree to which theatrical material is archived varies greatly from theatre to theatre. Some of the theatres at which the plays I examine here had premiered gave material to specialist theatre archives or town or regional archives rather than maintaining internal archives.43 In other theatres, materials and particularly recordings seemed to move with particular directors when they moved on to another theatre. At the Staatstheater Oldenburg, where Özdamar’s Keloglan in Alamania premiered, for example, there was merely a gap in the shelf where the chronology of the otherwise extensive archive suggested that materials relating to the play would be stored. In still other cases, productions were so new that the material available was yet to be archived. In these cases, artefacts were gathered from the theatres during my own trips to see the plays and were complemented by internal documents kindly made available by employees of the theatre or the directors themselves. While I have been as thorough as possible, other materials may still become available, particularly as Özdamar moves her personal archive into the Akademie der Künste, Berlin—a process which began in 2017. I also make some use of interviews with dramaturges, directors and the playwrights involved. The aim of these interviews was not to engage in systematic discourse or other qualitative analysis. Rather, they served as a way of bringing in the voices and knowledge of the real experts in this field—those involved in the practice of the theatre on which I am focusing

42 For a discussion of the symbolic role of the archive in the context of Turkish-German cultural production, see Seyhan (2001), Adelson (2005) and Mani (2007); particularly with regard to theatre, see Sieg (2011) and Stewart (2013, 2015). 43 The archives of Schauspiel Frankfurt, for example, where the first play this book examined premiered, are held not by the theatre but by the Archiv zu den Städtischen Bühnen Frankfurt at the Universitätsbibliothek Johann C. Senckenberg, part of the Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main University. Similarly, the archives of Schauspiel Hannover were to be found in the associated Theatermuseum next door.

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here.44 This was particularly useful in terms of constructing the genealogy of a production and contextualising its material remains. Indeed, in some cases, these interviews were not only useful in the process of setting artefacts in context, that is, in helping me “read” the documents which I had found, but also in the process of finding the artefacts in the first place, and in some cases, directors’ personal collections were also drawn on.45 This study thus uses a combination of archival and fieldwork to examine contemporary theatre practice and theatrical representation in the Federal Republic of Germany as a country of immigration. This approach builds on Knowles’ aims “to develop a method that brings the analysis of the material conditions to bear on the close reading of specific performances in the contemporary theatre” (Knowles 2004, 14), conditions which Knowles terms the “political unconscious” of a theatrical piece. Attention has recently been drawn to this theatrical “unconscious” in the contemporary German context by Franziska Schößler’s suggestion that “the cultural political developments which affect the organisation and institution of theatre, have lasting consequences for the aesthetic practice” (2013, 13).46 This observation has been taken further by Christopher Balme’s research centre on “institutional aesthetics” which explores “the effect of structural organisation in relation to the production, distribution and reception artistic outcomes particularly for the performing arts” (ineas 2016, quoted in Marshall 2018, 157), and by Peter Boenisch’s conceptualisation of “Institutional Dramaturgy” as one which “seeks to disclose the institutional power

44 As a result, the interview questions were production-specific and while I asked about the commission, inspiration, rehearsals, performance and reception of the plays in each case, each interviewee was encouraged to lead the discussion into the areas they found most important. 45 My interview with dramaturge Ingo Waszerka, for example, led me to search for the photographs of the premiere of Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s first play taken by Abisag Tüllmann. These images are discussed in Stewart (2013). My interview with Neco Çelik also led to his wife, actress and businesswoman Nermin Çelik, kindly giving me a copy of the audio–video recording of the premiere production of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins and other materials relating to the production, in which she originally played one of the characters. 46 “Die kulturpolitischen Entwicklungen, die die Organisation wie die Institution Theater betreffen, nachhaltige nachhaltige Konsequenzen für die ästhetische Praxis haben”.

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structures, which – beyond their economic and socio-political scope – have direct aesthetic implications” (2015).47 An analogous approach has also been taken by Randal Halle in German Film Studies, including with regard to Turkish-German cinema, where he has highlighted the importance of “attending to economic developments in order to explain aesthetic shifts” (2008, 9). As the scenes re-drafted in the prologue to this study suggest, the relationship between conditions of production and theatrical expression is a subject of discussion, investigation and transformation within postmigrant theatre itself. In responding to the ways in which this “political unconscious” is often consciously reflected on and voiced in these scenes, my aim is to bring these to further speak in the academic context. I am also interested then in exploring the extent to which these dramatic scripts provide starting points for broader rescriptings of the German theatrical establishment and its associated institutional and symbolic realm. In the process, I move between a consideration of scripts as material objects, as starting points for imagining and performing new models and realities, and in an extended sense, the script as a conceptual tool. I believe such an approach is important as a means of moving both beyond a dehistoricised understanding of the most recent interaction between theatre and migration in the FRG and beyond the recent hype around postmigrant theatre to a more critical overview of the challenges such theatrical work has faced. If, as Lynette Hunter suggests, “Performance Studies recognises the work of the art-makers, as well as the event of the made-art entering Culture (the Performance) and sometimes becoming Art” (2012, 10), it provides a particularly powerful way into beginning to re-engage with past works by migrantized artists—freeing the analysis from labels of “successful” or “failed” artwork which may be overdetermined by the very modes of reception such theatrical practice aims to challenge. 47 Ann-Christine Simke’s 2017 thesis also develops this idea, “expanding my field of inquiry from the performance event itself to the institution as an artistic, political and social framework and its many ways of communicating its specific profile to audiences”. As will be seen in the following section such “dramaturgies” in an extended sense, whether from the kind of state and regional cultural planning and policy touched on earlier in this introduction, or from within individual theatrical institutions can also be seen as scripts which function “as ‘strategy generating principles’, to use a term by Bourdieu, principles that accompany people’s actions within given situations, but don’t determine these actions completely” (Van der Berg 2008, 5).

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At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that success or recognition in other spheres, those of the literary and the filmic, has played a key role in making public memories of “failed” performances, and in “selling” the playwrights and productions examined here. The reworking of Özdamar’s early scripts into short stories, for example, kept those scripts active in the cultural sphere when no stage was available for them in their original medium, while Zaimoglu’s reputation as an artist who could be relied on for controversy no doubt led to demand for and interest in his forays onto the stage. It is thus unsurprising that Özdamar and Zaimoglu are two of the first German-language playwrights of Turkish origin to have made it out of the “grey zone” of amateur or “off-scene” theatre and onto the mainstream, state-subsidised German stage. That is not to say that they stand alone, however. Far from it. They have been followed by playwrights such as Nurkan Erpulat, Necati Öziri, Mely Kiyak and Hakan Sava¸s Mican and are preceded by Turkish-language playwrights in Germany such as Yüksel Pazarkaya, Aras Ören and Meray Ülgen to name only a few more prominent names.48 I thus engage performance studies paradigms but couple these with methodological approaches from theatre history and situate the works in a broader cross-media cultural field, bringing existing theoretical approaches developed with regard to Turkish-German cultural production in other media, such as literature and film, into dialogue with those of theatre and performance studies. Foundational work at the intersection of these fields has been carried out by Katrin Sieg, a foundation I build on here. If, as detailed in the previous section, Boran might be said to look at the ethnic make-up of German theatre on an institutional level, Sieg’s study, Ethnic Drag (2002), looks at ethnic make-up quite literally—tracing the performance of “race” both on and off the German stage over the course of the twentieth century. Moving between Nazi Jew farces, Red Indian hobbyism and plays by minority playwrights and ensembles (including Özdamar), Sieg explores the practice of “ethnic drag”, or dressing up as an ethnicised figure in West Germany, and uses the findings there to further structure her engagement with postmigrant theatre in individual articles (e.g. Sieg 2010). In the process of conceptualising ethnic drag, Sieg draws on Leslie A. Adelson’s preliminary work towards her study The Turkish Turn in

48 On the work of these earlier playwrights, see Boran (2004), Gezen (2018), Gezen (2019), Hadar (2019).

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German Literature (2005), a turn in which Özdamar and Zaimoglu’s literary production plays a key role. Leslie A. Adelson’s work in this field advocates, as Margaret Littler usefully summarises, “leaving behind categories of identity (even hybrid identity), and probing instead the textual structures” of prose by Zaimoglu, Özdamar and other Turkish-German authors (Littler 2006, 404–05). In place of the intercultural “cultural fable” of two worlds which, in the literary sphere, can effectively impose the same reading on various texts, Adelson works from the texts themselves to suggest “touching tales” as a productive heuristic device. By this, she means the existence of “lines of thought” emanating from Turkish or TurkishGerman authors which touch on and intertwine with those which combine to constitute the German national imaginary (Adelson 2005, 16–17). Such a line is “[d]ependent for its own manifestation on the discursive means with which it is never identical” (Brodsky Lacour, qtd in ibid., 22), i.e. the product, but not necessarily the continuation, of the cultural context from which it arises. “Turkish literature of migration in Germany” is thus for Adelson a phenomenon which developed from within (but was not identical to) a cultural context formed by political decisions and pre-existing cultural structures of the geopolitical entity, the Federal Republic of Germany. As Margaret Littler highlights, Adelson’s phrasing here contains “disconcertingly Deleuzian echoes” (2006, 403). Another way of thinking this line would be, as Littler suggests, as a Deleuzean “line of flight”, a term referring to “those parts of the assemblage that escape the structure of which they are a part and serve to connect such an assemblage to that which is outside itself” (Thornton 2018, 12).49 Sieg adopts an earlier version of Adelson’s “touching tales” specifically as a basis for thinking through “the semiotic triangle of actor, role, and referent” in the context of racialized representation in the FRG (Sieg 2002, 14). Adelson herself stresses her respect and admiration for Sieg’s work; however, she also makes a point of emphasising that “Sieg’s understanding of referentiality in ethnic drag departs from my understanding of referentiality in the literature of migration”; that is, it proceeds from but also significantly differs from Adelson’s use of referentiality. Adelson then takes this difference as an opportunity to argue that “the cultural 49 For a detailed engagement with Turkish-German cinema through a Deleuzean lens, see Naiboglu (2018).

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effects of Turkish migration to Germany manifest themselves variously in medium-specific ways” (2005, 18–19). In my own exploration of “the cultural effects of Turkish migration to Germany” in the theatrical sphere, I choose not to follow Sieg’s nevertheless extremely useful focus on the semiotic triangle of ethnic drag, in which a politically conservative mimesis, which I would term naturalism, is set in opposition to a politically engaged, Brechtian masquerade or drag (see Sieg 2002, 15–19; 28). I find a less predetermined view of the representational strategies at work allows a nuanced exploration of the ways in which theatre practitioners themselves turn to or away from mimesis as both artistic and cultural practice. Rather, I respond to Adelson’s emphasis on the value of tracing emerging trajectories in their newness,50 following them in reaching beyond what one might call the platonic Urbild (ibid., 22–23), or as Littler might put it, in their unfolding: asking not what these cultural effects are but how they work, what they can do, and where they take us. While working from the script outwards into the materiality of production allows methodologically for an exploration of such unfolding, engagement with the way in which the term “script” often unfolds into the metaphorical realm is something I have also found useful in my theoretical engagement with this material. In the introduction to her monograph on Transnational Theater, Literature, and Film in Contemporary Germany, Claudia Breger, for example, highlights the connection between the dominant script in the social and symbolic spheres and the representation of “reality” on stage in contemporary German theatre, when she discusses “mimesis as a process of active reconfiguration coshaped by available sociosymbolic scripts” (2012, 16).51 Elsewhere, Sieg notes the “interpretation, revision and reversal” of “the scripts and personnel of racial fantasy” (2008, 244) within plays such as Özdamar’s. Such references to a socially existing script which particular theatrical and social actors must find a way to navigate draw on similar language in the work of Judith Butler who famously notes: “Just as a script may

50 Ela Gezen’s recent work also responds to Adelson’s work which “directs our attention to how in these texts German worlds are ‘configured in new ways’” (Adelson 13; quoted in Gezen 2018, 9), by drawing our attention to the ways in which “Turkish writers’ engagement with Brecht – both in their own written works and on stages from Istanbul and Ankara to East Berlin and Erlangen – prompted a range of such reconfigurations” (Gezen 2018, 9). 51 Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins is also discussed in Breger (2012, 231–38).

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be enacted in various ways, and just as the play requires both text and interpretation, so the gendered body acts its part in a culturally restricted corporeal space and enacts interpretations within the confines of already existing directives” (Butler 1988, 526).52 While Butler here invokes the script as metaphor, the “already existing directives” she highlights also connect back to real theatrical scripts outside of the one-way direction of metaphor. Looking at intercultural theatre in Canada, one chapter in Ric Knowles’ recent work refers to “practices of official multiculturalism” as “scripts for performances that may not always follow their terms”, but which nonetheless can have “real, material, and to some degree determining consequences, particularly on the funding, housing and support of theatre” (2017, 21). For Knowles, “this script is intended to function in the way that many traditional understandings of scripts would suggest: as a template and container for performances that are understood to ‘realize’ it”, but which often use it as a departure point for other perhaps dissenting acts (ibid., 22). While for Knowles in the Canadian context, intercultural performance is both enabled by and moves significantly beyond the multicultural script of policy, I want to suggest that the very different policy and funding context in Germany mean that it is interculturalism which emerges as policy script there,53 or, in Butler’s words, as the “confines” within, against or alongside of which theatrical performances emerge. As will be seen, the subsidy system in Germany means that such policy level scripts also come to bear

52 The phrasing here bears similarities to Richard Schechner’s discussion of the script in opposition to the drama, where the script emerges as “something that pre-exists any given enactment, which persists from enactment to enactment” (2003, 68). However, for Schechner, “the script is the domain of the teacher, guru, master”, while for Butler it lies more firmly outwith the individual agent. Given the role of the postdramatic in the German theatrical context, I find the distinctions Schechner sets up here less useful when addressing this context and so will not be using the term script in his sense here. For a more detailed general critique of Schechner’s terminology here, see Shephard (2016, 27). In their recent book on theatre at the HAU, Ulrike Garde and Meg Mumford also make brief reference to “cognitive scripts”, which are “confused” by theatrical productions such as Ay¸se Polat’s contribution to X-Wohnungen (2004) in order to produce a dissonance that prompts reflection (2016, 132–33). These are scripts of “temporally-ordered schema” which describe “knowledge of stereotypical goal-oriented event sequences” though (Emmott and Alexander 2015, quoted in Garde and Megson 2016, 133) and represent an approach rooted in psychology. 53 McIvor also takes up Knowles’ vocabulary of the “script” in relation to intercultural policy in the Northern Irish context (2019a, 359).

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particularly on the institutional performances of individual theatre houses, creating a further interim level of engagement with the script whereby the institution itself may enact the scripts which frame its existence variously, and lay down further scripts of its own in the process. Moving from production to reception, “already existing directives” can also come to bear on the reception of the aesthetics and narratives presented in individual plays, or of whole groups of material associated through the label of “Turkish-German” or “postmigrant theatre”. The recognition of artistic representation (or more classically, mimesis) is, after all, “guided by the culturally defined realm of possibility that defines the ‘we’ of the readership [here viewership]. It invokes and creates the social group, even as it depends on it” (Senders 2002, 90). This is particularly the case in theatre. As Claudia Breger and Marvin Carlson highlight: performance […] always involves “mental comparison with a potential, an ideal, or a remembered original model” (Carlson 2004, 5) […]. [T]heatricalized performance thus attains its significance by virtue of how it repeats, or restages, its models. (Breger 2012, 34)

A key question for this study then, is when is the relationship to reality articulated in productions of Özdamar’s and Zaimoglu/Senkel’s plays recognised as relevant to, representing or co-creating a shared reality? How does this relate to the long-denied reality of Germany as a country of immigration? Attention to the attribution of significance, rather than reliance on it as guarantor of value, thus becomes a means “to investigate the internal logic of representation, to seek the cultural reality of the ‘true’” (Senders 2002, 90). I therefore to some extent return here to the theoretical intersections between Adelson and Sieg but reroute these via Littler and Knowles. To a large degree, my focus on and via the script ties this work via Butler to representational critique, and the play-scripts I examine in this study are certainly not fully anti-representational in the sense of the Artaudian theatre which partially inspired Deleuze (cf. Puchner 2010, 169). However, the concomitant emphasis on scripts as generative and in themselves performative also draws in Littler’s work on a Deleuzean framework for approaching Zaimoglu and Özdamar’s literary works and puts this into conversation not only with Adelson and Sieg, but also with Knowles’

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consideration of how “realities are explicitly enacted into being” (2017, 7) in and via the theatrical sphere.54 Interculturalism, Postmigration, Mimeticism While Idraw on Knowles here, a crucial element in an approach bringing together Turkish-German Studies and Performance Studies is a move away from an analysis of theatre which positions its own practice as intercultural, and from the intercultural encounter as a framework for reading the aesthetics of the play. In a theatrical context, interculturalism has, until very recently, generally been used to explore either the coming together of two distinct traditions, or how the semiotics of a piece translates across boundaries (cf. McIvor 2011, 314; Knowles 2010, 4). Julie Holledge and Joanne Tompkins define it as “the meeting in a moment of performance of two or more cultural traditions” (2000, 7; quoted in Knowles 2010, 4), while the use of “interculturalism” by Erika Fischer-Lichte and Patrice Pavis occurs in analyses which focus on the transfer of a play written in one cultural context to another radically different one, rather than plays produced within one locality (see Regus 2009; Fischer-Lichte 1989; Pavis 1989). However, interculturalism has also been invoked in initial scholarly responses to the new “postmigrant theatre” such as in many of the chapters included in Wolfgang Schneider’s German-language edited collection on theatre and migration in Germany (2011). This may be somewhat surprising for scholars coming from a background of research into Turkish-German literature, where the term has a different and contested history. In this field, literary work by TurkishGerman authors, including Zaimoglu and Özdamar, was long taught and researched in departments of “intercultural literature” rather than “German literature” in German universities. A focus on literature by Turkish-German authors as “intercultural literature” has therefore often been criticised as one which functions to anchor literature by authors of non-German ethnicity firmly in their “otherness” (cf. Adelson 2006).

54 Similarly, Laura Cull’s extensive work on Deleuze and performance suggests “per-

formance’s production of images, texts, events, and movements involves entering into a becoming that changes both the work and world as representation” (Cull 2013, 5). For a detailed discussion which squares the performativity and Deleuze circle, see Fancy (2014). Sharifi also suggests the potential of using Deleuze in exploring migration and theatre in contemporary Germany (2017, 336) but does not pursue this in her examples.

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Thus, “intercultural Germanistik recognises the foreign as something outside, not within, German society – more specifically, as something separate from, not an integral part of, German identity” (Teraoka 1997, 72). Here, interculturalism is frequently associated with an approach to this cultural production which misreads literary constructions for sociological insight into migrantized lives, a misreading based on a characterisation of cultures as homogeneous, closed constructs and cultural producers as mediators between the two.55 Readings of texts which emerge from this approach “do not necessarily preclude historical concerns or analytical complexity” (Adelson 2005, 23). However, they can function to reduce literature from being of artistic to social merit by focusing on “its cultural use-value in an ethnocentric manner” (Lornsen 2007, 12, n. 14).56 Within the literary sphere, a focus on interculturalism has thus often contributed to what Leslie A. Adelson and others have critiqued as a narrative which positions Turkish-Germans in particular as being negatively suspended “between two worlds” rather than agents who move across, have attachments to and shape multiple contexts (Adelson 2005, 1–4; 2006, 38–39). Similarly, I would argue that a focus on a model of intercultural theatre adapted from the Anglophone context has often, in the German context, resulted in a preference for analysing theatre companies invited to Germany from other countries over the products of resident TurkishGerman theatre artists (as in Fischer-Lichte 2008; see also the approach suggested in Holthaus 2011, 150). A positioning of plays by artists such as Özdamar and Zaimoglu/Senkel under the rubric of a traditional understanding of “intercultural theatre” thus runs the risk of suggesting that the Turkish-German playwright is as culturally “foreign” to Germany as nineteenth-century Russian author Chekhov may be to a modern Japanese audience (the exemplar of intercultural theatre practice in Fischer-Lichte 1989). Alternatively—as discourses developed in

55 This is a cultural model with roots in the thinking of philosophers such as Herder (cf. Kömürcü Nobrega 2011, 101–02). 56 “reduziert die Werke in ethnozentristischer Weise auf einen kulturvermittelnden Nutzwert”. Thus, Michael Hofmann, who continues in this tradition, writes “intercultural literary studies should be understood as an opportunity for society to reflect on the problems of, and chances offered by, intercultural constellations, and to grasp the diversity of cultures as profit” (2006, 238).

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Anglophone performance studies meet the German tradition of interculturalism—the use of the label “intercultural” may also come to suggest that the relevance of such theatre is limited to the “sociocultural” rather than to do with “high culture” (see also Sharifi 2011a, 242). More recently, Fischer-Lichte’s research platform “Interweaving Performance Cultures” (established in 2008 at the Freie Universität Berlin) has offered a significantly more nuanced approach that which emphasises complexity, entanglement and a rich fabric of interaction (Fischer-Lichte 2014, 11– 13). This is reflected in the fact that the platform has also hosted scholars working on postmigrant theatre in Germany such as Azadeh Sharifi and Hasibe Kalkan Kocabay.57 In doing so, however, the platform has explicitly moved away from the “intercultural” nominer (ibid.), a move which highlights the ideological baggage this term often brings with it. I therefore move away from an analysis of theatre which positions its own practice as intercultural in the traditional sense (what Daphne Lei terms “hegemonic intercultural theatre” 2011, 571), and from the intercultural encounter as a framework for reading the aesthetics of the plays. Instead, where I do address interculturalism in the latter part of this book, I am interested in tracing the way in which intercultural policies have both enabled and demanded the production of new forms of engagement, as well as the constraints these policies bring with them. In this sense, my engagement with interculturalism is more related to the “new interculturalism” advocated for by scholars such as Lei and Charlotte McIvor (2019b). In doing so, I aim to respond, in medium-specific manner, to Adelson’s emphasis on the value of tracing emerging trajectories in their newness. Or put differently, I aim to explore the ways in which these theatrical scripts as creative works move beyond the scripts laid out for them by societal and academic expectation. One such new trajectory has taken place under the nominer “postmigrant theatre”. Postmigration entered German-language popular and academic parlance primarily via the success of the Ballhaus Naunynstraße theatre, and several of the practitioners discussed in this study have been instrumental in bringing the concept of postmigration into the public

57 As a PhD student, I was also able to attend some of the platform’s events and meetings in 2012 while on a DAAD-funded research stay in Germany which Christel Weiler from the centre kindly supported. Sharifi also discusses intercultural theatre approaches developed in performance studies critically (2017, 373).

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realm. In its very construction, the term “postmigrant” (also written variously as post migrant or post-migrant) clearly has associations with the postcolonial (E. Yildiz 2014, 21) or, more problematically, the postracial (El-Tayeb 2016, 11–13; 16). To this, we could also perhaps add postmemory (see Hirsch 2008), especially when the term is viewed as a category which “refers to the descendants of migrants who have not experienced the actual spatial mobility themselves but whose actions and lives bear the traces of migration” and “marks the distance the descendants of migrants have vis-à-vis to their parents’ and grandparents’ migration experiences and at the same time helps to acknowledge the importance of these histories, affiliations and their traces in the post migrant subjectivities and practices” (Ça˘glar 2016).58 Each of these “posts” stages a different point of comparison and connection of the “postmigrant condition” with discourses originating outside of the history of labour migration and asylum which has largely shaped German migration history in the twentieth century. In each a different noun-object is more likely to follow the adjective; we thus begin to hear of not only postmigrant theatre, but also postmigrant (research) perspectives, postmigrant society and postmigrant as alternative noun in itself, i.e. as alternative label for so-called “people with a background of migration” in contemporary Germany. In the process, it moves from designator of artistic, or even research, approach, to further label for migrantized individuals. Thus, young theatre practitioners today with a biographical connection to cross-border migration find themselves asking whether their work is, or wants to be considered, “postmigrant theatre”,59 while from an analytical perspective as theatre researchers we might ask whether it is the perspective present in a play, the historical point in which the play arises, the biographies of those engaged in the theatre-making process (and if so, onstage? backstage?) or simply the label under which a play is marketed which might lead us to employ this term. Ay¸se Ça˘glar disputes the analytical purchase afforded by the term, highlighting the term’s reliance on cross-border migration (i.e. mobility as defined by a nation-state model) and its positioning of origin outside 58 Here, Ça˘ glar references an unpublished talk by Kira Kosnick from 2013. 59 Question raised by audience member at the event “10 Jahre postmigrantisches

Theater—Narrative des postmigrantischen Theaters: Repräsentation, Erinnerungsarbeit und Geschichtsschreibung,” curated by Onur Suzan Kömürcü Nobrega, Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Berlin, 24 May 2016.

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of Germany as “foundational”. For Ça˘glar, “methodological nationalism” thus “enters into the post migrant perspective through the back door” (2016, 6),60 and “[a]lthough it poses important challenges to the integrationist and or multiculturalist framings of migrant agencies, post migrant framing situates those who are designated as ‘with’ a migration background and those ‘without’ into different temporal fames” (Ça˘glar 2016, 8). These are important critiques to offer as the term develops and certainly stand for the tendency to use “postmigrant” as potentially more palatable stand-in for the German state’s preferred term, “person with a background of migration”. It is perhaps unsurprising then that in the theatrical sphere, the social actors (directors, artistic directors, theatrical actors, dramaturges, viewers, reviewers) who engage it might often be said to do so in a manner which displays a degree of distance: pointing to it, rather than identifying as it.61 For this reason, I aim to avoid the usage of the term in this sense within this monograph and the slippage it engenders between theatrical practice and the biographical body of the theatre practitioner. At the same time, Ça˘glar acknowledges that “the post migrant intervention in the German and Austrian arts and culture world was and is a valuable strategic tactic to mark the emerging spaces of power and resistance vis-à-vis migrants’ location within the field of cultural production” (2016, 14). The tactical, strategic, usage of the term which Ça˘glar highlights is significant, as the team at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße itself appear to have employed the term both as an act of pre-emptive self-labelling and as a means of establishing a strong profile for the Ballhaus in the competitive Berlin theatre market (Wahl 2013).62 The initial artistic director of the Ballhaus, Shermin Langhoff, positions the word “postmigrant” as a “Kampfbegriff”: a “polemical concept” or, translated more literally, a “term for doing battle with” (quoted in Schaper 2012). This positions it first and foremost as a term important for the work it can do, rather

60 This methodological nationalism is, according to Ça˘ glar, further enforced by the temporality she sees as inscribed in the term: “The prefix ‘post’ here clearly indicates that this is a category of temporal location” (2016, 7), creating a “post migrant chronotope […] where a particular temporal frame prepositions the migrants and links them to a predefined space” and “an inscribed and path dependent past” (Ça˘glar 2016, 8). 61 Cf. Discussions at “10 Jahre postmigrantisches Theater”. 62 For a more detailed history of the term’s development in its moves back and forth

between theatrical practice, theatrical analysis and sociological theory, see Stewart (2017).

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than as a descriptor for what a particular form of theatre might be. In Langhoff’s words: For us postmigrant means that we critically question the production and reception of stories about migration and about migrants which have been available up to now and that we view and produce these stories anew, inviting a new reception. (Langhoff, in Schacht 2011; translation based on my transcription).63

For Erol Yildiz, Regina Römhild and the postmigrant research group around Moritz Schramm in Denmark, indeed, postmigration, conceived tactically rather than literally, becomes the very means of countering methodological nationalism or methodological ethnicization in their arguments when used as societal descriptor and analytical lens (E. Yildiz 2014; Römhild 2014, 2017, 69). Thus, for Yildiz, postmigration becomes a means of centring migration in terms of conceptualisations of social structures (2014, 22). A nexus of competing and often paradoxical positions or social pressures is thus often staged within the term: the proximity to and difference from postcolonialism; the tension between repeating and challenging reductive and marginalizing framing of those with experience of migration; its usage as normative descriptor versus transformative lens (cf. Stewart 2017). In bringing the term into the title of this book, I aim to engage these tensions productively. The proximity to the postcolonial which the term stages in particular is useful in this regard as questions of power and representation raised there have often been engaged in the very different context of the cultural production of labour migration to Germany. One of the key questions at the start of a critical academic engagement with TurkishGerman literature, for example, was posed by Arlene Akiko Teraoka’s influential essay “Gastarbeiterliteratur: The Other Speaks Back” in 1987 using the language of postcolonial critique. In this essay, Teraoka uses “the silence of the Turks in works of contemporary [German] drama”, as the impetus for her re-assessment of what happens “[w]hen the silent Turk begins to speak in the dominant language”, that is, to write literature in German (1987, 77; 80). This question addresses not just the

63 “Postmigrantisch heißt für uns, dass wir die bisherige Produktion und Rezeption von Geschichten über Migration und über Migranten kritisch befragen und neu anschauen, neu produzieren und neu zur Rezeption einladen.”

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phenomenon of writing in a second language but also the issue of articulating and being heard in one’s own terms within an already loaded space of signification. It thus relates to the question famously posed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (1985), and has been explored extensively in relation to the medium of literature—the area that Teraoka’s essay in fact proceeds to focus on. However, more than a quarter of a century later, it has yet to be systematically related back to theatre written, directed or performed by Turkish-German artists. In this monograph, this question shifts to include visual language and theatrical signifying practice. The degree to which the Turkish-German encounter can be considered in relation to colonialism and postcolonialism has been much debated (see, for example, Steyerl and Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2003; Göttsche 2006). Turkish migration to the FRG is not a direct result of Germany’s colonial past; however, Germany’s historical role as colonial power continues to shape attitudes to race and ethnicity which awaited Turkish arrivals there. The role of Orientalism, a mode of thought arising out of French and British colonial encounters in the Middle East, but which German thought also contributed to, is also significant here and has shaped the perception of Turkish-German subjects and their cultural production (ibid.). The role of Turkish-German artists as “cultural brokers” and “native informants” analogous to, if not the same as, postcolonial writers is thus frequently broached (see, for example, Mani 2007, 35–36; Mandel 2008, 86). Most of this analysis has originated from a focus on the transnational circulation of racializing and orientalising discourses within Germany. However, Kader Konuk’s recent work on mimesis in early twentiethcentury Turkey explores the specifics of the circulation of similar discourses within the Turkish context. Konuk provides a useful historical perspective and in doing so warns against “equating colonial strategies in [for example] British India with Turkey’s self-imposed appropriation of Western European culture” (2010, 87), emphasising Turkish agency in the process of Turkish modernisation. At the same time, though, for Konuk: Thinking about imitation and authenticity in modern Turkey brings to mind Homi Bhabha’s useful insights into the politics of appropriation. […] Bhabha’s insights help us understand the anxieties that were triggered by the Europeanisation of Turkey, for his notion of mimicry highlights

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the difference between representation and repetition. Translated into the Turkish context, Bhabha’s notion of mimicry demonstrates the difference between the European, who stands for Europe, and the Europeanised Turk, who is thought merely capable of aping the foreign. (2010, 87)

Konuk therefore outlines the “dilemma that arises from a mimetic process that equates modernity with a simple vision of Europe” as follows: From a Western European point of view, Turkish modernity was, at best, a Platonic copy, not the result of a mimetic process in the Aristotelian sense. As a result, Turkish history, like all non-European histories, has simply become a variation on Europe’s master narrative. (2010, 80)

The way in which this view of Turkish modernity as Platonic copy, that is, as a second order, deviant imitation of a European model has played out in the later context of Turkish migrations to Germany is addressed by the work of Ruth Mandel amongst others. Mandel’s anthropological study of the diverse Turkish community in Berlin outlines the selective cosmopolitanism at work in contemporary German society and the “Turkish challenges to citizenship and belonging in Germany” created by labour migration and its after-effects: On the one hand, Turks are thought to reinforce their originary cultural, linguistic, and religious affiliations. On the other, sometimes Turks who have “succeeded” in German society are seen at worst as traitors or at best as hybrid, unable to achieve a genuine status. (2008, 131)

In discussing the positions which Turkish-origin social actors in Germany find available to them, we again see echoes of Bhabha on mimicry. Mandel herself draws on Phillipe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, as “[m]imetism [sic] for these authors [Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy] consists of the search for models or types on the basis of which to identify and reinforce a national identity” (2008, 8). An expanded theorisation of the mechanisms by which concepts of idealised “originals” and their imperfect imitation are used to measure the “authenticity” of certain subjects and cultural productions, and so “keep them in their place” is also offered by cultural theorist Rey Chow (2002, 95–127) and this I

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find particularly useful for the ways in which pre-existing directives might “script” expectations of and for ethnicized and migrantized subjects.64 Chow has outlined three main modes in which such mechanisms manifest. In the initial variant, the white male and his culture function as idealised model, which the colonised subject must copy in order to legitimate him/herself, but of which he/she will always remain “a bad copy” (ibid., 104). In the second, the split subject of the colonial “copy” and, by extension, the cultural productions of this split subject become potentially resistant and threatening in themselves, but are still defined in relation to the white man as unitary “model” (ibid., 104–06; see also Bhabha 1994, 121–31). Finally, in “coercive mimeticism”, “the ethnic person is expected to come to resemble what is recognizably ethnic” (2002, 107). Although in this third instance the already existing directive is “a stereotyped view of the ethnic” (ibid., 107), as with the first and second instances, fulfilling these directives fully remains unattainable, leaving ethnicized subjects once again in the position of “inferior imitations, copies that are permanently out of focus” (ibid., 127). When such mechanisms are at work, the ability to imitate without becoming merely a copy is thus reserved for the subject construed as “non-ethnic”, allowing that subject full freedom of social and artistic movement, while restricting the ethnicized and/or migrantized subject into particular ways of being (ibid., 117). Such mechanisms are clearly identified and critiqued in the theatrical scenes sketched in the prelude to this study, and the relevance of Chow’s work to the Turkish-German context has also been noted in key literary studies by B. Venkat Mani (2007, 30, 125–26) and Leslie A. Adelson (2005, 133–37). Here, however, I will explore the ways in which this sociopolitical mimeticism or “scripting” manifests itself and is responded to in the theatrical sphere. Returning to the overlap between theatrical metaphor and theatrical practice, if the focus in Mandel’s work

64 While Mandel’s anthropological accounts are focused more on social than on artistic practices, she highlights that “[p]rocesses of mimetism [sic] are found in the variety of assertions of visibility” created by work such as Zaimoglu and Özdamar’s literary writing (2008, 4; see also 86). I bring in Chow here as Chow’s work takes us beyond a model applicable only to the question of national identity into a multiple set of models used to shore up structures of inclusion and exclusion in various power relations. This seems particularly important in a globalising context where the national is still significant, as exemplified by the issues still surrounding citizenship law in Germany, but is both modified and compromised by the globalised economic sphere and the transnational legal and socio-economic realm of the EU.

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“is on the ways in which social actors mimetically recreate themselves and their social landscapes in relation to their imagined homeland and diaspora” (2008, 232), one key question this study asks is how these processes or scripts of cultural mimesis are represented, critiqued or reimagined when the social actor and theatrical actor converge, when the playwright becomes scriptor. Scripts of Postmigration While the theatre text and two/three particular dramatists form the starting point for this study, I emphasise these texts as generative scripts which can unfold into multiple theatrical performances, events, and perspectival or material shifts in practice. Rather than attempting to cover all of the theatrical work of Özdamar and Zaimoglu/Senkel superficially, or only as written texts, I have chosen to focus on several key plays both as theatre and as performance texts.65 Each chapter focuses on the production history and analysis of performances of one play-text or script. The chapters follow a similar model throughout, beginning with an introductory section summarising the play in question and outlining the issues at stake in the examination of the play with regard to theoretical concept of social scripts. Two central sections of the chapter will then be dedicated to analysis of the genealogy, aesthetics and reception of the premiere production of the play. A final section in each chapter will draw comparisons with subsequent productions and link these to broader theatrical developments.

65 As my focus is on the plays in production, in Özdamar’s case this means that I omit an examination of her unperformed dramatic texts, Hamlet Ahmet, Karriere einer Putzfrau – Erinnerungen an Deutschland and Der Hof im Spiegel as well as her children’s play, Noahi (written 2001; performed 2003, Theaterhaus Frankfurt). Instead, I focus on those of her plays designed for the adult stage and successful in being performed. Zaimoglu/Senkel are currently the authors of sixteen dramatic texts. I have chosen to omit a closer examination of those productions in which Zaimoglu’s sole authored prose work is adapted for the stage, and of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s three early plays Casino Leger (2003), Ja. Tu es. Jetzt (2003) and Halb So Wild (2004). The duo’s numerous other rewrites Lulu Live (2005), Romeo und Julia (2006), Max und Moritz (2007), Molière: Eine Passion (2007), Nathan Messias (2009), Hamlet (2010) and Julius Caeser (2011) are not examined in detail but will be brought into the chapter on Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Othello as points of comparison. Since I began this research, Zaimoglu/Senkel have also written a good number of newer plays; these will be discussed briefly in the conclusion.

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As will be seen, over the past quarter of a century Özdamar’s work has been performed only sporadically. However, in this study, I will suggest that the production history of her plays appears to provide an almost paradigmatic model for the changing ways in which the theatrical establishment has regarded Turkish-German theatre over the past 25 years. As will be seen in the first chapter to follow this introduction, “Scripts of Migration: Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Early Plays”, although the decision to stage her first publicly-performed play Karagöz in Alamania on the part of Schauspiel Frankfurt was connected to a desire to engage with the realities of a changing Germany, the attempt was considered to have a largely experimental character. In the 1980s, the Turkish-German playwright appears to have been something of a curiosity. Stagings of Özdamar’s plays next appeared in 2000, when changes in Germany’s citizenship law, as well as debates on the rights of foreigners in Austria, made migration and “foreigners”, as they were called, a fashionable but fleeting political subject for the German stage. This period will also be addressed in the chapter on her early plays. The briefness of this interlude becomes clear when one considers the fact that the following ten years were to see no new productions of Özdamar’s dramatic texts for the adult stage until the commission of Perikızı for the theatre festival Odyssee Europa as part of the Ruhr Metropolis’ year as European Capital of Culture in 2010. Productions and staged readings based on her novels began to appear throughout the 2000s, as well as a commission for a piece of children’s theatre, however, as the effects of the alteration of German citizenship law and the subsequent adoption of “intercultural action plans” began to be felt. By 2010 then, Özdamar had become a desirable figure to engage as part of the Ruhr’s staging of itself as a region of diversity and innovation. I would suggest that Özdamar’s status as a relatively prominent author of Turkish origin makes her a ready figure to turn to when plays from this perspective become desired. As will be seen in the final full-length chapter of this book, “Celebrating the New ‘Normal’? Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Perikızı (2010) and the Festival Context”, the damaging effects of such authorial positioning become the subject of criticism in Perikızı itself. However, the rapid succession of productions of Perikızı in response to high-profile events such as RUHR.2010 and the fiftieth anniversary of Turkish-German labour recruitment suggests a gradual anchoring of this desire within the German theatrical establishment which was absent in previous decades. At the same time, Özdamar’s

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complex aesthetics remain resistant to any easy co-option of the authorial migrant figure and her theatrical work continues to make demands which exceed methods of ready representation. Özdamar’s plays in production thus function as touchstones for thinking through broader tendencies in the German theatrical establishment’s inclusion of theatre by, with and concerning Turkish-Germans. Indeed, the recent academic interest in this area prompted a staged reading of Karagöz in Alamania in the USA—the first in many years.66 Productions of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s plays in contrast arguably function to reveal points at which the paradigm shift outlined above might be said to have taken place. As the three central chapters of this book on Othello, Black Virgins (Schwarze Jungfrauen) and Shadow Voices (Schattenstimmen) respectively will show, from the early 2000s on Zaimoglu/Senkel’s plays have frequently been commissioned and staged at points where directors wished to make a programmatic statement about the direction of their theatres or to begin to engage actively with migrant and postmigrant concerns. Projects such as the Ballhaus Naunynstraße which aims to provide a platform for postmigrant theatrical experimentation as a “motor” for change (Langhoff and Ohr 2010, 23) have had significant effect on this development. Zaimoglu/Senkel’s plays have frequently provided fuel for that particular motor in the years since the Ballhaus Naunynstraße opened in 2008. Indeed, in the productions of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s plays examined here, their dramatic work emerges as flammable material often employed by directors keen to move theatrical discourse and practice within their own institutions in particular directions. The degree to which what happens behind the scenes can influence even the types of texts produced for the theatre will also become especially clear when looking at the dynamics of commissioning presented in these case studies. As will be seen in the chapters on Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Othello (2003), Black Virgins (2006) and Shadow Voices (2008), repeated working partnerships with ensembles such as Junges Theater Bremen, and a range of directors such as Luk Perceval, Lars Ole-Walburg and Christian Scholze, have created productive and exciting workout of

66 This took place at a conference titled Intersections: Cross-Cultural Theater in Germany and the U.S. with Emine Sevgi Özdamar at the University of Pennsylvania (22–24/03/2014).

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Zaimoglu/Senkel’s theatrical scripts. At the same time, the free directorial hand preferred by these directors means that Zaimoglu/Senkel are often not required to produce “stageable” texts in the traditional sense. Indeed, there is nothing particularly dramatic or even postdramatic about the texts examined here apart from their labelling as theatrical texts rather than their publication as prose. This presents no problem, however, for a theatrical system in which the director enjoys taking on the “authorial” role. Özdamar, in comparison, seems to write for the theatre largely outside of the commissioning context, a factor perhaps connected to her more occasional output. However, her latest two plays, Perikızı and Dying on Foreign Ground (Sterben in der Fremde), were taken up in the catalogue of her theatrical publishers within a mere two years of one another. Following a playwriting hiatus of five years, this circumstance does suggest the impact which the changed climate and potential for a staging of her work might have had. In his analysis of Özdamar’s novel Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn (The Bridge of the Golden Horn, 1998), B. Venkat Mani explains that his aim in analysing the text is, to render transparent the performative aspects of the narrative in order to trace the trajectory along which Özdamar, in her script of multiculturalism, detaches her first person narrator from the figure of native informant and moves her toward the figure of a cultural performer. (2003, 35)

While I am also concerned with trajectories of change here, I begin, rather than end, with the figure of the Turkish-German cultural practitioner and move beyond the theatrical metaphor to examine the narratives surrounding theatrical productions as historical events, as well as those present within the aesthetic products. Notably, these trajectories are not driven by the Anglo-American meta-scripts of multiculturalism, or even play-texts which might embrace multiculturalism or interculturalism as a political concept. Instead, they are driven by individual artists, activists and producers, by shifting degrees of mainstream interest, by the cultural capital which has accumulated around Turkish-German artistic practice following “successes” in the fields of literature and film, and particularly in recent years, by shifts in funding structures. Adapting Mani’s phrasing, while I talk of Turkish-German scripts in this book, I argue that they are

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also scripts of postmigration: scripts which form the basis for an engagement with life in a FRG shaped by migrations, from a number of quarters, by actors with complex agendas and with results which may diverge from these.

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Schacht, Martin. 2011. “50 Jahre Scheinehe.” ARTE.DE, October 31. Accessed June 15, 2013. https://www.arte.tv/de/theaterfestival-50-jahre-scheinehe/ 4238696,CmC=4236326.html. Schaper, Rüdiger. 2012. “Nach dem Theatercoup: Wie Langhoff und Hillje das Gorki leiten wollen.” tagesspiegel.de , May 23. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/ kultur/nach-dem-theatercoup-wie-langhoff-und-hillje-das-gorki-leiten-wol len/6661782.html. Schechner, Richard. 2003. Performance Theory. New York and London: Routledge Classics. Schiller, Friedrich. [1784] 1985. “Theatre Considered as a Moral Institution.” Translated by John Sigerson and John Chambless. In Friedrich Schiller, Poet of Freedom, vol. 1, 209–19. New Benjamin Franklin House, New York. Schmidt, Gary. 2008. “Feridun Zaimoglu’s Performance of Gender and Authorship.” In German Literature in a New Century: Trends, Traditions, Transitions, Transformations, edited by Katharina Gerstenberger and Patricia Herminghouse, 196–213. New York: Berghahn. Schneider, Wolfgang (ed.). 2011. Theater und Migration: Herausforderungen für Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis. Bielefeld: transcript. Schößler, Franziska. 2013. Drama und Theater nach 1989: Prekär, interkulturell, intermedial. Hannover: Wehrhahn. Senders, Stefan. 2002. “Jus Sanguinis or Jus Mimesis? Rethinking Repatriation.” In Coming Home to Germany? The Integration of Ethnic Germans from Central and Eastern Europe in the Federal Republic, edited by David Rock and Stefan Wolff, 87–101. New York: Berghahn. Senkel, Günter. 2011. “Hinter dem Vorhang der Vernunft: Über meine Theaterarbeit mit Feridun Zaimoglu.” In Feridun Zaimoglu in Schrift und Bild: Beiträge zum Werk des Autors und Künstlers, edited by Rüdiger Schütt, 35–36. Kiel: edition fliehkraft. Senkel, Günter. 2012. “Recherchen mit/Researching with Feridun Zaimoglu.” In Feridun Zaimoglu, edited by Tom Cheesman and Karin Ye¸silada, 259–66. Oxford: Peter Lang. Seyhan, Azade. 2001. Writing Outside the Nation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sharifi, Azadeh. 2011a. “Postmigrantisches Theater: Eine neue Agenda für die deutschen Bühnen.” In Theater und Migration: Herausforderungen für Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis, edited by Wolfgang Schneider, 35–45. Bielefeld: Transcript. Sharifi, Azadeh. 2013. “Ich rufe meine Schwester und Brüder.” Freitext 22: 102– 05. Sharifi, Azadeh. 2017. “Theatre and Migration.” In Independent Theatre in Contemporary Europe: Structures – Aesthetics – Cultural Policy, edited by Manfred Brauneck and ITI Germany, 321–416. Bielefeld: transcript.

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Shepherd, Simon. 2016. The Cambridge Introduction to Performance Theory. Cambridge: CUP. Sieg, Katrin. 2002. Ethnic Drag: Performing Race, Nation, Sexuality in West Germany. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press. Sieg, Katrin. 2008. “German Theatre and Globalisation.” In Theatre in the Berlin Republic: German Drama since Reunification, edited by Denise Varney, 307– 24. Bern: Peter Lang. Sieg, Katrin. 2010. “Black Virgins: Sexuality and the Democratic Body in Europe.” New German Critique 37 (1): 147–85. Sieg, Katrin. 2011. “Class of 1989: Who Made Good and Who Dropped Out of German History? Postmigrant Documentary Theater in Berlin.” In The German Wall: Fallout in Europe, edited by Marc Silberman, 165–83. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Simke, Ann-Christine. 2017. “Berlinische Dramaturgien: Dramaturgical Practices in the German Metropolis.” PhD diss., University of Glasgow. Solmaz, Denise. 2010. “Ich bin Sagengestalt, Krüppel oder Frau zugleich.” Nationaltheater Mannheim, January 21. https://www.freunde.nationalthea ter.de/feridun-zaimoglu.html. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. [1985] 1993. “Can the Subaltern Speak.” Reprinted in Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader, edited by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, 66–111. Hemel Hampstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Stenzaly, Georg. 1984. “Ausländertheater in der Bundesrepublik und Berlin-West am Beispiel der türkischen Theatergruppen.” Lili, Zeitschrift Für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 56: 125–41. Stewart, Lizzie. 2013. “Countermemory and the (Turkish-)German Theatrical Archive: Reading the Documentary Remains of Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Karagöz in Alamania.” Transit 8 (2): 1–23. https://www.escholarship.org/ uc/item/0fq2m874. Stewart, Lizzie. 2015. “Turkish-German Comedy Goes Archival: Almanya — Willkommen in Deutschland (2011).” In Archive and Memory in GermanLanguage Literature and Culture, edited by Dora Osborne, 107–22. Rochester, New York: Boydell and Brewer. Stewart, Lizzie. 2017. “Postmigrant Theatre: The Ballhaus Naunynstraße Takes on Sexual Nationalism.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 9 (2): 56–68. Stewart, Lizzie. 2019. “‘The Future Market and the Current Reality’: Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins and Interculturalism in the German Context: New Directions?” In Interculturalism and Performance Now, edited by Charlotte McIvor and Jason King, 311–42. Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Steyerl, Hito and Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez. 2003. “Einleitung.” In Spricht die Subalterne deutsch? Migration und postkoloniale Kritik, edited

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by Hito Steyerl and Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez, 7–16. Münster: UNRAST. Teraoka, Arlene A. 1987. “Gastarbeiterliteratur: The Other Speaks Back.” Cultural Critique 7: 77–101. Teraoka, Arlene A. 1997. “Multiculturalism and the Study of German Literature.” In A User’s Guide to German Cultural Studies, edited by Scott Denham, Irene Kacandes and Jonathan Petropoulus, 63–78. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Terkessidis, Mark. 2010. Interkultur. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Thornton, Edward. 2018. “On Lines of Flight: A Study of Deleuze and Guattari’s Concept.” PhD diss., Royal Holloway, University of London. Tiedke, Marion. 2004b. “‘...die Flammen der wahren Hölle.’ Ein Gespräch mit den Autoren Feridun Zaimoglu und Günter Senkel.” In Othello, by William Shakespeare, Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel, 121–35. Münster: Monsenstein & Vannerdat. Tudor, Alyosxa. 2018. “Cross-Fadings of Racialisation and Migratisation: The Postcolonial Turn in Western European Gender and Migration Studies.” Gender, Place & Culture 25 (7): 1057–72. Van der Berg, Bibi. 2008. “Self, Script, and Situation: Identity in a World of ICTs.” In The Future of Identity in the Information Society, edited by Simone Fischer-Hübner et al., 63–76. New York: Springer. Varney, Denise. 2005. “Transit Heimat: Translation, Transnational Subjectivity and Mobility in German Theatre.” Transit 2 (1): 1–22. https://escholarship. org/uc/item/9jz180fs. Voss, Hanna. 2014. Reflexion von ethnischer Identität(szuweisung) im deutschen Gegenwartstheater. Marburg: Tectum. Wagner-Egelhaaf, Martina et al. (eds). 2007. Transkulturalität: Türkisch-deutsche Konstellationen in Literatur und Film. Münster: Aschendorff. Wahl, Christine. 2013. “Theaterpionierin Langhoff: Ich habe mich selbst gelabelt.” Der Spiegel Online, November 14. https://www.spiegel.de/kul tur/gesellschaft/shermin-langhoff-uebernimmt-maxim-gorki-theater-in-ber lin-a-933453.html. Weiler, Christel. 2014. “Theatre and Diversity”. In The Routledge Handbook of German Politics & Culture, edited by Sarah Colvin, 218–29. London and New York: Routledge. Yildiz, Erol. 2014. “Postmigrantische Perspektiven. Aufbruch in eine neue Geschichtlichkeit.” In Nach der Migration, edited by E. Yildiz and M. Hill, 19–36. Berlin: transcript. Yildiz, Yasemin. 2009. “Turkish Girls, Allah’s Daughters, and the Contemporary German Subject: Itinerary of a Figure.” German Life and Letters 62 (4): 465–81.

Scripts of Migration: Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Early Plays (1982–2000)

Staging Arrival in Alamania In 1985, Lutz Tantow made one of the first attempts to bring theatre produced by Turkish migrants in Germany into the broader discussion of what was then called “Gastarbeiterliteratur” (Guestworker Literature), with an article on “Aspects of ‘Guestworker’ Theatre in the Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin”. Along with giving a more general overview of amateur theatre productions by Gastarbeiter in the FRG, his article highlighted one unperformed dramatic text in particular: Karagöz in Alamania, written in 1982. Tantow introduces this play, written by Emine Sevgi Özdamar, who “would never describe herself as a writer, but is first and foremost an actress” (217),1 as the first fulllength “‘Gastarbeiter’-Drama” to be published as a manuscript available for performance and to be taken up for premiere by a major German

1 “Emine Sevgi Özdamar […] würde sich nie als Schriftstellerin bezeichnen, sondern ist in erster Linie Schauspielerin”.

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theatre (1985, 210).2 It would go on to be premiered in 1986 at Schauspiel Frankfurt under Özdamar’s own direction. Karagöz in Alamania is not only the first of Özdamar’s texts to be registered with a publisher, thus marking the beginning of her career as a writer; it also occupies a significant place in the history of Turkish-German cultural production.3 The “Karagöz” in the title of the 1982 dramatic text is the name of both a traditional form of Turkish shadow theatre and the main character of this performance style. In migration, however, Karagöz becomes an alienated Gastarbeiter, played in the 1986 production by renowned Turkish actor Tuncel Kurtiz, who was living in exile in Germany at that time. The expansion of the puppet figure Karagöz, a name which literally translates as Black-Eye, to incorporate the figure of the Turkish guest worker gestures towards a newly racialized position for workers arriving in Germany. The influence of Turkish poet Ece Ayhan (1931–2002) on Özdamar may also be relevant here: Ayhan refers to “what he calls ‘the marginals’, the oppressed and the excluded” within Turkey as “kara¸sıns, a neologism that plays on the word sarı¸sın [blonde] to depict those who have a darker skin tone” (Reiso˘glu 2016, 107). As Marion Victor, the editor of the publishing house which held the rights to the play, suggested in 1985, Karagöz in Alamania can also be positioned alongside the work of modern German artists such as Heiner Müller: “As, notwithstanding the fact that these are very different plays […] they have one thing in common: they go beyond a conventional

2 The emphasis on the script being both German-language and having been taken up by a publishing house here is important to emphasize though as Yüksel Pazarkaya’s Ohne Bahnhof (No Station) was written in German in 1966 (Boran 2004, 83). Boran also highlights that “even before Özdamar’s Karagöz, Nezihe Meriçs (*1925) Sevdican (translated as Gateway to Hope) was staged at established German theatres in the years 1984-85” (“[n]och vor Özdamar’s Karagöz kam Nezihe Meriçs (*1925) Sevdican (übersetzt als Tor zur Hoffnung ) in den Jahren 1984–1985 an etablierten deutschen Theatern zur Aufführung”; ibid., 354, n. 111). Renan Demirkan, for example, also lists a number of self-directed solo-productions from the early 1980s on her website: http://www.renandemirkan.de/gespieltes/soloprogramme/ [last accessed 3 August 2014]. There remains significant research still to do in this area. For a close reading of an earlier Turkishlanguage script see Gezen on Aras Ören’s Turkish-language Learning Play for Turkish Workers from 1971 (2018, 39–76). 3 Boran, for example, sees it as a forerunner of a significant alteration in TurkishGerman theatre on the independent scene which was to develop in the late 1980s and early 1990s: “the emphatic turn to the German language” (“die konsequente Hinwendung zur deutschen Sprache”; 2004, 136).

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manner of representing reality” (Sterz et al. 1985/1986, 63).4 “Alamania” is of course a fictionalised West Germany, although in fact the action moves between rural Turkey, Istanbul, the Turkish border, the West German border, West Germany and Yugoslavia, as well as between “reality” and dream. In a series of 19 scenes, the 1986 production charts the fate of Karagöz, a Turkish peasant turned Gastarbeiter; his loyal talking donkey, Semsettin; ¸ and his wife, Ümmü, as they migrate back and forth between Turkey and Germany. Along the way they encounter a treasure hunter, a Doctor Mabuse figure, German and Turkish border officials, other Gastarbeiter and their wives, a belly-dancing fridge, a seminaked intellectual, and an aggressive Opel car. While Karagöz’s earnings lead to property and increased status back in Turkey, his physical decline due to working and living conditions in Germany is evidenced by injuries to his head, and he becomes increasingly tormented by the potential betrayal of his wife with his uncle back in Turkey. This leads to the central question of the play: is Ümmü herself guilty of this betrayal or is it a circumstance of capitalism and the migration Karagöz is forced to undertake in its service? The play ends with a dream-like encounter with Karagöz’s younger self and a return to Germany for what may or may not be the final time.5 This chapter thus focuses on the literal re-scripting of Germany as the dream-world Alamania (a distorted version of the Turkish word for Germany, Almanya), and of characters from Turkish folklore in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s theatrical work. Much has been written on performativity and theatrical references in Özdamar’s later work as a novelist.6 This has rarely been carried over into an examination of her theatrical work itself, however. This seems a particularly striking omission given that, as Liesbeth Minnaard points out, Özdamar’s “novels and the shorter pieces of prose refer to, and even pre- and re-tell, each other. Together they can be seen as a complex web of oeuvre-immanent intertextualities” (2008, 71–72). Karagöz in

4 “Denn bei aller Unterschiedlichkeit der Stücke […], eines ist ihnen gemeinsam: sie entziehen sich einem herkömmlichen Abbildungsverfahren von Wirklichkeit.” 5 In the 1982 dramatic text Karagöz returns with Semsettin ¸ and Ümmü, in the 1986 production he returns with only his beloved car. 6 To mention just a few examples: Karin Lornsen focuses on ways in which Özdamar’s prose work “equates theatrical role and gender role”, for example (2009, 201–17). Kader Konuk discusses the “staged speech” she sees as typical of Özdamar’s prose (inszeniertes Sprechen; 1999, 60–74).

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Alamania (1982), for example, was later rewritten and published as a short story under the same name in Özdamar’s 1991 prose collection Mutterzunge.7 The two texts do overlap closely for the main part. However, apart from the differences to be expected in which pieces of dialogue or stage directions from the dramatic text are glossed over and reworked as descriptive passages in the short story, the short story also contains new material, not present in the published version of the dramatic text.8 As this chapter will show, the world premiere, directed by the dramatist herself, appears to have provided some of this material. The 1986 premiere was also the subject of a further short piece of writing, “Black Eye in Germany” (“Schwarzauge in Deutschland”),9 and more scholarly attention is paid to Özdamar’s fictionalised account of the rehearsal process of Karagöz in that text, for example, than to the dramatic text or the performance itself. This chapter draws on an otherwise unregarded set of images and recording, as well as interviews, to analyse the aesthetic choices made in the 1986 production.10 Drawing on 7 Unlike the dramatic text, this short story has been the subject of a large number of detailed analyses. Likewise, Özdamar’s “Career of a Cleaning Lady – Memories of Germany” (“Karriere einer Putzfrau – Erinnerungen an Deutschland” 1990) and “The Courtyard in the Mirror” (2006; “Der Hof im Spiegel” 2001) both also began life as dramatic monologues registered with Verlag der Autoren prior to their publication as short stories. 8 Quotations from Marx’s Das Kapital, for example, are present in the later short story version (Özdamar 1990, 80), but not the 1982 dramatic text. Other differences will be discussed in the following section of this chapter. 9 This text was published first in Die Zeit (1992), then in dual English and German text with commentary in an academic volume on Turkish Culture in German Society (Horrocks and Krause 1996) before appearing in Özdamar’s second short story collection Der Hof im Spiegel in 2001. 10 In doing so, it builds on work begun by Erol Boran in his 2004 doctoral thesis. There Boran begins to piece together aspects of the production history, mise-en-scène, and aesthetic adopted in the 1986 production from interviews with Özdamar and from the reviews of the play. Boran’s work makes a pioneering contribution by moving beyond the accounts of Karagöz in Alamania preserved in Özdamar’s short stories and engaging with some of the material remains of the actual production in the form of reviews. As Boran’s use of sources is necessarily limited, there are some small inaccuracies. Stage directions from the 1982 text are often taken as evidence of performance in the 1986 production and the date of the premiere given is incorrectly as 26 April 1986 (2004, 140), rather than 4th May 1986 (Schauspiel Frankfurt 1986). Given the significance of Karagöz in Alamania both in Özdamar’s oeuvre and in the broader history of TurkishGerman theatrical production, I would argue that Boran’s approach can and should be taken further. With respect to Karagöz in Alamania, further enquiry also revealed the

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these material remains of the 1986 productions, this chapter argues that while the play was received at the time as a failed experiment in the transmission of intercultural knowledge,11 the premiere performance can be read as a postdramatic piece interested in disrupting established paradigms of knowledge and perception. In doing so, this chapter explores the divergences between the script of intercultural communication which the audience and critical establishment appear to have expected the production to follow and the active disruption of pre-scripted modes of seeing the guest worker which the production engaged in. It also highlights the difficulties which refusing to conform to the established scripts of either Turkish theatrical tradition or German representations of Turkish migrants caused in terms of the reception of the piece in 1986. The final section of this chapter contrasts the lack of space for Özdamar’s Alamania script on German stages in the late 1980s and early 1990s to the sudden interest in performing this same play in the year 2000, the year in which the Federal Republic officially recognised itself as a country of immigration and instigated citizenship reforms reflecting this. Here I also address the premiere production of Özdamar’s second play, Keloglan in Alamania: The Reconciliation of Pig and Lamb (Keloglan in Alamania: Die Versöhnung von Schwein und Lamm, 1991). Despite being available for premiere since 1991, this play only premiered at the Oldenburg Staatstheater in 2000, a year which also marked the second production of Karagöz in Alamania in a production at the Innsbrucker Kellertheater.12 Taking citizenship as its theme, the main character of this later play, Keloglan, is both demanded to perform an adequate version of Germanness in order to stay in the country, and

existence of an audiovisual recording of the premiere, and copies of the programme as well as of the flyer circulated by the artistic director of Schauspiel Frankfurt in the opening performance of the production “explaining” its peculiarities to the audience. These materials were accessed in holdings such as the archive of Verlag der Autoren, the theatrical archive of the Universitätsbibliothek Johann C. Senckenberg, part of the Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main, or were kindly made available by the author. On the ways in which the photographic remains of the 1986 production produce and preserve a ‘counter-memory’ to the written accounts of the play see Stewart (2013). 11 David Horrocks and Frank Krause tentatively suggest the 1986 production, as described in “Black-Eye in Germany”, can be read as a Brechtian Lehrstück, in which the focus is on the performers, rather than the audience, learning from the experience (1996, 70, n. 3). 12 For an analysis of the pig and lamb of the subtitle see Kraft (2003, 124).

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labelled unable to do so in his engagements with other characters in the play. In this chapter, I will ask whether such concerns with social performance, thematised by the playwright within her play-text, affected the casting decisions made around the premieres of both Özdamar’s Alamania plays. How is the actor’s work delineated from the labouring migrant s/he performs? To what extent is the actors’ representational work acknowledged in or related to the play’s reception? An inclusion of a discussion of Keloglan in Alamania is important not only for extending an examination of Özdamar’s Alamania plays into performance but also in bridging the gap between the 1980s context of Karagöz and the twenty-first-century positioning of the other plays considered in this study. Within the theatrical sphere, access to the “privileged” sphere of mimesis, i.e. the representation of reality, is also bound up with access to the means of producing and distributing a play. Maha El Hissy highlights that in the opening scene of the dramatic text of Keloglan in Alamania it is only while the (unethnicized) actors take a break in rehearsals for an opera, that the story of Turkish-German Keloglan and his mother Kelkari is given space to begin; a scene which for El Hissy “is paradigmatic for the instrumentalisation of canonical works in moving from the margins to the centre” (2012, 98–99).13 In examining not only the aesthetics of Özdamar’s Alamania plays in production, but also their performance history, I will argue that this scene can also be read as paradigmatic for the marginal place of Turkish-German theatre in general on Germany’s stages at the time, as performances which had to find a way in between other, more canonical, spectacles.

“These People no Longer Have a Stage”: Addressing the “Ausla¨ nder” Script The audiovisual recording of the 1986 production of Karagöz in Alamania reveals that the performance took place on a Brechtian simultaneous stage, the centrepiece of which was a large, branching wardrobe structure, consisting of three levels, and surrounding the centre stage on three sides. This structure was hung with costumes and interspersed with giant light bulbs. On either side of this structure the wings were left open

13 “steht paradigmatisch für die Funktionalisierung von kanonischen Werken, um sich vom Rand ins Zentrum zu bewegen”.

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to the audience, displaying the actors preparing for their entrances, the props, and the prompt book. Tethered to the left-hand side of the central stage area throughout the two-and-a-half-hour performance was a live donkey, and at various points a live sheep, lamb and chickens as well as a real car were also brought onto the stage. Throughout the course of the action the stage became littered with the debris accumulated by the characters. By the final curtain, the mise-en-scène thus also featured an abandoned fridge, a bath, many torn cushions, and an entire—but battered—car (see Fig. 1). Although there is no curtain, scene changes were marked variously by a slowing of tempo, alterations in the lighting and recorded sound indicating change of place, and the introduction of props onto the stage which indicated the situation at hand (Özdamar 1986). In reference to the scenery of the 1986 production of Karagöz in Alamania, Özdamar herself is recorded as saying: “We wanted […] to show that these people no longer have a stage, but only a costume store,

Fig. 1 Mise-en-scène at close of Karagöz in Alamania, dir. by Emine Sevgi Özdamar (1986). Still from unpublished audiovisual recording

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a waiting room” (quoted in Boran 2004, 152).14 Özdamar is clearly speaking metaphorically here: if, as Shakespeare suggests in As You Like It “all the world’s a stage, […] And one man in his time plays many parts” ([1683] 1951, 266), the parts available to play for Turkish subjects become fundamentally altered by the material conditions of labour migration. The wardrobe structure thus references the concept of migration as a metaphorical no-man’s land in which pre-prepared identities must be taken on and off, or alternatively left suspended, waiting to be one day reclaimed or rejected. The use of costumes also suggests a specifically theatrical storeroom, emphasising the metatheatrical element of this metaphor.15 Özdamar’s comment above also directly reflects the conditions under which it was generally necessary to produce theatre as a “foreigner” in West Germany at the time. In the 1980s, West German policy was still officially geared to encouraging Gastarbeiter and other migrants to eventually return to their countries of origin. As Manfred Brauneck’s study of “foreigners’ theatre” (“Ausländertheater”) in the Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin highlights, official documents, such as a 1983 report from the Commission for Policy on Foreigners led by the Ministery of the Interior, did encourage “support at a municipal level of cultural and leisure activities for foreign residents which are related to their home country or origin” (Kommission für Ausländerpolitik 1983, 143; qtd in Brauneck et al. 1983, 43–44 n. 13).16 However, as the document also summarises, this was with an eye to “maintaining their ability to return of their own volition” (12).17 The express intention was thus to encourage migrants to retain links to their “own” culture, rather than creating links with the host country, West Germany. As Azadeh Sharifi highlights, policies such as this had a negative effect on the professionalisation of Turkish theatre in Germany (2011, 36). Brauneck’s study also shows that while theatre groups made up of so-called Ausländer (literally: “foreigners” 14 “Wir wollten […] zeigen, dass diese Menschen keine Bühne mehr haben, sondern nur einen Fundus, einen Wartesaal”. 15 The permeability of this structure, which is played with by the actors and props appearing and disappearing, transforming this structure into other spaces also disrupts the impermeable border image. 16 “Förderung heimat- und herkunftsbezogener Kultur- und Freizeitaktivitäten der Ausländer auf kommunaler Ebene”. 17 “die Erhaltung der Rückkehrfähigkeit im Rahmen der Freiwilligkeit”.

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although non-citizen workers or residents are what are referred to here) were numerous and had diverse aims, national make-up and aesthetic interests, they were united by a lack of an actual theatre in which to rehearse or perform, a lack of funds, and as a result minimal resources in terms of costumes, scenery, lighting and sound equipment (1983, 20). This stands in stark contrast to the ample resources available to productions taking place in Germany’s state theatres. The many costumes hanging on the wardrobe structure which constitutes Özdamar’s scenery in 1986, for example, display the costume store of the Frankfurt Schauspielhaus. The scenery can thus be read as using the exceptional resources at its own disposal to reference the material issues which can affect the production of theatre in migration. So how did this production come about at all? As outlined in this chapter, the story of Özdamar’s theatrical training and career seems to contrast with the image of a homogenous and “untouched” Turkish culture present in West German policy for its “foreign” residents in the 1980s. Rather Özdamar’s career highlights the already extant interweaving of multiple “German” and “Turkish” performance cultures: an interweaving already long at work in the German influence on theatrical training in Turkey, and which was fed by the interest of Turkish theatre practitioners in the work of Bertolt Brecht from the 1960s on in particular. This developed in new directions in the wake of Turkish labour migration to Germany, and the move of some practitioners, including Özdamar, to Germany following the 1971 Turkish military putsch.18 Karagöz in Alamania was written during Özdamar’s time as director’s assistant and ensemble member at Bochum under artistic director Claus Peymann.19 Peymann’s aim at that time was to make theatre which reflected contemporary West Germany and was relevant to the industrial, working-class town the theatre served (Beil et al. 1986, 352). This allowed Özdamar as director’s assistant and actress to begin her project of smuggling the role of the “Turkish Cleaning Lady” onto

18 Cf. Boran 2004, 39–74; Ip¸ ˙ siro˘glu 2008, 202–03. On Brecht’s influence in particular see Nekimken (1998) and Gezen (2018). 19 In a personal interview, Özdamar explained that she was commissioned to write the piece and had three months to begin this work. At the end of this period, she showed the piece to Peymann and Langhoff, who approved it. This allowed her to continue writing. See also Özdamar’s account of the commission in Dayıo˘glu-Yücel and Gutjahr (2016, 87).

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the West German stage (cf. Lennartz 2000, 28–29). In this role, “collecting rubbish, sweeping, dusting”, Özdamar brought “the realities of working lives today into (the) play” (Theater heute 1980, 12).20 Özdamar was commissioned to write the piece there (cf. Dayıo˘glu-Yücel & Gutjahr 2016, 87) and advertising materials refer to plans for Karagöz in Alamania to be staged at Bochum in the early 1980s (Verlag der Autoren [1982/1983]). However, these did not come to fruition and a full play addressing this reality was ultimately not deemed relevant to the demographic of the town. According to Ingo Waszerka, a member of the dramaturgical department at Bochum during Özdamar’s time there and the eventual dramaturge of the 1986 Frankfurt production, ultimately “Peymann wasn’t interested in the play because Bochum isn’t a Turkish town” (personal interview, 2011).21 Although Karagöz in Alamania was never staged at Bochum, its inception there was still key to its eventual premiere. In the early 1980s, Waszerka moved on from the Bochumer Ensemble and, after stints at various other theatres, became an in-house director and dramaturge at Schauspiel Frankfurt (personal interview, 2011). It is there that he apparently remembered Özdamar’s play and, with Frankfurt’s large Turkish population in mind, first began re-considering it for production. In the meantime, newspaper reports show that Karagöz in Alamania had received its first public dramatic reading as part of a prize for new dramatic writing in Bayreuth in October 1983, where it was selected as one of seven plays out of 100 (Lorenz 1983). The prize included the opportunity to have a scene of approximately 15 minutes worked on by the workshop’s dramaturges and performed in front of an audience; an event which will be examined in more detail shortly. An announcement in Theater heute then has the play as being taken by Schauspiel Frankfurt as early as 1984 (Merschmeier 1984, 144), and Lutz Tantow’s article of June 1985 sheds more light on the play’s development there. Tantow refers to plans to stage Karagöz in Alamania in a big-top circus tent

20 “Abfälle einsammelnd, fegend, staubwischend [… bringt sie] Arbeitsrealität von heute in das Spiel”. 21 “Peymann hat das Stück nicht interessiert, weil Bochum […] keine Türkenstadt [ist]”. The decision of whether it should still premiere at Bochum then seems to have come down to a vote in the dramaturgical department. Waszerka was for the play, however, two dramaturgs voted against including the play in the programme for the season, while the fourth dramaturge effectively abstained, leaving Waszerka outvoted.

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in the centre of Frankfurt, near the Frankfurter Römer, but also highlights the change of artistic director at that time as a factor which made the production “doubtful once again” (219 n. 27).22 In 1986, Frankfurt finally staged Özdamar’s Karagöz in Alamania, not in a tent but on the main stage of the Schauspielhaus, Frankfurt. The recording of the show I am working with suggests each performance lasted approximately 2 hours and 22 minutes, with no interval. As can be seen from the brief pre-production history provided here, despite a lack of new writing at the time, which the Bayreuth competition intended to counter, and despite the prestige which premieres bring, a variety of complex factors, from the responses of individuals to the ethos and location of a theatre combined to stand in the way of the play’s first full performance. The stageability of the play may well also have been an issue. The inclusion in Karagöz in Alamania of speaking gravestones and a man being eaten alive on stage certainly competes with Heiner Müller’s frequent inclusion of ghosts, pumas, and torn-apart bodies in terms of challenging stage business. Notably, however, in each case outlined thus far it is the degree of “relevance” of the play to particular localised realities that seems to be most contested. The production history therefore presents a strong link between the attribution of relevance to or even representation of “reality” and the desires and expectations of the receiving audience. Karagöz was also considered for production at Schauspiel Köln. However, according to interviews with both Özdamar and the Colognebased Turkish actress and writer Renan Demirkan, here it was Demirkan who was instrumental in blocking the play. Demirkan was engaged in the ensemble at Cologne and would have been offered the key role of Ümmü.23 She refused it though due to what she considered the play’s “folkloristic” elements and negative portrayal of the working class (Boran 2004, 145).24 In her prose writing, Özdamar has often been accused of recirculating stereotypes or coming dangerously close to doing so, in particular with regard to the Karagöz texts (see Mecklenburg 2006, 91; Wierschke 1996, 205–7; Seyhan 2005, 215). In their examinations

22 “nochmals fraglich”. 23 For a detailed analysis of Ümmü’s role in the production see Stewart (2016). 24 “folkloristisch”. On Özdamar’s connection to the Ikinci ˙ Yeni, and the potential

influence of these debates on her work, see Reiso˘glu (2016).

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of Özdamar’s short stories and novels, Azade Seyhan (2005), Claudia Breger (1999), Kader Konuk (1999), Karin Lornsen (2009) and Sohelia Ghaussy (1999), all identify mimicry as a strategy by which an author situated as “other” can use a distorted imitation to challenge dominant discourses, but also highlight how close this can lie to simply repeating such discourses. Karagöz for example is often inarticulate, beats his wife, drinks, and attempts to seduce women in Germany—putting him perhaps dangerously close to the stereotype of the hyper-sexualised, oriental, male other. At the same time, multiple episodes in the dramatic text itself highlight the problematic nature of the scripts and images to which the Gastarbeiter must correspond. In one scene, German doctors inspect Turkish men like horses before offering them a work permit, for example, highlighting a mimetic “measuring up” as a process built into the very fabric of the recruitment process.25 While the production history outlined above leads to a focus on the play’s relationship to the representation of Germany’s new realities, Demirkan’s critique of stereotyping and her concerns about the context these representations enter into might well be related to critical dismissals in the German press of Haldun Taner’s Keanlı Ali Destanı (“The Ballad of Ali from Kean”) at the relatively high profile Turkish Ensemble of the Schaubühne in Berlin in 1980.26 They can also be further contextualised by the debate amongst Turkish literary critics around Realism. As Mert Bahadır Reiso˘glu (2016) has highlighted, much of this debate centred on the politics of the relationship between “folklore” and the poetry of the ˙ Turkish Ikinci Yeni (Second New) movement. Focusing on Özdamar’s prose and novels, Reiso˘glu suggests that the “expectation of a new type of realism […] is important in order to understand Özdamar’s aesthetic” (2016, 105) and that the “physicality” of her language “should also be read both as a poetological and political strategy that aims to bridge the gap between tradition and the avant-garde” (109). Equally, we could add in the legacy of the East German formalism debate and the challenge to the Socialist Unity Party’s policy of an “aesthetic of reflection [of reality]” by Özdamar’s East German colleagues and mentors, Karge, Langhoff and

25 For a fuller account of this scene in performance see Stewart (2013, 10–13). 26 These dismissals are described in Boran (2004, 106). See also Misha Hadar’s 2019

article on the Turkish Ensemble which was published as I was finishing this manuscript, for his discussion of both the critique of and the turn to folklore in the Ensemble’s work.

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Besson (Brandt 2016, 28; quoting Stuber).27 Demirkan’s critique thus alerts us to the existence of social scripts, both as a theme of the Alamania plays and in their reception in relation to existing debates and desired formal models from both the German and Turkish context. However, comments such as Demirkan’s also overlook the potential inherent in the realisation of the characters in the performance. The ways in which the mimicry typical of Özdamar’s prose work translates into theatrical performance is thus of particular interest in this chapter. In an early scene of the 1986 production, for example, on the way from their village to Istanbul, Karagöz and Semsettin ¸ are photographed by an American tourist along with some antique jugs (Özdamar 1986).28 Susan Sontag famously associated photography with tourism and colonialism, suggesting: there is something predatory in the act of taking a picture. To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. (1979, 14)

At first glance, Sontag’s analysis seems to describe the process depicted by Özdamar in the scene above exactly: the photographer is literally a tourist whose photography makes Karagöz and his donkey into objects that can be taken away with her. By equating them to the antique jugs the tourist also takes as souvenirs, this process figures Karagöz and his donkey as representatives of a culture characterised in Orientalist terms as pre-modern and incapable of change (cf. Said 1979). Indeed, in the 1986 performance Karagöz, played by Tuncel Kurtiz, initially defends himself from the camera, covering his face with his arm and backing away; a gesture which positions the photographic eye as intrusive and predatory. Özdamar is one of a number of playwrights in Germany whose work functions to: privilege the vantage point of those who, as Barbara Christian has indignantly phrased it, “have never conceived of themselves as somebody’s other” (54), yet who do not remain unaffected by the visual technologies

27 “Widerspiegelungsästhetik”. 28 The 1986 production deviates from the 1982 dramatic text in which it is only the character of the treasure hunter who is photographed (cf. Özdamar 1982, 5).

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that continue to construct postcolonial relationships in the binary terms of classical mimesis. (Sieg 2002, 224)29

“Having never conceived of himself as somebody’s other”, Karagöz, like the Turkish actor he is played by, is, however, by no means obliged to take on this role when interpellated as such. In the 1986 video recording, while the character of the tourist-photographer attempts to capture an “authentic” Turkish peasant, Tuncel Kurtiz as Karagöz quickly begins to perform for the on-stage camera, actively posing and inserting himself into shots even when not desired. In this highly comic turn he, and by extension the performance as a whole, arguably refuses the script set by the blocking at work and the photographer’s gaze, disrupting the “binary terms of classical mimesis” which are continued by an equation of presence with truth. The photographer is then left not with “knowledge of him that he can never have” but with an image which may mark both a desire and a failure to engage. In the 1986 production, the difference between perception of visual representation and knowledge is also thematised by repeated intertextual references to the act of looking. Take for example, the quotation of Socrates’ dialogue in Plato’s Theaetetus by the speaking donkey Semsettin: ¸ Shall we say that we know every thing which we see and hear? for example, shall we say that not having learned, we do not hear the language of foreigners when they speak to us? or shall we say that we not only hear, but know what they are saying? Or again, if we see letters which we do not understand, shall we say that we do not see them? or shall we aver that, seeing them, we must know them? (Plato, quoted in Özdamar 1982, 21; English trans. Jowett 2008)30

This extract comes from a dialogue that questions the relationship between knowledge and perception, which is posited by the young 29 On the relationship of postcolonial thought to the Turkish-German context see the “Introduction” chapter. 30 “Sollen wir also eingestehen, was wir durch Sehen wahrnehmen oder durch Hören, dass wir all dieses auch zugleich verstehen? Zum Beispiel, Ausländer, deren Sprache wir noch nicht gelernt haben: Sollen wir leugnen, daß wir die hören, wenn sie darin sprechen? Oder sollen wir sagen, daß wir sie nicht nur hören, sondern auch das verstehen, was sie sagen? Ebenso, wenn wir Buchstaben noch nicht kennen, doch aber unsere Augen auf sie richten: Sollen wir behaupten, daß wir sie nicht sehen, oder daß wir sie auch verstehen, wenn wir sie doch sehen.”

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Theaetetus. Socrates’ aim with this rhetoric is to show his pupil that mere perception is not the same as knowledge, in order to help him answer the broader, abstract question of what knowledge is (Jowett 2009). The performance of this section in 1986 explicitly linked the question of perception and knowledge with that of the situation of the Turkish worker in contemporary Germany. On the audiovisual recording of the premiere production, the donkey Semsettin, ¸ played by Jürgen Holtz, sits centre stage, facing the audience, at a laid table. He drinks wine, smokes cigars, and orders food from an obsequious waiter who lights his cigars for him as he philosophises. According to the programme of the 1986 production, the actor playing the waiter is Senih Orkan who has already played multiple parts in the performance including an old man with sheep, the rich neighbour, and one of the men examined by the German doctor (Schauspiel Frankfurt 1986, 2). Because we are in the theatre, therefore, when he reappears as a waiter we see this as yet another role, unrelated to the others he has thus far played or to him as a private person offstage. At the point in the Socrates monologue where Holtz as Semsettin ¸ says “foreigner”,31 however, he turns from the audience to stare at the waiter, identifying him within the play as a foreigner playing the part of a German waiter. The waiter starts, looking frightened at having been identified thus.32 According to Dirk Göttsche, intertextual references in Özdamar’s writing function in several ways. Firstly, they inscribe the author in a West-European literary tradition, “without bracketing this off as other”.33 Secondly, they introduce citations from Turkish artists or traditions into German-language texts as equals alongside citations from artists or texts considered to be canonically “West European”. Thirdly, they can also be interpreted as a “complex model of reflection” within a text itself (Göttsche 2006, 523).34 While several scholars have traced the quotation above back to Socrates, Wierschke (1996, 199) and Mecklenburg (2006, 88) attribute its inclusion in Karagöz in Alamania to the generalised conception of Özdamar’s use of intertextuality voiced in Göttsche’s 31 “Ausländer”. 32 This moment is also captured in the two photographs of the play taken by Abisag Tüllmann and held at the Deutsches Theatermuseum, suggesting it as a moment which also stood out to the photographer at the time. 33 “ohne diese als fremde abzugrenzen”. 34 “komplexes Reflektionsmodell”.

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first and second conclusions. As Kate Roy points out, however, these first two conclusions are still rooted in a concept of interculturality (2008, 115). Following Roy, then, I would suggest that within the 1986 performance the Socrates quotation in fact functions as this third complex model of reflection. While in Theaetetus the specific example of the “foreigner” helps Socrates to make his broader, abstract point, in Özdamar’s text it functions on two levels—the philosophical and the concrete. The emphasis placed on the use of the word “foreigner”, or in the original German “Ausländer” in performance, a word commonly used to denote people of non-German origin resident in Germany at that time, thus points to a contemporary situation in which a certain knowledge of people, and script for them to play, is assumed based on appearance. In the following, I will explore what happens in terms of reception when the theatrical script provided by the playwright not only identifies but also deviates from the societal script at stake. Turkish Tradition Meets Postdramatic Performance Positioned as the first German-language play by a Turkish dramatist on the subject of Turkish labour migration to be published and performed on a major German stage (Boran 2004, 136), Özdamar’s self-directed premiere attracted significant amounts of media attention. The piece was reviewed and featured in major theatre journals such as Theater heute (Auffermann 1986) and Die deutsche Bühne (Delek 1986) as well as in the cultural pages of the local and regional newspapers and the influential magazine Der Spiegel (1986).35 Despite the level of interest the existence of these reviews evidences, the reviews themselves were less than enthusiastic. One reviewer mistakenly states “that the majority of the foreign actors are amateurs, who have problems with acting at all, with expression, with the gestic communication of ideas” (Fühner 1986).36 Another laments: 35 These reviews and all others cited in this chapter were accessed in the Archiv zu den Städtischen Bühnen Frankfurt am Main, at the Universitätsbibliothek Johann C. Senckenberg, part of the Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main. Abteilung Musik, Theater, Film. Schauspiel Inszenierungsmappen, Spielzeit 1985/1986: Mappe Nr. 17. “Schauspiel, Karagöz in Alamania, 4.5.1986”. 36 “[dass] die meisten ausländischen Mitspieler Laien sind, die überhaupt Schwierigkeiten mit der Schauspielerei, mit dem Ausdruck, der gestischen Umsetzung von Ideen haben.”

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Where was the dramaturge who insists that the foreign actors are worked with until one can understand them where this is necessary? Where was the dramaturge who ensures that the scenic action is clearer and more transparent? (Schneider [1986], 15)37

In fact, the cast included only one amateur actor, and the leads Jürgen Holtz, Sonia Theodoridu and Tuncel Kurtiz were established professionals: Holtz was a member of the East German Berliner Ensemble before emigrating to West Germany in 1983, Theodoridu a professional opera singer, and Kurtiz, a Turkish theatre and film star in exile in West Germany, had just been awarded the Silver Bear at that year’s Berlinale.38 Nevertheless, Horst Köpke, writing in the Frankfurter Rundschau concludes that “more than we already know about the Turks in and outside our country, is not to be discovered in the production, which is two and a quarter hours long and, in contrast to the information given in the programme, is played without interval” (1986).39 The implication is clear: not only has the play failed to conform to the critic’s expectations in terms of length and structure, his expectation of “learning” about the play’s subjects has not been adequately met. As the programme for the 1986 premiere explicitly stated, however, this play was “no period piece, no reportage, no social drama, but rather a dream play about reality” (Schauspiel Frankfurt, 1986).40 Indeed, the relationship between reality and representation is complex in both the dramatic text and its performance. Özdamar generally claims to have been inspired to write Karagöz in Alamania both as a result of her own experiences in Germany and following the reading of a letter by a Turkish Gastarbeiter (2001, 47–48). The programme produced by the dramaturgical department for the 1986 premiere also consists mainly of a reprint of an article from Der Spiegel chronicling the dangers presented by migration along the transnational E5 motorway and including the 37 “Wo bleibt der Dramaturg, der darauf dringt, dass mit den ausländischen Schauspielern gearbeitet wird, bis man sie versteht, wo das nötig ist? Wo bleibt der Dramaturg, der durchsetzt, dass das szenische Geschehen klarer und durchsichtiger wird?” 38 Well-known actor Volker Spengler also played several smaller parts. 39 “mehr als wir schon wissen, erfahren wir in der zweieinviertelstündigen, entgegen

der Programmankündigung pausenlos gespielten Aufführung über die Türken in und außerhalb unseres Landes nicht”. 40 “kein Zeitstück, keine Reportage, kein Sozialdrama, sondern ein Traumspiel über die Wirklichkeit”.

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Fig. 2 Poster for the premiere of Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Karagöz in Alamania (1986), featuring Tuncel Kurtiz as Karagöz. Courtesy of Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt a.M., Archiv Schauspiel Frankfurt, Saison 1985/1986

story of a Gastarbeiter caught driving backwards, a trope which reappears in the play in the final scene. Several elements of the framing of the play thus point to a “documentary” basis for the play’s inception.41 At the same time, the re-use of the Turkish stock-figure, Karagöz, and the dream sequence which frames the action (to be discussed in more detail later in this chapter) create a certain distance from or mediation of this reality. The programme unfolded into a poster which displayed Karagöz, played by Tuncel Kurtiz, leading his donkey through a hazy pink and orange landscape, framing the presentation of this character in the colours of dream (Fig. 2). In similar fashion, the image on the front cover of the programme shows the actor playing Semsettin, ¸ Jürgen Holtz, encountering the real donkey also used in the production—staging 41 Bettina Brandt highlights the collection of sketches and documentary materials which Özdamar was collecting in 1980 while working on Karge and Langhoff’s “Marie. Woyzeck” and which is to be found in the Bochum Stadtarchive as early material behind “Karagöz in Alamania” (2016, 31).

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and highlighting the tension between “original” and actor (Schauspiel Frankfurt 1986). Boran views the complaints highlighted above as a result of the language the script demands the actors speak, rather than as a reflection on the actors themselves (2004, 147–55). As he notes, Özdamar herself has highlighted in interviews her emphasis on an aesthetic of Sprachdadaismus (linguistic Dadaism) in which clear comprehension is actively avoided and a form of opacity preferred (see also Konuk 1999, 63). However, in performance the scripted language becomes only one of the levels of communication through which a production “speaks”. In both of the reviews quoted above, visual as well as aural issues are cited as flaws and an overall lack of stage presence subtly becomes linked to the actors’ nationality. This positions the Turkish theatre practitioners, in Orientalist manner, as “unable” to represent. Notably, neither the later Austrian production in 2000, nor the 1983 dramatic reading staged in Bayreuth appear to have suffered from the same issues regarding lack of clarity on the level of accent or dramaturgy. Instead, reviews of both were positive and encouraging: the 1983 dramatic reading is described as “juicy, substantial Volkstheater (people’s theatre)” (Lorenz 1983), for example.42 While Özdamar’s nationality may be one factor which seems to have made the production “suspect” in the eyes of many German reviewers, here I would like to turn to compare the aesthetic approach to the 1983 dramatic reading with that of the 1986 world premiere of Karagöz in Alamania. In doing so, I will consider the ways in which the inclusion of actors of Turkish and Greek origin, and thus also of bodies perceived as “other” on the German stage at the time, may also have affected the reception of this performance. An interview found in the Verlag der Autoren archive in which Özdamar discusses the dramatic reading with an unknown interviewer sheds further light on the 1983 dramatic reading. The interviewer outlines the two aesthetics she considers a director might have to choose between when directing Karagöz in Alamania: on the one hand, an exaggeratedly theatrical commedia dell’arte style, translating the text’s partial roots in Turkish shadow theatre into an actor-based form; on the other, a filmic realism. This latter approach is then qualified by the interviewer as follows: “then only a Turk could play this type of role” (Kohl 42 “saftiges und handfestes Volkstheater”. Volkstheater was also the subject of Özdamar’s research during her time in Paris.

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and Jonquiere [1983], 4).43 Although not explicitly excluded from the “commedia” style, the association of the Turkish body with a naturalist aesthetic is telling here. Following the dramatic reading, the aesthetic of which seems to have lain somewhere between the two poles outlined above, the interviewer goes on to summarise Karagöz in Alamania as follows: political theatre in the best sense. After one has read, has seen the play, one knows more about our Turkish fellow citizens, one knows more about the problems in Turkey, and also about our own country, that is to say, Germany. (Kohl and Jonquiere [1983], 8)44

The political aspect of the play is thus explicitly linked to its informative nature. Clarity and learning are emphasised in the best tradition of a Theatre of Enlightenment, in which, as Sue-Ellen Case puts it “a potent observant spectator could subject a field or a bounded space to its gaze”, in order to learn about it and benefit in terms of moral or political self-improvement as a result (2007, 10). The reception of the 1983 dramatic reading outlined above positions Karagöz in Alamania alongside the numerous contemporaneous artistic attempts to “explain” the Gastarbeiter to a German audience. While in the late 1970s public and political discourse had shifted from considering Turkish migrants as temporary Gastarbeiter to positioning them as “foreign fellow citizens” (“ausländische Mitbürger”), the economic slump of the early 1980s and shift from an SPD-dominated coalition to a CDU government inaugurated a far less positive approach to the Gastarbeiter “problem” (Chin 2007, 142). As mainstream Germany became increasingly invested in taking a position with regard to the Turkish presence in Germany, a series of “dramatized encounters with fake Turks” was embarked on by journalists such as Gerhard Kromschröder and Günter Walraff (Sieg 2002, 179). In her analysis of public discourse in this period, Katrin Sieg highlights the subtitle of Kromschröder’s book, When I was a Turk: A Learning Play on Xenophobia (Als ich ein Türke war:

43 “dann könnte nur ein Türke so eine Rolle spielen”. 44 “politisches Theater im besten Sinne. Nachdem man das Stück gelesen, gesehen hat,

weiß man mehr über unsere türkischen Mitbürger, man weiß mehr über die Probleme der Türkei und auch über unser eigenes Land, das Deutschland heißt.”

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Ein Lehrstück zur Ausländerfeindlichkeit, 1983), as a Brechtian reference which “embedded the author’s adventure of passing as a Turk in a didactic project of considerable scope” (179). This didactic project was continued on the stage with plays such as Franz Xaver Kroetz’s Fear and Hope in the FRG (Furcht und Hoffnung der BRD; 1983), which included one scene titled “Foreigner’s German” (“Ausländerdeutsch”), featuring a male Gastarbeiter unable to speak (cf. Teraoka 1987, 77–78). Özdamar, however, appears to have reacted quite differently to the 1983 dramatic reading from her unnamed interviewer. While stressing how much she has enjoyed seeing the play partially staged, the approach taken also seems to have altered her own ideas of how the play could best be performed: At first I was only thinking of German actors, but then I noticed that one really cannot expect German actors to make themselves so empty inside that they are able to speak this language [the broken German in the play] without mocking it. I don’t mean that anyone made fun of it this evening. You tried to convey what you understood of this, unequivocally. (Özdamar in Kohl and Jonquiere [1983], 3)45

Several subsequent analyses of Özdamar’s prose writing have pointed to her use of a Bhabhian or Irigarayian mimicry as a strategy which, rather than ignoring stereotypical attitudes to or ideas about Turks in Germany, cites mainstream discourse in order to acknowledge but simultaneously debunk it (Ghaussy 1999, 9; Breger 1999, 32; Sieg 2002, 248).46 As Özdamar’s comment above suggests, despite having conceived of the play 45 “Zuerst dachte ich nur an deutsche Schauspieler, aber dann habe ich festgestellt, dass man es von deutschen Schauspielern nicht verlangen könne, dass sie sich innerlich so leer machen, dass sie diese Sprache, ohne sich darüber lustig zu machen, sprechen können. Ich meine nicht, dass sich heute abend irgend jemand lustig gemacht hat. Ihr habt versucht, das, wie Ihr es verstanden habt, unbedingt weiter zu geben.” 46 While Bhabha’s concept of mimicry has been discussed in the Introduction chapter, Irigaray summarizes hers as follows: “One must assume the feminine role deliberately. Which means already to convert a form of subordination into an affirmation, and thus begin to thwart it. Whereas a direct feminine challenge to this condition means demanding to speak as a (masculine) ‘subject,’ that is, it means to postulate a relation to the intelligible that would maintain sexual indifference. To play with mimesis is thus for a woman, to try and locate the place of her exploitation by discourse, without allowing herself to be simply reduced to it” (Irigaray 1985, 76, quoted in Ghaussy 1999, 9). Both Bhabhian and Irirgarayan mimicry undermine and expose the structure being mimicked from within, making the difference inherent to the process of mimesis productive, but Irigarayan

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for the professional milieu in which she worked in Germany (i.e. mainly German actors), the 1983 dramatisation appears to have revealed that when the German actor’s body cited mainstream German stereotypes of the “Turkish” body, it became more difficult to maintain the specular and critical aspect of mimicry, without it collapsing into an uncomfortable mockery or repetition of stereotypes—a factor which may have affected Özdamar’s subsequent decision to make use of a multinational cast in 1986. The dramaturge involved in the 1986 world premiere, Ingo Waszerka, described the acting style eventually adopted for the 1986 production as follows: There was a realismo on this stage […] This commedia atmosphere was what we tried to create – realistic, but at the same time theatrical. Like a realistic commedia. (personal interview, 2011)47

As noted earlier, Demirkan feared the collapse of the character of Karagöz into folkloristic stereotype; however, in a personal interview Özdamar also highlighted the overtly theatrical manner in which she saw workers: “not as poor people, but as Chaplin” (telephone interview, 2013).48 In the 1986 production, the use of Chaplinesque movements and humorous set pieces inspired by the Marx brothers amongst others helped create the “realistic commedia” mentioned by Waszerka.49 While on the whole the role allocation meant that Turkish actors played Turks and the Germans

mimicry is positioned as a specifically feminist writing strategy, one which Ghaussy highlights has also been identified as useful by Judith Butler, Donna Harraway, and Trinh T. Minh-hà. This is a strategy Ghaussy, for example, sees employed by Özdamar’s female characters in her novels. 47 “auf dieser Bühne war ein Realismo […]. Diese Commedia-Atmosphäre, die haben wir versucht herzustellen – realistisch, aber gleichzeitig theatralisch. Wie eine realistische Commedia.” The influence of commedia dell’arte on Besson, with whom Özdamar worked closely is noted by Brandt (2016, 27). 48 “nicht als arme Menschen, sondern als Chaplin”. 49 These include a shaving scene which could also be considered reminiscent of Bertolt

Brecht and Karl Valentin’s comedic collaboration on “Mysterien eines Frisiersalons” (“Mysteries of a Barbershop”, 1923).

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played Germans, it was also up to each actor to bring their own interpretation to the roles at hand: “The actors have to develop a character from within themselves” (Waszerka 2011).50 Although it is often assumed that a Brechtian Verfremdung is characteristic of Özdamar’s creative work, both in her novels and in interviews the relationship to the Brechtian practice of Verfremdung or estrangement as acting methodology is more ambivalent than often suggested. Özdamar gives equal attention and an equal dose of irony to the methods of the Brechtian and Stanislavskian tutors represented in her novel Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn, for example (The Bridge of the Golden Horn; [1998] 2002, 201-06). Likewise, in interviews she has stressed “it was Brecht’s poems that I loved above all. The A-effect on the other hand was like a Damocles sword for me” (quoted in von Saalfeld 1998, 166–67).51 An exception to the assumption that Brechtian theatre as practised in his lifetime is central to Özdamar’s aesthetics is provided by Claudia Breger’s 2012 discussion of Özdamar’s third novel, Seltsame Sterne (Strange Stars) where she emphasises “the post-Brechtian experiments Özdamar’s protagonist saw in the making” (116). Such experiments can also be considered part of a move towards what today would be considered postdramatic theatre: theatre which decentres the text, and privileges the affective dimension of performance above the discursive, offering a political theatre which aims at audience dissensus rather than consensus (cf. Lehmann 2005). Indeed, although Breger’s comment comes in a discussion which situates this novel in the context of the 1990s trend for “pop literature” in Germany, she argues that: It seems almost self-evident to position Özdamar’s poetics, with its focus on perceptions, bodily sensations, and things, at the (historical and conceptual) point where transnational pop art meets the theater forms traced also thematically in the book. (2012, 116)

Self-evident as a relationship between Özdamar’s aesthetics and the experiments with representation and affect which characterise postdramatic theatre may seem to Breger, aside from occasional references to Heiner Müller in analyses of Özdamar’s novels and short stories, this has yet 50 “Die Schauspieler müssen aus sich heraus Figuren entwickeln”. 51 “Ich habe bei Brecht vor allem die Gedichte geliebt. Der Verfremdungseffekt war

dagegen für mich wie ein Damoklesschwert.”

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to be explored in any detail with respect to her plays.52 This is perhaps because the majority of work on Özdamar has been carried out by literary scholars.53 While Breger concentrates primarily on situating Özdamar’s “aesthetics of presentification-at-a-distance” in relation to pop literature (2012, 117), here this becomes useful in situating this premiere within the postdramatic turn towards evoking affect and away from the transmission of knowledge. In this case, Waszerka’s description of the acting techniques preferred for the 1986 production suggest these had closer links to the postdramatic concern with the actor as a creator of “presence”, which was developing in Germany at the time (cf. Lehmann 2005, 254–60). The use of live animals on-stage, also a feature of work at the Bochumer Ensemble, certainly speaks to a postdramatic aesthetic. The use of real animals in theatre has been characterised as a “permanent motif” (“Dauermotiv”) of the postdramatic turn by Hans-Thies Lehmann, who explains that this “conveys a mythical dimension” of engagement between stage and audience at the same time as the animals “denounce the fiction by means of their unconscious presence” (2005, 387).54 Similarly, these elements of the real were described by Waszerzka “not [as] an attempt to imitate life, but perhaps to cite it in some details. So the donkey was a citation, because it represents so much for Karagöz [the puppetry form] and for Turkey” (personal interview, 2011).55 In the short story “Karagöz in Alamania. Black-Eye in Germany” (1990) based on the dramatic text of the same name, Özdamar’s use of “realistic” elements

52 Boran suggests the mise-en-scène can be seen as “a theatre machine reminiscent of her mentor Heiner Heiner Müller” (“[eine] an ihren Mentor Heiner Müller erinnernde Theatermaschine”; 2004, 152); however, he focuses more on this as a link to Brechtian aesthetics. Apart from this, Müller is generally referred to in analyses of “Karriere einer Putzfrau” rather than with regard to the Karagöz texts (see, for example, Bird 2003, 173–81). 53 Even Breger (2012) and Gezen (2018), who write extensively on theatre in their most recent monographs, stop short of extending insights to Özdamar’s theatrical work and focus instead on the way in which theatre is figured in Özdamar’s semi-fictional narratives. The exception to this rule is provided by Moray McGowan (2005). 54 “vermittelt eine mythische Dimension”; “denunzieren durch ihr bewußtloses Dasein die Fiktion”. In the performance documented in the audiovisual recording, the donkey interrupts the action by braying, for example (see Özdamar 1986). 55 “kein Versuch, Leben zu imitieren, sondern vielleicht in Details zu zitieren. Also der Esel war ein Zitat, weil er so viel für Karagöz und für die Türkei ist.”

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such as dialogue of mixed German and Turkish is identified by scholars such as Norbert Mecklenburg as “the original and a literary V-effect in one” (2006, 85). 56 Rather than as signifiers of a naturalist aesthetic, the donkeys, sheep and chickens on stage in the 1986 production, who interrupted the action with uncontrollable noise, movement and bodily functions, could also be seen as further markers of the emerging postdramatic aesthetic. Although the “real” props and animals alongside the “real” Turkish bodies on stage may have created confusion amongst the reviewers, in mainly casting Turkish and other non-German actors in the Turkish roles in 1986 Özdamar does not seem to have been returning to a kind of filmic naturalism but rather attempting to maintain this specularity. This is a factor largely overlooked by reviewers who seemed unable to see the Turkish actors as performing carefully conceived roles rather than simply themselves, and who therefore suggested that a “hint of Naturalism” (Tantow 1986)57 pervaded the production. Returning to the “spectacular pedagogy” which shaped this historical context, it is significant that in her analysis of the presence of migrant authors in the German literary sphere in the 1980s, Rita Chin argues that institutions such as the newly established Institut Deutsch als Fremdsprache (Institute for German as a Foreign Language) in Munich hoped to promote “the minority author who could speak to the German public from the outside in a way that made his or her foreign experience more intelligible, familiar, and even ‘close’” (2007, 137). As Chin explains, such explanatory efforts were consistent with a political positioning aligned to the leftist SPD and thus stand in contrast to the more aggressive anti-foreigner rhetoric of the dominant political party of the time, the CDU. At the same time, rather than breaking with a broader hegemonic discourse, these efforts often further cemented other problematic tendencies. Chin’s examination of the cultural politics of institutions like the Munich Institute highlights that “the DaF [Deutsch als Fremdsprache] leadership chose subjects remarkably similar to the rhetoric and ideology produced by social scientists and SPD politicians from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s” (135). According to Chin, in doing so they “constructed a category of Ausländerliteratur that operated squarely within the terms of public debate during the late 1970s” (135).

56 “Originalton und literarische Verfremdung in einem”. Mecklenburg also refers to the 1991 Karagöz short story as “realist-grotesque” (“eine Realgroteske”; 2006, 90). 57 “Hauch von Naturalismus”.

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The construction of this category of literature by organisations such as the Munich Institute, and the role of the intellectual in “explaining the Gastarbeiter” is famously parodied by Özdamar in an oft-cited scene (see Wierschke 1996, 205–6; Mecklenburg 2006, 90; Seyhan 2001, 110) from the 1990 short story “Karagöz in Alamania, Black-Eye in Germany”. There an “enlightened intellectual” seated in a bathtub holds forth on the need for a poetry competition to measure how Turkish migrants remain vs. how German they have become. The bathtub in which the intellectual sits in the short story creates an intertextual reference to Peter Weiss’ play Marat/ Sade which Sabine Milz reads as a device that “discloses intellectual patronising and stereotyping” and “exposes the intellectual’s unwitting complicity with the dominant discourse” (2000, 11). Özdamar thus uses this reference to distance herself from a position of narrating “the truth” in addition to, as Annette Wierschke highlights, critiquing the attitude to fostering cultural production taken by bodies such as the Munich Institute at the time (1996, 206). This critique was also present in the 1982 dramatic text and, in sharpened form, in the 1986 premiere of Karagöz in Alamania. There the intellectual, played by Volker Spengler, addressed the audience directly (see Fig. 3). He was thus the only figure to interpret the Turkish Gastarbeiter for the waiting audience: What do you think of this: there needs to be a poetry or tailoring competition amongst the guestworkers. Then we could check how they sew their Turkish clothes from German material; could see how much of their identity is still there. (Özdamar 1982, 41; also quoted in Wierschke 1996, 206)58

However, his attempts at enlightenment are undermined by his bathtub and association with the out-of-touch intellectual Marat (Wierschke 1996, 206). Close examination of Özdamar’s Karagöz matrix of texts shows that while the figure of the enlightened intellectual does appear in the 1982 dramatic text, he does so without bathtub. The audiovisual recording of the 1986 premiere suggests that it is here, in the performance text, that the bathtub makes its first appearance, only moving later into the textual Karagöz matrix when the play is rewritten as short story.

58 “Was meint ihr dazu: man müßte unter den Gastarbeitern einen Gedicht- oder Kleidernäh-Wettbewerb machen. Dann könnte man prüfen, wie sie aus deutschen Stoffen ihre türkischen Kleider nähen; so könnte man sehen, wieviel von ihrer Identität noch da ist.”

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Fig. 3 Volker Spengler as the Intellectual with typewriter in bathtub plus live donkey in background. In Karagöz in Alamania, dir. by Emine Sevgi Özdamar (1986). Still from unpublished audiovisual recording

In the 1990 short story the image of the intellectual in his bathtub and the association created with Peter Weiss’ Marat/ Sade might function to point to the theatrical origins of that text; on stage, this intertextual reference becomes explicitly metatheatrical, though, building on the metatheatrical element of the staging as a whole discussed earlier in this chapter. Indeed, images preserved in the archive of the Deutsches Theatermuseum, and the audiovisual recording, show that some of the costumes hanging in the background are those used in a production of Marat/Sade staged earlier at Schauspiel Frankfurt.59 Within the 1986 production the Marat/ Sade reference, a piece in which Brechtian theatre famously meets Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of

59 I was unfortunately unable to reproduce these images here as the Theatermuseum refused to give the permissions required by the publisher. For further comparisons between the play as dramatic text and the 1986 staging see Stewart (2013, 2016).

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Cruelty, thus also functions to highlight the performance’s links with the post-Brechtian tradition of Peter Weiss. It therefore not only explicitly highlights Özdamar’s inheritance of a number of transnational dramatic traditions,60 but explicitly parodies the idea of theatre as a place of enlightenment or as an opportunity for Germans to “learn” about, rather than engage with, their Turkish compatriots. Boran, the only other scholar to have attempted to engage with this play in performance, interprets the mise-en-scène of the play as described in his interviews with Özdamar as follows: The foreignised, chaotic dimension was therefore a thoroughly intentional, central element of the staging: as the emphasis lay on bringing the guest worker’s existential state of being-thrown-into-German-life onto the stage and on conveying [this] to the audience affectively, the achievement of an easy or complete degree of comprehensibility was by no means intended. (2004, 148)61

Here he usefully reads the chaotic aspect of the premiere identified in reviews as an aesthetic that mirrored the experience of migration. It can also, I would suggest, be positioned as not only representational technique, but also critique of representation: a purposeful and comic interference with the transparent representation demanded from a variety of sides at the time. Thus, while the 1986 production of Karagöz was frequently received as a (failed) attempt to bring Turkish theatre to a German audience, as will also be seen in the following section of this chapter, a return to and reading of the multi-medial material remains of the production reveals it as a rejection of a “museal” discourse of preservation of “original cultures” preferred in cultural policy at the time.

60 Connections are also made to productions which Özdamar worked on at the Volksbühne and the Bochumer Ensemble (Brandt 2016, 33). 61 “Das Befremdliche, Chaotische war also ein durchaus beabsichtigtes, zentrales Element der Inszenierung: Da es darum ging, das existentielle Ins-deutsche-LebenGeworfensein der Gastarbeiter auf die Bühne zu bringen und dem Publikum gefühlsmäßig zu vermitteln, war eine leichte, beziehungsweise vollständige Verständlichkeit keinesfalls angestrebt.” Wierschke also questions whether the “irritating variety of impressions” (“irritierende Vielfalt der Eindrücke”) in the short story might not be a method of doing justice to the “changing realities” (“sich verändernder Realitäten”; 1996, 207).

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“Oh Those Turks!” Intertextuality, Orientalism, and Dreams of Capital In Özdamar’s short narrative based on the play’s first production, the narrative voice highlights with gentle irony the well-meaning attempts to mediate the play in its premiere production by the artistic director of the time, Günter Rühle, himself a well-established theatre critic: “Before the première the theatre, out of love for the play and without asking my permission in advance, had leaflets distributed amongst the audience, in which it attempted to explain the work” (Horrocks and Krause 1996, 68).62 Moving beyond the page to the stage, however, reveals that the 1986 production engaged in its own very different form of mediation via the framing of the performance by an audio intertext wholly absent from the dramatic text or subsequent short stories.63 On the audiovisual recording (1986) as the lights go up at the beginning and down at the end of the performance, the hall of the Schauspielhaus Frankfurt is filled with the sounds of a record: Uska Dara by Eartha Kitt (1953). Kitt, an African-American singer better known for her rendition of Santa Baby, her role as Catwoman in several Batman films, and her outspoken political stances, based her Uska Dara on the Turkish folk song Üsküdara gidir iken or Kâtibim, which Kitt apparently learned while touring Turkey in the early 1950s (Buchanan 2007, 37). The Turkish part of the song performed by Kitt dates back to the Ottoman Empire and describes a woman’s attraction to a handsome clerk—a position symbolic of modernisation and westernisation in Turkey at that time—with whom she has a romantic tryst in the town of Üsküdar (ibid., 9).64 Musicologist Donna Buchanan translates the Turkish as follows: On the way to Üsküdar it began to rain hard. The clerk I love wears a long frock coat; its long skirt is muddied. 62 “Vor der Premiere ließ das Theater, ohne mich vorher zu fragen, aus Liebe zu diesem Stück an die Zuschauer ein Flugblatt verteilen, in dem das Theater versuchte das Stück zu erklären” (Özdamar 2001, 52). 63 On further uses of voice, song and postdramatic musicalisation in the play see Stewart (2016). 64 A version of Üsküdara is also sung by the protagonist to her lover Jordi in The Bridge of the Golden Horn (see Özdamar 2007, 102). Üsküdar, today a district of Istanbul, is also referenced in Özdamar’s 2007 Turkish-language book on Ece Ayhan (cf. Özdamar 2008).

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My clerk just awoke; his eyes are still languid. That clerk is mine – I am his – that’s no one else’s business. That starched shirt looks so lovely on my clerk. Going to Üsküdar I found a handkerchief, And filled it up with Turkish delight. […] (Buchanan 2007, 5–6).

In addition to the Turkish lyrics, in her 1953 recording Kitt also sings her own English “translation” of these lines. In the background is an orchestra which Buchanan describes as “deliberately playing slightly out of tune, thus conveying their misguided perception of a Turkish ensemble’s heterophonic texture and use of untempered intervals” (37). The English Kitt sings is as follows: Üsküdara is a little town in Turkey. And in the old days, many women had male secretaries. Oh well, that’s Turkey. They take a trip from Üsküdara in the rain, and on the way they fall in love. He’s wearing a stiff collar and full dress suit. She looks at him longingly through her veil, and casually feeds him candy. Ooooh, those Turks! (37)

Thanks to Buchanan’s translations and transcriptions, it is clear to see that the Turkish and English sung by Kitt differ significantly. For example, in the Turkish noun “kâtibim”, “my clerk”, the possessive case is used primarily to denote possession in a metaphorical sense, indicating an emotional relationship, i.e. the clerk whom the singer loves. Kitt’s English “translation” makes this possession literal and more generalised: although remaining the singer’s lover the clerk also becomes her secretary, a move which plays with the gender roles both of the Turkish original and the 1950s American context Kitt was translating into. Although this could be put down simply to faulty translation, Kitt’s periodic growls of “Ooh those Turks” throughout the song and the purposefully misspelled title suggest that an orientalised image of Turkey is purposefully being played with here.65

65 Cf. Özdamar’s subtle distortion of the Turkish word for Germany Almanya to Alamania.

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In her broader study of adaptations of the song, Buchanan files Kitt’s adaptation under “American Orientalism” for precisely this reason, a labelling which seems to suggest the adaptation as inherently problematic (39). Although Kitt’s reduction of the clerk from a position of power and influence as town clerk to the mere secretary of a woman might be considered to correspond to the feminisation of men commonly found in the mechanism of Orientalism (cf. Said 2003, 56–57), it also conjures up an image of a world which offers a radical escape from the gender relations of the 1950s. While leaving the Turkish as incomprehensible and thus also incommensurable, suggesting a certain exoticism, Kitt’s playful translation might also be said to parody the Anglo-American stereotype of “the Turk”. Following such a reading, I would suggest that framing the 1986 performance within this audio citation functions on several levels. Firstly, the use of a song widely disseminated and adapted throughout the former territories of the Ottoman Empire and beyond arguably “reflects the fluidity of musical culture enabled by the process of ‘covering’” (Buchanan 2007, 8). The use of Eartha Kitt’s version to frame the 1986 performance thus refuses the nationalism potentially associated with a “purely” Turkish version of the song, asserting the continual flow of artistic texts from context to context as a more natural process than a retention of strict boundaries. The inclusion of Sonia Theodoridu, a Greek opera singer, in the role of Ümmü arguably functions similarly; to share, rather than claim the heritage of Karagöz (a theatre style and figure often disputed over as a national symbol between Turks and Greeks; see Krause 2000, 83; Mani 2003, 38). Secondly, the inclusion of this song as a framing device explicitly conjures up Orientalism as a further framework which the play may have to position itself in relation to. Rather than countering Orientalist expectations with a refusal of folkloristic aspects and so “cutting” Turkish culture down to size, the production also makes use of this framing song as a purposefully “inauthentic” performance of Turkish folk culture.66 By

66 As Kader Konuk suggests in her analysis of the presence of Else Lasker-Schüler’s “Orientalized language” in Özdamar’s Seltsame Sterne, Özdamar’s relationship to Orientalism in her literary narratives not only extends lines of commonality between the narrator and other marginalized figures such as Lasker-Schüler but also “complicate[s] the wholesale dismissal of Orientalist discourses as hegemonic” (2007, 242).

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performing the Turkish lyrics alongside her own adaptation, Kitt’s rendition, like Özdamar’s play as a whole, allows a version of Turkish culture to be presented without offering it up for easy consumption. Returning to our Socrates quotation from earlier in this chapter, the act of hearing is removed from the production of knowledge in that the non-Turkish speaker is left merely to guess to what extent the translation is an accurate or faithful rendition of the original. This undermines the authority of the audience member not versed in Turkish, English, and German to interpret what the play is about to present to him or her. This audio intertext also has a bearing on a framing device already present in the dramatic text, that of the dream. The dramatic text opens with a framing narrative marked in the written texts as “Ümmü’s dream” in which a double of Karagöz is caught in a tree stealing apples.67 Although Karagöz pretends to be a nightingale, and an inexperienced one at that, suggesting he is stealing apples for the first time, the rich apple tree owner takes this as an opportunity to extort Karagöz’s uncle. Their argument is interrupted by a third party, however, who promises to put up the money for Karagöz to travel to Germany in exchange for the uncle’s field, thus ostensibly offering a way out of the conditions in rural Turkey (Özdamar 1982, 1–3). In this way, the opening sequence prefigures the real Karagöz’s initial journey from Turkey to Germany, where he is expected to earn as much for his uncle as twenty-five workers like Karagöz would at home. While the closing sequence of the dramatic text is not marked so explicitly as a dream, in it the young dream double from the opening sequence reappears and events repeat themselves. The only exception is that Karagöz has become the owner of the apple tree which his younger double steals from. Both Karagöz figures claim to be the “real” Karagöz until the older Karagöz bundles Ümmü and Semsettin ¸ into his car and drives off, in reverse, to Germany. This framing narrative has been identified as significant by a number of critics. It is commonly understood to demonstrate Karagöz’s selfalienation as a result of his experience as a Gastarbeiter, his poor working conditions, and his life between two countries and cultures (cf. Mecklenberg 2006, 87; Boran 2004, 143). I would like to move beyond a reading of the dream as a “between two worlds” (cf. Adelson 2006) narrative however, and compare Özdamar’s framing narrative to another instance

67 For a detailed reading of Ümmü’s role in the production see Stewart (2016).

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in which fruit is stolen by a younger Doppelgänger or dream figure from an older tree owner: Brecht’s “The Cherry Thief” (“Der Kirschdieb,” 1938). While in Özdamar’s Karagöz, retribution is speedily enacted on the protagonist-thief, in “The Cherry Thief” the speaker, woken from his morning slumbers by a merry whistling, calmly watches a representative of the younger generation steal his fruit through a window: On my cherry tree – dawn light filled the garden – Sat a young man with mended trousers And merrily plucked my cherries. Seeing me he Nodded at me, with both hands He pulled the cherries from the branches into his pockets.68

The nod within the Brecht poem suggests a recognition of one figure in another and the theft takes place in a spirit of friendly complicity which emphasises solidarity across the generations. At the end of Özdamar’s text, however, Karagöz’s inability to recognise his younger self can be read not only as evidence of his self-alienation but also of a failure to recognise how his own actions reproduce the conditions which have created that alienated state of being.69 The 1986 production retains this framing dream narrative, using visual markers to emphasise the continuities and differences between the first and last scene. The white suit of the old landlord is echoed, in grotesque register, by the “real” Karagöz’s white suit and bandages; the same younger actor, Paco Rosales, is used to play Karagöz’s young double in both. Within the 1986 performance of Karagöz in Alamania, the violence done by the older Karagöz to his younger self is also comically indicated by the older figure attacking his young double until the double’s leg falls off. Such physical generational violence could be seen to 68 Auf meinem Kirschbaum – Dämmerung füllte den Garten –

Saß ein junger Mann mit geflickter Hose Und pflückte lustig meine Kirschen. Mich sehend Nickte er mir zu, mit beiden Händen Holte er die Kirschen von den Zweigen in seine Taschen. 69 Wierschke suggests that although more predominantly read as a scene of Betroffenheit,

this scene could also be read as Marxist critique of capitalism (1996, 205). Also noted by Boran (2004, 143). Notably, quotations from Marx’s Das Kapital, are present in the 1986 performance and the subsequent short story (1990), but not the 1982 dramatic text suggesting this also emerged more strongly in the interim for the playwright or in rehearsals.

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stand for the violence which Marxist theory sees one generation practising on another in its reproduction of capitalism. If the reproduction of relations of capitalism is something which the dream sequence of doubling within the play might draw attention to, the inclusion of Kitt’s song may be read as an attempt to produce an alternative process of interaction between the audience and the action on stage. This would be consistent with two contemporaneous concerns: firstly the need to question or challenge mimeticist scripting of the Gastarbeiter figure and secondly the postdramatic experimentation with the realisation of theatre scripts and audience-stage relationships at the time which challenged the audience to engage in meaning-making, moving away from the didacticism of earlier political theatre (cf. Lehmann 2005, 471). Discussing intertextuality, Gebauer and Wulf suggest that, “[i]f texts are understood as combinations of signs, then mimetic processes take place, not between texts and a reality existing external to them, but only inside texts” (1995, 305). In the context of German cultural policy at the time, Özdamar’s refusal to subscribe to an understanding of culture as constituted by nationality as “reality” rather than a web of texts can in fact be seen as a radical move. Equally her refusal to contribute to the homogenisation of Turkish culture—often positioned as a necessary precondition for the funding of Turkish artistic practices in Germany— is inscribed in her refusal to draw on only Turkish texts or actors. Instead of national identity becoming a reference point for the representation of reality, the “mimetic movement” and disseminative thrust of Özdamar’s intertextuality (cf. Gebauer and Wolf 1995, 302) allows the full array of texts and traditions surrounding her to filtrate through into the world of the play. Rather than any authentic “original”, in Karagöz in Alamania Özdamar privileges the second-order representation of the shadow puppet turned Gastarbeiter, Karagöz, and his double. The result is to counter the possibility of ready representation of individuals and supposedly homogeneous cultures with playful and challenging experiment with the possibilities of theatrical practice.

Alamania Again: Scripts of Migration at the Millennium The importance of interventions such as Özdamar’s has been highlighted in the numerous examinations of her prose work and even in analyses of her plays as dramatic texts. Helga Kraft argues that:

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Governmental measures and an improving economy can help in the acceptance of foreigners, but playwrights add a dimension that only the stage allows […] Özdamar’s postmodern juggling of discursive clichés engage[s] the German theatregoing public in a debate on political, economic, legal, and customary xenophobia in its country. (2003, 125–26)

The production history of Karagöz in Alamania, however, reminds us that the symbolic and affective potential of work such as Özdamar’s remains mere potential unless taken on by a theatre willing to stage the play and an audience interested in recognising the approach to reality presented. The only subsequent full-staging to follow was in 2000: this took place outside Germany at the Innsbrucker Kellertheater. Katrin Sieg reads the long delay in staging Özdamar’s second re-scripting of Germany as Alamania, Keloglan in Alamania, as one which “measures the resistance to publicly considering cultural differences along with political equality” (2002, 234) around the time of unification in Germany. This suggests that the inclusion or exclusion of particular subjects from the repertoires of German theatres is also relevant to a discussion of scripts in the theatre, both literal and symbolic. In turning to briefly trace the contours of the production history of this second play, Keloglan in Alamania, here I want to unpack this possibility further and explore the ways in which this lag may have framed the 1991 text in its performance in 2000. While the dramatic text can be said to critique geopolitical divisions of labour and practices of labelling and exclusion in German society, the play as event may expose and allow us to briefly explore other contradictions in the German theatrical relationship to issues of migration within the period which spans the transition from a focus on the 1980s to the 2000s. In 1991 Keloglan in Alamania, newly registered with Verlag der Autoren, was featured in the publishing house’s brochure “Stücke gegen Rassismus, Fremdenhass, Ausländerfeindlichkeit, Nationalismus” (“Plays against Racism, Xenophobia, Hostility to Foreigners, Nationalism”) as available for a premiere. While the immediate unification period is often characterised as one in which the artistic establishment neglected its “foreign fellow citizens” in order to focus on “German-German” concerns, as this brochure suggests less visible efforts to engage more broadly did continue. One year later Keloglan in Alamania was featured again, together with another play focusing on migration to Germany. Although Keloglan was still available for premiere at this point, this was not due

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to public resistance to considering the issues it raises but rather, as an advertising leaflet from the publisher explains, due to a change of artistic director at the Schiller Theater in West Berlin, where the play had been intended to premiere (Verlag der Autoren 1992). 1992 also saw a series of right-wing attacks on “foreigners” and asylum seekers in Germany, a circumstance which Verlag der Autoren highlight in their marketing of the play: Now is again the time for declarations of solidarity and the signing of petitions. But wouldn’t it be better if the theatres were to perform such plays, to bring these people on-stage? The multicultural society has a right to exist on our stages and the moral institution of the theatre must concern itself with this. (1992, n. p.)70

The rhetoric here is reminiscent of some aspects of the later postmigrant theatre movement which will be discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters. This rhetoric had little of the latter’s success, however. Indeed, it was not until 2000, that Keloglan in Alamania was first staged in Oldenburg as a piece of youth theatre. According to my interview with the dramaturge involved in the Keloglan premiere, Axel Gade, the play was chosen in 2000 as the theatre’s annual theatre project for giving local young people a taste of working with the theatre. While the main roles of Keloglan, Kelkari and Tekir were filled by professional actors from the Oldenburg ensemble, the variety of smaller parts made Özdamar’s piece ideal for offering young amateurs supporting roles. Gade also mentions the dramatic text’s inclusion of musical citations from both high and low culture as an element which particularly suited the play to production as part of this project. His comments suggest that the mixture of fairy tale and opera also spoke to the position of the age group involved in the play as somewhere between adulthood and childhood. Murat Yeginer, a Turkish-German director and playwright in his own right, was one of the actors and directors at the Staatstheater Oldenburg at that time and his presence as director and interest in staging a piece on Turkish migration to Germany is cited by

70 “Jetzt ist wieder die Zeit für Solidaritätserklärungen und Unterschriftenaktionen. Aber müßten die Theater heute nicht besser solche Stücke spielen, diese Menschen auf die Bühne bringen? Die multikulturelle Gesellschaft hat ein Existenzrecht auf unseren Bühnen, und die moralische Anstalt Theater muß sich mit ihr beschäftigen.”

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Gade as a further reason for taking on the play. While this may suggest an overly simplistic equation of personal biography with artistic interest, it also highlights the difference which the much fought-for inclusion of Turkish-German theatre practitioners within the state theatres can make in terms of the willingness to stage plays with particular themes. The timing of the Keloglan premiere is also telling as in 2000 migration, racism and nationalism once again began to take on a central role in public discourse in the German-speaking mainstream media. As we saw in the Introduction, this was partly as a result of the change in German citizenship law from a model of jus sanguinis to jus soli which, as Gade highlighted in our conversation, also resulted in a reactionary backlash. The formation of a coalition government with the right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ) in Austria also became a major point of concern for many on the Left across the German-speaking countries. While speeches by influential figures of the theatrical establishment such as Elfriede Jelinek at Austrian anti-racism demonstrations became editorials in Theater der Zeit, in the same year the section charting events and trends in German theatre of Wer spielte Was, the publication which captures the annual statistics of theatre’s in Germany, reports the following: “overture against xenophobia”; at the start of the season, under this motto, the president of the Bühnenverein [the organisation representing the interests of theatres and orchestras in Germany], Jürgen Flimm, called upon the theatres and orchestras in Germany to take a position against xenophobia and racism by means of relevant actions: “theatres and orchestras are, in their internationalism, also places of mutual understanding”, something which, he said, is to be nurtured and supported. In the following weeks many theatres took up this call. (Deutsche Bühnenverein 2000, 8–9)71

The topical nature of Keloglan in Alamania clearly made it an attractive proposition at that time. Gade notes that an awareness of a reactionary turn in Germany at the time during which Keloglan was being discussed for inclusion in the 2000/2001 season led him and others at the theatre 71 “‘Auftakt gegen Fremdenhass’, unter diesem Motto ruft Bühnenvereinspräsident

Jürgen Flimm die Theater und Orchester in Deutschland zum Beginn der Spielzeit auf, gegen Fremdenfeindlichkeit und Rassismus durch eine geeignete Aktion Stellung zu beziehen: ‘Theater und Orchester sind in ihrer Internationalität auch ein Ort der Verständigung’, dies gelte es zu pflegen und zu fördern. Dem Aufruf folgen in diesen Wochen viele Theater.”

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Fig. 4 Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Keloglan in Alamania, dir. by Murat Yeginer (2000). Photograph by Stefan A. Schulz

to the question: “How does one treat migrants? Are they migrants?”72 Equally, however, the need for such an extreme context to make the piece “relevant” highlights the dependence within such a logic of its staging precisely on those voices keen to deny the Turkish population in Germany access to the nation-state. The precarious place of Turkish-German theatre in this period can also be read to a degree in the mise-en-scène of this production of Keloglan in Alamania, as designed by Stefan A. Schulz. Although the evidence of the mise-en-scène is fragmentary, photographs taken of the performance show that the premiere of Keloglan in Oldenburg was set in a burnt-out container hung with a fire hydrant (Fig. 4). Comments in the reviews, my interview with the dramaturge Axel Gade, and correspondence with the stage designer Stefan A. Schulz confirm that the scenography Schulz conceptualised actively used visual citations of events which had taken place in the intervening years. The most prominent of 72 “Wie geht man mit Migranten um? Sind das Migranten?”

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these is the Solingen attack of 1993 in which five Turkish-German family members were burned to death. Karin Ye¸silada highlights the attacks on “Ausländer” in Rostock, Hoyerswelda, Mölln and Solingen as constitutive of a “caesura” in Turkish-German history and experience; she analyses the way in which this has entered into Turkish-German poetry when she writes of a “Poetry post Solingen” (2012, 23; 72–73). In the 2000 performance of Keloglan in Alamania, the burnt-out walls and fire extinguisher hung around the stage unmistakably referenced the Solingen attacks. The fire extinguishers, devices which Turkish ambassador Onur Öymen had “urged” his compatriots to buy in the wake of the attacks (Triadafilopoulos 2012, 144),73 thus index the renewed insecurity of Turkish residents of Germany; a device similar to that of the ready-packed suitcase often referenced in German-Jewish post-war narratives. A further visual citation of contemporary discourses on, or debates surrounding, migration and ethnicity in the German-speaking context is created by the container in which the production was staged. This is a clear reference to Christoph Schlingensief’s performance piece Bitte liebt Österreich—a performance piece in which a number of figures identified as “asylum seekers” were placed in a large container and voted out for deportation on a nightly basis. Much as in the plot of Keloglan in Alamania, in Schlingensief’s performance piece “the winner will receive financial reward and potentially, depending on the availability of volunteers, marriage into the winner’s adopted home, Austria” (Schlingensief.com [2000]).74 Both Schlingensief’s 2000 performance and the narrative of Keloglan in Alamania highlight the discrepancy between the real result of a situation such as Keloglan’s and that provided by the theatre—money and security provided by an arranged marriage into the country in question.75 In referencing Schlingsief’s container action, however, a further frame is added to this commentary: one which highlights the discrepancy between the attention accorded representations of migration in which the “migrants”

73 My thanks to Karin Ye¸silada for highlighting the exhortation to buy fire extinguishers to me. 74 “[d]em Sieger winkt ein Geldgewinn und eventuell, so sich Freiwillige finden, die Einheirat in die österreichische Wahlheimat”. 75 The difference between the solutions provided by reality and those provided by the playwright in Keloglan in Alamania form the basis of analysis by Sieg (2002, 241; 2011, 172). On the marriage scene of the dramatic text see Sieg (2002, 249–51); El Hissy (2012, 108–10).

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are objects (however ironically in Schlingensief’s case) and that awarded to those in which the migrantized subject initiates representation, such as Özdamar’s play. Such framing, combined with the visual citations of the attacks of Solingen and Mölln in the mid-1990s, indicates that the mise-en-scène positioned the place of the migrant in German society as still dependant on the whims and desires of the German majority. The fact that Keloglan was staged as part of the theatre’s youth programme also suggests a lack— or presumed lack—of interest for such material amongst adult audiences at the time. Much as the fire extinguishers of the mise-en-scène symbolised the insecurity of Turkish residents of Germany at that time, the ten-year lag between the writing and performance of this play points to a theatrical system in which stories of migration, much like migrantized artists, were still considered exceptional rather than as having a constant right to a presence on German stages.

Works Cited Adelson, Leslie A. 2006. “Against Between—Ein Manifest gegen das Dazwischen.” Text und Kritik 9 (6): 36–46. Auffermann, Verena. 1986. “Alltagshölle Alamania.” Theater Heute 27 (6): 41– 42. Beil, Hermann et al. (eds). 1986. Das Bochumer Ensemble: Ein deutsches Stadttheater 1979–1986. Königstein: Athenäum. Bird, Stephanie. 2003. Women Writers and National Identity: Bachmann, Duden, Özdamar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boran, Erol M. 2004. “Eine Geschichte des türkisch-deutschen Theaters und Kabaretts.” PhD diss, Ohio State University. Accessed May 1, 2010. http:// etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?osu1095620178. Brandt, Bettina. 2016. “Emine Sevgi Özdamar als Theaterautorin: eine Vorstudie zu ‘Karagöz in Alamania’.” Text und Kritik 211: 26–36. Brauneck, Manfred et al. 1983. Ausländertheater in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und in West-Berlin, 1. Arbeitsbericht zum Forschungsprojekt “Populäre Theaterkultur”. Hamburg: Pressestelle der Universität Hamburg. Brecht, Bertolt. “Der Kirschdieb.” In Bertolt Brechts Gedichte und Lieder: Auswahl Peter Suhrkamp, edited by Peter Suhrkamp, 150. Berlin and Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Breger, Claudia. 1999. “‘Meine Herren, spielt in meinem Gesicht ein Affe?’ Strategien der Mimikry in Texten von Emine S. Özdamar und Yoko Tawada.” In AufBrüche: Kulturelle Produktionen von Migrantinnen, Schwarzen und

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jüdischen Frauen in Deutschland, edited by Cathy S. Gelbin, Kader Konuk, and Peggy Piesche, 30–59. Königstein/Taunus: Ulrike Helmer. Breger, Claudia. 2012. An Aesthetics of Narrative Performance: Transnational Theater, Literature, and Film in Contemporary Germany. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Buchanan, Donna A. 2007. “‘Oh, Those Turks!’ Music, Politics, and Interculturality in the Balkans and Beyond.” In Balkan Popular Culture and the Ottoman Ecumene: Music, Image, and Regional Discourse, edited by Donna A. Buchanan, 3–54. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press. Case, Sue-Ellen. 2007. Performing Science and the Virtual. New York, NY and London: Routledge. Chin, Rita. 2007. The Guest Worker Question in Postwar Germany. Cambridge: CUP. Dayıo˘glu-Yücel, Yasemin, and Ortrud Gutjahr, eds. 2016. Special Issue on “Emine Sevgi Özdamar”. Text und Kritik 211. Delek, Thomas. 1986. “E. S. Özdamar‘s Türkenstück: Schwarzauge in Deutschland.” Die deutsche Bühne, June edition: 28–32. Deutscher Bühnenverein. 2000. Wer spielte was? Werkstatistik des Deutschen Bühenvereins 1999/2000. Cologne: Mykenoe. El Hissy, Maha. 2012. Getürkte Türken: Karnevaleske Stilmittel im Theater, Kabarett und Film deutsch-türkischer Künstlerinnen und Künstler. Bielefeld: transcript. Fühner, Ruth. 1986. “Von der Uraufführung des deutsch-türkischen Theaterstücks Karagöz in Alamania.” Transcript of review broadcast on Texte und Zeichen, moderated by Harald Eggebrecht, 7 May, NDR 3. Gade, Axel. 2011. Personal Interview. Kaiserslautern, 19 May. Gebauer, Gunter, and Christoph Wulf. 1995. Mimesis: Culture—Art—Society. Translated by Don Reneau. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gezen, Ela. 2018. Brecht, Turkish Theater, and Turkish-German Literature: Reception, Adaption and Innovation after 1960. New York: Camden House. Ghaussy, Sohelia. 1999. “Das Vaterland verlassen: Nomadic Language and ‘Feminine Writing’ in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei.” The German Quarterly 72 (1): 1–16. Göttsche, Dirk. 2006. “Emine Sevgi Özdamars Erzählung Der Hof Im Spiegel: Spielräume einer postkolonialen Lektüre deutsch-türkischer Literatur.” German Life and Letters 59 (4): 515–25. Hadar, Misha. 2019. “Performing Multiculturalism: The Turkish Ensemble at the Schaubühne.” Theatre Journal 71 (2): 135–52. Horrocks, David, and Frank Krause. 1996. “Emine Sevgi Özdamar, ‘Black Eye and His Donkey’: A Multi-Cultural Experience.” In Turkish Culture in German Society Today, edited by David Horrocks and Eva Kolinsky, 55–69. Oxford: Berghahn.

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˙ siro˘glu, Zehra. 2008. Eine andere Türkei: Literatur, Theater und Gesellschaft Ip¸ im Fokus einer Randeuropäerin. Frankfurt am Main: Brandes & Apsel. Jowett, Benjamin. 2009. Plato’s Theaetetus with Introduction and Analysis. Rockville: Serenity. Kohl, and Jonquiere [first names unknown]. 1983. Undated eight-page manuscript recording Emine Sevgi Özdamar in conversation on the occasion of the 1983 dramatic reading at Bayreuth. Accessed in the holdings of Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt am Main. Konuk, Kader. 1999. “‘Identitätssuche ist ein [sic] private archäologische Graberei’: Emine Sevgi Özdamars inszeniertes Sprechen.” In AufBrüche: Kulturelle Produktionen von Migrantinnen, Schwarzen und jüdischen Frauen in Deutschland, edited by Cathy S. Gelbin et al., 60–74. Königstein and Taunus: Ulrike Helmer. Konuk, Kader. 2007. “Taking on German and Turkish History: Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Seltsame Sterne.” Gegenwartsliteratur: Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch 6: 232–56. Köpke, Horst. 1986. “Türkische Selbstpersiflage.” Review of Karagöz in Alamania. Frankfurter Rundschau, 6 May. Kraft, Helga. 2003. “Staging Xenophobia in the 1990s: The Political Plays of Bettina Fless, Anna Langhoff, and Emine Sevgi Özdamar.” In Writing Against Boundaries: Nationality, Ethnicity and Gender in the German-Speaking Context, edited by Barbara Kosta and Helga Kraft, 113–30. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Krause, Frank. 2000. “Shadow Motifs in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn.” Debatte 8 (1): 71–86. Lehmann, Hans-Thies. 2005. Postdramatisches Theater, 3. veränderte Auflage. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Autoren. Lennartz, Knut. 2000. “Die Putzfrau an der Oper.” Die deutsche Bühne 71 (10): 28–29. Lea Lorenz. 1983. “Sieben suchen eine Bühne.” Saarbrückener Zeitung, 26 October. Accessed in holdings of Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt am Main, Autoren Archiv O. Lornsen, Karin. 2009. “The City as Stage of Transgression: Performance, Picaresque Reminiscences, and Linguistic Incongruity in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s The Bridge of the Golden Horn.” In Gender and Laughter: Comic Affirmation and Subversion in Traditional and Modern Media, edited by Gaby Pailer et al., 201–17. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Mani, B. Venkat. 2003. “The Good Woman of Istanbul.” Gegenwartsliteratur: Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch 2: 29–49. McGowan, Moray. 2005. “‘Sie kucken beide an Milch Topf’: Goethe’s Bürgergeneral in Double Refraction.” In Sprache—Text—Bildung: Essays für Beate

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Dreike, edited by Andreas Stuhlmann and Patrick Studer, 79–89. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Mecklenburg, Norbert. 2006. “Leben und Erzählen als Migration: Intertextuelle Komik in Mutterzunge von Emine Sevgi Özdamar.” In Text und Kritik 9 (6): 84–96. Merschmeier, Michael. 1984. “10 Neue Stücke in der Saison 1984/85.” Theater 1984: Jahrbuch der Zeitschrift Theatre heute, edited by Peter von Becker et al., 144. Zurich: Orell Füssli+Friedrich. Milz, Sabine. 2000. “Comparative Cultural Studies and Ethnic Minority Writing Today: The Hybridities of Marlene Nourbese Philip and Emine Sevgi Özdamar.” CLCWeb 2 (2): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374. 1071. Minnaard, Liesbeth. 2008. New Germans, New Dutch: Literary Interventions. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Nekimken, Albert. 1998. Brecht in Turkey, 1955–1977: The Impact of Bertolt Brecht on Society and the Development of Revolutionary Theater in Turkey. Istanbul: Isis Press. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 1982. Karagöz in Alamania. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Autoren. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi (dir.). 1986. Karagöz in Alamania. Unpublished audiovisual recording, Schauspiel Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main. Accessed thanks to Emine Sevgi Özdamar. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 1990. “Karagöz in Alamania, Schwarzauge in Deutschland.” In Mutterzunge, by Emine Sevgi Özdamar, 47–101. Hamburg: Rotbuch. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 1991. Keloglan in Alamania. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Autoren. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 2000. “Keloglan in Alamania Oder die Versöhnung von Schwein und Lamm.” Die deutsche Bühne 71 (10): 3–37. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 2001. “Schwarzauge in Deutschland.” In Der Hof im Spiegel, by Emine Sevgi Özdamar, 47–53. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. [1998] 2002. Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 2007. The Bridge of the Golden Horn. Translated by Martin Chalmers. London: Serpent’s Tale. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 2008. “Ein unzeitgemäßer Üsküdarer: Über den Dichter Ece Ayhan.” Translated by Dilek Dizdar. Akzente 5 (5): 436–45. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 2013. Telephone interview. Edinburgh/Berlin, 9 January. ˙ Reiso˘glu, Mert Bahadır. 2016. “From Poetry to Prose: Özdamar and the Ikinci Yeni Poetry Movement.” Türkisch-deutsche Studien 6: 97–114.

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Roy, Kate. 2008. “Cartographies of Identity: ‘East’ and ‘West’ in the Works of Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Leïla Sebbar.” Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Manchester. Saalfeld, Lerke von. 1998. Ich habe eine fremde Sprache gewählt: Ausländische Schriftsteller schreiben Deutsch. Gerlinger: Bleicher. Said, Edward W. [1979] 2003. Orientalism, rev. edn. London: Penguin Books. Schauspiel Frankfurt. 1986. Karagöz in Alamania, programme. Frankfurt am Main: Schauspiel Frankfurt. Accessed in Archiv zu den Städtischen Bühnen Frankfurt am Main (Universitätsbibliothek Johann C. Senckenberg): Schauspiel Inszenierungsmappen, Spielzeit 1985/1986: Mappe Nr. 17. Schlingensief.com. N. dat. “Bitte liebt Österreich – Erste Österreichische Koalitionswoche.” schlingensief.com. http://www.schlingensief.com/projekt.php? id=t033. Schneider, Felix. [1986]. “Moralisches Muß oder reueloses Vergnügen.” Pflasterstrand. Seyhan, Azade. 2001. Writing Outside the Nation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Seyhan, Azade. 2005. “Is Orientalism in Retreat or in for a New Treat? Halide Edip Adivar and Emine Sevgi Özdamar Write Back.” Seminar 41 (3): 209–25. Sieg, Katrin. 2002. Ethnic Drag: Performing Race, Nation, Sexuality in West Germany. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Shakespeare, William. [1683] 1951. “As You Like it.” In William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, edited by Peter Alexander, 254–83. London: Collins. Sharifi, Azadeh. 2011. “Postmigrantisches Theater: Eine neue Agenda für die deutschen Bühnen.” In Theater und Migration: Herausforderungen für Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis, edited by Wolfgang Schneider, 35–45. Bielefeld: transcript. Sontag Sontag. 1979. On Photography. London: Penguin. Stewart, Lizzie. 2013. “Countermemory and the (Turkish-)German Theatrical Archive: Reading the Documentary Remains of Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Karagöz in Alamania.” Transit 8 (2): 1–23 http://www.escholarship.org/ uc/item/0fq2m874. Stewart, Lizzie. 2016. “Ümmü in Alamania? Female Voice and Song in the Premiere Production of Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Karagöz in Alamania (1986).” Oxford German Studies 45 (3): 252–74. Tantow, Lutz. 1985. “‘Aber mit ein bißl einem guten Willen tät man sich schon verständigen können’: Aspekte des ‘Gastarbeiter’-Theaters in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und West-Berlin.” Info DaF 12 (3): 208–21. Tantow, Lutz. 1986. “Türkischer Eulenspiegel: ‘Karagöz in Alamania’ in Frankfurt uraufgeführt.” Saarbrücker Zeitung, 6 May. Accessed in holdings of Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt am Main.

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Teraoka, Arlene A. 1987. “Gastarbeiterliteratur: The Other Speaks Back.” Cultural Critique 7: 77–101. Theater heute. 1980. “Auf dem Eis, im Eis.” Theater heute 21 (3): 12–19. Triadafilopoulos, Triadafilos. 2012. Becoming Multicultural: Immigration and the Politics of Membership in Canada and Germany. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Verlag der Autoren. [1982/1982]. “Programmheft.” Advertising material for the publishing house. Accessed in the holdings of Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt am Main. Verlag der Autoren. 1991. “Programmheft: Stücke gegen Rassismus, Fremdenhass, Ausländerfeindlichkeit, Nationalismus.” Advertising material for publishing house, June edition. Accessed in the holdings of Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt am Main. Verlag der Autoren. 1992. “Sprachkurs Deutsch.” Advertising leaflet for publishing house. Accessed in the holdings of Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt am Main. Sterz, Peter, Marion Victor, and Klaus Völker. 1985/1986. “Erfahrungen mit Gegenwartsthemen und -stoffen: Drei Arbeitsberichte.” TheaterZeitSchrift 14: 60–66. Waszerka, Ingo. 2011. Personal Interview. Recklinghausen, 23 May. Wierschke, Annette. 1996. Schreiben als Selbstbehauptung: Kulturkonflikt und Identität in den Werken von Aysel Özakin, Alev Tekinay und Emine Sevgi Özdamar. Frankfurt am Main: IKO. Ye¸silada, Karin. 2012. Poesie der dritten Sprache: Türkisch-deutsche Lyrik der zweiten Generation. Tübingen: Stauffenburg.

Zaimoglu/Senkel/Shakespeare: Othello (2003) and the Turkish-German Rewrite

Zaimoglu/Senkel/Shakespeare As the shift from the 1980s to the early 2000s in the previous chapter suggests, in the 1990s, following the turbulence of the Wende and German unification, the “performance” of Turkish-German life-worlds took place largely in arenas other than the state-funded or mainstream theatre—those of literature, film, comedy and activist intervention. One of the most notable Turkish-German literary figures to emerge from this period apart from Emine Sevgi Özdamar was Feridun Zaimoglu, known as the enfant terrible of Turkish-German literature for the assertively antiassimilative stances of his early literary work. The performative aspect of his persona as author, as well as of his writing style, has, as noted in the “Introduction” chapter, drawn much attention, with his public readings often being characterised as performances themselves.1 While these readings may be performances in a broad sense, they were initially not theatre in the strict sense of the word. This was not

1 See Boran (2004, 302–303), Cheesman and Ye¸silada (2012, 4), Minnaard (2003, 16–22), Schmidt (2008, 197–202).

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to remain the case for long though. As debates about German citizenship filled the headlines of Germany’s newspapers, groups such as the activist network, Kanak Attak, of which Zaimoglu was for some time a member, emerged. Members of the network began to use agit-prop style theatrical techniques in their political work, as in the 2001 “OpelPitbullAutoput Revue”, part of the network’s first large-scale event, “Dieser Song gehört uns” (“This song belongs to us”) in which “the history and stories of migration was presented with a focus on the dynamic of the struggles which was central to Kanak Attak” (Heidenreich 2013, 349).2 In 2002 this was followed by a second large-scale event or congress, “Konkret Konkrass” (concrete concrass) this time within the space of the theatrical establishment: at the Volksbühne, Berlin and Schauspiel Frankfurt in Frankfurt am Main (ibid.).3 For Duygu Gürsel, “[t]his new scene, created through unexpected acts, was first and foremost a new discursive scene, aiming to break the hegemonic debate and empower a new perspective on anti-racism” (2012). At the same time, adaptations of Zaimoglu’s texts Kanak Sprak (1995) and Koppstoff (Headstuff 1998) began to make their way onto German stages keen to either engage with or be associated with the politics and energy of this new scene: namely those of the Kampnagel, Hamburg (1997), the Junges Theater Bremen (1998), the Nationaltheater Mannheim (1999), the Maxim Gorki theatre (2001) and the Westfälisches Landestheater (2003). While Kanak Attak and Zaimoglu would go their separate ways,4 this interest on the part of a range of theatres in Zaimoglu’s work and his growing profile as critical commentator eventually translated into opportunities for Zaimoglu to experiment with the role of playwright. In 2003 Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel, his friend and writing partner in his theatrical work, made their dramatic debut, when they were commissioned to write a new version of William Shakespeare’s Othello.5 The

2 “Geschichte und Geschichten der Migration mit dem für Kanak Attak zentralen Fokus auf die Dynamik der Kämpfe präsentiert”. 3 Heidenreich also highlights the 2003 performance “Le Show Papers Royal” as taking

place in SO 36 Berlin, the “go create resistance” at Schauspielhaus Hamburg (2004) and “Dönerstress” at the Präter, Berlin which was partially funded by the Hauptstadtkulturfond (2013, 349–50). See also El-Tayeb (2011, 122–28; 144–61). 4 For discussion of this see Cheesman (2002). 5 Later the same year Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Casino Leger (Casino Casual ) premiered at

Schauspiel Frankfurt (dir. Marlon Metzen) and their Ja. Tu es. Jetzt (Yes. Do it. Now)

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result was a controversial piece, which radically transformed Shakespeare’s words. The language of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s rewrites incorporated everything from paraphrases of contemporary political figures including the German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to “the streetwise lexicon of the sub-literate skinhead” (Chillington Rutter 2007, 49). Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Iago, for example, tells foul jokes about women and refers to Othello with a tirade of hate speech which plays off the N-word (Shakespeare et al. 2004, 37), while Rodrigo declares the plot to be “a psychothriller, man” (55).6 Tom Cheesman’s detailed analysis of the dramatic text has highlighted the range of registers used by the other main characters: “Brabantio’s diction is aristocratic, featuring recherché, French-derived vocabulary. Cassio speaks the smug jargon of a leftist intellectual” (2010, 208). However, it is the fouler and more extreme language highlighted above which appears to have stuck in reviewers’ ears, leading many to characterise the play as an exercise in scatology (see, e.g., Dengler 2003). The play premiered at Munich’s newly re-opened Kammerspiele in a two-hour production by Flemish director Luk Perceval. The staging was stark and bare, couched in what numerous reviews have referred to as a film noir or expressionist style. The casting was unusual for Germany in that Othello was played without make-up by white actor Thomas Thieme, while Emilia was played by the only Black cast member, Sheri Hagen.7 According to numerous reports, large numbers of audience members walked out of the premiere production before the play’s end, while others stayed in order to emphatically boo or cheer the result. A scandal was born—and has been the impulse for both scholarly interest and significant attention from the international theatrical community. The Kammerspiele production has since toured to Poland, Denmark, the UK, Holland, Lithuania and South Korea and the premiere production remained part of the repertoire at the Kammerspiele until it moved with director Luk Perceval to the Thalia Theater Hamburg in 2009. Further productions of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Othello script have also been put on at the Schauspiel Graz, Austria (dir. Christina Rast, 2008) and Theater der Keller, Cologne (dir. Stefan Nagel, 2011). premiered at Junges Theater Bremen (dir. Nomena Struß). These plays are published in Zaimoglu and Senkel (2004). 6 “‘n Amokthriller, Alter”. 7 Hagen is both an actress and since 2007 a film director with her own production

company, Equality Films.

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The controversy that Zaimoglu and Senkel’s Othello rewrite caused in 2003 was nothing new for Zaimoglu. He is best known for Kanak Sprak, a 1995 collection of angry young Turkish-German male voices, which aimed to reappropriate a derogatory term often used to refer to Turks in Germany, “Kanake”, as a term of radical empowerment.8 As part of a broader movement known as Kanak Attak, Zaimoglu’s texts and authorial “performances” had provocatively challenged concepts of inclusion in Germany based on ethnic origin (Cheesman 2007, 23; 28; Kanak Attak 1998).9 This early work has been referred to as “Allemannbeschimpfungen”, a neologism translatable as “verbal attacks on Germans”, but which as Cheesman points out also “evokes Peter Handke’s play Publikumsbeschimpfung [Offending the Audience]” (2007, 7, n. 27). An equation of audience with offended “Germans” and Zaimoglu with oppositional “ethnic” artist seemed to reach its culmination with the premiere of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Othello at the Münchner Kammerspiele in 2003. It certainly offered a ready model for understanding the dynamics at work there for many critics. Thus, Gad Kaynar suggests that: Through such means of vandalizing an icon of “high” European culture, Zaimoglu appropriates and colonizes the symbolic capital of his implied spectators. […] The translation of Othello, rather than affirming an updated conception of Shakespeare, subverts the classical notion of the play that is inextricably bound with a phenomenological model of a hierarchical cosmic order (and, if you wish, German middle class Law and Order). (2011, 235)

8 This was followed by Koppstoff (the title is roughly translatable as “head material” or “head stuff”); cf. Dickinson et al. 2008, 1) in 1998, a collection similar in style but offering female perspectives. In 1998, extracts from Kanak Sprak and Koppstoff were performed by actors from the Junges Theater Bremen as a telegenic example of Zaimoglu’s work on a television debate involving the author (see Cheesman 2007, 1– 11). This programme can be viewed online under the title “Feridun Zaimo˘glu vs. Heide Simonis” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrV7adgbcMc and http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=Redlbxp0284 [both last accessed 17 July 2014]. 9 On the political performances and interventions staged by Kanak Attak in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a group see El-Tayeb (2011, 122–28; 144–61), and on their Kanak TV in particular see Göktürk (2009) and Breger (2015). Zaimoglu’s relationship to Kanak Attak, which formed in 1998, appears to have come to an end in 1999 over his use of the name in the title of a film amongst other differences (Cheesman 2002, 192).

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Here Zaimoglu is set up in othered opposition to “European” high culture. Indeed, Kaynar also claims that Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Othello “manifested the otherness of migrating populations as experienced by the dramaturge himself” (226).10 Certainly, Othello has often been turned to in postcolonial theatre and as a means to work through race relations in the UK and American contexts (cf. Kolin 2002). As the Nigerian writer Ben Okri points out, even “[i]f Othello is not a play about race, then its history has made it one” (quoted in Iyengar 2002, 103). An emphasis on the oppositional nature of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s rewrite in the academic reception of this play is therefore perhaps unsurprising and echoes Petra Fachinger’s reading of Zaimoglu’s earlier work, Kanak Sprak, as a rewrite with parallels to a postcolonial tradition of “writing back” to a hegemonic centre (2001, 5–10; 98–11; see also Ye¸silada 2001). For many of the UK-based Shakespeare critics who saw the production on tour at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works Festival in 2006, the emphasis on Zaimoglu as Turkish-German anti-racism activist in the RSC programme led to curiosity and “wild surmises” about the play’s original context. Director of the Shakespeare Institute, Michael Dobson, for example, speculates somewhat facetiously: The adaptor is of Turkish extraction, so are the grotesques which he is putting through a vastly simplified version of the plot of Othello intended as an angry outsider’s satire on the attitudes of white Germany? How offensive did this show seem in Munich, and was its offensiveness purposely designed to shock a complacent bourgeoisie out of their prejudices, or does Zaimoglu just genuinely suffer from a virulent dramaturgical equivalent of Tourette’s syndrome? […] [I]t would be just as possible to hypothesize that the Münchner Kammerspiele’s regular audience must consist of baying Neo-Nazis as to picture an auditorium full of anxious and masochistic liberals. (2007, 287)11

10 The dramaturge for the premiere production was actually Marion Tiedke not Zaimoglu. 11 These questions are also raised in a more earnest and reflective manner in Christian M. Billing’s review (2007, 198 n. 2). Such questions remain open partly because while English-language Shakespeare scholars have thus far concentrated on the play in performance, those with access to German have mainly addressed the play as dramatic text and translation.

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While Dobson is clearly being polemical here, the aggrieved and aggravated tone used and the crude stereotypes he invokes illuminate the frustrated expectations of a UK audience in the face of a production which allows them to read neither Shakespeare nor Germany in terms of pre-scripted ideas.12 The presence of vulgar or extreme language and a desire to discomfort the audience are in fact far from unusual on Germany’s most prestigious and influential stages. Handke’s original Publikumsbeschimpfung (Offending the Audience) dates from 1966 and productions of work by British playwrights of the “In-Yer-Face” wave, such as Mark Ravenhill and Sarah Kane, are extremely popular in Germany: indeed the pose of provocation is often considered a defining feature of German theatre in other countries.13 While a section of the German middle class present on the night of the premiere and at subsequent performances was clearly provoked, “Law and Order” remained very much in place. The cast and other guests proceeded to the theatre’s restaurant “to celebrate the scandal” (Seidenberg 2003),14 which was to assure the play cult status. Critics who reviewed the premiere were also considerably less divided than the reactions they reported. Almost all saw the production as a success aesthetically, and while the less enthusiastic identified the language of the play as a weakness (see, e.g., von Becker 2003), others considered this a strong contribution (e.g. Tholl 2003). The very white casting, the references to George Bush and Condoleezza Rice in the advance publicity for the play and the lack of any reference to Turkish or even German culture in the sparse aesthetic of the premiere production further actively worked against the creation of parallels between the world of the play under Perceval’s direction and a specific instance of racialized relations in contemporary Germany. Indeed, between 1995 and 2003 the sociopolitical context for Zaimoglu’s writing and his own self-positioning as an author had changed significantly. German citizenship law was reformed in 2000, shifting from a 12 Although not with respect to this play, Kidnie highlights that the heritage context

of the RSC can lead to particularly adverse reactions to more adventurous Shakespeare productions (2009, 45–64). 13 The fact that Perceval’s production began with the actor playing Brabantio slowly taking off his clothes is seen by Michael Dobson as “the perfect comic undergraduate parody of every cliché […] of modern German theatre” (2007, 287). 14 “um den Skandal zu feiern”.

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basis of jus sanguinis to jus soli. Although in its wake naturalisation procedures were to tighten up and new ways of discursively marking difference were to emerge (cf. Harper 2011), as subsequent chapters of this book will show, the terrain on which politicised interventions around political and artistic representation in the Federal Republic took place shifted correspondingly. As Frauke Matthes points out, Zaimoglu’s development as an established novelist via the “rewriting” of traditional German genres since Kanak Sprak has concomitantly been a process of emphatic inscription of the author within German literature (2011, 222; 2015). Zaimoglu’s self-identification with the German Romantic movement has been particularly pronounced at points in this process, particularly in the early- to mid-2000s, leading Michael Hofmann to elevate him from childish enfant terrible to dashing “Romantic Rebel” (2012, 241).15 As will be seen in the discussion of the translation strategy adopted later in this chapter, this Romanticism with a capital “R” plays an important role in understanding Zaimogu/Senkel’s approach to the text, and positions this in relation to the tradition of Shakespeare translations by Romantic writers in the German context. Correspondingly, Zaimoglu, together with Senkel, arguably stages a very different type of intervention as a more established cultural figure in 2003 than that created by his earlier works. Rather than simply setting Zaimoglu/Senkel and their rewrite of Othello in racialized or ethnicized opposition to a supposed European high culture, then, in this chapter I move away from a reading which maintains the writer’s role as “protestant ethnic”. This is a term developed by Rey Chow to characterise the manner in which contemporary constructions of “the ethnic” often place this figure in the “position of a captive, whose salvation lies in resistance and protest”. As Chow argues, paradoxically this creates a situation in which ethnicised subjects are: by logic, people who must continue to act as victims – to protest and struggle continually for what has been stolen from them – for the entire world to see. […] In this context, to be ethnic is to protest – but perhaps less for actual emancipation of any kind than for the benefits of worldwide visibility, currency, and circulation. (2002, 48)

15 For a detailed discussion of Zaimoglu’s relationship to the German Romantic movement, see Hofmann (2012), Littler (2012), and Twist (2014).

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In what follows I focus on the dynamics of social scripting present not only in Zaimoglu/Senkel’s text, but also in the commissioning of the translation and the aesthetics of the world premiere. In doing so I sketch out the alliances made with members of the theatrical establishment in Germany such as the director of this premiere Luk Perceval, and historical playwrights such as Shakespeare himself. While such positioning brings with it the benefits of visibility which Chow notes above, exploring this as part of a structural tension also allows a move away from a reading which positions Zaimoglu as Othello to one which aligns him with Shakespeare: producer rather than object of representation. This approach also allows for an examination of the rewrite as a particularly practical way of establishing oneself as a playwright within the German theatrical environment. Since the success of Othello, Zaimoglu and Senkel have produced at least twenty-three dramatic texts for both the larger state-supported theatres and smaller independent theatre groups across Germany. Of these, almost half have been rewrites of classics of the German stage. As the first of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s commissions for the theatre to be premiered, their Othello also provides an interesting example of another mode of entry into the theatrical establishment than that of Özdamar. In the final section of this chapter, I analyse their success in this area, commenting in particular on the reception of their equally controversial Hamlet . I compare this success with that of other TurkishGerman theatre practitioners in the 2000s, such as Nurkan Erpulat and Nuran David Calis. As will be seen there, Calis and Erpulat also make use of the rewrite or adaptation to different ends in plays such as Erpulat’s Crazy Blood (Verrücktes Blut ), a rewrite of both Schiller’s The Robbers (Die Räuber) and of the French film The Day of the Skirt (La Journée de la Lupe), and David Calis’ reworked Spring’s Awakening (Frühlings Erwachen).16 Here I will ask what limits and possibilities are involved for Turkish-German playwrights in entering the theatrical establishment via rewriting rather than “new writing”, i.e. through a rework of existing play scripts that carry their own symbolic and cultural capital. Broadening out from an exploration of the tensions between a turn away from Zaimoglu’s association with Kanak Sprak and the insistent return to Zaimoglu’s ethnic identity as a category of interpretation, this final 16 Further subsequent examples would include Necati Öziri’s The Engagement in San Domingo—A Contradiction (Die Verlobung in San Domingo—Ein Widerspruch, 2019) which sets Öziri “against Kleist”.

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section will explore the ways in which tensions over the right to rescript run through the commission and production of the subsequent rewrites on a larger scale.

Offending the Audience: The Playwright as “Protestant Ethnic”? As Margaret Jane Kidnie points out in her introduction to her work on Shakespeare adaptation in Anglophone performance, a particularly moralistic vocabulary is frequently used in the process of “fidelity criticism”, i.e. the process of critics positioning a certain production in relation to their image of “the work” (2009, 22). Arguably this is still more the case when a double adaptation involving both free translation and performance is at work, as is the case with the premiere production of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Othello. Here I want to begin by exploring the intersection between this vocabulary and that produced by Zaimoglu/Senkel for their new Othello script, in order to set this intersection in the context of the play’s commission. As we have seen, Zaimoglu’s ethnicity and his authorial persona appear to have shaped the reception of his and Senkel’s Othello in very concrete ways in the academic context. A degree of mimetic and simultaneously moral measurement appears to be at work there. In contrast, the initial contemporary reviews of the Munich premiere focused on the audience’s relationship to the source text rather than to the playwright: while some reviews characterised the Munich production as “the adulteration of a classic”17 and “false advertising” (Weber 2003),18 others referred to it as “pure Shakespeare” (Altmann 2003).19 Kidnie, who has worked extensively on Shakespeare adaptations (as opposed to new translations) in the UK context, has suggested that audiences have two main reactions to a new production of a classic work: An encounter with an instance of dramatic production prompts one either to find a place for it within an already-existing conception of a dramatic work (or to make a place for it, if necessary, by adjusting one’s expectations

17 “Klassikerverhunzung”. 18 “Etikettenschwindel”. 19 “Shakespeare pur”.

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of the work), or to identify it as a first encounter with what seems, in one’s own experience and according to one’s own historically and culturally contingent criteria, a new work. (2009, 32; emphasis in original)

As the reviews quoted above and the reports of audience reactions to the first few performances in Munich suggest, the degree to which audiences at the world premiere were willing to accept or exclude this Othello from their conception of the work varied wildly. The reasons for this can be illustrated by a closer look at the commissioning context. Careful attention to available sources shows that the impetus for Zaimoglu and Senkel’s rewrite of Othello came from the side of the theatre rather than from Zaimoglu himself. The director of the premiere, Luc Perceval, and his lead actor Thomas Thieme had formed a close working relationship through previous projects, and the decision to rewrite Othello originated not with Zaimoglu as “oppositional” figure but partly with a desire to have Thieme play the part (Tiedke 2004b, 144). Rather than using one of the existing German-language translations, it was decided to commission a new translation as Perceval and his team were dissatisfied with the existing translations of Othello into German: these either obscured key aspects of the play through an overly literal approach to translation or were considered too heavily influenced by the context in which they emerged (Tiedke 2004b, 122). As Tom Hoenselaars points out with respect to Perceval’s earlier productions, this is not unusual practice in the Low Countries. The multi-lingual background of many directors there and the expense involved in obtaining the copyright for a contemporary translation combine to make the use of the director’s own translation or the commission of a new translation particularly attractive (2004, 87–88). Cheesman, Ana Calero Valera and more recently Christine Nilsson outline in detail the differences between the resultant dramatic text of Zaimoglu and Senkel’s Othello and that of Shakespeare’s Othello in terms of plot, character and language used. While in many sections of the resultant text Shakespeare’s words are matched approximately phrase for phrase, sentiment for sentiment, in others Zaimoglu/Senkel’s rendition deviates wildly from the content and language of the standard editions. Cheesman thus identifies between eighty per cent (2010, 208) and ninety per cent (2009, 22) of the rewrite as “based on Shakespeare’s text”. As Calero Valera highlights, these changes range from very minor semantic differences within certain lines to the inclusion of modern prejudices

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about Black culture, such as an association with drugs in Brabantio’s assumption that Othello has drugged Desdemona in order to marry her (2010, 409). The structure of the play is also altered significantly in the process. At some points, such as the beginning of Act II, fully new text is inserted—an eloquent monologue by Othello on his love for Desdemona (Cheesman 2010, 216; Shakespeare et al. 2004, 40–41), for example. At others, both minor and major scenes present in the Othello quarto and folio are cut altogether.20 Characters such as Emilia and Bianca are condensed into one, new, Emilia; Iago kills both Cassio and Rodrigo; and the action stops with Othello’s murder of Desdemona rather than carrying on until Othello’s own suicide (cf. Calero Valera 2010, 408–11; Cheesman 2010, 211, Nilsson 2018, 532–33). As a result, although some of Shakespeare’s ambiguities are resolved or given a particular interpretation, Zaimoglu’s own literary input means that new ambiguities also flow into the text (cf. Calero Valera 2010, 410). At the same time Zaimoglu also highlights that the alteration in the number of characters had much to do with Perceval: “From the beginning then Luk Perceval wanted to get rid of the figure of Bianca and enhance the role of Emilia in the adaptation” (quoted in Tiedke, 2004b, 132).21 Similarly, while the director Luk Perceval also liaised with Zaimoglu and Senkel during the writing process, in my interview with Zaimoglu from 2012 he explained that the playwrights themselves were little involved in the rehearsals and production developed from their text. This is particularly important to bear in mind as the uneven nature of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s rewrite means that how it is cut for performance will partly determine how close or far from the “original” the performance, perceived by the audience as “the play”, will be.22 At the same time, the 20 None of the articles to draw comparisons between Zaimoglu and Senkel’s Othello and the “original” explain which folio they take as their point of comparison. In my 2012 interview with Zaimoglu he was unable to remember which English-language edition he and Senkel had used as the primary basis for their translation. In my own comparisons between the Zaimoglu/Senkel Othello and that of Shakespeare, I made use of the Arden edition (Shakespeare 2001). 21 “Luk Perceval wollte deshalb von Anfang an die Figur Bianca streichen und zugleich die Figur Emilia in der Bearbeitung aufwerten”. 22 This also affects the extent to which the excellent close readings which exist of the dramatic text apply to an analysis of the performance. Unless noted otherwise all quotations from the published text used in this chapter were also present in the Kammerspiele/Thalia production.

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overt and direct interventions/alterations by Zaimoglu and Senkel in the source text render the duo very “visible” as translators or rewriters in Lawrence Venuti’s sense of the word (Venuti 1995, 1–42).23 The rewrite was also commissioned during a period of upheaval for the theatre at which it premiered. From 1983 to 2001 the Kammerspiele had been led by Dieter Dorn, a director particularly well-known for his very “faithful” renderings of classic texts such as those of Shakespeare.24 Following a decision taken by Julian Nida-Rümelin, then Head of the Municipal Department of Arts & Culture of Munich, Dorn was replaced in 2001 by the younger and more experimental director Frank Baumbauer. According to a review by cultural journalist Katja Werner for the Berlin-based newspaper Freitag, this context played an important role in the controversy surrounding the Othello premiere. Werner characterises Nida-Rümelin’s move as “a programmatic decision for contemporary theatre and against unassailable classicism” (2003).25 In response, the CSU politician and head of the Bavarian Ministry for Science, Research and Art, Hans Zehetmair, then hired Dorn as head of the Münchner Staatstheater, retaining his style of theatre for Munich and constituting a direct challenge to Baumbauer only a few doors down at the Kammerspiele (ibid.). At the same time the Kammerspiele building itself, a Jugendstil theatre built in 1901, was closed for three years of costly renovations. While the Kammerspiele’s official reopening ceremony was consciously placed a few days earlier than the Othello premiere, numerous reviews link the two (e.g. Müry 2014; Bugdahl 2003), reflecting the fact that the two occasions were closely associated by the Munich theatre-going community.

23 Kaynar describes the piece as “explicitly translated” (2011, 236). Indeed, the text points to its own status as “rewrite” not only via the significant changes it makes to the plot and characters, but also via the insertion of self-referential lines absent from any version of the “original” Shakespeare such as Rodrigo’s despairing cry: “If things carry on like this I’m going to freak out and become a shitting poet” (“Wenn’s so weiter geht dreh ich durch, un werd n Scheiß Poet”; Shakespeare et al. 2004, 27). This line does not appear in the cut of the script used in the world premiere, however, which further condensed and adapted Zaimoglu and Senkel’s rewrite to form the basis for a striking two-hour performance. 24 Dorn had also been a director there since 1976. 25 “[e]ine programmatische Entscheidung für zeitgenössisches Theater und gegen

unangreifbaren Klassizismus”.

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Fig. 1 Othello, in a version by Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel, dir by Luk Perceval (2003) (Stage Design by Katrin Brack. Photograph © Andreas Pohlmann)

Certainly, the contrast between the concern with heritage performed by the restoration of the building of the Kammerspiele and the antimuseal gesture performed by the mise-en-scène of the new Othello could hardly have been greater (cf. May 2003). The black, sparse stage with its evocation of 1920s expressionism or seedy 1940s dives (see Fig. 1) created a cold atmosphere on stage which contrasted starkly with the golden proscenium arch and pastel-coloured Jugendstil embellishments of the building which framed it. As reviewer Peter Michalzik pointed out, the black-box staging also formed a stark contrast to Dorn’s typical white wonderlands: as a result, a use of black-box staging “which in other contexts wouldn’t be particularly remarkable, appears here as the struggle between two principles” (2003).26 This tension seems to have been further played on by Wolfgang Pregler’s Iago, the most foul-mouthed of

26 “[w]as anderswo nicht weiter auffällt, erscheint hier als Kampf zweier Prinzipien”.

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all the characters in Zaimoglu/Senkel’s rewrite. In the premiere production, Pregler/Iago repeatedly leaned against the golden proscenium arch surrounding the black stage, so highlighting not only the boundary between the world of the stage and the world of the audience, but also the contrast between the aesthetics of the staged production and those of the theatre building itself (Perceval 2003; also remarked on in reviews, see Seidler 2003, Schütt 2003). The very different attitudes which Dorn and Baumbauer had to theatre, and the effect of this on the commission and reception of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Othello, can be further illustrated through a brief comparison between the translations used for the Shakespeare productions under their leadership. Dorn’s preferred translator of Shakespeare, Michael Wachsmann, aimed to produce translations, “which were orientated as closely as possible – as far as that can in fact be said for a translation – towards the original” (Poppek 2009, 15).27 The fidelity to the words of the original text aimed at in Wachsmann’s translations was mirrored in the directing style Dorn favoured. In an interview in 1997, Dorn characterised his vision of the Münchner Kammerspiele under his leadership as follows: “a theatre for directors who stage the play (that is to say neither their own obsessions nor a commentary)” (Dorn, quoted in Poppek 2009, 24).28 Dorn followed this approach consistently during his time as Intendant and as a result gained a reputation for “Werktreue”, or fidelity to the text. In contrast, Luk Perceval’s earlier Shakespeare productions have been characterised by an “admiration for Shakespeare [which] produces a need to destroy the sacrosanct image that Shakespearomantics [sic] have been constructing since the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth century” (Hoenselaars 2004, 96). Similarly Zaimoglu, the rewriter then commissioned by Perceval, summarises his own attitude to the source text as follows: I hate fidelity to the original like the plague. When a text gives off high and holy miasmas, that actually drives me to really go to town on it. I want to have the people in front of me, I want to understand the story, and what is 27 “die sich möglichst eng – soweit das überhaupt von einer Übersetzung gesagt werden kann – am Original orientierten”. 28 “Ein Theater für Regisseure, die das Stück inszenieren (also weder ihre Obsessionen noch einen Kommentar)”.

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in the original doesn’t interest me in terms of the literal words, but rather in terms of the sense. […] I reworked it significantly as I had understood the history/story. (Zaimoglu in Tiedke 2004b, 123; also quoted in Calero Valera 2010, 408; Cheesman 2010, 210)29

The invocation of religious imagery via words such as “sacrosanct” and “holy miasmas” in both Zaimoglu’s and Perceval’s case suggests a shared preference for an iconoclastic approach to Shakespeare.30 While for Wachsmann and Dorn the exact and individual words of the original constitute its meaning, Zaimoglu here chooses to draw a distinction between the words and the meaning of the Shakespeare text. Although an attempt to stay true to a canonised and sanctified “original” is vehemently rejected, the fact that Zaimoglu’s understanding of the “real” meaning of the text, and the text’s own roots in the adaptation of an older story, is used to justify his own authority as rewriter, suggests a form of being “true” to the “spirit” of the original still has a role to play here. This Romantic approach to the spirit of the text situates the text in a particularly German translation tradition.31 Eighteenth-century thinkers Friedrich Gottlieb Kloppstock and Johann Gottfried Herder, for example, “invested the ‘spirit’ of the original with the ultimate authority”, as did August Wilhelm Schlegel’s Shakespeare translations (Kittel and Poltermann 1998, 422). According to Perceval, the Schlegel-Tieck translation was often cited as the “original” by members of the audience in post-show discussions. Perceval himself sees this translation as a “toothless version”32 of Shakespeare’s work, explaining in our 2012 interview: “Shakespeare was a provocateur, he distorted the story [of Giraldi Cinthio’s novella Gli Hecatommithi (1565)]. He was a people’s author. He played with 29 “Ich hasse Originaltreue wie die Pest. Dass ein Text hoch und heilige Miasmen ausströmt, das peitscht mich eher an, dem Text den Garaus zu machen. Ich will die Menschen vor mir haben, ich will die Geschichte verstehen, und was im Original steht, das interessiert mich nicht vom Wortlaut her sondern vom Sinn. […] [I]ch [habe] den Acker umgepflügt, denn ich hatte die Geschichte verstanden”. 30 Hoenselaars also refers to Perceval as iconoclastic (2004, 97). In the literary context,

iconoclasm in Zaimoglu’s prose work is also discussed by Adelson (2005, 104). 31 Tom Cheesman argues that Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Othello breaks with a long history of German translations in its approach to the language of race within the text (2009, 23–27). While this may be the case, I suggest here that it does so by engaging with German translation traditions in approach. 32 “verharmloste Version”.

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provocation”.33 Interestingly, the same description could equally apply to Zaimoglu. Rather than Zaimoglu’s ascribed “otherness” becoming a way into that of Othello, here it is his pose as author which becomes a way into re-reading Shakespeare. Zaimoglu/Senkel’s translation thus simultaneously breaks the text free from the letter of the original, but embraces the spirit of a Romantic approach to translation. The mise-en-scène is also significant in terms of the premiere production’s self-positioning in relation to the “original”. Centre stage were two large pianos, one black piano standing over an upturned white one (see Fig. 1). The black piano was played throughout by Jens Thomas, a musician known for his jazz style, who apparently improvised his soundtrack anew every night.34 A key aspect of the performance was thus constantly being “rescripted” each evening, drawing attention to the production’s indefinite status. In our interview Perceval explained that this created space for the production to develop over time: “after three, four years, in which they had performed it continuously, the actors became more and more free […] and also reacted more musically to the text” (2012).35 The pianos themselves function similarly in Katrin Brack’s stage design, creating an associative quality in which “the constant visual citation was a black ram tupping a white ewe” (Chillington Rutter 2007, 50).36 While an established idea of Othello is cited or forms the basis for the rewrite and play in production, both riff on this freely and self-consciously. The initial audience responses can thus be situated in a particular discussion about theatre in Munich, which in turn relates to a broader and long-running argument in German theatre as to whether the dramatic text

33 “Shakespeare war ein Provocateur, hat die Geschichte verfälscht. Das war ein Volksautor. Er hat gespielt mit der Provokation”. 34 The role of jazz in the production is also significant. The production in fact toured not only to international Shakespeare festivals, but also to the 2008 Copenhagen jazz festival and Luk Perceval’s production of Othello is mentioned in a chapter on Shakespeare and Jazz (Sanders 2007, 26). As Sanders also notes elsewhere, in postcolonial Othello rewrites such as Harlem Duet, jazz is also invoked as a part of Black heritage (33). Billing, who provides a detailed description of Jens Thomas’ music in his review, argues that the German context where Jazz was often whitewashed alters the way in which this music signifies (2007, 198, n. 6). 35 “nach drei, vier Jahre, wo sie das immer gespielt haben, sind die Schauspieler immer freier […] und auch immer musikalischer mit dem Text [geworden]”. 36 Shakespeare’s Iago uses this phrase in Act I, scene i, and the line is retained in Zaimoglu and Senkel’s version of the dramatic text (Shakespeare et al. 2004, 9).

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should be the basis for a production or whether the director’s vision and the potential of performance should take priority. Not only did the play open the newly restored Münchner Kammerspiele, it consciously made a statement as to the future of that theatre’s artistic direction. Baumbauer’s own comments in interviews strongly suggest that his move with this play was no less programmatic than his own appointment by Nida-Rümelin: We offered this play to Luk [Perceval] for the opening precisely in order to carry on a particular more recent tradition which this house has cultivated with Shakespeare. When the radicalism of Feridun Zaimoglu und Günter Senkel’s reworked version for this Othello was then added to this, we became aware that through this a new positioning of the theatre, a positioning along the lines that we wished for, would be very clearly expressed. (Baumbauer, quoted in Irmer 2005, 209)37

The intention was that the audience members displaced from their familiar seats in the Kammerspiele by the long renovations which the theatre had undergone “would not return to something safe and familiar” (ibid.).38 Although the “new” Othello presented by Baumbauer, Perceval, Zaimoglu and Senkel in Munich was subject to criticism then, this had as much to do with the attitude to the Shakespeare material displayed via the cutting of scenes and the production’s visual aesthetics as it did with the language itself. In fact, despite being repeatedly referred to as shocking, the foulest points of the script drew several laughs at the premiere as documented in an in-house audiovisual recording of the first performance (Perceval 2003). This recording also shows the final distribution of the muchreported boos and applause more clearly. While little apart from general applause can be heard during the actors’ curtain calls, it is when the director and authorial team join them on stage that the booing can

37 “Wir trugen Luk dieses Stück zur Eröffnung an, gerade auch um eine besondere, jüngere Tradition, die dieses Haus mit Shakespeare pflegt, fortzusetzen. Als dann die Radikalität von Feridun Zaimoglu und Günter Senkels Bearbeitung für diesen Othello hinzukam, wurde uns bewusst, dass dadurch eine neue Positionierung des Theaters, wie wir sie uns wünschten, deutlich zum Ausdruck kommen würde”. 38 “nicht mehr in ihre Vertrautheit zurückkehren würden”. According to Werner’s review, the reactions of the audience at the premiere can be seen as “a final rebellion against the loss of the comfortably familiar, the recognizable” (“eine letzte Rebellion gegen den Verlust des Wohlvertrauten, Wiedererkennbaren”: Werner 2003).

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be heard clearly over the continuing applause (see also Kaiser 2003). The displeasure of a section of the audience was clearly reserved for the approach taken rather than the quality of its execution. Returning to reviewers’ reception of the Zaimoglu/Senkel rewrite of Othello, the wildly differing statements about how “true” to Shakespeare’s original the rewrite and its staging are in the reviews of the premiere production, can thus be read as signs of either support for or condemnation of the new direction being taken by the theatre.39 Both the commissioning of the play and the emphatic audience reactions recorded in reviews of the premiere can themselves be understood as performative contributions to a discussion of what theatre in Munich should be. Correspondingly, Zaimoglu’s own role in the dynamics of rewriting Othello in 2003 can be figured as a very different type of intervention than that created by his earlier work Kanak Sprak. As already noted, Petra Fachinger has read Zaimoglu’s Kanak Sprak as a contribution “to dismantling traditional notions of what constitutes ‘German literature’ through abrogation and appropriation” (Fachinger 2001, 111). This earlier writing back was in response to a particular context of political exclusion of Turkish-Germans from the German nation-state. While those political issues were far from resolved by 2003, a close examination of the dynamics surrounding the controversial Othello rewrite suggests that in contrast to his early work, Zaimoglu is not using the rewrite here to align himself with a particular ethnicized or political group. A focus on the genesis of the literal script, and its relationship to social and symbolic scripts surrounding Shakespeare, Zaimoglu and the Kammerspiele in Munich, rather reveals a destruction of a false image of Shakespeare as a broader concern of the rewrite.40 This rewrite thus also functions to identify Zaimoglu with other transnational avant-garde artists such as Luk Perceval; its iconoclastic attitude signals not necessarily 39 As a point of comparison, the second German production of the play, a piece directed by Stefan Nagel for off-scene theatre Theater der Keller in Cologne, provoked nothing like the same degree of controversy. The association of off-scene theatres with less bourgeois audiences may well have had a role to play here, however, the marketing of the play may also have made a difference. While the world premiere had positioned itself firmly within the Shakespeare matrix, the Theater der Keller production appeared as part of the theatre’s programme for a season exploring adaptations of stage classics. 40 While Cheesman positions the iconoclasm at work in the play as one issuing from Zaimoglu’s idiosyncratic relationship to the Muslim faith (2010, 214), there is little to link Zaimoglu’s own faith to the character of Othello within the rewritten text.

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or solely a symbolic and politicised gesture of appropriation by a minority author, but rather a process of intervention in artistic practices within a particular locality.

Othello in Performance at the Kammerspiele: Casting and Coercive Mimeticism That is not to say that themes of racialization, integration and assimilation are not present in the premiere production. Rather, moving beyond a focus on the author’s biography as lens through which to understand both dramatic text and resultant performance, allows the presence of these themes, alongside themes of corruption, loneliness and masculinity, to be addressed in a more nuanced way, and to re-address statements such as the following: on the one hand, the production emphasized Schoko’s41 ostensibly perfect assimilation […] On the other hand, however, this approach also emphasized the protagonist’s and the other figures’ awareness that his whiteness is but a histrionic mask for the part that he acts on the void, heterotopic, barren, imagistic stage, of his exploitation by white society as Gastarbeiter (guest worker) or hired army general; Zaimoglu seems to see no difference. (Kaynar 2011, 235)

The mimetic trap of being “not quite/not white” (cf. Bhabha 1994, 86) which Kaynar appears to identify here is one I will explore further in the following analysis not just of the dramatic text, but also of the world premiere as performance. I will argue, however, that Zaimoglu and Senkel do mark this difference, and that the way in which this figures in the premiere production in fact takes us far beyond a simplistic conflation of Turkish-German playwright and racialized main character.42 The complex 41 “Schoko” (Choco) is used as a nickname for Othello by other characters in this rewrite. 42 Nilsson also discusses Othello as “transcultural subject” in relation to the postmonolingual paradigm not only on the basis of the character’s arrival in Venice but also with respect to the interweaving of what she terms Judeo-Christian and Islamic myths in his speeches within the play-text (2018, 543–46). Some of Nilsson’s points about the use of racialized language in the play may overlap with my own here, however as Nilsson had access to my 2014 doctoral dissertation during the preparation of her article, I do not reference her at those particular points.

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nature of the iconoclasm at work here can thus also be seen when we move beyond a construction of Othello as iconoclastic Turk and take a closer look at the scripts of behaviour laid out for Othello as character in the premiere production. As already noted, the position of Othello, an army general, in the play does not map directly on to that of contemporary Gastarbeiter and lies still further from mapping on to the figure of a second-generation immigrant in Germany. While Calero Valera identifies the use of contemporary reference points purely as a way of modernising the play (2010, 409), Billing identifies the linguistic references from contemporary racism, European colonialism, Nazism, and Shakespeare’s day as creating instead a certain co-temporality. This leads to “a historically indeterminate effect in which audiences are made to understand that the racial horrors that were supposed to be left in the past persist in the present” (2007, 189) or in Nilsson’s words “a form of racialization that brings to the linguistic surface what monolingualism represses: Germany’s racist past” (2018, 529). What all of the movements highlighted by Billing might be said to share is the privileging of a certain version of reality to the benefit of one group in society and to the detriment or danger of the “others” this discourse fixes on. Within Kanak Sprak and Zaimoglu’s earlier work language was used as a tool in the service of a rebellion against the place in German society assigned to second- or third-generation migrant youth, but it was not an explicit theme of the monologues in itself (Yildiz 2004, 320). Here, however, the emphasis shifts, and the power of discourse to shape reality becomes a theme. One character in particular stands out in this regard: “Zaimoglu’s adaptation gave spectators an Othello hijacked to Iago’s point of view, rendered in his limited but relentless pornographic vocabulary” (Chillington Rutter 2007, 52). Notably, while Zaimoglu’s early works carved a reputation as the previously unheard literary voice of a certain “Kanakster” sub-culture, a fact critics are clearly aware of and use to try to situate their reactions, in Shakespeare criticism Iago is commonly considered as “the voice of ‘common sense,’ the ceaseless repetition of the always-already ‘known,’ the culturally ‘given’” (Stallybrass, quoted in Kolin 2002, 25). Indeed, in his exploration of “white self-fashioning” in Shakespeare’s Othello, Peter Erickson points out that “the overt racial prejudice” of not only Iago, but also Brabantio and Rodrigo, suggests that the views expressed by Iago are “not an isolated aberration in an otherwise unprejudiced

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white society” (2002, 137). Rather than articulating the view of a particular sub-culture, then, Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Iago can be considered to be voicing an underlying normative discourse. This can be seen very clearly by looking at the language shared by Iago and Zaimoglu’s earlier Kanaksters. The word “human trash” (“Menschenmüll”) appears in reference to ethnicized figures in both texts, for example. In Zaimoglu’s Kanak Sprak the poet Memet uses this word to claim an alternative challenging, yet inclusive, position outside of the mainstream: “they are human trash […]. That’s why they are Kanaki, that’s why I’m a Kanak, that’s why you’re a Kanak. We are bastards, friend” (1995, 110).43 In Iago’s mouth, the same words become purely negative. Having manipulated Rodrigo into an attack on Cassio as part of his plan to bring down Othello, he declares: “Human trash needs to be used. High-level recycling” (Shakespeare et al. 2004, Act II, Scene ii, 21).44 The violence implicit in his statement becomes clear when, having used Rodrigo to dispatch Cassio, Iago himself does the same for Rodrigo (Act IV, Scene I, 110–13).45 Alexander Altmann, reviewing the premiere for the Bayerische Staatszeitung, reads the language used in the rewrite as a sign of contemporary spiritual degradation: These man-machines of flesh and blood live in a world of appearances and pressure to be seen. Pretence has become their deadly second nature. […] What we see there is our tragedy. A reality, in which authenticity is replaced by poses. (2003)46

Indeed, several reviews refer to the “poison of the word”47 in the production (see, e.g., DPA 2003): that this poison is specifically Iago’s is

43 “sie sind Menschenmüll […]. Deshalb sind sie kanaken, deshalb bin ich ein kanake, deshalb bist du ein kanake. Wir sind bastarde, freund”. 44 “Menschenmüll braucht Verwendung. Recycling auf hohem Niveau”. 45 In the cut of the script used in the premiere production, this is shifted to Act IV,

Scene ii. 46 “Diese Menschen-Automaten aus Fleisch und Blut leben in einer Welt des Scheins und Scheinmüssens. Die Verstellung ist ihnen zur tödlichen Natur geworden […] Was wir da sehen ist unsere Tragödie. Eine Wirklichkeit, in der Authentizität durch Posen ersetzt ist”. 47 “Giftspur des Wortes”.

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particularly clear in the distribution of the most vulgar language of the play. As Cheesman notes, Othello initially speaks “an elevated German with touches of archaic syntax” (2010, 208). It is only from Act III that his language begins to descend to the level of Iago’s.48 Notably this also signals the point at which Othello takes on Iago’s world view. In the following scenes Iago’s words, re-voiced by Othello, degrade the Desdemona the audience still sees as innocent girl-child from “sugar-lips”49 (Shakespeare et al. 2004, Act III, Scene i, 34) to “dirty whore”50 (Act IV, Scene ii, 62). In Luk Perceval’s production this process was also emphasised via the blocking. In Act II, scene i, for example, Iago is mid-way through one of his most offensive speeches—a string of misogynistic, racist jokes—when Thomas Thieme appears onstage as Othello. As Iago declaims “What do licking pussy and the mafia have in common? One false move with your tongue and you’re in a load of shit” (Act II Scene i, 18),51 Thieme jogs lightly on the spot then takes a run up to Julia Jentsch’s Desdemona, who turns away from Iago to face him. They embrace, nuzzling one another in silence for several minutes. The intensity of their intimacy interrupts the action onstage and slowly stills even Iago mid-diatribe. As can be seen in Fig. 2, their white clothing on the dark stage invokes the purity associated with their silence in comparison with Iago’s vulgar chatter, and the blocking excludes both Rodrigo and Iago completely from this grouping.52 At this point in the play “[t]he result is a series of haunting juxtapositions of vocal, physical and emotional difference, not between black and white characters, but between Othello/Desdemona and the rest of the play’s dramatic constructs” (Billing 2007, 193). The embrace also functions as a visual sign of the point of view that Othello takes as his own, allowing us to trace changes in his positioning. As already noted, the point of no return in this tragedy occurs when Othello takes on Iago’s language. It is precisely at 48 Cheesman locates this turning point at Act II (2010, 208). I would argue that Othello’s language only becomes vulgar, as opposed to angry, in Act III. 49 “Zuckerschnütchen”. 50 “Hurensau”. 51 “[w]as haben Fotzelecken und die Mafia gemeinsam? Ein Ausrutscher mit der Zunge und du steckst in großer Scheiße” On the misogynistic as well as racist bent of many of the jokes in the play, including this one, see Billing (2007, 194; 199, n. 10). 52 This scene is grudgingly admitted to be successful even by the mainly negative review given by Mirko Weber (2003).

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Fig. 2 Thomas Thieme as Othello embraces Julia Jentsch as Desdemona, to the exclusion of Wolfgang Pregler’s Iago. In Othello, in a version by Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel, dir by Luk Perceval (2003). Photograph © Andreas Pohlmann

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this point that Thieme’s Othello “corrupted to his [Iago’s] point of view, bear-hugged him, made him [his] own” (Chillington Rutter 2007, 52; see Fig. 3). What is obscured in Fig. 3 but can be seen in the audiovisual recording of the premiere of the Munich production is that Desdemona remains shut out of the Othello-Jago unit, emphasising the patterns of exclusion and inclusion created via language (Perceval 2003). Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Desdemona fights back, unsuccessfully, against Othello’s accusations—which in this version of the plot are presented as clearly false. In the moment where he exercises physical power over her body and begins to choke her, though it is what is said about Desdemona, i.e. her representation, that counts, rather than her actual actions. Writing on the “original” Othello, G. K. Hunter argues that “[t]he relationship between these two [Othello and Iago] is developed in terms of appearance and reality. Othello controls the reality of action; Iago the appearance” (quoted in Kolin 2002, 29). This aspect of their relationship is emphasised in particular by the Kammerspiele production where Schein (appearance) becomes Sein (being) to disturbing effect as Iago rescripts

Fig. 3 Thomas Thieme as Othello embraces Wolfgang Pregler’s Iago. In Othello, in a version by Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel, dir by Luk Perceval (2003). Photograph © Andreas Pohlmann

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the roles Othello and Desdemona have decided on for themselves, by drawing on existing social scripts active in the society in which they live. Focusing briefly on a key scene in which Desdemona starts to sense Othello turning away from her, allows us to see how this refigures ethnicity within the play. Turning on him in an attempt at self-defence in Act IV, scene ii of the Zaimoglu/Senkel rewrite, Desdemona tells Othello, “You lie there on your armour-plated back, kicking your legs about like a fat beetle” (Shakespeare et al. 2004, Act IV, scene ii, p. 98).53 This is clearly a gloss of the opening lines of Kafka’s Die Verwandlung (Metamorphosis, 1915) and, via the associations of that text in particular with Kafka’s experience of the Jewish condition, could be said to align Othello with the figure of the historical ethnicized other in German society, the Jew.54 However, this alignment with the “ethnic” other is also complicated by Othello’s simultaneous alignment with “thoroughly” German figures such as Frederick the Great via his repetition of their language: “I am the first servant of the state” he declares in Act I, Scene iii (19) and Act V, Scene II (118).55 In performance these Prussian words would have been further defamiliarised through Thieme’s Saxon accent. Othello’s points of identification are thus multiple and complex, far from “merely” those of stand-in ethnic other. Notably, while Gregor Samsa waves his legs because he is a beetle, according to Desdemona Othello is merely acting like a beetle, and failing to do so convincingly. As noted in the “Introduction” chapter, Rey Chow identifies the assumption that “the ethnic person is expected to come to resemble what is recognizably ethnic”, as “coercive mimeticism”: a particular form of social scripting. She sees this as a trap similar to that identified by Frantz Fanon, in which the “ethnic” subject is doomed to fail to live up to an idealised image of the authentic “white” person (Fanon 1967; Chow 2002, 107). In “coercive mimeticism”, however, it is an adequately authentic image of the “ethnic” person, which a subject fails to live up to (ibid.). As Desdemona’s words suggest, it is also Othello’s fall into the 53 “Du liegst auf dem gepanzerten Rücken, du strampelst wie ein dicker Käfer”. 54 Cheesman also identifies this quote more broadly as “Kafkaesque” in his discussion

of the existential aspects of the dramatic text (2010, 217). 55 “Ich bin meines Staates Diener”. This motto was seen to differentiate the rule of Frederick the Great from that of the French model of Louis XIV, epitomised by the phrase “L’Etat c’est moi!”. Via this citation, Othello thus becomes a General whose downfall is linked to a specifically Prussian militarism.

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mimetic trap which causes him to lose faith in her. This then forms the core of the tragedy, rather than Othello’s “failed” ethnicity in itself.56 Such a reading is further supported by the role of ethnicity in the casting of the play. As already noted in the introduction to this chapter, unusually for most German Othellos up till then, Thieme played the part without blackface. It has long been the case in German theatre that the white actor on the German stage is cast as neutral—a carte blanche rather than already carrying some characteristics which might shape the audience’s interpretation of his or her performance on-stage in some way. In his 2002 exploration of tendencies in the casting of Othello in Germany, Christopher Balme highlights German theatre’s preference for the metaphorical, rather than metonymical, traditions of acting. While the casting of a white actor as Othello is frequently played with critically—as in Peter Zadek’s 1976 production where Othello’s greasepaint smeared onto Desdemona throughout the show, highlighting the actor’s own make-up and costume in a metatheatrical manner—the idea of a Black actor playing Othello is often seen as too reductive (Balme 2002, 108). At the same time, however, actors of colour have rarely been cast in roles often unspokenly considered “white” roles, creating a double exclusion.57 Here, the casting of Thieme as Othello throws a further spanner in the works of a reading which seeks to map contemporary sociopolitical

56 In contrast, Kaynar suggests that: “The tragedy of the foreign author-dramaturge, as well as of his theatrical agent, lies in the fact that, unlike Pirandello’s Enrico IV, the outsider – especially the privileged and successful one such as Othello or Zaimoglu – is neither capable of being his authentic self nor is he incapable of internalizing the white mask that he himself has grafted onto his face” (2011, 235). Kaynar seems to suggest that it is Othello/Zaimoglu’s failure to wholly occupy only one position, “to internalise” the mask, which constitutes the tragedy here. In Pirandello’s work, however, mask after mask is typically revealed in an unending and ultimately impossible search for “the authentic self”, a process which suggests that freedom is only possible in the “flow” between “forms” (cf. Krysinski 1999). Put differently then, my argument is that the tragedy in fact arises from Othello’s inability to “play” with the masks, as opposed to internalise one of them. 57 On casting and assumptions of whiteness in Germany in the 1980s, see Sieg (2002, 10–13). There has also been a lack of engagement with the history of blackface and the racializing mode of representation it engenders in the German context. This has recently been challenged by members of an anti-racist activist group named Bühnenwatch, who publicly campaigned against the use of blackfacing in the representation of Black characters by white actors at the Deutsches Theater and others from 2011 on. See documentation in Voss (2014, 229–40) as well as analysis of the German “blackfacing debates” which ensued in Dodua Otoo (2012), Sieg (2015) and Sharifi (2018).

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situations directly onto the world of the play.58 For dramaturge Marion Tiedke: As Othello is not visibly the Black general, but rather is made into this Black general by the others, the focus on the play is suddenly different. I don’t see the victim from the very beginning.59 (Tiedke 2004a, 145)

Tiedke’s identification of the position of a person of colour purely with victimhood is uncomfortable here as are several other of the comments made around race and casting in the interviews with Perceval and Tiedke which accompany the published version of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s script. Hagen in particular seems objectified in some of the interview comments. Nonetheless, while the 2008 production at the Schauspielhaus Graz retained a similar casting choice but made the process of racialization “visible” for the audience by daubing the word “Negro”60 on the white, un-made-up lead actor’s back (Rast 2008), in the Munich production this process takes place purely via language. In Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Othello, as directed by Perceval, it is through the other characters’ language and labelling of him that he becomes “other”. While visually white (and aurally from Saxony),61 Thieme’s Othello is referred to throughout by names such as “Choco”, “the N*****” or “Choccie Biscuit” (Shakespeare et al. 2004, Akt II, Scene I, 32; 36; 35; stars my addition): whether signalling affection, aggression or a combination of the two in the context of the scenes in question, such naming consistently functions to simultaneously belittle the general and highlight the character as a

58 This casting is played on purposefully in the script, which as we have seen followed rather than preceded the casting decision. Frequent references to race as “mask” present in the full dramatic text, but struck out in the Munich version, highlight its distinction from a core identity: “I am unmasked before you” declares Othello to Desdemona, for example (“Vor dir bin ich unmaskiert”; Shakespeare et al. 2004, Act II, scene ii, 40). 59 “Da Othello nicht sichtbar der schwarze General ist, sondern gleichsam zu diesem

schwarzen General durch die anderen gemacht wird, ist der Fokus auf das Stück plötzlich ein anderer. Ich sehe nicht schon von Anfang an das Opfer”. 60 “Neger”. This could also be translated as N***** but as that term is also in use in German I use the above translation here. 61 The Saxon accent is often looked down on and ridiculed as an East German accent; this identifies the actor as “Other” in a German context in a different way.

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Black man within the world of the play.62 The visual sign thus becomes overwhelmed by the linguistic for the audience as well as for Othello. At the same time, however, the divide between signifier and signified undermines an essentialist conflation of the subject of racist language with the terms of that language. It remains emphatically others’ discourse, and the audience’s own acceptance of that, which defines Othello as Black, rather than visual or essentialist difference. Within the world of the dramatic text this discourse leads unstoppably to tragedy for Othello and Desdemona. On the Kammerspiele stage, however, other “postdramatic” forms of expression were set in opposition to the word for the audience. In the in-house audiovisual recording of the Munich premiere Othello expresses his boyish joy at his love for Desdemona with a Flintstones-like yell of “Yabadabadoo!”, lending his feelings the innocence and simplicity of a 1950s cartoon world. Rodrigo expresses his frustration and discontent through a laconic dance, while Iago’s staccato line delivery almost frames his words in quotation marks, indicating their emptiness (Perceval 2003). Finally there is also the musical accompaniment by Jens Thomas. In both audiovisual recordings I have access to, which appear to have been made on different nights, while Emilia watches Iago destroy her lover Cassio’s jacket following his murder off-stage, responding to her husband’s taunts as coolly as any film noir character, Thomas is silent for a moment—one of the few such silences in the performance. Following the couple’s listless farewell, however, he fills the silence with an impassioned musical attack on the piano accompanied by deep, almost animalistic yelps of distress. Perceval explains the role he envisioned for music in the production in an interview with Tiedke: “through the presence of the music these words gain a dark side. And this dark side is universal loneliness or better: the longing for love” (in Tiedke 2004a, 140).63 The contrast between Thomas’s impassioned playing and the actors’ cool demeanour creates a longing in the spectator for real emotion

62 “Schoko”; “der Neger”; “Schokoplätzchen”. For examples of this naming see, for example, Shakespeare, Zaimoglu, and Senkel, Othello, Akt II, Scene I, p. 32; p. 36; p. 35. The association with traditional German words for sweets such as the “Negerkuss” and “Mohrenkopf” created by many of the confectionary terms used is discussed in more detail by Cheesman (2010, 209). 63 “durch die Präsenz der Musik erhalten diese Wörter ihre Schattenseiten. Und die Schattenseite ist universalle Einsamkeit oder besser: Diese Sehnsucht nach Liebe”.

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and leads to the cathartic desire for a language free of the illusions created by Iago.64 For Edward Pechter, Shakespeare’s Othello “makes sure that Iago is injected into us right from the beginning, undiluted, not just before we know what is happening but as the way we know it is happening” (quoted in Kolin 2002, 25). Phillip Kolin uses this reading to suggest that the “epistemology – and disease – of the play comes from Iago” (ibid.). As we have seen, this is undoubtedly also the case with Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Othello and is an aspect emphasised in the Munich production. This perhaps accounts for experiences of watching the play in that production which perceived it as “coercive” (Chillington Rutter 2007, 55) and where a perceived violence is stressed: a violence done first to the original text, but also, later to the unsuspecting audience member. Chillington Rutter, for example, suggests that: “If translation ‘liberated’ Othello from Shakespeare’s ‘original’ words, it produced other words that captured Shakespeare’s play for that new lexicon, perhaps taking his play hostage in the process” (2007, 49).65 While the role of the migrantized playwright as protestant ethnic whose “position of a captive, whose salvation lies in resistance and protest” (Chow 2002, 48) was addressed earlier in the chapter, there is perhaps a second captivity narrative which the moralistic vocabulary that accrues around adaptation makes is too easy to weave around this Othello. Although within both Zaimoglu/Senkel and Shakespeare’s versions of the play, Othello and Desdemona are the targets of the coercive rescripting of reality, phrasing such as the above functions to reposition or substitute the audience as the victim, positioning the audience as captive in the postmigrant world. It suggests the theatre as being taken over, held captive by the Turkish-German playwright, and thus in danger, or a threatened audience group of “white, middle class” viewers in need of rescue.66 In fact, Zaimoglu/Senkel’s adaptation is an unusual success 64 This longing was expressed by, for example, Alexander Altmann in his review for the Bayerische Staatszeitung (2003). 65 Emphasis in original. Similarly the language of capture, criminality and aggressive re-appropriation is employed by Kaynar, who characterises the play as “hostile”, “vandalizing”, and claims it “colonizes” Shakespeare (2011, 236). 66 There is a particular irony here in that the potential emotional impact on any Black audience members of listening to or reading the litany of hate speech thrown at Othello in the play is not considered. While playing with the Turkish experience of racialization in Germany through an exaggerated use of hate speech in Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Othello script may be radical in terms of the Turkish-German relationship whether this universalizes,

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for a Turkish-German author within a theatrical landscape which until very recently has been constructed as the exclusive preserve of GermanGerman or White European culture. While the very extremity of the language and the calculated “mis-matches” between on-stage and extratheatrical racialization highlight Iago’s epistemology as negative, here I suggest that it does so in ways which could provoke the traditionally white audience of the Kammerspiele—if not the on-stage characters—to reject and rail against this mode of understanding the world. At the same time, although Perceval and Baumbauer discuss a desire to shake up and potentially transform the audience at the Kammerspiele, a sense of this as potentially also transforming audience demographics in terms of ethnicity does not seem to be present at that point.67

Rewriting and the Turkish-German Stage: Spring ’s Awakening, the Robbers and Hamlet Following the success of the Othello rewrite, Zaimoglu/Senkel have, to date, produced a further twelve rewrites of texts which occupy a canonical place in German (and world) theatrical repertoires. These include three further Shakespeare rewrites: Romeo und Julia (2006), Hamlet (2010) and Julius Caesar (2011).68 A reworking of Molière’s texts and life story for the Salzburger Festspiele (the annual Salzburg Festival) under the name Molière: Eine Passion (Molière: A passion; 2007) was also successful and was followed by rewrites of German classics: Frank Wedekind’s Lulu, which became Lulu Live (2005), Wilhelm Busch’s children’s story Max und Moritz (2007) and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan der Weise, which became Nathan Messias (2009).69 Most recently, these rewrites have taken on a still more canonical scope with rewrites of Sophocles’ Antigone (2016), Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio, 2018), and two new versions of the Siegfried myth from the Niebelungslied, the German medieval epic which has frequently appropriates or sidelines Black and particularly Black German experience is a question to be considered further. 67 For a critical perspective on white normativity at the Munich Kammerspiele see Anta Helena Recke (2018). 68 On Shakespeare as adopted German national author see, for example, Habicht (1989, 113). 69 A detailed reading of Nathan Messias is provided by Cheesman (2012).

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been used as a founding national myth: Siegfrieds Heldentaten (Siegfried’s Heroic Deeds, 2015), Siegfrieds Erben (Siegfried’s Heirs, 2018). While little may have changed for actors and directors with a background of migration as a direct result of these plays,70 the number and commissioned nature of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s rewrites suggests that the rewrite is a particularly practical way of establishing oneself as a playwright within the German theatrical establishment. Katharina Koch highlights the difficulties facing any new writer attempting to establish themselves within the German system (2010, 7–9). Although the spectacle provided by a new writing premiere initially pulls in crowds, factors such as a failure to develop longer-lasting playwright-centred relationships, a limited audience with an interest in new writing within the theatre-going community, and specific ideas about what the subject matter of such writing should be, can make new writing difficult to sustain (13–15). To counter this, Ulrich Khoun has stressed the importance of bringing authors and directors together (in Gutjahr et al. 2008, 62). The effectiveness of such an approach is reflected in the fact that three of the rewrites mentioned above, Hamlet , Molière: Eine Passion and Lulu Live, were also commissioned and directed by Perceval (cf. Cheesman 2012, 117).71 The Perceval-Zaimoglu/Senkel relationship thus indicates the importance of establishing a connection with a particular theatre or director for new playwrights.72 The advantage of the rewrite as a form can also be seen in that, in contrast to new writing, classic plays, such as those of Shakespeare, are seen as a reliable attraction and regularly feature on the lists compiled by the Deutscher Bühnenverein (German theatre association) of the best attended performances (cf. Koch 2010, 15). As a result of the turn to Regietheater since the 1960s in Germany, it seems that audiences are often interested less in a new play, than in a new perspective on a familiar story 70 The exception being Nathan Messias, which premiered at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße in a production directed by Neco Çelik, whose work is discussed in the next chapter, “The ‘Neo-Muslima’ Enters the Scene”. 71 Zaimoglu/Senkel also returned to the Kammerspiele in 2011 with their play Alpsegen, directed by Sebastien Nübling. 72 This is a method which has since been adopted to great success as a means of developing and supporting playwrights with a background of migration by the Maxim Gorki theatre’s Studio  (est. 2013–2014). There devising work which to some extent merges the roles of director, actor and playwright has also been a key technique in developing new theatre.

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(cf. Gutjahr 2008, 24). That this has provided a hurdle for the development of Turkish-German theatre in particular is clear if we refer back to the history of this theatre. As noted in the “Introduction” chapter, for a long time state theatres in Germany operated as a kind of “private party” or “closed shop”73 (Boran 2004, 12), where the politics of the Federal Republic of Germany were mirrored in cultural policies which discouraged the development of Turkish-German theatre practitioners. The first Turkish national offered a place studying directing at the prestigious Hochschule für Schauspielkunst “Ernst Busch” (Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Art), Berlin, for example, was apparently Nurkan Erpulat in 2003 (Kömürcü Nobrega 2013): a director born and trained in Turkey, who came to Germany as part of the young new wave of international artists drawn there post-unification, rather than in the wake of labour migration or as part of the resident Turkish-German population. In a landscape where the dramaturge or director increasingly shapes the theatrical work, and few Turkish-origin practitioners in Germany have, until recently, had access to these positions, the role of “rewriter” might be said to become particularly effective as it allows the authorial function generally allotted to the director in the German system to be shared to a degree with the playwright. Indeed, as already noted in the introduction to this chapter, the “rewrite” or adaptation of a classic is a form which has also been taken up briefly by Erpulat, as well as by popular playwright-director Nuran David Calis. Calis, for example, received much critical acclaim for his rewrite and direction of Frank Wedekind’s Spring’s Awakening (Frühlings Erwachen), under the title of Frühlings Erwachen (LIVE FAST —DIE YOUNG) at the Schauspiel Hannover in 2007. Similarly, Nurkan Erpulat and Jens Hillje’s 2009 Crazy Blood (Verrücktes Blut ) a rewrite of French film La journée de Lupe (The Day of the Skirt ) and Schiller’s The Robbers (Die Räuber) directed by Erpulat was successful enough to be invited to the Berliner Theatertreffen in 2011, a theatre festival which selects ten of that year’s “best” German-language plays.74 While Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Othello moved away from specifically Turkish-German concerns, both Calis and Erpulat/Hillje’s rewrites are, however, firmly situated within a 73 “geschlossene Gesellschaft”. 74 For a detailed discussion of the play’s intertextuality see Layne (2014). In this

chapter, there is only space for a brief discussion of the play, however, for more detailed engagements see also: Landry (2012), Voss (2014), and Stewart (2017).

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Turkish-German or postmigrant context. Calis’s Frühlings Erwachen used contemporary rap and music to combine “street” with “high” culture, merging various performance cultures. Erpulat and Hillje took a different approach, allowing the postmigrant context to become a way of critically exploring the classic itself. Set in a contemporary German classroom, Crazy Blood portrays a teacher’s attempts to teach a diverse class of teenagers Schiller’s The Robbers . The chaotic class is interrupted by the appearance of a gun, brought into the classroom by one of the students. The teacher, Sonia, confiscates the gun but rather than sending the teenager to be punished, snaps and uses the loaded firearm to hold the class hostage for a lesson on Schiller and the concept of “aesthetic education”. While the questions of honour, family and individuality raised in Die Räuber are shown to have clear parallels, and so relevance, to the lives of the postmigrant teenagers, the forced recognition of this created by the hostage situation calls into question Sonia’s own grasp of the “enlightened” values she is supposedly imparting (cf. Layne 2014, 53–54). In the course of the play then, the migrantized teenagers emerge as the contemporary inheritors of the Romantic legacy. The metatheatrical element of Crazy Blood emphasised by the Schiller “play within a play” and the discussion of the teenage characters’ failings as actors creates parallels with contemporary discussions on the role of theatre in a Federal Republic of Germany characterised by diversity, and with the difficulties facing actors with a particular accent or skin tone. As detailed in the prelude to this book, Erpulat has voiced precisely this concern at events such as “Jenseits von Identität—Postmigrantische Kultur” (“Beyond Identity – Postmigrant Culture”), a discussion on postmigrant theatre at the 2011 Heidelberger Stückemarkt (an annual theatre festival in Heidelberg which provides a platform for contemporary drama and theatre). Elsewhere in interviews, Erpulat, who grew up in Turkey and studied theatre there before coming to Germany as a young artist, explains the discrepancy between the way his ethnicity positions him in Germany and his own self-perception as a director: I would claim that I know Shakespeare better than any stories from the streets of Neukölln [an area of Berlin with a high migrant and postmigrant population]. But until now the artistic directors have lacked the courage

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to let me stage that kind of material. This is changing at the moment. (quoted in Sharifi 2011, 42; Sharifi 2017, 397)75

While for Zaimoglu/Senkel the rewrite of classical material has opened the way for a variety of other theatrical commissions in Germany, conversely for director Nurkan Erpulat, the rewrite has provided a means of using “stories from the streets of Neukölln” to deal with the classics he originally entered the theatre to direct.76 In sorting through the differing forms of cultural and symbolic capital which accrue around the postmigrant rewrite, the revelation that Sonia, the on-stage “director” both of the rehearsals and the hostage situation within Crazy Blood, is Turkish-German is of particular interest: MARIAM : Are you a Turk or something? MUSA: Why didn’t you tell us? SONIA: Because its none of anyone’s business! This here is a German school, German is spoken here, ok?! (Erpulat and Hillje 2014, 57; trans. by Layne)77

Sonia’s assumption is that within a public institution the ethnic background of a person should make no difference. As the responses from her on-stage audience of cast/teenagers suggest, however, Sonia’s ethnicity still alters their perception and reception of the cultural goods she presents them with. Although the teenagers at first perceive Sonia as another example of German society forcing irrelevant “high” German culture 75 “Ich behaupte mal, dass ich Shakespeare besser kenne als Neuköllner Straßengeschichten. Aber den Intendanten fehlten bis jetzt der Mut, mich auch solche Stoffe inszenieren zu lassen. Das ändert sich gerade”. Here I have used my own translation rather than that provided in Sharifi’s 2017 chapter. Sharifi also discusses Crazy Blood, however, her discussion focuses on the way in which the piece plays with concepts of identity without relating this to the metatheatrical elements of the play (2011a, 40– 42). See also Voss, who views the play as an example of a “performative reflexion of ethnic differentiation” (“performative Reflexion von ethnischer Differenzierung”; 2014, 171–218). 76 His subsequent success is reflected in invitations to direct at institutions such as the Deutsches Theater, Maxim Gorki theatre, the Ruhrtriennale and Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, where his work has included adaptations of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, and Kafka’s The Castle. 77 “MARIAM: Bist du Türkin oder was? / MUSA: Warum haben Sie uns das nicht gesagt? / SONIA: Weil das niemand was angeht! Das hier ist eine deutsche Schule, hier wird deutsch gesprochen, klar?”

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down the throats of postmigrant “others”, the revelation of her own ethnicity highlights that Turkish-origin Germans themselves engage with cultural goods coded as “German” for a variety of reasons. While it is easy to position the rewrite as an oppositional impulse and characterise it in the language of opposition and destruction, here Erpulat/Hillje, like Zaimoglu/Senkel, explicitly also situate themselves within “German” traditions, in this case Sturm und Drang (storm and stress). This suggests rather a desire for a renewal and reengagement with the transgressive elements of both classic plays and the German theatre as a whole. Returning briefly to Othello, in the interviews accompanying the first edition of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s rewrite, dramaturge for the premiere production Marion Tiedke asks: “Is your aim to break taboos in the cultural temple of the theatre though your use of a classic?”78 Zaimoglu answers wryly: “Breaking taboos is for teenage bedwetters” (Tiedke 2004b, 134).79 The biblical tale of the overturning of temple tables which Tiedke’s word choice brings to mind was one in which disruption of the status quo was designed not to destroy but renew the faith of those worshipping there. Similarly, Zaimoglu/Senkel’s radical rewrite can be perceived not merely as the “rude case of the adulteration of a classic” (Weber 2003), but as a Romantic gesture in which the true “spirit” of “the work” is defended via a deviation from the original text.80 The way in which such attempts are received, however, can be overdetermined by the expectations which a particular playwright’s name and reputation arouses in some critics in the context of a loaded public discourse. The reception of the second of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Shakespeare rewrites for Luk Perceval, Hamlet (2010: Thalia Theater, Hamburg) is particularly interesting in this regard. Although again the immediate reception of the piece was mixed, Alan Posener’s review in the conservative national newspaper Die Welt stands out as unusually polemical. Posener, like many of the initial reviewers of the 2003 Othello premiere, complained of the sacrifice of Shakespeare’s original to a director’s concept and a disrespectful translation. However, he articulated this in particularly loaded imagery and word choice: “This text is to the original 78 “Beabsichtigt ihr den Tabubruch anhand eines Klassikers im Kulturtempel Theater?” 79 “Tabubruch ist was für pubertierende Bettnässer”. 80 “grober Fall von Klassikerverhunzung”. For a discussion of Zaimoglu’s relationship to the German Romantic movement as one opposed to monumentalism and the creation of (religious and national) idols, see Littler (2012, 235–37).

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what the Qu’ran is to the Bible. It has driven everything contradictory out of the original text, and along with it all poetry, all depth. What remains are shallow platitudes” (2010).81 Despite his acknowledgement that the production is shaped to a large degree by Perceval’s Buddhist world view, Posener insisted on an islamophobic and mimeticist vocabulary which positions the Qur’an as “inferior copy” of the Bible. This suggests that his comments were directed at Zaimoglu, not only as racialized author this time, but specifically as practising Muslim.82 Posener’s comments were objected to in the strongest possible terms by the artistic director of the Thalia Theatre, Joachim Lux, and were debated heavily on influential theatre websites such as nachtkritik.de (see Slevgot 2010). This alerts us both to the changing context which theatre by playwrights such as Zaimoglu was entering into in the late 2000s and the new debates which their presence on Germany’s most influential stages have provoked. In the next chapter, the ways in which Islam has begun to take on a significant role in discussions of theatre and postmigration will be the focus.

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81 “Dieser Text verhält sich zum Original wie der Koran zur Bibel. Er hat dem Urtext alles Widersprüchliche ausgetrieben und mit ihm auch alle Poesie, alle Tiefe. Der Rest ist Plattheit”. 82 Jens Thomas’s musical accompaniment was also criticized by Posener as a “mixture of Monoglian throat-singing, call to prayer, and yodelling” (“Mischung aus mongolischem Obertongesang, Muezzin-Ruf und Jodeln”: 2010), i.e. as having been somehow islamicized. The audiovisual recording I had access to did not suggest anything similar to me (cf. Perceval 2010).

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Twist, Joseph, 2014. “‘The Crossing of Love’: The Inoperative Community and Romantic Love in Feridun Zaimoglu’s ‘Fünf klopfende Herzen, wenn die Liebe springt’ and Hinterland.” German Life and Letters 67 (3): 399–417. Venuti, Lawrence. 1995. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. New York and London: Routledge. Voss, Hanna. 2014. Reflexion von ethnischer Identität(szuweisung) im deutschen Gegenwartstheater. Marburg: Tectum. Weber, Mirko. 2003. “Wenn Möchtegerns Shakespeare erledigen.” Stuttgarter Zeitung, March 31. Werner, Katja. 2003. “Theater muss wie Kaffee sein.” Freitag, April 18. Ye¸silada, Karin. 2001. “Das Empire schreibt zurück: Deutschsprachige Autoren ‘nicht-deutscher Herkunft’.” In Weltliteratur: Vom Nobelpreis bis zum Comic, edited by Thomas Böm et al., 118–37. Cologne: Könemann. Yildiz, Yasemin. 2004. “Critically ‘Kanak’: A Reimagination of German Culture.” In Globalization and the Future of German, edited by Andreas Gardt and Bernd-Rüdiger Hüppauf, 319–40. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Zaimoglu, Feridun. [1995] 2005. Kanak Sprak: 24 Mißtöne vom Rande der Gesellschaft. Hamburg: Rotbuch. Zaimoglu, Feridun, and Günter Senkel. 2004. Drei Versuche über die Liebe. Münster: Monsenstein & Vannerdat.

The “Neo-Muslima” Enters the Scene: Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins (2006) and the Postmigrant Theatre

Beyond Belonging Following Othello, Zaimoglu and Senkel continued their writing for the stage with two original plays focusing on love, Casino Leger (Casino Casual, 2003) and Halb so wild (Half as wild, 2004), and a further original play with a similar theme but set in a theatre itself, Ja. Tu es. Jetzt (Yes. Do it. Now. 2003). These were succeeded by two further rewrites of classics of the German repertoire: Lulu Live (2005), a version of Frank Wedekind’s Lulu, and a further Shakespeare rewrite, Romeo und Julia (2006). While each of these plays was received relatively well, it was in 2006 with the premiere of their seventh play, Black Virgins (Schwarze Jungfrauen), that the pair once again drew the attention of the theatrical community in Germany as a whole. Black Virgins premiered in the tiny HAU 3 theatre space in Berlin, Kreuzberg, as part of a new experimental festival, Beyond Belonging.1 HAU 3 is the smallest stage of Berlin’s Hebbel am Ufer theatre complex; yet despite the premiere’s modest setting, Black Virgins attracted the attention of major German theatre critics (Breger 2012, 232). This landed the world premiere a front-page placement in the May 2006 issue of Theater heute, where a section of the dramatic text was also reprinted. 1 Title of festival originally in English.

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The success of the world premiere led to Zaimoglu/Senkel being listed second in the “Playwright of the year” survey in Theater heute (Theatre Today) for 2006 and to the play’s 2007 nomination for the prestigious Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis, the main prize for new dramatic writing in Germany. This success also marked the arrival of a new movement in German theatre: “postmigrant theatre”, a movement which aimed to redress the lack of postmigrant representation on German stages. Since 2006, the premiere production, directed by Turkish-German director Neco Çelik, has followed the curator of the first Beyond Belonging festival, Shermin Langhoff, in her move up through Berlin’s theatrical institutions. Having initially reappeared in subsequent Beyond Belonging festivals, in 2010 the premiere production reopened in Langhoff’s own new theatre, the Ballhaus Naunynstraße. This theatre has aimed to provide a platform both for what it calls postmigrant perspectives and for the work of artists with a background of migration within the theatrical establishment (see Kulao˘glu 2010, 162; Sharifi 2011a, 38–40). Following Langhoff’s subsequent move to the Maxim Gorki Theatre in 2013, the premiere production was also to be seen there—on one of Berlin’s most significant historic stages. In this process, the production has assumed a flag-ship status for postmigrant theatre: in 2014, it was advertised on the Gorki’s Facebook feed as “Black Virgins – the classic”,2 for example. However, this is far from the only form in which Black Virgins has made its way into the German theatrical consciousness. In the wake of the successful premiere, Black Virgins has not only been produced as an audio play but has also appeared in at least ten further professional productions in Germany alone.3 This signals an industry interest in “postmigrant” 2 “Schwarze Jungfrauen – der Klassiker”. 3 The dates of premieres of subsequent German productions include: 22 September

2006 at the Westfälisches Landestheater Castrop-Rauxel (dir. Christian Scholze); 10 November 2006 at the Theater Freiburg (dir. Enrico Stolzenburg); 13 September 2007 at the Theaterhaus Stuttgart (dir. Tanja Richter); 30 May 2008 at the Theater Kiel (dir. Kristina Ohmen); Schwarze Jungfrauen II (second set of monologues), 25 April 2009, Westfälisches Landestheater at Theater Duisburg (dir. Christian Scholze); 17 June 2009 at the Junges Theater Bremen (dir. Anja Wedig); 28 August 2009 at the Theater Willy Praml, Frankfurt am Main (dir. Willy Praml); 25 September 2009 at the Theater der Jungen Welt, Leipzig (dir. Kathleen Bredenbeck et al.); 27 March 2010 at the Schauspiel Hannover (dir. Lars-Ole Walburg); 1 April 2010 at the Theater Ingolstadt (dir. Julia Mayr). The play was also produced in Austria by Walburg at the Burgtheater, Vienna in 2007, in the Czech Republic by Dušan David Paˇrízek in 2010 at the Divadlo Komedie,

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perspectives previously absent from the theatrical sphere in Germany, an interest which this chapter and the following will interrogate further. The dramatic text of Black Virgins consists of ten monologues, each corresponding to a different “Neo-Muslima” or radical Muslim woman. This is a term popularised by Zaimoglu in his discussions of the play, but which was already in use in sociological studies of women’s relationship to Islam in Germany (see the usage in Nökel 2002, 31–65).4 The monologues are the result of conversations apparently conducted by Zaimoglu with Muslim women living in Germany. From these, he and Senkel selected those they found most interesting to then rework for the theatre in their own inimitable style (personal interview 2012). The result is a fiercely delivered combination of accounts of everyday experiences, family life, inter- and intra-religious conflicts, extreme and extremist political statements. Stories of love and sexuality are interspersed with declarations of belief, and the narratives presented often revolve around questions of tradition and modernity, identity, and belonging. In monologue six, for example, the speaker exclaims: I don’t bandage myself up like a mummy, I am not … how do you say? … abstinent. God forgive me, I have to say it: I still fuck because I know it doesn’t damage my faith. I pray five times a day. I fast in Ramadan and I am a committed Muslim. (ellipses in original; Zaimoglu and Senkel 2006, 31)5

Here, we see the combination of sexual freedom, profane language, emphatic self-assertion and religious devotion which the play’s title encapsulates; the “black virgins” are thus no saints but rather nuanced figures

Prague, and as Malte C Lachmann’s final project for his studies at the Bayerische Theaterakademie August Everding, Munich. The latter production won the 2012 Körber Studios Young Director’s Prize in Hamburg and guested at the Thalia Theater Hamburg in February 2013. 4 For further discussion of the ways in which the “Neo” prefix can be read, see El Hissy (2012, 117–18). 5 “Ich trage kein Mumientuch, ich bin nicht …wie sagt man? … enthaltsam. Gott verzeih’ mir, ich muß es sagen: ich ficke immer noch, weil ich weiß, es schadet nicht meinem Glauben. Ich bete fünf Mal am Tag. Ich faste im Ramadan, und ich bin überzeugte Moslemin.”

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who complicate received ideas of religious, cultural and sexual purity and whose narratives point to the intersections between these discourses.6 The figure of the Muslim woman has been consistently invoked in debates on migration and integration in Germany in recent years, with the supposed oppression symbolised by the headscarf becoming a particularly fraught area of political debate and even legislation.7 The change in focus from the ethnicized, gendered groups which were the subject of Zaimoglu’s early prose works such as Kanak Sprak (1995), to a gendered group which share a religion (Matthes 2010; Sieg 2010; Breger 2012; El Hissy 2012), thus reflects a contemporary shift both in the ways which women in Germany with a background of migration were being portrayed in the media and in which many were identifying: a shift which has been sketched by Yasemin Yildiz as one of “Turkish Girls” to “Allah’s Daughters” (2009). At the same time, Zaimoglu’s own emphasis on the women whom he interviewed for the play as “a minority, in the minority, in the minority”8 implies, as Matthes highlights, “a limited reference to reality” (2010, 208). These female figures thus form a limit case allowing the playwright to probe the areas of postmigrant Germany where “things hot up” (Zaimoglu 2012).9 This has not prevented the play being received as an act of representation designed to shed light on a “typical” migrant life (Matthes 2010). Indeed, one unforeseen outcome of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins was Zaimoglu’s invitation to participate in the first Deutsche Islamkonferenz (German Islam conference), an attempt to provide a national forum for dialogue between the state and Muslim communities in Germany.10 Initially keen, Zaimoglu took part in the 2006 conference, but then in 2007 provocatively demanded the opportunity to give up his place for a “Neo-Muslima” (2010, 200–201). In one interview, he explained:

6 For a discussion of the title and summary of the play, see also Matthes (2010, 206), Sieg (2010, 152), and El Hissy (2012, 120–21; 131). 7 For a detailed outline of and engagement with the so-called Headscarf debate, see Breger (2008), and (Weber 2012, 2013, 77–136). 8 “eine Minderheit in der Minderheit, in der Minderheit”. 9 Free translation of “wo es kracht”—the literal translation is “where it cracks”, i.e.

where trouble happens in an explosive manner. 10 For a detailed discussion of the politics of the DIK, see, for example, Amir-Moazami (2011) and Weber (2013, 19–28; 136–39).

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if the idea is that the participants of the Islam summit should speak on behalf of and in the place of other Muslims and Muslima, then I ask that a young Neo-Muslima also be selected […]. I felt flattered when I was appointed as a participant in the Islam Conference. I didn’t recognise myself in the descriptions though. I am not a secular Muslim and of course I am not an orthodox Muslim either. I am a writer. (Zaimoglu and Reimann 2007)11

Matthes suggests that Zaimoglu’s “path from radical to serious writer and his public avowal of his faith have given him the credibility of the postmigrant intellectual with ‘Islamic expertise’” (2010, 200). For Zaimoglu, if not for those receiving his work, however, there is clearly a significant difference between his representation of the Neo-Muslimas’ views in the form of a play in an aesthetic sphere and in the form of statements in a political forum. In this chapter, I will suggest that notions of legitimacy and authenticity have not only accumulated around, but also shifted during the performance history of the play. Such notions have had a frequent role to play in engagements with Zaimoglu’s non-dramatic writing. Scholars such as Julia Abel and Chantelle Warner, for example, have read paratextual elements, such as the preface in Zaimoglu’s infamous debut book Kanak Sprak, as containing and playing with literary signs which create or deny certain expectations of authenticity and documentary associated with the ethnicized, previously subaltern voice which these texts are often supposed to contain (Abel 2006, 309–14; Warner 2011, 258–61). As Warner puts it, “[f]ramed as social autobiography, the value of these works comes to be measured by their ‘documentariness,’ which in turn is evaluated in terms of preconceived notions” (2011, 263–64). What these preconceived notions might be for Black Virgins in terms of the Muslim woman as source has been explored by Sieg, who discusses the play in the context of a growth in female testimonial literature which repeatedly follows a narrative of oppression by Islam and self-realisation 11 “wenn man davon spricht, dass die Teilnehmer des Islamgipfels stellvertretend für andere Muslime und Muslima sprechen sollen, dann bitte ich darum, auch eine junge NeoMuslima auszuwählen […]. Ich fühlte mich geschmeichelt, als man mich zum Teilnehmer der Islamkonferenz ernannte. Ich fand mich aber in den Zuschreibungen nicht wieder. Ich bin kein säkularer Muslim und natürlich auch kein Orthodoxer. Ich bin ein Schriftsteller.” ˙ A. Çelik and the Zaimoglu’s participation in the Islamkonferenz is also discussed by I. final two sentences of this quotation are also quoted there (2012, 121).

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through escape to the West and rejection of the religion. Indeed, 2006 also saw the touring of Dutch playwright Adelheid Roosen’s 2003 play, De Gesluierde Monologen (The Veiled Monologues), to Berlin Kreuzberg, an interview-based play for which “Muslim women [were] asked about their views on and experiences with a variety of issues related to sexuality” (ElTayeb 2011, 98).12 Black Virgins thus positions itself in opposition to a discourse already prevalent in the media and the political sphere in 2006 which presents Islam as inherently antithetical to supposedly “European” values such as women’s and gay rights (Sieg 2010, 173–85; 2011, 166; see also Stewart 2017). In this regard, “the notion of ethnic authenticity is already scripted in advance” (Sieg 2010, 166). The way in which the play’s rescripting of these sociopolitical discourses in performance interacts with broader aesthetic tendencies in contemporary German theatre, on the other hand, is the subject of this chapter. The chapter also explores the play’s representation of an “authentic” relationship to Islam and to sexuality as emancipatory. The interaction between these notions of authenticity, and those connected to the label of “semi-documentary theatre” I suggest, led to difficulties in the play’s reception. As an alternative approach to reading the play, I focus on the use of references to science fiction, and particularly to Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind in the premiere production, which thematise, rather than attempting to gloss over issues of fictionalisation and representation in the play. Rather than continuing a focus on the ethics and power relations at work when the “women’s voices” or documentary object is mediated, this reading thus shifts to consider how the postmigrant professional as artistic mediator is received. In the final section of the chapter, I will look beyond the premiere and suggest that attention to the multiple productions of Black Virgins and the complex 12 El-Tayeb critically addresses the reporting of this event: “Sellar’s reading of the audience (more than of the play) encapsulates dominant notions of the clash between radical art addressing taboo subjects (here, both criticizing the dominant society for stereotyping the Muslim community and said community for failing to address its own shortcomings) and the atavistic ethnic cultures providing the diversity attracting the creative class, including playwrights, to the new metropolises, but who prove incapable of appreciating, or even understanding, the art their exotic presence inspires” (2011, 136–37). Notably, although several of El-Tayeb’s points about overwriting the voices of the Muslim women at the centre of De Gesluierde Monologen via the mediation of the liberal non-Muslim ˙ A. Çelik (2011) and other’s criticism of Zaimoglu/Senkel, playwright are echoed in I. El-Tayeb herself suggests Black Virgins can be read as a response to Roosen’s Veiled Monologues (2011, 256, n. 12).

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real-world dynamics surrounding them also help create a broader picture of the role of discourses of authenticity and legitimacy in the larger trajectory at work in Germany’s theatres.

Documentary, Authenticity and an “Uncanny Emancipation” The HAU complex where the premiere production of Black Virgins was first performed in 2006 is comprised of three previously separate theatres located in Berlin-Kreuzberg: the Hebbel Theater, Theater am Halleschen Ufer and the Theater am Ufer. These stages were united in 2003 under the name Hebbel-Am-Ufer or HAU, and placed under the artistic direction of Matthias Lilienthal, previously head dramaturge at the Berlin Volksbühne. Nina Peters, who charts the rise of postmigrant theatre in Berlin, describes the HAU as follows: The HAU concept was reminiscent of the profile of British community theatres, which place an emphasis on bringing the local neighbourhood and the sum of diverse cultures into the theatre. For the HAU this meant first of all the residents of Berlin and/or Kreuzberg with a Turkish or Arabic background. (2011, 171)13

While Peters references the British context, a related concern with making theatre for the town or community which a theatre serves can also be traced within the German theatrical tradition: a result of the decentralised system where funds are predominantly allocated by the Länder rather than at a national level. The importance of the regional base of a theatre for its repertoire can already be seen in the case of the Bochumer Ensemble in the earlier chapter on “Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Early Plays (1982–2000)”. While in 1986 the make-up of the surrounding community there was one of the factors which led Claus Peymann not to premiere Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Karagöz in Alamania though, in twenty-firstcentury Berlin-Kreuzberg it had the opposite effect, leading Lilienthal to make a focus on theatre by and for a postmigrant public part of his very

13 “Das HAU-Konzept erinnerte an das Profil britischer Community Theaters, die es darauf anlegen, die direkte Nachbarschaft und die Summe unterschiedlicher Kulturen ins Theater zu holen. Beim HAU waren das zunächst die Berliner bzw. Kreuzberger mit türkischem oder arabischem Hintergrund.”

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application for his post at the HAU (Lilienthal quoted in Raddatz 2008, 18). In fact, the HAU soon became best known for postdramatic experimentation, but its already loose structure enabled Lilienthal to organise it differently from the standard state-funded houses.14 As he explained in an interview with Theater der Zeit (the former East German counterpart to Theater heute) in 2008: “We don’t have a permanent ensemble [as is traditionally the case in Germany], rather we work with a network of forty or fifty groups. That gives us the freedom to invent the system anew each time” (quoted in Raddatz 2008, 17).15 As part of this reinvention, Lilienthal engaged Shermin Langhoff as curator of the aforementioned Beyond Belonging festivals—a series of festivals designed both to appeal to Kreuzburg’s large migrant or postmigrant population, and to engage artists with this background. Langhoff was born in Turkey but moved to Germany as a young child where she was influenced by leftist Turkish émigré circles. She was active in the German film industry before moving into the theatre, although her connections to both artistic spheres were close as suggested by her marriage to Lukas Langhoff, whose grandfather, Wolfgang, father, Thomas and uncle, Matthias, are renowned directors.16 Both Wolfgang and Thomas were artistic directors of the Deutsches Theater, while Matthias directed to acclaim at the Berliner Ensemble and Volksbühne before moving to West Germany in 1978. While Lilienthal’s approach to the HAU provided the framework within which the Beyond Belonging Festival came into operation, it was Shermin Langhoff who was instrumental in the creation of Black Virgins. Operating under the slogan “Migration squared – migrants who

14 This loose structure and its benefits in terms of opening doors for artists with a background of migration are also discussed in detail by Peters (2011, 170–71). For a detailed engagement with the HAU under Lilienthal’s leadership, see Garde and Megson (2016). Garde and Megson also provide a detailed account of discourses around authenticity in the German theatrical establishment at this time, but explicitly bracket works such as Zaimoglu’s, which do not put real people on stage as themselves, from their examination (ibid, 16). 15 “Wir haben kein festes Ensemble, sondern arbeiten mit einem Kreis von 40 oder 50 Gruppen. Das gibt uns die Freiheit, jedes Mal das System neu zu erfinden.” 16 See the earlier chapter on “Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Early Plays (1982–2000)” on her work with Matthias Langhoff.

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create the artistic working through of migration”,17 part of the festival’s aim was to bring migrantized artists already active in other media into the theatre, an approached which Langhoff and the HAU had already trialled with a project titled X -Wohnungen (X-Apartments) in 2004.18 Zaimoglu had been involved in the X-Apartments project, for which renowned film director Fatih Akın staged an extract of a prose work by Zaimoglu, “Gotteskrieger” (God’s Warriors) from the short story volume Zwölf Gramm Glück (Twelve Grams of Happiness, 2004).19 For Beyond Belonging, Langhoff approached Zaimoglu with a commission for a sort of Kanak Sprak or Koppstoff “reloaded” (quoted in Krug 2011; El Hissy 2012, 118), and asked film director Neco Çelik, who had also been part of X-Apartments, into the theatre to direct. Zaimoglu, together with Senkel, accepted the commission but, as he explained in our 2012 interview, decided to shift the focus to Muslim women in Germany. For the now well-known premiere production, Neco Çelik and his dramaturgical team created a playful montage of seven of the original monologues, occasionally merging characters together and cutting the texts to highlight aspects of the monologues which addressed sexuality (cf. Sieg 2010, 153–54). My own comparison of the scripts shows that several of the sections cut for the premiere production also contained much of the dramatic text’s more antisemitic language. This means that there were at least two levels of mediation present in the premiere production of Black Virgins : that of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s authorial mediation of the original interviews, and that of the director’s and dramaturgical team’s subsequent mediation of the resultant monologues for their production. Sieg views this as a factor which “compromises” the already unclear issue of authorship (2010, 154),20 while I˙ A. Çelik raises related concerns over 17 “Migration hoch 2 – Migranten, die die künstlerische Aufarbeitung der Migration schaffen.” 18 An earlier version of the X-Wohnungen project had taken place in Duisburg under the aegis of Theater der Welt in 2002 (cf. Witt 2018, 54). 19 For a discussion of this staging of “Gotteskrieger”, see Garde and Mumford (2016, 100–101; 136–38). 20 Sieg’s intervention is important as earlier articles concerning Black Virgins have

tended to take the version of the monologues published in Theater heute as the script used in the world premiere (see, for example, Matthes 2010, 202; Müller 2012, 47–71). In fact, as Sieg highlights, these monologues do not correspond to the version of the script used in the premiere production (2010, 153–54). Theater heute published only five of the ten monologues which make up the dramatic text of the play.

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the ethics of making Muslim women comprehensible to a non-Muslim audience by overwriting their original statements in the language of liberalism and so meeting a “demand for seeing Muslim women speak and in a comprehensible manner – as liberal subjects whose emancipation can be ˙ assessed and evaluated according to Western standards” (2012, 128). I. A. Çelik thus highlights the use of Christianised and sexual vocabulary to suggest that the Muslim woman is repackaged or retranslated to fit a more readily comprehensible, and marketable, model of what an emancipated woman might be. Critical engagements with the play thus far have therefore centred on the question of “who speaks” in Black Virgins and identify Zaimoglu’s potentially problematic “ventriloquism” of the female figures as a key ˙ A. Çelik concern (Matthes 2010, 201–202; Sieg 2010, 171–72; 185; I. 2012, 124–26; El Hissy 2012, 119; Hentschel 2007, 133). Such interventions are important in a perhaps otherwise overly celebratory narrative of the play’s impact. The gesture they make towards the high politicoethical stakes involved in this discussion become clearer if we relate the question of the extent to which the Muslim woman “speaks” here to the potential overlap of this figure with that of the subaltern. As can be seen from the outline of the commissioning context provided above though, female agency had a decided role to play in the play’s commission and the premiere’s dramaturgy, to say nothing of the narrative choice exercised by the women supposedly interviewed by Zaimoglu. This chapter suggests that an examination of the relationships at work between dramatist, director and the supposed “original interviewees” of the play must also be accompanied by a consideration of the relationships between the postmigrant theatre practitioners involved in the premiere’s commission and production and the broader theatrical establishment in Germany. Departing from the demand for “authentic” source material in contemporary postdramatic documentary theatre, and focusing rather on unpacking the commissioning context in which the play emerged, highlights the layers of mediation and multiple authorship at work in and on the dramatic text. In doing so, I want to acknowledge these as typical textual interventions within the contemporary theatre-making context and interrogate the demand made on contemporary migrantized subjects to write or be “themselves” onstage rather than engaging in artistic representation. In her work on documentary theatre in the British context, Janelle Reinelt argues that it is precisely the overdetermined nature of the implied

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promise of documentary theatre that means “documentary claims are almost always met with both suspicion and excitement: Arguments about the purity or contamination of the document/ary have since needlessly obfuscated the recognition that an examination of reality and a dramatisation of its results is in touch with the real but not a copy of it” (2009, 8). Certainly suspicion and excitement are appropriate descriptions for the reactions of many reviewers for whom, as Matthes (2010, 201) highlights, Black Virgins seemed to promise an insight into the lives of women otherwise beyond their ken. In the judging of the Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis, for which the play was nominated in 2007, for example, jury member Til Briegleb voted against the play being selected as overall winner for the following reasons: I find the play manipulative in its manner of construction. I think that when you see it and have no background information, you have no idea whether what you are being shown here is documentary theatre, whether it has been devised on a wild whim of the authors, or what they really want to achieve with this. […] It creates the impression of being representative for something, and that’s something I don’t believe in the slightest. (My transcription; Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis 2007)21

Here, we see the high expectations associated with the documentary or semi-documentary labelling in terms of not only the function of the play—it should be informative—but also the ethics of representation present within it: it should contain a clear truth value (cf. Reinelt 2009). Similar notions have had a frequent role to play in engagements with Zaimoglu’s prose writing. Scholars such as Julia Abel and Chantelle Warner, for example, have read para-textual elements, such as the preface in Zaimoglu’s infamous debut book Kanak Sprak, as containing and playing with literary signs which create or deny certain expectations of authenticity and documentary associated with the ethnicized, previously subaltern voice which these texts are often supposed to contain (Abel 2006, 309–14; Warner 2011, 258–61). It is perhaps unsurprising then,

21 “Weil ich die, in ihrer Konstruktionsart und -weise, manipulativ finde. Ich finde, wenn man das sieht und keine Hintergrundsinformation hat, hat man keine Ahnung, ob einem hier dokumentarisches Theater vorgeführt wird, ob das von den Autoren wild zusammen konstruiert ist, und wo sie genau damit hinwollen. […] [E]s erweckt den Eindruck repräsentativ für etwas zu sein, und das glaube ich auch nicht die Bohne.”

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given the contemporary trend for and historical tradition of documentary theatre in Germany, that when Zaimoglu/Senkel’s play-text entered the theatrical reception context it was positioned in relation to such dominant concepts.22 There are certainly similarities between the play’s “interview-based” form and the form of much contemporary documentary theatre which claims to use verbatim material.23 Other productions from 2006 which use similar techniques include Karl Marx: Capital, Vol 1. (Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Erster Band) by Rimini Protokoll which combined quotations from Marx with verbatim material drawn from interviews with individuals. As Katharina Keim explains, in such theatre in the German context, perceived “guarantors” of a link to the real world outside the theatre can be located “on the level of the performers, who really embody their own biographies, and on the other hand, on the level of documentary speech”. She continues: “[t]he practice of developing semi-documentary play-texts on the basis of interviews with special target groups, in particular, has become well-known through the work of texts by Kathrin Röggla, such as we never sleep [2004]” (2010b, 135).24 While in the German context, the earlier documentary theatre of the 1960s bore the legitimacy of drawing on legal testimony given by witnesses under oath, e.g. Peter Weiss’ dramaturgical reworking of testimony given at the Auschwitz trials into his celebrated Die Ermittlung (The Investigation, 1964), the narratives at the heart of Black Virgins originated in a very different fashion. In interviews with the press, Zaimoglu repeatedly highlighted the play’s origin in an informal interview situation, his desire to allow the unacknowledged voices of Muslim

22 For a discussion of the form of the dramatic text in relation to both the documentary theatre of the 1960s and its contemporary incarnation, see also Breger (2012, 232) and Hentschel (2007, 159). 23 Ingrid Hentschel therefore includes Black Virgins as one of only two examples of the contemporary documentary tradition in her recent book (2007, 159). 24 “Die Garanten für die Verortung in realer Gegenwart können im semidokumentarischen Theater […] auf verschiedenen Ebenen angesiedelt sein, zum einen auf der Ebene der Darsteller, die tatsächlich ihre eigene Biografie verkörpern, und zum anderen auf der Ebene der dokumentarischen Rede. Insbesondere das Verfahren, auf der Grundlage von Interviews mit speziellen Zielgruppen semi-dokumentarische Stücktexte zu entwickeln, ist durch die Texte Kathrin Rögglas wie etwa wir schlafen nicht [2004] bekannt geworden”. Keim discusses Black Virgins as semi-documentary or postdramatic theatre separately elsewhere (2010a).

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women in Germany to be heard through the play, but also the artistic nature of his own interventions with the texts: They knew about me, they knew about my publications and they were familiar with my process. They knew their words would be transcribed, then translated into my artistic language and finally, as part of a play, would be set in a particular context. […] Naturally, some of them were also a little suspicious. But they agreed to it, as in doing so they had the opportunity to say who they are, what they think, where they stand. (Burgtheater 2007)25

Here, we see what Katharina Keim calls the turn to the “egodocument”: the “voluntary testimony of a person about themselves, without recourse to the collection of administrative or legal data concerning the person in question” (2010b, 132).26 Arguably, this owes more to the use of theatre to give voice to marginalized perspectives familiar from the AngloAmerican context (see the frequent comparisons of this play with The Vagina Monologues ), as well as to the growth of performance art, both of which place an emphasis on self-performance. Indeed, Frank Raddatz

25 “Sie wussten um mich, sie wussten um meine Publikationen und sie kannten mein Verfahren. Sie wussten, ihre Worte werden transkribiert, dann in meine Kunstsprache übertragen und schließlich als Teil eines Theaterstückes in einen bestimmten Kontext gestellt. […] Das war ihnen natürlich auch ein wenig suspekt. Aber sie haben sich damit einverstanden erklärt, da sie so die Gelegenheit hatten, zu sagen, wer sie sind, was sie denken, wo sie stehen.” 26 “freiwillige Aussagen einer Person zu sich zu verstehen, ohne Hinzunahme administrativ-juristischer Datensammlungen zu eben dieser Person.” This relates to what Charles Taylor has identified as the predominant ethic of our age: being authentic in the sense of being “true to oneself” (1991). For Taylor, authenticity is largely associated with an emancipatory freeing of the self from rules imposed by restrictive power structures, traditions or religions. In this concept of authenticity, self-articulation becomes linked to emancipation and empowerment; the outer move from being spoken for to speaking is perceived to mirror an inner rejection of submission to outside authority (Taylor 1994, 25). In the post-Christian secular context, the “individual” is seen as a product of the modern, that is, of a break with religious tradition as authority. This is Foucault’s posi˙ A. Çelik (2012, 123). Islam is structured very differently from tion as drawn on by I. Christianity, however, and has always emphasised a direct relationship between worshipper and Allah, in which believers must decide which leaders and teachings to use as models for their own lives, rather than being dependant on a church-like structure mediating this (Langer and Simon 2007, 273). Neco Çelik, as well as academic commentators, highlights the fact that “in Islam the individual is a very important factor” (“[i]m Islam ist das Individuum ein sehr wichtiger Faktor”; quoted in Behrendt and Wille 2006, 44). See also Kermani for a discussion of individualism and Islam (2009, 99–125).

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highlights that in postdramatic theatre, particularly in its twenty-firstcentury iteration, “[t]he authenticity of artistic expression, that is to say, the thing the artist traditionally fights for, is sacrificed in favour of something unadapted and raw, which has no need to be fully worked through nor to be fully conquered in formal terms” (2010, 141).27 Raddatz differentiates between two forms or understandings of authenticity here, the “authenticity” of the artist’s work related to a tradition which positioned beauty as truth, and “authenticity” as the presentation of an unmediated “Reality”. Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins it seems straddles the two interconnected yet diverging models of authenticity outlined by Raddatz. The emphasis in Black Virgins on Islam as a means of female emancipation and path to self-expression gives a particularly explosive energy to the play. The play also, I would suggest, interrupts a related narrative which, in the years immediately following the initial iteration of the Danish cartoon controversy of late 2005 and early 2006, set freedom of (artistic) expression against what Newsweek dubbed “Muslim rage” (Hotz 2012). That this was prevalent in the theatrical sphere in Germany as much as in the mainstream media at the time is illustrated by Christopher Balme’s analysis of public discussions surrounding the revival of Hans Neuenfels’ production of the Mozart Opera Idomeneo at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, which took place a few months after the Black Virgins premiere in September 2006 (2010, 63–66). This production, which had been first performed in 2003, included a scene in which the Prophet Mohammed’s severed head appears along with those of Christ, Buddha and Neptune. As Balme explains, in 2006, the planned revival was abruptly called off following advice from the police and reported suggestions of an anonymous Islamic threat to the opera house (63). This triggered a storm of protest in the German media in which, as Balme succinctly explains, the need to defend “artistic freedom”28 was pitched against capitulation to “Islamic fanaticism”,29 adding to a situation in which “the principle of artistic freedom serves an anti-multicultural agenda” (66).30 Here, Islam is also positioned in opposition to artistic mediation, a coalition which 27 “Geopfert wird die Authentizität des künstlerischen Ausdrucks, also das, um was der Künstler traditionell ringt, zugunsten eines Unbearbeiteten, Rohen, das weder durchdrungen, noch formal bewältigt muss.” 28 “künstlerische Freiheit”. 29 “islamischen Fanatismus”. 30 “das Prinzip der künstlerischen Freiheit dient einer anti-multikulturellen Agenda”.

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curiously reverses and so denies the frequent lack of acknowledgement on the part of mainstream critics of the ability of artists, authors and playwrights who self-identify, or become identified, as Muslim to represent artistically, rather than politically or sociologically.

Staging Close Encounters with Islam: Spielberg Meets Kreuzberg Turning to the premiere production of Black Virgins, the deliberately abstract mise-en-scène certainly did not attempt to create an aura of documentary facticity (cf. Breger 2012, 233–35). The stage began in darkness, the only sound a low-level ominous tone, similar to static on a wire. Then, as the curtain slowly drew back across the stage to reveal a grid of six equally sized and identical performance spaces (see Fig. 1), squares of bright neon red, green and yellow light, followed occasionally by a searing white, began to flash out from the stage (see Fig. 2). This was

Fig. 1 Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel’s Black Virgins, dir. by Neco Çelik (2006). Photograph © Ute Langkafel Maifoto Berlin

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Fig. 2 Opening sequence of Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel’s Black Virgins , dir. by Neco Çelik (2006). Set of three stills from unpublished audiovisual recording

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accompaniment by a low, ominous growl which then built to a series of tones reminiscent of the audioscape of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Both light and tone patterns increased in speed and it was only during this faster strobing sequence that the boxes were revealed to contain women dressed in black raincoats and headscarves which covered wigs of long hair. To the accompaniment of these tones and lights, the women stripped down to an androgynous alien-like base costume of flesh-coloured long-johns, long-sleeved t-shirts and bald caps (Fig. 1), before disappearing again into darkness, leaving one box lit, in which the first actress began her monologue (Fig. 2; Çelik 2006).31 Most existing analyses have focused on the striptease element of this opening scene and the suggestions of nudity; however, here I want to dwell with the audiovisual reference to sci-fi film—a reference often noted but rarely examined in existing analyses of the production.32 As interviews with Neco Çelik reveal (2012; Behrendt and Wille 2006, 44), this striking opening sequence explicitly and purposefully plays on Spielberg’s film. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the story of a mass encounter engineered by mysterious alien beings, is perhaps best known for the light-and-sound spectacular which forms the lengthy encounter scene at the climax of the film (1977, 01:40:35-02:09:00; see Figs. 3 and 4). In the central section of this sequence, a series of tones is played back and forth in order to establish contact between the US military and alien spacecraft which arrive at the base of a mountain named “Devil’s

31 The mise-en-scène and staging of the premiere production are also described in detail ˙ A. Çelik 2012, 119; El Hissy 2012, 126–27). This use of by Sieg (2010, 153—55; I. light and sound was also repeated in the production’s closing sequence. Elements of the opening and closing sequences can also be seen on the Gorki Theatre’s promotional video from 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCSsn5YDaNI. Last accessed 26 August 2014. 32 Katrin Sieg, for example, notes: “The repetitive, computer-generated melody emanating from the loudspeakers recalls the soundtrack to Steven Spielberg’s (1977) science fiction movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and heralds, tongue in cheek, the arrival of aliens” (2010, 178). However, she immediately moves on from this observation to her illuminating analysis of the costuming as a critical comment on European discourses which problematically link nudity with emancipation (ibid.). Similarly, Breger also notes Çelik’s references to aliens in this interview and in some responses to the play (2012, 236–37) and suggests in passing that his production “produces an uncomfortably close encounter with the radical voices presented on stage”. Passing references are also made to encounter in Breger (2012, 266) and Hentschel (2007, 155), however, neither piece addresses Spielberg’s film any more explicitly.

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Fig. 3 Alien Communication Scene in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Fig. 4 Alien Arrival in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Tower”. Each tone corresponds to a different light and, as the aliens play ever more complex variations for the humans to respond to, an epic sequence of light and tone emerges (01:54:13-01:57:24). As the audiovisual recording of the 2006 production shows, this sequence is echoed by the neon-lit boxes and repeated tonal patterns of the opening and closing movements of Neco Çelik’s production of Black Virgins (Neco Çelik 2006; compare Fig. 2 and Fig. 3). The eerie blue lighting and

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costuming of the actresses in Fig. 1 are also strongly suggestive of Spielberg’s particular representation of blue-lit, bald, humanoid aliens (see Fig. 4). The radical nature of Langhoff’s approach to the curation of the Beyond Belonging festival programme in which Black Virgins premiered is important to highlight at this point: By commissioning film directors to direct plays, and asking literary authors to write them, for instance, Beyond Belonging has compensated for the unequal access to professional training in the different artistic disciplines. (Sieg 2010, 149–50)

The allusion to unequal access to professional training here refers to the way in which a lack of institutional support for migrant and postmigrant theatre practitioners has to a degree shaped their lack of representation on Germany’s state-funded stages.33 Tunçay Kulao˘glu explains that at the time of Beyond Belonging postmigrant artists had already managed to establish themselves more firmly in the film industry, an industry in which he and Langhoff had also long been active. As a result, in 2006, “[the] first step was to make use of this potential” (Kulao˘glu 2010, 161)— a potential which also brings different frames of reference with it.34 Neco Çelik came to the production of Black Virgins in this context and as the Close Encounters reference highlights, he brought not only a so-called “background of migration” (“Migrationshintergrund”) but also a background in film to his theatrical work.35 The inclusion of a pop culture reference within the staging of the world premiere thus alerts us to a frame of reference which is far from canonical and has little to do with Islamic tradition, constructions of Muslim women, or German politics and theatre—the three areas in relation to which the play is 33 Erol Boran outlines a situation in which funding for Turkish-German theatre in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s was frequently low, drawn from social funds rather than cultural budgets, and consisted of short-term, project-based subsidies, rather than money for longer running projects (Boran 2004, 79; 158). 34 “[der] erster Schritt auch darin lag, auf dieses Potenzial zurückzugreifen”. 35 Film scholar Randal Halle, for example, mentions the “cinematic quality” of the

premiere of Black Virgins in his analysis of Çelik’s cinema (2009, 44). Halle also sees a “transposition […] of a cinematic structure onto the stage” in the frame-like boxes of the mise-en-scène (2009, 44). Similarly, a colleague from film studies, Jane Sillars, found the boxy scenery suggestive of the screen display of digital film-editing programmes.

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most frequently situated. Instead, this reference to Hollywood situates the Turkish-German or Muslim theatre practitioner (both Zaimoglu and Neco Çelik self-identify in these ways) at the centre of a web of transnational, intermedial influences which cannot be reduced to one, or even two, national or religious cultures. Returning to the context and ethos of the Beyond Belonging festival and the intersecting traditions of documentary theatre already present in Germany at the time, it is important to recognise that while the postmigrant theatre movement creates new space for postmigrant artists, it also brings with it a new set of perspectives and patterns of artistic development. In an interview I carried out with Çelik in 2012, he explained the effect this had on his relationship to the idea of documentary theatre, as opposed to documentary film, at the time of the premiere: I didn’t know what documentary theatre was […], that there are different genres in theatre, […] it’s a waste. What for? What is the point of having these various genres in theatre? The space is defined, the terms of the encounter are defined. I can adapt the space etc., but it always remains theatre.36

Since the premiere, Çelik has gone on to direct a number of theatrical and operatic pieces in Germany and Turkey. He has won the prestigious German FAUST award and has become a passionate advocate of the need for Turkish-Germans to gain a foothold in this sphere of German social and artistic life.37 In the quotation above though, Çelik highlighted his position back in 2006 as a first-time theatre director whose frames of reference were more filmic than theatrical. These comments are extremely productive in opening up “documentary theatre” as a contested category and further exploring the ways in which the initial dynamics of the postmigrant theatre movement entered into that contestation.

36 “Ich wusste nicht, was Dokumentartheater ist […], dass es im Theater unterschiedliche Genres gibt, […] das ist eine Verschwendung. Wozu? Wozu diese verschiedenen Genres im Theater? Weil der Raum definiert ist, die Verabredung definiert ist. Ich kann den Raum umstellen usw., aber es bleibt immer Theater.” 37 These include Zaimogu and Senkel’s Nathan Messias (Ballhaus Naunynstraße, 2009). Neco Çelik directed Ludger Vollmer’s operatic adaptation of Fatih Akın’s Gegen die Wand (Head On) at the OperStuttgart in 2010 and an adaptation of Shostakovitch’s Moscow, Cheryomushki (Moskau Tscherjomuschki) at the Staatsoper Berlin in 2012.

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Derek Paget highlights that the history of documentary theatre is almost too scattered and interrupted to be considered anything other than a “broken tradition” (Paget 2009, 224). In contrast to “the continuity of the tradition of stage naturalism”, the association of documentary theatre with political interests and non-mainstream theatre groups has meant that, in the UK at least, “[p]ractitioners almost always have to learn again techniques that seldom get passed on directly” (Paget 2009, 224). In a broader sense, Paget argues that while practices which correspond to “documentary” genre markers used previously may reappear in areas where such a tradition once existed, they do not necessarily represent a continuation of the previous tradition (Paget 2009, 224). Here, I want to suggest that Paget’s identification of documentary theatre as a “broken” tradition also finds resonance in situating the work of theatre directors who enter the theatre via less-established routes. Directors such as Çelik might be said to stand in a broken tradition to more dominant concepts of documentary authenticity at that point of entry, which engages another perspective on established genre conventions. Rather than the 2006 production presenting itself as a “true” or “real” expression of Muslim women’s voices (as a more typically documentary or naturalistic aesthetic might suggest), the intertextual reference to Close Encounters arguably becomes one way in which the staging highlights the degree of fantasy and artistic experimentation involved in its own mediation.38 While Black Virgins has mainly been received as at least “semi-documentary” theatre, the production of the play directed by Neco Çelik frames it with a reference to a determinedly non-documentary genre: science fiction. This is not a refusal of the questions of authenticity raised by the play’s format however. Performance scholar Sue-Ellen Case points out

38 Halle (2009, 44) and Breger (2012, 233–39) also highlight the staging as challenging in this regard. In the online extract from Nora Haakh’s unpublished Masters dissertation, Haakh stresses the artistic work of the Ballhaus Naunynstraße when she contrasts the “imagined Islam” (“imaginierte Islam”) of the mass media with the “fictional” Islam produced by specific artists at the Ballhaus (Haakh 2011, 9). In the extract, Haakh argues that “in this way Islam and motifs associated with Islamisation are playfully picked up and renegotiated through their incorporation in fantasy-laden and experimental configurations” (“so werden mit Islam und Islamisierung assoziierte Motive spielerisch aufgegriffen und durch die Eingliederung in phantasievolle Versuchsanordnungen umverhandelt”; 2011, 14). The page numbers here refer to the online extract.

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that a performative and playful turn to science fiction occurs in afrofuturist music such as that of US-musician Sun Ra. There it functions as a means to “imagine racialized people as powerful, in-control citizens of a different order of things” and “invest social relations with fictional rather than factual powers as instruments of change” (2007, 124–25).39 In the area of literary fiction and film, attention has also been drawn to the generic and historical connection of science fiction to colonialism (see Reid 2009, 257). This connection has made science fiction a ready means for cementing, contesting or working through concepts of race, power and alterity (ibid., 256–57). While operating in a different context and discourse of othering, in choosing what Case has called “alien over alienation” (2007, 118), Neco Çelik also pointedly embraces the fictional rather than the factual in his presentation of female Muslim subjectivities. Rather than the 2006 production presenting itself as a “true” or “real” expression of Muslim women’s voices (as Breger suggests a more typically documentary or naturalistic aesthetic might indicate), the staging thus highlights its own status as fantasy and artistic experimentation.40 At the same time, focusing on this playful reference becomes a highly productive way of reading the more “serious” questions of the power relationships surrounding the play and of reflecting on the presence of these power relationships in the “real world”. This reframes a seemingly documentary discourse on Islam as always constructed, but as therefore also open to reconstruction and so change.41 In doing so, it engages with questions at the heart of any examination of the document: namely what constitutes a documentary source, whose story these documents tell, where they come from, how they are framed in relation to one another, and what purposes particular documents already, or potentially could, serve. On both a textual level and in its premiere production, Black Virgins can thus be said to engage in what 39 As Layne (2018) and Watkins (2017) highlight, afrofuturism has since become a key strategy for many Black German theatre practitioners who would come to be associated with the Ballhaus at a later stage in the theatre’s development. 40 While Neco Çelik also mentions “information” in the interview quoted above, the mode in which this information is delivered is clearly important in terms of the power relations inherent in the play. 41 My analysis here provides one possible answer to questions raised by Breger who asks “in which ways and for whom exactly” the women are positioned as “strangers” and “how exactly does a theatricalizing, (post-) Brechtian aesthetics of distanciation work here?” (2012, 236).

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Fatima El-Tayeb terms a “queering of ethnicity”—a “politicized creolization of traditions and identities” (2011, 89). Rather than attempting to keep apart what I˙ A. Çelik positions as Western, liberal understandings of freedom and the “real” stories of Muslim women, or the documentary and the fictional, such an approach “acknowledges the fact that supposedly incompatible cultures and histories have already merged in European practices and uses the ‘improper’, ‘inauthentic’ and impossible positionality of racialized Europeans as the starting point for situated, specifically European strategies of resistance” (2012, 89). With I˙ A. Çelik’s critiques in mind, it is also perhaps important to highlight that Zaimoglu is a very self-aware writer and seldom invokes a particular discourse uncritically (cf. Dickinson et al. 2008, 15), whether it be liberal multiculturalism, militant Islamism or Christianised under˙ A. Çelik uses the presence of standings of Muslim practice. While I. the term “beichten” (“to confess”) in Black Virgins as inspiration for a Foucauldian critique of the play, for example, a further possibility would be that it actively clues us into one already present in the texts themselves. Equally, the very notable presence of a Christianised language of confession in the play might have multiple functions. El Hissy identifies this as an example of religious syncretism, present in contemporary Germany (2012, 142–43). The blending of religious languages within the play could thus be understood as a way of critiquing the idea that Islam and the West form two impermeable blocs. Indeed, the adoption of Christian beliefs and language is the focus of the wrath of one of the monologues not included in the world premiere: in monologue eight, a radical young woman accuses her sister, who is also a practising Muslim, of Christian “nonsense” (Zaimoglu and Senkel 2006, 45): My sister is a naive, big-arsed nun of a Muslima. […] She sticks to the letter of the law, but the law comes from God and it won’t let itself be degraded to the status of user manual for the good life. (ibid., 43)

While this could be seen as purist separatism, on closer reflection it appears to be the transference of a Christian-style reliance on the holy book for instruction (and an over-indulgence in chocolate) which disgusts the speaker in this monologue. Coming back to the aims of the festival for which the play was commissioned, creating a public space for intraIslamic contestation, and what El Tayeb refers to as modes of resistance specifically rooted in the postmigrant context, is thus arguably as much of

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an aim of the play as presenting the complexities of Islam to that public might be. Indeed, the more the women’s Islamic practice is translated into Christianised terms, arguably the less “comprehensible” it becomes.42 Although theatre critics were overwhelmingly positive about the world ˙ A. Çelik 2012, 121), anecdotes of audience reactions and premiere (I. the content of many of the reviews suggest that the play presented figures which many were excited by, but did not in actual fact find easy to comprehend. For example, in his review of the premiere production, Reinhard Wengierek refers to the play as an “open-hearted glimpse into the unfathomable depths of an uncanny emancipation, which combines the modern with the archaic, the liberal with the most fundamental religiosity”43 (2007, 24). While attempting to fit the world views articulated in the monologues into his own, each familiar concept appears distorted to Wengierek, in a way which he registers as “uncanny” or “unheimlich”. Similarly, Kirsten Riesselmann of the tageszeitung reports, “for all those who presume that under the headscarf hides an oppressed little mouse, what they have to say has the quality of half a culture shock” (2006).44 Rather than the use of terms such as “to confess” (“beichten”) and the discussion of sexuality making the women comprehensible, it is arguably the liberal vocabulary of emancipation and the emphasis which the “black virgins” lay on individualisation which the reviewers struggle to comprehend as compatible with a view of Islam dominant at the time.

42 Using the example of the term “orthodoxy”, Robert Langer and Udo Simon discuss some of the issues created by attempting to understand Islamic theology and practice via Christian terminology: “There [is] no generally accepted religious authority, no hierarchy, or ecclesiastical office that would decide for all Muslims what is the right belief. […] [T]he ‘orthodoxy’ versus ‘heresy’ scheme is denounced as a dichotomy of Eurocentric interpretive categories that fails to grasp the pluralism and complexity characteristic of Muslim religious life. Instead, it is argued, one should let Islamic tradition speak for itself” (2007, 273). 43 “offenherzigen Blick in die unsäglichen Abgründe einer unheimlichen Emanzipation, die das Moderne mit dem Archaischen, das Liberale mit dem fundamentalistischen Religiösen verquickt”. 44 “[w]as sie sagen, hat für alle, die unter dem Kopftuch ein unterdrücktes Duckmäuschen vermuten, die Qualität eines halben Kulturschocks.”

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Authenticity and Interculturalism in the Theatrical Context Reading the premiere production of Black Virgins through the references to Close Encounters not only disrupts a reading overdetermined by ethnicity, it also highlights the role of invitation in the “encounters” which took place around the premiere.45 In Close Encounters, the hero Roy Neary feels a compulsion to travel to the place where the alien encounter will take place, after the aliens implant an image of the meeting place in his mind. He then becomes the first man to enter the alien spaceship because, as the other key figure of identification within the film, Lancombe, emphasises, Neary has been explicitly invited to the point of encounter by the aliens themselves (Engel 1996, 380). Similarly, while it is extremely important to address questions of representation, potential voyeurism and manipulation surrounding the subjects of Black Virgins, attention to the most explicit intertextual reference of the mise-en-scène suggests that we should also recognise the premiere production as an invitation. This invitation was extended not only by the HAU theatre to artists of postmigration to share their artistic concerns and views of the world, but also by those artists themselves, who in turn invited both white German and migrantized audiences to listen to and engage with their work. As we saw in the prelude to this study, in Berlin the appearance of the actresses after the play in the para-theatrical space of the foyer seems to have had a curious effect on the audience which sheds interesting light on the ways in which this invitation was received. In our 2012 interview, Neco Çelik describes this moment as follows: People were so irritated that even when there was no post-show discussion they didn’t go home. They waited in the foyer and forced you into a discussion. […] They were completely at odds with themselves and needed some hope, some kind of relief. […] The relief was always especially present when

45 Garde and Megson also discuss encounter in their analysis of productions at the HAU, but with regard to theatre as “an aesthetic playground in which both habitual and new avenues of encountering unfamiliar people are put under the spotlight and tested” (2016, 102). They thus focus on encounter via the theatrical performance, rather than direct verbal encounters of post-show discussions which I discuss here. At the same time, again this points to the role of the HAU’s artistic strategies in shaping the new postmigrant theatre.

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the actresses came into the foyer in their own clothes and they were just normal women. None of them wore a headscarf and this kind of murmur always went through the room then. The fact that these women were just not perceived as actors, that was the crazy thing for me.46

Çelik’s description here returns us to the question raised in the earlier chapter on “Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Early Plays (1982–2000)” of how audience members see the migrantized actor. Rather than continuing a focus on the ethics and power relations at work when the “women’s voices” or documentary object is mediated, it also shifts the focus to how the migrantized professional as artistic mediator is received. This is an ˙ A. Çelik’s and Matthes’ concern important issue which relates back to I. with the role Zaimoglu, as artist, is assigned by the play. This question of the politics of professional practice rather than artistic representation will be explored further in the next chapter. Viewing the premiere production as both aesthetic intervention and social event also reveals that post-show discussions, whether planned or impromptu, enabled encounters to take place not only between practitioners and audience members, but also between the various audience members gathered to see the production. In a personal interview, LarsOle Walburg, for example, who later directed the Austrian premiere of Black Virgins related his experience of a HAU post-show discussion in which a Turkish audience member announced his daughter would never speak as the women in the play had, only to be corrected for his ignorance by his own wife. As Walburg’s anecdotal evidence suggests, these 46 “Die Leute waren so irritiert, dass sie, auch wenn es kein Publikumsgespräch gab, nicht nach Hause gegangen sind. Sie haben im Foyer gewartet und haben ein Gespräch erzwungen. […] Sie waren dann völlig durcheinander und haben eine Hoffnung, eine Art von Lichtblick, gebraucht. […] Der Lichtblick war immer besonders, wenn die Schauspielerinnen in ihren privaten Sachen in das Foyer gekommen sind und sie dann normale Frauen waren. Keine hat Kopftuch getragen und es ging immer so ein Raunen durch den Raum. Dass man diese Frauen nicht mal als Schauspielerinnen wahrgenommen hat, das war für mich [das Verrückte].” Breger highlights the overt theatricality of the premiere production as aiding the positive responses to the world premiere (2012, 236; 266). However, Sieg suggests that the immediacy of the direct address created by the blocking in the world premiere “encourages spectators to view actors as stand-ins for actual women, obscuring the activity of producer, writer and director as cultural mediators” (2010, 172). I would suggest that the sci-fi framing of the play is designed precisely to avoid such a mode of viewing; however, it appears to be over-ridden by the use of so-called “ReadyMades” or “real people” in other semi-documentary plays which address migration in Germany.

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encounters took place not only between Germans and Turks, Christians, secularists and Muslims, but also within supposed groups and even within families. Rather than simply informing “Germans” about “postmigrants”, the play can thus also be understood as a catalyst for re-evaluation of assumptions amongst a variety of sectors of the audience present. Such encounters were not limited to the performances of the premiere production. In my interview with Christian Scholze of the Westfälisches Landestheater in 2011, the director provides anecdotal evidence of “very strong need for a conversation”47 following performances of Black Virgins by his theatre in the Ruhr area, which he met by ensuring, “that the follow-up discussion is a part of the production”.48 The importance of these discussions for the overall experience is reflected in their inclusion in the majority of reviews.49 While this degree of audience extra-theatrical self-performance might suggest productions of the play as a space “for an audience reaffirming their own middle-class, majority German identities” (Breger 2012, 238),50 in Scholze’s case the pre-existing links between the Westfälisches Landestheater and local schools, as well as its remit for touring, ensured that, in a region where the demographic proportion of people with a background of migration is higher than the Germany-wide average, the audience was far from exclusively white German (Scholze 2011, 2015). The performances thus became events which literally offered a space for dialogue between individuals of Muslim

47 “ein sehr starkes Bedürfnis für ein Gespräch”. 48 “dass das Nachgespräch Teil der Inszenierung ist”. Similarly, in our interview, Lars-

Ole Walburg recounted that at performances of his production of Black Virgins in Austria, “we had an audience discussion every time and it was also necessary each time […]. The vestibule was always full somehow and people talked till they were blue in the face” (“wir haben jedes Mal ein Publikumsgespräch gemacht, es war auch jedes Mal nötig […] Das Vestibül war immer voll irgendwie und die Leute haben sich heiß geredet”). 49 In, for example, the review of this production published in regional newspaper Der Westen, “Schwarze Jungfrauen im ‘Mumientuch’” (Anon 2009), the centrality of the postshow discussion is reflected in the replacement of a photograph of the production with one of the discussions. 50 Breger raises this issue with respect to the world premiere; however, she also concludes that the visual aesthetics and mode of encounter there force a renegotiation rather than reassertion of identity on the part of the spectator.

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and non-Muslim faith as well as an opportunity for Muslims to reflect on their own identities.51 The Close Encounters reference is thus productive in ways beyond those which Neco Çelik, Zaimoglu/Senkel and the Beyond Belonging Team might have anticipated while developing the premiere production. B. H. Fairchild draws attention to Lancombe’s interpretation of the alien encounter in Close Encounters as “an event sociologique” in order to move the focus from the UFO landing within the film to the phenomenon which the film became on distribution: Close Encounters is about a sociological rather than a scientific event, but the film is also a sociological event in itself. We, the audience, become the content of the film. We swarm to the theater to witness a close encounter. (1978, 343)

Drawing in turn on Fairchild’s interpretation of Lancombe’s comment within the film, an “event sociologique” may be a very good way to describe the post-show discussions described above, and the play’s subsequent spread in multiple and aesthetically divergent productions across Germany. The emphasis on post-show discussions, that is, on theatre as a place of “real interaction” between people of a particular locality, is also interesting in terms of increased demand for scripts from playwrights with a background of migration in the mid-2000s and a rescripting of what theatre itself has to offer, as it allows theatres to position themselves as a more “authentic” form of encounter than other media. Lars-Ole Walburg, the director of the 2007 Austrian premiere, which then later moved with him into the repertoire of the Schauspielhaus Hamburg, explained his own ambivalent feelings about the play in our interview in 2012. Referring to the potential of Black Virgins to explore post-9/11 fears of Islam within the German population as a reason for its popularity, Walburg said: I’m not too sure really, whether that is good or not, whether you should do that or not in the theatre. […] I had to justify myself so often for that […]. At the beginning to the actresses in Vienna, for one […]. And I’ve always thought, in the somewhat vague formulation, that everything which

51 In fact, Gazelle: Das multikulturelle Frauenmagazin encourages its readers to attend the play for precisely this reason (Anon 2007).

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promotes new considerations in others, everything which leads to a second step in communication, can only be good.52

Notably, what Walburg highlighted here was not the authenticity of the texts and their representation in his production, but rather the authenticity of the encounters provoked by the production as event. In a time of mass media and high technology, theatre, and particularly well-funded theatre, is frequently in the position of having to justify its own existence or necessity. In doing so, the “live” nature of performance and the “real” presence and community-building potential of the theatrical audience are often highlighted (see Auslander 1999; Case 2007, 164). Indeed, a determined direction towards what has begun to be called “intercultural mainstreaming”,53 or efforts to normalise inclusive theatre practice, can certainly be seen at Schauspiel Hannover under Walburg’s leadership. Since he moved there in 2009, Walburg has been instrumental not just in staging plays about migration, but also in engaging postmigrant directors and dramaturges such as Nuran David Calis (Keim 2011). Similarly, following the success of the Westfälisches Landestheater’s initial production of Black Virgins, this theatre has not only produced a second production with the remaining monologues but also has increasingly used these plays to position itself as an intercultural facilitator—a position in high demand in an area where one in four people have a “background of migration” (Ministerium für Arbeit, Integration und Soziales des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen 2011). A further factor in this shift, which a broad view of the multiple productions of Black Virgins reveals, is therefore the question of which audiences state-funded theatres in particular should be aiming to attract. In our conversation, Walburg highlighted that if one wants to democratise theatre, it is important to respond to the needs of the changing population of Germany. This has become an increasingly common point of view since the premiere of Black Virgins . Mark Terkessidis, for example, writes of the need for public institutions, including the theatres, to shift to serve

52 “Ich bin mir da auch nicht ganz sicher, ob das gut ist oder nicht, ob man das machen sollte auf dem Theater […]. Ich musste mich so oft dafür rechtfertigen [….] Am Anfang zu den Schauspielerinnen in Wien, durchaus […]. Und ich habe immer gemerkt in der etwas schwammigen Formulierung, alles, was das Nachdenken in anderen befördert, alles, was dann auch zu einem zweiten Schritt in der Kommunikation führt, kann nur gut sein.” 53 “interkulturelles Mainstreaming”.

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the diverse population of Germany today (2010b, 108; 196–203). At the same time, as Terkessidis himself has suggested, the recognition of postmigrants as not just citizens but above all as consumers needed by a model in decline is somewhat problematic, following as it does a neoliberal, market logic (2010a, 6). In a case of life mirroring art, in the dramatic text of Black Virgins , the “black virgin” of monologue five identifies herself and her “sisters” as “the future market and the current reality” (Zaimoglu ˙ A. Çelik have, with good and Senkel 2006, 27).54 Scholars such as I. reason, questioned the political legitimacy of Black Virgins , positioning it as a play in which a male playwright creates or lays bare a “confessing” Muslim woman for the desiring gaze of a mainly white German audience. However, this knowing nod to the market also highlights the role which this gaze, however problematic, might have to play in a pragmatic politics of recognition for artists associated with the postmigrant theatre movement who want their work to be seen. Whether initially successful or not, the inclusion of Black Virgins in a theatre’s repertoire often seems to have either triggered or been the first step in an active policy of inclusion which had previously been largely absent. As a result both of its potential to create new points of community interaction and of the resultant audience it could win for German theatres, following Black Virgins postmigrant theatre began to contribute to a broader drive to legitimate theatre as a place of “authentic” encounter. The impact this has begun to have within theatrical institutions, and the structural shifts which have partially enabled this, will be examined further in the following chapter.

Works Cited Abel, Julia. 2006. “Konstruktion ‘authentischer’ Stimmen: Zum Verhältnis von ‘Stimme’ und Identität in Feridun Zaimoglus Kanak Sprak.” In Stimme(n) im Text: Narratologische Positionsbestimmungen, edited by Andreas Blödorn et al., 297–320. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Amir-Moazami, Schirin. 2011. “Dialogue as a Governmental Technique: Managing Gendered Islam in Germany.” Feminist Review 98: 9–27. Anon. 2007. “Schwarze Jungfrauen – Ein Theaterstück das zum Nachdenken anregt.” Gazelle: Das multikuturelle Frauenmagazin, February edition. Copy

54 “[d]er künftige Markt und die heutige Wirklichkeit”.

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Accessed in the Holdings of the Regieassistenz, Westfälisches Landestheater, Castrop-Rauxel. Anon. 2009. “Schwarze Jungfrauen im ‘Mumientuch’.” Der Westen, 16th February. Copy Accessed in the Holdings of the Regieassistenz, Westfälisches Landestheater, Castrop-Rauxel. Auslander, Philip. 1999. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. Abdingdon: Routledge. Balme, Christopher. 2010. “Gefährliche Bilder: Theater und Öffentlichkeit in einer multireligiösen Gesellschaft.” In Irritation und Vermittlung: Theater in einer interkulturellen und multireligiösen Gesellschaft, edited by Wolfgang Sting et al., 57–69. Berlin: LIT Verlag Dr. W. Hopf. Behrendt, Eva, and Franz Wille. 2006. “Mal sehen was Gott sagt.” Theater heute 47 (5): 43–45. Boran, Erol M. 2004. “Eine Geschichte des türkisch-deutschen Theaters und Kabaretts.” PhD diss, Ohio State University. Accessed May 1, 2010. http:// etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?osu1095620178. Breger, Claudia. 2008. “Religious Turns: Immigration, Islam and Christianity in 21st-Century German Cultural Politics.” Konturen: Interdisciplinary Journal for German Cultural Analysis 1: 1–32. Breger, Claudia. 2012. An Aesthetics of Narrative Performance: Transnational Theater, Literature, and Film in Contemporary Germany. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Burgtheater, Wien. 2007. “Schwarze Jungfrauen”. Programme for Production Directed by Lars-Ole Walburg. Vienna: Burgtheater. Accessed in Archive of the Rowohlt Theater Verlag, Reinbek. Case, Sue-Ellen. 2007. Performing Science and the Virtual. New York: Routledge. ˙ Çelik, Ipek A. 2012. “Performing Veiled Women as Marketable Commodities: Representations of Muslim Minority Women in Germany.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 32 (1): 116–29. Çelik Neco (dir.). 2006. “Schwarze Jungfrauen”. Unpublished Audiovisual Recording. HAU, Berlin. Accessed thanks to Nermin and Neco Çelik. Çelik, Neco. 2012. Personal Interview. Berlin, May 23. Dickinson, Kristen et al. 2008. “Translating Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Feridun Zaimoglu’s Koppstoff .” Transit 4 (1): 1–33. http:// escholarship.org/uc/item/8z0270rh. El Hissy, Maha. 2012. Getürkte Türken: Karnevaleske Stilmittel im Theater, Kabarett und Film deutsch-türkischer Künstlerinnen und Künstler. Bielefeld: transcript. El-Tayeb, Fatima. 2011. European Others. Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Engel, Charlene. 1996. “Language and the Music of the Spheres: Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Literature Film Quarterly 24 (4): 376–82. Fairchild, B. H. 1978. “An Event Sociologique: Close Encounters.” Journal of Popular Film 6 (4): 342–49. Garde, Ulrike, and Meg Megson. 2016. Theatre of Real People: Diverse Encounters at Berlin’s Hebbel am Ufer and Beyond. London: Bloomsbury. Haakh, Nora M. 2011. “Islamisierte Körper auf der Bühne: Identitätspolitische Positionierung zur deutschen Islam-Debatte in Arbeiten des postmigrantischen Theaters Ballhaus Naunynstraße Berlin.” Extract from MA thesis, Freie Universität Berlin, 1–18. Available at academia.edu. https://www. academia.edu/1083349/Islamisierte_Korper_auf_der_Buhne_Identitatspolit ische_Positionierung_zur_deutschen_Islam-Debatte_in_Arbeiten_des_postmi grantischen_Theaters_Ballhaus_Naunynstrasse_Berlin. Halle, Randall. 2009. “Experiments in Turkish-German Film-Making: Ay¸se Polat, Kutlu˘g Ataman, Neco Çelik, Aysun Bademsoy and Kanak Attak.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 7 (1): 39–53. Hentschel, Ingrid. 2007. Dionysos kann nicht sterben: Theater in der Gegenwart. Berlin: Dr. W. Hopf. Hotz, Alexander. 2012. “Newsweek ‘Muslim Rage’ Cover Invokes a Rage of its Own.” US News Blog, The Guardian, September 17. http://www.thegua rdian.com/media/us-news-blog/2012/sep/17/muslim-rage-newsweek-mag azine-twitter#. Keim, Katharina. 2010a. “‘Allah ist kein Ausländer’ – Transkultureller religiöser Fundamentalismus in zeitgenössischen deutschsprachigen Theatertexten.” In Irritation und Vermittlung: Theater in einer interkulturellen und multireligiösen Gesellschaft, edited by Wolfgang Sting et al., 71–84. Berlin: Dr. W. Hopf. Keim, Katharina. 2010b. “Der Einbruch der Realität in das Spiel: Zur Synthese von Faktizität und Fiktionalität im zeitgenössischen semidokumentarischen Theater und den Kulturwissenschaften.” In Reality Strikes Back II: Tod der Repräsentation: Die Zukunft der Vorstellungskraft in einer globalisierten Welt, edited by Kathrin Tiedemann and Frank Raddatz, 127–38. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. Keim, Stefan. 2011. “Migration ist selbstverständlich: Das Schauspiel Köln beleuchtet die multikulturelle Gesellschaft.” In Theater und Migration: Herausforderungen für Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis, edited by Wolfgang Schneider, 91–98. Bielefeld: transcript. Kermani, Navid. 2009. Wer ist Wir? Deutschland und seine Muslime. Munich: C.H. Beck. Krug, Hartmut. 2011. “Postmigrantismus für alle.” Freitag, May 6. http://www. freitag.de/kultur/1118-postmigrantismus-f-r-alle.

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Kulao˘glu, Tunçay. 2010. “Das kulturelle Kapital der Postmigranten ist riesig.” In Kultur mit allen! Wie öffentliche deutsche Kultureinrichtungen Migranten als Publikum gewinnen, edited by Vera Allmanritter and Klaus Siebenhaar, 159–80. Berlin: B&S Siebenhaar. Langer, Robert, and Udo Simon. 2007. “The Dynamics of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy. Dealing with Divergence in Muslim Discourses and Islamic Studies.” Die Welt des Islams 48: 273–88. Layne, Priscilla. 2018. “Space Is the Place: Afrofuturism in Olivia Wenzel’s Mais in Deutschland und anderen Galaxien (2015).” German Life and Letters 71 (4): 511–28. Matthes, Frauke. 2010. “‘Authentic’ Muslim Voices? Feridun Zaimoglu’s Schwarze Jungfrauen.” In Religion and Identity in Germany Today: Doubters, Believers, Seekers in Literature and Film, edited by Julian Preece et al., 199–210. Oxford: Peter Lang. Ministerium für Arbeit, Integration und Soziales des Landes NordrheinWestfalen. 2011. “Sozialindikatoren NRW.” http://www.mais.nrw.de/soz ialberichte/sozialindikatoren_nrw/indikatoren/2_demografie/indikator2_3/ index.php. Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis. 2007. “Diskussion der Jury um die Vergabe des Mülheimer Dramatikerpreises.” Audiovisual Recording. June 2, Mülheim. www.stuecke.de. Müller, Toni. 2012. Was schaut ihr mich an? Darstellungen von Menschen mit Behinderung in der zeitgenössischen Dramatik. Berlin: Frank & Timme. Nökel, Sigrid. 2002. Die Töchter der Gastarbeiter und der Islam. Bielefeld: transcript. Paget, Derek. 2009. “The ‘Broken Tradition’ of Documentary Theatre and Its Continued Powers of Endurance.” In Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present, edited by Alison Forsyth and Chris Megson, 224–38. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Peters, Nina. 2011. “Die Umkehrung des eigenen Blickes: Beobachtungen und Bekundungen aus dem Blickwinkel Berliner Theater.” In Theater und Migration: Herausforderungen für Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis, edited by Wolfgang Schneider, 169–76. Bielefeld: transcript. Raddatz, Frank. 2008. “HAU 1, 2, 3: Matthias Lilienthal im Gespräch.” Theater der Zeit 63 (2): 16–20. Raddatz, Frank. 2010. “Authentische Rezepte für ein unvergessliches Morgen: Der Wunsch nach dem Echten in Zeiten globalen Wandels.” In Reality Strikes Back II: Tod der Repräsentation: Die Zukunft der Vorstellungskraft in einer globalisierten Welt, edited by Kathrin Tiedemann and Frank Raddatz, 139–62. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. Reid, Michelle. 2009. “Postcolonialism.” In The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Mark Bould et al., 256–66. London: Routledge.

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Reinelt, Janelle. 2009. “The Promise of Documentary.” In Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present, edited by Alison Forsyth and Chris Megson, 6–23. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Riesselmann, Kirsten. 2006. “Radikaler Glauben.” die tageszeitung, March 20. Scholze, Christian. 2011. Personal Interview. Castrop-Rauxel, May 13. Scholze, Christian. 2015. “Theater macht Schule. Interkulturelle Bildung in Castrop-Rauxel.” In Kunst verbindet Menschen: Interkulturelle Konzepte für eine Gesellschaft im Wandel, edited by Tina Jerman, 180–86. Bielefeld: transcript. Sharifi, Azadeh. 2011. “Postmigrantisches Theater: Eine neue Agenda für die deutschen Bühnen.” In Theater und Migration: Herausforderungen für Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis, edited by Wolfgang Schneider, 35–45. Bielefeld: transcript. Sieg, Katrin. 2010. “Black Virgins: Sexuality and the Democratic Body in Europe.” New German Critique 37 (1): 147–85. Sieg, Katrin. 2011. “Class of 1989: Who Made Good and Who Dropped Out of German History? Postmigrant Documentary Theater in Berlin.” In The German Wall: Fallout in Europe, edited by Marc Silberman, 165–83. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Spielberg, Steven. 1977. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Los Angeles, CA: Columbia Pictures. Stewart, Lizzie. 2017. “Postmigrant Theatre: The Ballhaus Naunynstraße Takes on Sexual Nationalism.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 9 (2): 56–68. Taylor, Charles. 1991. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1994. “The Politics of Recognition.” In Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, edited by Amy Gutmann, 25–73. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Terkessidis, Mark. 2010a. “Die Heimsuchung der Migration. Die Frage der interkulturellen Öffnung des Theaters.” Neue Spieler, alte Städte: Favoriten 2010, edited by Aenne Quiñones und Tom Mustroph, 5–10. Dortmund: Theater der Zeit/Theaterfestival Favoriten. Terkessidis, Mark. 2010b. Interkultur. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Walburg, Lars-Ole. 2012. Personal Interview. Hannover, June 7. Warner, Chantelle. 2011. “A Turkish Tale: Genre, Subjectivity, and the Controversy around Feridun Zaimo˘glu’s Leyla.” Gegenwartsliteratur 10: 254–75. Watkins, Jamele. 2017. “The Drama of Race: Contemporary Afro-German Theater.” PhD Diss. Amherst, MA. Weber, Beverly M. 2012. “Hijab Martyrdom, Headscarf Debates: Rethinking Violence, Secularism, and Islam in Germany.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 32 (1): 102–15.

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Weber, Beverly M. 2013. Violence and Gender in the “New Europe”: Islam in German Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Wengierek, Richard. 2007. “Schwarze Messe des realen Irrsinns.” Theater heute 48 (5): 23–24. Witt, Sophie. 2018. “Mediales Tun und unheimliche Zeitdiagnostik: ‘X Wohnungen’: Theater in privaten Räumen.” Figurationen: Gender, Literatur, Kultur 19 (1): 51–69. Yildiz, Yasemin. 2009. “Turkish Girls, Allah’s Daughters, and the Contemporary German Subject: Itinerary of a Figure.” German Life and Letters 62 (4): 465–81. Zaimoglu, Feridun. [1995] 2005. Kanak Sprak: 24 Mißtöne vom Rande der Gesellschaft. Hamburg: Rotbuch. Zaimoglu, Feridun. 2012. Personal Interview. Kiel, June 5. Zaimoglu, Feridun, and Anna Reimann. 2007. “Die Idee eines deutschen Islams begeistert mich.” Spiegel Online, April 24. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ deutschland/integration-die-idee-eines-deutschen-islam-begeistert-mich-a479051.html. Zaimoglu, Feridun, and Günter Senkel. 2006. Schwarze Jungfrauen. Reinbek: Rowohlt Theater Verlag.

Performing Institutional Change: New Faces, Shadow Voices (2008)

Migration and Documentary: Exploring an Entanglement In 2008, a second semi-documentary play, this time on the subject of irregular and undocumented migration, Shadow Voices (Schattenstimmen) was commissioned from Zaimoglu and Senkel by Schauspiel Köln, one of Germany’s most prominent state-subsidised theatres. To the extent that Black Virgins (Schwarze Jungfrauen; 2006) and Shadow Voices share a semi-documentary form and a focus on issues raised by contemporary migration, they can be said to form a conceptual pair. While the previous chapter on Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins (2006) looked at the dynamics of documentary and authenticity at work within the semi-documentary postmigrant play, this chapter will further examine the ways in which scripts of authenticity, self-representation, and interculturalism also play into the institutional dynamics at work within the theatre industry and cultural policy in Germany more broadly. Commissioned in the wake of Black Virgins, Shadow Voices reflects not only the success and impact of that earlier play but also mirrors its structure. Shadow Voices consists of nine monologues based on interviews with irregular or undocumented immigrants to Germany, commonly referred to as “illegal immigrants”. As migration scholar Heide Castañeda explains, “there are multiple categories of ‘illegality’ – illegal exit, entry, residency © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. Stewart, Performing New German Realities, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69848-5_6

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and employment” (2008, 174), and these are reflected in the range of experiences represented in the collection of monologues. The nine monologues thus include figures as diverse as a homophobic “African” male prostitute, a Russian widow who cares for the old ladies of a German village, a Moroccan kitchen porter who initially came to Germany to study and dreams of marrying a German woman, and a Ukrainian exau-pair who lives a party lifestyle in Berlin. They are joined by a character who longs to return to his life as an undocumented migrant in Rome (the “Roman”), an Eastern European high-end prostitute, a Kurdish honour-murderer, an “African” drug dealer,1 and a vengeful Roma or Sinti woman. Themes which cut across many of the monologues include the entanglement of “normal” German life with the economy of undocumented migration, the role of the EU, and the impact of undocumented status on interpersonal and particularly sexual relationships. The position of irregular and undocumented immigration had been under renewed discussion in Germany in the year of the premiere. In 2007 the Schengen agreement, allowing passport-free movement between most member states of the EU, expanded to include nine further countries including two that border on Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. Several of the texts of Shadow Voices reflect this change: in a vulgar pun, the prostitute refers to herself as a “powder box expanded by the EU”,2 for example, and relates this to her role as “competition” for German women (Zaimoglu and Senkel 2008a, 29). 2008 then saw several changes to policies relating to irregular immigration within the EU. In June 2008, for example, new EU-wide rules on the deportation of undocumented immigrants were agreed and a further immigration and asylum pact was agreed in September of the same year (Göktürk et al. 2011, 787). Within the play text of Shadow Voices, the more precarious the employment and legal situation, the more precarious the mental state of the figure appears to become. There is thus a stark contrast between the state of mind expressed by the measured and reflective language of the Russian carer of monologue six, who lives with her naturalised German family, speaks fluent German and has a clear role to play in local village life, and that of the “African” drug dealer

1 In monologues one, two and eight, countries of origin within Africa are not differentiated, with the exception of Morocco. 2 “EU-erweiterte Puderdöschen”.

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of monologue eight, whose highly political criticism of the expectations placed on him as a representative of Black culture by well-meaning leftleaning Germans is interspersed with more paranoid theories concerning the purposeful introduction of Aids into Africa. Like Black Virgins , Shadow Voices was printed in Theater heute (Theater today; Zaimoglu and Senkel 2008b). However, it is generally considered a less successful piece: it was staged in only four productions, none of which were particularly celebrated.3 Nonetheless, both can also be situated at the forefront of a wave of new interview-based, or documentary theatre which has explicitly taken migration to Germany as its subject matter. This development marks a stark change to a previous reluctance to stage stories of migration by, with, or about migrantized artists, but it may also function to relegate the migrant and migrantized experience to the realm of fact rather than fiction, creating what Mark Terkessidis terms an “entanglement of migration and ‘docu’”4 (2010a, 7; also quoted in Czerwonka 2011, 78). In an article which also briefly addresses Shadow Voices in its production by Nurkan Erpulat at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Katrin Sieg argues that: [t]he documentary theater’s appeal to sociological notions of the real, coupled with the conflation of actor and character in some documentary performances, risks laminating social behaviour to a particular national psychology or even a racialized anatomy. (2011, 172–72)

As this chapter will show, such potential for “lamination” also extends to the postmigrant playwright. The demand for a repeat performance from Zaimoglu/Senkel thus also has its issues. Tom Cheesman and Karin Ye¸silada suggest that Zaimoglu’s unusual monologues “are a gift for performers in the currently dominant idiom of ‘shouty’ theatre [theatre of the In-Yer-Face or postdramatic school]”, but also highlight that “calls upon him and Senkel to vary Kanak Sprak for new occasions cannot be very productive for his development as a writer” (2012, 9–10).

3 Three years after the premiere, reviewer Stefam Keim commented: “these stories have hardly any emotional effect and a few years later have already been mainly forgotten and one has to read up on it to still remember the production” (“emotional wirken diese Geschichten kaum, und einige Jahre später sind sie schon weitgehend vergessen und man muss nachlesen, um sich an die Aufführung noch zu erinnern”; 2011, 93). 4 “Verquickung von Migration und ‘Doku’”.

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While the previous chapter looked at the dynamics of documentary and authenticity at work within the semi-documentary postmigrant play, this chapter will examine the ways in which concerns with authenticity, “selfrepresentation”, and postmigrant theatre also play into the institutional dynamics at work within the theatre industry, and the extent to which the documentary turn risks “laminating” particular aesthetic expectations onto postmigrant theatre practitioners. Two of the productions of Shadow Voices thus become of particular interest as they both took place in the context of pioneering, but very different, attempts to alter the ethnicized structures of German theatre companies themselves. The first of these is the 2008 premiere at Schauspiel Köln. Shadow Voices was commissioned and premiered as part of Karin Beier’s much-publicised project at Schauspiel Köln to reflect “the social reality” of Cologne as a city in which one in three people are considered “people with a background of migration”. Accordingly, Beier recruited new members for the Cologne ensemble so that thirty percent of the actors themselves had a “background of migration” thus attempting to mirror the demographics of the city (Sharifi 2011, 100). This chapter situates this move within the context of the adoption of an “intercultural” framework in areas such as North Rhein-Westphalia following the change in citizenship law in 2000. Although Beier’s move appears a positive one, little, it seems, changed behind the scenes at the theatre: indeed, a number of interviews reveal that the casting of actors with a “migration background” as the protagonists almost only in explicitly migration-themed plays formed one of several tensions running through the broader project at Schauspiel Köln (see, e.g., Perumal 2013). Only a few years later, the experiment seemed to largely have failed, with many of the new actors employed by Beier having left the ensemble. I will conclude by comparing the production at Schauspiel Köln to one which took place as part of a very different attempt to alter the ethnicized structures of German theatre companies themselves: Nurkan Erpulat’s production (also 2008).5 This was performed as part of Dogland,6 the opening festival of the Ballhaus

5 Shadow Voices has also been directed by Thomas Bischoff (Kassel: Staatstheater Kassel, 2008) and by Judith Ittner (Bochum: Schauspiel Bochum, 2009). 6 Title originally in English.

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Naunynstraße; an institution which opened as an artistic forum for “postmigrant” theatre work but also relied on funding from “intercultural” pots. This chapter takes this example as an opportunity to explore the relationship of theatrical work and literal scripts of postmigration, to the scripts provided by cultural policy.

“Intercultural Mainstreaming”, Documentary Theatre, and the “Professional Ethnic” The significance and necessity of experiments with institutional change are highlighted by a 2008 interview with Matthias Lilienthal, the artistic director of the HAU theatre in which Black Virgins had premiered. Here Lilienthal commented on the lack of prospects for young actors of Turkish origin and other migrantized actors in Germany: The situation is schizophrenic insofar as there are young people who are trained at the acting schools. But only a few of them really get a foothold in the ensembles of the theatres. That needs to change. (Lilienthal quoted in Raddatz 2008a, 19)7

Rather than simply lamenting this lack of opportunity, Lilienthal also made reference to the theatre as an opportunity for “creating social sculpture” (ibid.),8 a term which alludes to Joseph Beuys’ concept of the role of the everyday individual as artist with the potential to be involved in consciously shaping social structures. As outlined in the previous chapter, this opportunity was taken up by Shermin Langhoff, who went on to co-found the Ballhaus Naunynstraße as a home for the avant-garde, postmigrant theatre produced by the initial Beyond Belonging Festivals. It has also been made use of by many of the theatres where Black Virgins was subsequently performed. This suggests a broader development which is significant for situating an examination of Shadow Voices. For example, the Westfälisches Landestheater was the second theatre to stage Black Virgins after the HAU premiere. The director Christian Scholze was familiar with Zaimoglu’s work from 7 “Die Situation ist insofern schizophren, als es junge Migranten gibt, die an den Schaupielschulen ausgebildet werden. Aber nur wenige von ihnen kommen wirklich in die Ensembles der Theater hinein. Das muss sich ändern.” 8 “Soziale-Plastiken-Schaffen”. On Beuys and Lilienthal see Garde and Mumford (2016).

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having previously directed Almanya, a dramatised version of Zaimoglu’s Koppstoff (1999), which Scholze produced together with actress Günfer Cölgecen in 2002 (personal interview 2011; see also Scholze 2015).9 Almanya is significant both as it began a working relationship between Zaimoglu and Scholze, and as it originated in Cölgecen’s dissatisfaction with what she felt to be a clichéd role in an adaptation of Koppstoff (Headstuff) for the Maxim Gorki theatre prior to Almanya (ibid.). Not only does this highlight the extent to which a director can shape the interpretation of a play-text, it also points to the various ways in which Turkish-German actors negotiate their paths through the German theatrical system.10 Almanya was also very timely as from 2002 onwards the state of North Rhein-Westphalia had adopted an emphasis on “intercultural work”, which in 2004 became the highly influential “Handlungskonzept Interkultur” (“Interculture Action Plan”; personal interview with Scholze 2011). This change in cultural policy provided funding specifically for developing intercultural competencies and work within institutions in North Rhein-Westphalia, the region within which the premiere of Shadow Voices then took place in 2008. As a touring theatre, the Westfälisches Landestheater already had close links with schools in the area and so, following the success of Almanya, was in a good position to bid for funding for further projects under the umbrella of “intercultural work” (ibid.; Scholze 2015).11 When I interviewed him in 2011, Scholze emphasised the advantage of having this extra money available in terms of making theatre relevant to contemporary debates. Generally, the theatre had to set its programme a year and a half in advance, resulting in a relatively apolitical set of productions. However, as a result of this extra funding, when Black Virgins was published Scholze was able to mobilise these resources to address a current theme. The success of Black Virgins

9 Images from the production and a selection of reviews are available at www.bofind er.de, a website dedicated to the production [last accessed 11 March 2013]. 10 It is interesting to note as a point of comparison that Fatih Akın also cites dissatisfaction with the roles available to him as an actor as one of the factors which led him to begin directing films himself (Akın, quoted in Burns 2006, 142). A similar level of dissatisfaction within the theatrical sphere also led Turkish-German actor and doctor Tu˘gsal Mo˘gul to found theatre company “Theater Operation”. http://theater-operation. de/?page=Profil [last accessed 11 March 2013]. 11 “interkulturelle Kulturarbeit”.

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in turn helped the Westfälisches Landestheater consolidate its new role as “intercultural facilitator’”, and following such localised trials, North Rhein-Westphalia as a whole has begun to increasingly sell itself this way, a factor which, as this chapter will outline in more detail, frames the commissionof Shadow Voices. While Zaimoglu/Senkel’s “semi-documentary theatre” helped set a new direction for the Westfälisches Landestheater, the production of Black Virgins for the independent theatre group Junges Theater Bremen in 2009 functioned more to continue an established interest in postmigrant theatre. This interest dated back to the commission of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Ja. Tu es. Jetzt (Yes. Do it. Now) by the Junges Theater as the opening production for their permanent home the Schwankhalle, Bremen (2003) and to their 1998 production of Kanak Sprak.12 According to director Anja Wedig, the continued interest in Zaimoglu’s work stemmed from two impulses: firstly, from the young theatre group’s interest in contemporary themes and language as well as the related theme of “how the Ego deals with its environment” (personal interview 2012),13 and secondly from the fact that members of the group themselves were practitioners with a background of migration. In her chapter on postmigrant theatre in Berlin, Nina Peters describes “the independent scene as trailblazers” in terms of addressing postmigrant reality (2011, 170).14 That this is to a degree the case throughout Germany is suggested by Wedig’s attitude to her production—what in 2008 was a striking novelty in the slower moving state-sponsored theatres, was already normal in the independent scene. So what enabled this proliferation of productions of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s “semi-documentary” plays? Azadeh Sharifi takes the idea of “culture for all”15 —a key aim in German cultural policy since the 1990s—as the starting point for her study of the participation of postmigrants as audience members in theatres in Cologne (2011, 241–43). This focus on culture as a “right” for all citizens in the FRG highlights a factor which has clearly had a role to play in the adoption 12 This is the production which is featured in the infamous encounter between Feridun Zaimoglu and Heide Simonis on the “3 nach 9” (“3 After 9”) chat show, the transcript of which was reproduced in English in Cheesman (2007, 1–11). 13 “wie das Ich mit seiner Umgebung klarkommt.” 14 “die freie Szene als Vorreiter”. 15 “Kultur für alle”.

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of an “intercultural” framework in areas such as North Rhein-Westphalia following the change in citizenship law in 2000 (Sharifi 2011, 88). The Immigration Law (Zuwanderungsgesetz) of 2005 in which “measures for the integration of immigrants with legal long-term residence in Germany was anchored in law for the first time” (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, n.d.), and the introduction of a National Integration Plan by the Federal Government of Germany have also had their effect, it seems, on the subsequent adoptions of “intercultural action plans” (“Interkulturelle Handlungskonzepte”) by regional cultural senates and have been reflected in policy documents such as the “Twelve Essentials of Integration Policy in Berlin” from 2005 which “simultaneously places demands on the receiving society to open its institutions and processes interculturally” (Abgeordnetenhaus Berlin 2005, 9–11). This is also referred to in debates as “intercultural mainstreaming”,16 i.e. as an active move to normalise diversity. Onur Suzan Kömürcü Nobrega explains that this term, and the thinking behind it, “follows the debates about gender mainstreaming [the systematic inclusion of women] and addresses the issue of discrimination and racialised labour divisions in public institutions” (2011, 92 n. 2). The influence of this new direction not only nationally, but specifically in Cologne and the related commission of Shadow Voices seems closely bound up with Karin Beier’s arrival as artistic director of Schauspiel Köln in 2007. Beier was already known for “intercultural” theatre as a result of her multi-lingual productions of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1995 and The Tempest in 1997.17 The 1995 production was very positively received in Germany where it was selected for the prestigious Berliner Theatertreffen in 1996, although it was viewed more critically when it toured internationally. Christopher Balme, for example suggests that, “[i]f we were particularly ungenerous we could say that it combines the culinary-cynical with the essentialistic tendencies of multiculturalism”, although he qualifies this critique with the suggestion “that this is the best that mainstream German theatre can do, at present, when it comes to representing cultural difference on-stage”

16 “interkulturelles Mainstreaming”. 17 William Shakespeare, Ein Sommernachtstraum (A Summer Night’s Dream) dir. by

Karin Beier (Düsseldorf: Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, 1995); William Shakespeare, Der Sturm (The Tempest) dir. by Karin Beier (Cologne: Schauspiel Köln, 1997).

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(Balme 2005, 20). As a young dynamic director with an interest in multinational theatre productions, however, an approach often confused for intercultural work within a locality (cf. Dede Ayivi 2018), Beier must have been an appealing candidate for a cultural senate looking to revive the flagging Schauspielhaus in Cologne and develop its own intercultural profile. Beier’s much-publicised project at Schauspiel Köln therefore was to reflect “the social reality” of Cologne as a city in which one in three people at the time had a background of post-war migration (Beier, quoted in Sharifi 2011, 100).18 For Beier, this meant the imitation or representation of reality not only with respect to the content of the plays performed but also within the ensemble itself. Accordingly, Beier recruited new members for the Cologne ensemble so that ca. thirty percent of the actors themselves had a background of migration; she thus attempted to mirror the demographics of Cologne. In multiple interviews given at the time and since both she and her chief dramaturge Rita Thiele have suggested that “normalising” the place of actors “with a background of migration” within the ensemble was necessary in order to ensure that the placement of an actor of colour in a “German” role would not be understood as symbolic by the audience: It needs to go without saying that actors with a background of migration can be cast in central roles without their belonging to a particular cultural milieu having a meaning for the director’s concept. (Beier, in interview with Baur 2007, 27)19

The rationale for introducing a kind of “quota” into the ensemble clearly aimed at moving beyond a casting practice in which migrantized actors are frequently cast only in “cliché-roles” or as representatives of “the Other” (ibid.).20 A number of issues arising from this context can, however, be seen in the processes surrounding the commission of Shadow Voices and were 18 “die soziale Wirklichkeit”. 19 “Es muss selbstverständlich werden, auch in zentralen Rollen Schauspieler mit Migra-

tionshintergründen zu besetzen, ohne dass die Zugehörigkeit zu ihren kulturellen Mileus für das Regiekonzept Bedeutung hat.” 20 “Klischee-Rollen”; “das Fremde”. Such a casting practice is critiqued by Mark Terkessidis amongst many others (see Gintersdorfer et al. 2011).

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clearly picked up in several of the reviews of the premiere. The director originally intended for the piece is identified in several of the reviews as Jette Stechel, a young director voted “Emerging Director of the Year” in 2007 (Hennecke 2008).21 However, Stechel was apparently unable to work with the texts and withdrew from the production: she is quoted in a later article in the tageszeitung newspaper as saying that continuing to direct a text which was not working for her “is fair neither to the text, nor to the director, nor to the author” (in Schmeller 2008).22 This is quite an unusual decision: a world premiere tends to have a high market value and the commission appears to be alluded to as a prominent aspect of the opening season’s programme in several interviews given around the beginning of Karin Beier’s time as artistic director. In her programmatic interview with Die deutsche Bühne (The German Stage) from May 2007, Beier alludes to her wish for “the integration of foreign artists in our work” and highlights the inclusion of theatre which has a “halfdocumentary and half-fictional form” as a means of further addressing “social reality” in the 2007/2008 season (Baur 2007, 28).23 In order to keep the premiere at Schauspiel Köln therefore, the production was taken on by the director Nora Bussenius, who at that time was qualified as a director but employed by the theatre as a director’s assistant (personal interview 2011). Even before rehearsals began then, the Shadow Voices texts seem to have met with a certain level of resistance. This is perhaps unsurprising given that the use of hate speech in the texts is particularly unrelenting, even for Zaimoglu/Senkel’s work. As one reviewer of the later Ballhaus production states, the dramatic text “challenges even the willing recipient” (Granzin 2008).24 What is perhaps unexpected, however, is that Feridun Zaimoglu also appears to have had reservations about the commission, both in terms of the subject matter and the form involved. In a personal interview (2012) he recounted:

21 “Nachwuchsregisseurin des Jahres”. 22 “wird weder dem Text gerecht, noch dem Regisseur, noch dem Autor”. The subse-

quent director Nora Bussenius also mentions having to convince sceptical actors of the text (personal interview, 2011). 23 “die Integration ausländischer Künstler in unsere Arbeit”; Theater “halbdokumentarischer und halbfiktionaler Form”; “die soziale Wirklichkeit”. 24 “sich auch dem wohlwollenden Rezipienten heftig entgegenstemmt”. For further discussion of ambiguities and problematic aspects of the use of hate speech in Zaimoglu’s other work, see Schmidt (2008, 196–213) and Günter (1999, 15–28).

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It was immediately clear, from the theatre, that they wanted something documentary. And that is what we then suggested to them and they were really fired up with enthusiasm. And, I have to admit, in the meantime I had got to a point where I said ‘Oh God, not this again, not monologues again. Lord, can’t it go differently for once!’ But […] no, they wanted monologues.25

Head dramaturge Rita Thiele has stressed both in her interviews with Sharifi and in pieces published in Dramaturgie, that part of the intention of the commission was for the theatre to distance itself from “multicultural kitsch” and other potentially problematic approaches to the theme of migration which it had adopted for that season (2009, 14; Sharifi 2011, 99).26 This was reflected in the choice of commissions: There is a very concrete search for plays such as the Zaimoglu we have in the programme or the Nuran Calis, [playwrights] who concern themselves with the situation of migrants very concretely in their plays. […] But as I said, always understood not as a kind of conservation programme on our part, but rather as a contribution to our urban hybrid culture, which should be taken to be as self-evident as possible. (2008, quoted in Sharifi 2011, 99)27

While the theatre rejects the idea of a “conservation programme” and talks the talk of hybridity, it is interesting to note that both the Turkish-German dramatists Zaimoglu/Senkel and Nuran David Calis were commissioned to provide semi-documentary, rather than fictional, plays. The turn to documentary and semi-documentary theatre when it comes to themes of migration is often justified by directors as a response

25 “es war gleich klar, von Seiten des Hauses, dass sie etwas Dokumentarisches haben wollten. Und das haben wir ihnen dann vorgeschlagen und sie waren dann Feuer und Flamme. Und ich war, muss ich ehrlich gestehen, in der Zeit mittlerweile so weit, dass ich sagte ‘Oh Gott, nicht schon wieder so, nicht schon wieder Monologe. Himmel, kann es vielleicht mal anders gehen!’ Aber […] nein, sie wollten Monologe.” 26 “Multi-Kulti-Kitsch”. 27 “Da gibt es sehr konkrete Stückfindung wie den Zaimoglu bei uns im Spielplan oder den Nuran Calis, die sich explizit mit der Situation von Migranten in ihren Stücken beschäftigen. […] Aber wie gesagt, immer verstanden nicht als Artenschutzprogramm von uns, sondern eher als ein möglichst selbstverständlich zu nehmender Beitrag zu unserer städtischen Hybridkultur.”

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to the “lack of plays” which tell migrant and postmigrant stories.28 As the commissioning of Shadow Voices suggests, however, the theatre’s own expectations may also play a role in creating a self-perpetuating situation here. The upsurge in the late 2000s and the 2010s in documentary or semidocumentary theatre which takes migration to Germany as its focus has drawn the attention of several critics. Examples of this genre include, to name only a few: Moschee.de (Mosque.com; Schauspiel Hannover, 2010) based on Robert Thalheim and Kolja Mensing’s research into reactions in a Berlin community to the building of a new Mosque; and Jenseits: Bist du schwul oder bist du Türke? (On the other side: Are you gay or are you Turkish?; Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2008), Nurkan Erpulat’s documentary play exploring the intersection of supposing antithetical identities in contemporary Germany (see Stewart 2017). This dramatic (or post-dramatic) form has also had a key role to play in attempts to bring the narratives of recently arrived asylum-seekers and refugees in Germany to the stage particularly from 2010 on, and with a renewed emphasis following the so-called refugee crisis of 2015. Productions such as Marita Ragonese’s Heimat (n)irgendwo ([No]Where to call Home?; Theater Bonn, 2011), and Nuran David Calis’ Brennpunkt X (Flashpoint X ), which premiered in June 2015 at the Saarländisches Staatstheater, both use interview-based monologues as a rapid and emotive means of engaging their established audiences with the challenges faced by those seeking refugee at that time.29 Mark Terkessidis critically summarises his view of German theatre’s recent “discovery” of migration as a subject for documentary theatre and the subsequent inclusion of particularly youths with a background of migration in the mid-2000s as “themselves” on the stage as follows:

28 This is a sentiment repeated in a number of the personal interviews I conducted. 29 For more on documentary responses to the so-called refugee crisis in German theatre

and beyond see the articles gathered in Sharifi and Wilmer’s 2016 special topic section of Critical Stages, particularly Sieg (2016).

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These young people don’t seem to be capable of truly processing their experiences artistically: they cannot represent anything – they constantly tell the story of their own lives. (2010b, 198)30

The terms Terkessidis uses here are strongly reminiscent of Edward Said’s summary of the action of Orientalism, in which “the Orient” “cannot represent itself” (1978). By invoking Said in this way, Terkessidis identifies this conflation of the postmigrant body in theatre with a “real-life” person to be displayed onstage, rather than with an “actor” or artistic practitioner, as highly problematic and places it within a larger discourse of othering which has its roots in the European colonial project. In Germany, this othering often manifests itself in a demand that postmigrants simply “be themselves” onstage; a demand for cultural “authenticity” which, as already noted in the previous chapter, intersects with a particular conception of authenticity in contemporary, postdramatic German theatre. This second, postdramatic conception of authenticity is further outlined by Frank Raddatz as follows: In order to assert itself against the dominance of the virtual, postdramatic performativity turns to the authentic, that is to elements from reality. Reality is not represented but shows itself as already present. The human as ready-made. (Raddatz 2010, 141)31

This privileging of the “authentic”, then becomes the inclusion of “the Real” on stage in much postdramatic documentary theatre. In particular, this takes the form of the inclusion of what are commonly known in contemporary theatre criticism in Germany as “Ready-Mades”: that is, “real” people “being themselves” on stage (ibid.).32 This inclusion of the

30 “Zu einer echten künstlerischen Bearbeitung ihrer Erlebnisse scheinen diese Jugendlichen nicht in der Lage zu sein; sie können nichts darstellen – stets erzählen sie die Geschichte ihres eigenen Lebens.” 31 “Um gegenüber der Übermacht des Virtuellen Eigenes zu behaupten, greift die postdramatisch eingerichtete Performativität zum Authentischen, also zu Elementen aus der Realität. Realität wird nicht repräsentiert, sondern zeigt sich in ihrem Vorhandensein. Der Mensch als Readymade.” 32 The “Ready-Made” terminology situates this practice in the lineage of work made famous by Marcel Duchamp, such as the signed urinal, Fountain (1917), a major piece in

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“Real” on stage is often posed as the antithesis of the theatre of representation preceding the postdramatic (Carroll et al. 2013). However, Janelle Reinelt has argued that the document is never “the Real” but has what she calls a “link to reality” which “sets up a realist epistemology where knowledge is available through sense perception and cognition linked to objects/documents” (2009, 9). By simply equating the postmigrant body with “the Real”, the association of migration and documentary within German theatre could be seen to posit the postmigrant as outside of representation and therefore beyond the symbolic order in a Lacanian sense (Lacan 1989).33 The risk of actor-character conflation highlighted here seems to be one of many conflations potentially involved in the commission of Shadow Voices . A degree of slippage appears to also be present, for example, in the shift from a commission in which Zaimoglu, a practising Muslim, was engaging with a topic closely related to his own lifeworld, to a commission in which Zaimoglu as postmigrant playwright is seen as the ideal person to write about the experiences of undocumented immigrants. Various modes and histories of migration thus appear to be collapsed onto one another, despite the very different experiences and legal statuses involved.34 As Terkessidis has suggested, it is possible that through an emphasis on the documentary or semi-documentary genre, a thematic “reduction to authenticity and pedagogy rubs off to a degree onto the artist with a background of migration” (2010a, 7).35 This state of affairs resonates in particularly interesting ways with Rey Chow’s discussion of self-referentiality:

twentieth-century art. For a detailed discussion of theatrical practice at the HAU around this time which engaged such “ready mades” see Garde and Mumford (2016). 33 Amanda Loos summarises the “Real” as follows: “very unlike our conventional conception of objective/collective experience, in Lacanian theory the Real becomes that which resists representation, what is pre-mirror, pre-imaginary, pre-symbolic – what cannot be symbolized – what loses its “reality” once it is symbolized (made conscious) through language” (2002, n.p.). 34 As Castañeda and others explain, the boundaries between legal and illegal migration shift as laws change, and migrants often move between the two categories. Citizenship functions differently. 35 “Reduktion auf Authentizität und Pädagogik färbt dabei gewissermaßen ab auf die Künstler mit Migrationshintergrund.”

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Presumed to be direct and unmediated, the act of referring to oneself has taken on the aura of a type of representation that can miraculously transcend the limits of representation, a type of representation that, however trivial and self-aggrandizing it might be, is morally justifiable because it is (thought to be) non-representational. Such self-representation is now equated with the expression of truth. (2002, 113)

Chow’s suggestion in her discussion of literary production is that coercion into the self-referential is a way of “keeping them [ethnic minorities] in their place”, a suggestion which “poses discomforting questions about the real function of autobiographical writing by those whose very acts and utterances are considered in an a priori manner autobiographical or representative of their group” (ibid., 152). Discreditation of the “professional ethnic” is thus identified as a mechanism which “discredits his or her (contentious) representation of the ethnic culture in question and reinforces the status quo – and the fantasy – of the proper that it seeks to maintain” (ibid., 191). As discussed earlier in this chapter, the potential has been raised for documentary theatre to normalise rather than disrupt certain discourses in a way which “risks laminating social behaviour to a particular national psychology or even a racialized anatomy” (Sieg 2011, 173). However, it is the potential for the lamination of a perceived inability to represent onto postmigrant theatre practitioners via the recourse to documentary forms which interests me here. This lamination, a term which suggests the fixing of an object in unalterable form as well as a false transparency and correspondence between object and an artificially attached layer of additional material, seems to also be at work not only in the preference for documentary theatre in which those documented themselves appear onstage, but also in the demand for documentary theatre from playwrights such as Zaimoglu. These tensions might also be seen to inscribe themselves within the texts produced for Shadow Voices . The inclusion of some of Zaimoglu’s most provocatively homophobic language and least sympathetic characters can, if read generously, thus be seen to mark a certain resistance to the ascriptions and paradoxes at work in the commission of the play.36 Comparing these texts to Chow’s discussion, the “trivial and selfaggrandizing” nature of several of the characters is certainly very notable. 36 A detailed discussion of homophobia in Zaimoglu’s earlier prose writing is provided by Schmidt (2008, 196–213).

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The unnamed Moroccan character of monologue two asserts his sense of self via his narrative of success and expertise in the “Dance Palace”,37 for example: ’n Arab is no Arab, he’s ’n enemy who every arse-cunt here wants a war with […] As long as I can wash-up here, I don’t give a toss about the rest of the shit, human relationships – I get those elsewhere. To be exact, in the Dance Palace. […] I come into the dance palace and know how the game goes (Zaimoglu and Senkel 2008a, monologue 2, 13–14)38

The tone of the monologue is outwardly defiant and uses sexualised and often racialized language throughout to gain further power via the infliction of symbolic violence on other vulnerable groups. However, there is a distinct suggestion that this can be seen as a response to the situation of exclusion in which the figure’s racialized and undocumented status leaves him. Equally, the “weakness” of Shadow Voices as a whole, compared to Black Virgins , may reflect a certain resistance on Zaimoglu’s part to the commission and the role assigned to him through it.

Casting and Cologne’s “Multicultural Ensemble” The conflation of migration and documentary identified above was further complicated in the commission of Shadow Voices for Schauspiel Köln by the institution’s attempt to redress the position of migrantized actors. Several of the actors given main roles in the premiere production of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Shadow Voices had been recruited for the ensemble of Schauspiel Köln as part of Beier’s new approach and were strongly aware of the tensions that approach involved. In an open letter to German theatre website Nachtkritik, one of the actors involved in the production, Murali Perumal, highlighted his frustration with being asked to play roles in which the reality of multicultural life in Germany is not shown: “At Schaupiel Köln the ‘multi-culti’ ensemble failed because the dramaturges

37 “Minusmaroc”; “Tanzpalast”. 38 “N Araber ist kein Araber, er ist n Feind mit dem jede Arschfotze hier Krieg führen

will […] Solang ich hier spülen kann, ist mir der andere Scheiß völlig egal, menschliche Beziehungen krieg ich woanders. / Nämlich im Tanzpalast. […] Ich komme rein in den Tanzpalast und weiß, wie das Spiel geht.”

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and German directors cast us almost only in migrant plays as foreigners, not however as the Germans which we all are in real life” (Perumal 2013).39 Omar El-Saeidi, an actor who was also briefly part of the new ensemble, and who wrote his diploma dissertation on the “German actor with a background of migration” describes the results of Beier’s attempt to change ensemble structures as “sobering” even by the end of 200840 : Looking at the 21 productions which ran in the 2007/2008 season more closely, one can see that even under Beier the ensemble members whose non-German heritage is visible, were not necessarily cast as “protagonists”. (2009, 102)41

Speaking in 2011, the theatre’s head dramaturge Rita Thiele both confirmed and lamented this assessment as the “natural” outcome of a situation in which “quota” is supposedly always in opposition to “quality”: If I was […] putting together a new ensemble today I would also go about things differently than back then. Then we mainly engaged a lot of beginners; so we mainly cast actors and actresses who come from these kinds of families, that is who have international roots […] in beginners’ roles. Schauspiel Cologne has a huge auditorium, so to survive on the stage there they usually need to have a deal of stage experience and a very strong presence. And then it ended up being the case that a lot of the beginners were exclusively to be seen in the smaller, not to say service, roles on the stage. (Gintersdorfer/Hasselberg/Terkessidis/Thiele 2011; My transcription)42

39 “Am Schauspiel Köln ist das ‘Multi-Kulti Ensemble’ deswegen gescheitert, weil die Dramaturgen und deutschen Regisseure uns fast nur in Migrantenstücken als Ausländer besetzt haben, nicht jedoch als Deutsche, die wir im wirklichen Leben alle sind.” 40 “ernüchternd”. 41 “Betrachtet man die 21 angelaufenen Produktionen der Spielzeit 2007/2008 einmal genauer, kann man erkennen, dass auch bei Frau Beier die Ensemblemitglieder, bei denen die nicht-deutsche Herkunft erkennbar ist, nicht unbedingt ‘protagonistisch’ besetzt werden.” The exceptions to this rule, are, as El-Saeidi points out, those plays where the themes are to do with migration, as in Shadow Voices. 42 “Ich würde das heute auch, wenn ich […] ein [neues] Ensemble zusammenstellen würde, anders angehen als damals. Wir haben damals sehr viele Anfänger engagiert; also hauptsächlich Anfängerpositionen mit […] Schauspielern und Schauspielerinnen besetzt, die aus solchen Familien kommen, also internationale Wurzeln haben […]. [Schauspiel Köln hat] einen Riesensaal, also um da auf der Bühne zu überleben, müssen sie in der

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Mark Terkessidis, who was part of the discussion panel during which the above statement was voiced, refers directly to Thiele’s statement in a subsequent interview when he states critically: I’m astounded really by the naiveté with which this was put into action: so, now we’ll just make a quota and bring in a load of beginners, and then we realise in the end they are only allowed to play the servant. (in Marcus 2011, n.p.)43

Further criticisms of the project at Schauspiel Köln also come from Sharifi, who notes the failure to alter the higher and administrative levels of the organisation along with the ensemble (2011, 102; 127–28; 205).44 Sharifi also criticises the decision not to actively attempt to engage with migrant and migrantized audience members via the routes already tried and proved successful at the Cologne-based Arkada¸s theatre; an organisation originally founded as a forum for Turkish theatre in 1986 and which today characterises itself as a “Bühne der Kulturen” (Stage of [many] Cultures), focusing on providing an “intercultural programme” for the diverse area of Cologne in which it is situated (2011, 116–29). The casting of actors with a “migration background” primarily in main roles in explicitly migration-themed plays thus forms one of several tensions running through the broader project at Schauspiel Köln, tensions which are arguably then also inscribed not only in the dramatic text but also in the premiere production of Shadow Voices. Director Nora Bussenius was certainly aware of these tensions and in discussing the aesthetic of the premiere production in a personal interview mentioned: I also wanted to protect the actors. These were big debates – so, the Black actor who is always cast as the Black illegal immigrant […] [In the

Regel einige Berufserfahrung haben und sie müssen eine sehr große Präsenz haben. Und man landete dann bei vielen Anfängern dabei, dass die ausschließlich in kleineren, um nicht zu sagen dienenden Funktionen auf der Bühne zu sehen waren.” 43 “Mich erstaunt allerdings die Naivität, mit der das dann umgesetzt wird: so, jetzt machen wir mal ’ne Quote und setzen lauter Anfänger rein, und dann merken wir, dass sie am Ende nur den Diener spielen dürfen.” 44 Terkessidis also mentions the need to change institutional culture (Marcus 2011) and this is his broader point in his book Interkultur (2010b).

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Fig. 1 Full cast on-stage in Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel’s Shadow Voices dir. by Nora Bussenius (2008). Photograph © Sandra Then-Friedrich production the focus] was actually also on this, […] on thematising this. (2011)45

This explains the choice of an overtly theatrical aesthetic, which aimed to allow no possibility of conflation of actor and role and instead emphasised performance. The production opened with the actors dressed in grey colours and seated on-stage on a bank of seats which self-reflexively mirrored the raked seating of the auditorium (see Fig. 1). In a series of black-outs, the actors simultaneously spoke their own monologues forming a disjointed chorus, only to halt abruptly as the light returned. This highlighted their role as “channels” for others’ voices and the paradox of attempting to represent subjects whose survival as undocumented immigrants rests on anonymity. The first monologue delivered, that of monologue three, then issued forth out of the on-stage darkness 45 “Ich wollte auch die Schauspieler schützen. Das waren große Debatten – also [der] schwarze Schauspieler, der immer besetzt wird als [der] schwarze Illegale […]. [In der Inszenierung geht] es auch eigentlich darum […], das zu thematisieren.”

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before a harsh spotlight was turned first on the audience, then on the stage itself. The issue of visibility continued to be played with throughout, as the actors moved in and out of shadow and sight, sometimes speaking their monologues from the on-stage bank of chairs, sometimes from the wings, at one point even from the ladies’ toilets (Bussenius 2008). Of the nine monologues, all except the last were used in a slightly cut form and each of the five actors became the main spokesperson for one or two monologues, as well as sharing elements of particular monologues between them. The final scene brought all the actors together in a parody of the shrine of the three kings—a reference to Cologne’s famous cathedral— over which the angriest of the monologues, that of the Roma or Sinti woman of monologue nine, was recited by the two actresses. The aesthetic employed attracted serious criticism from several reviewers. In local newspaper, the Kölnische Rundschau, for example, Günter Hennecke sighs “if only they really told us something, the ‘illegal’ people” (2008, n.p.).46 On Deutschlandradio Ulrike Gondorf criticised Bussenius for not trusting the supposedly unquestionable quality of the monologues, but instead burying them under “quite desperate theatrical attempts at art” (2008).47 For Bussenius herself, however, there was a clear distinction between more conventional documentary theatre and Zaimoglu/Senkel’s semi-documentary brand, “because there is an exaggeration there, but what this exaggeration involves is quite interesting” (personal interview 2011).48 It is this artificiality and exaggeration which then became the key for Bussenius’ approach to the play, an approach which in turn stressed the performative, rather than confessional, nature of the monologues themselves: “not ‘Who is Germany’s Next Top Model?’. But rather ‘Who is Germany’s Next Top Illegal Immigrant?’ They also try to profile themselves through their narratives, that is, in front of the audience” (ibid.).49 While each monologue took prominence at different points, the actors frequently interrupted one another’s 46 “wenn sie uns doch wirklich was erzählten, die ‘illegalen’ Menschen”. 47 “ziemlich kramphaften theatralischen Kunstanstrengungen”. 48 “weil eine Überhöhung da ist, aber ziemlich interessant, was diese Überhöhung hat

so.” 49 “nicht ‘Wer ist Germanys Next Topmodel?’. Sondern ‘Wer ist Germanys Next Topillegaler?’ Dass sie auch versuchen mit ihren Geschichten sich zu profilieren, also vor den Zuschauern.”

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monologues with lines from their own. The competing and distanced relationships were further emphasised by the blocking in which the figures onstage alternately watched one another with a kind of detached curiosity, ignored one another or actively tried to interrupt (Bussenius 2008). The association of the characters’ “self-assertion” with the kind of profiling present in reality television shows50 arguably functioned to draw parallels between the inclusion of the Shadow Voices monologues in the programme of a bastion of high culture such as Schauspiel Köln and the desires of a bourgeois audience to be both entertained by and to distance themselves from more precarious lives and senses of self. Indeed, Bussenius explained in our interview that when presented with the paradoxical challenge to display lives lived without legal residence status on stage, her prime concern was with what the purpose of the production was: What is the point of departure, so to say, when it comes to migration? […] It is just it quickly becomes this kind of fashionable theme […] and often the question isn’t posed of what is the point of this, then? […] For us in the work, in the staging, [the focus was] this impossibility, this absurdity that we – the bourgeois public – go to the theatre and stare at the poor illegal immigrants, and what is then the result, so to say, of this: that we soothe our own bad conscience, or what is it? […] It is a kind of battle between the stage and the audience. (personal interview)51

The metatheatrical focus in the premiere production thus also suggests that the reality to be imitated or repeated was far more that of the interaction at work when a bourgeois theatre audience spends an evening at the theatre in order to “learn” about “illegal immigrants”, than that of the immigrants themselves. While the performances of Black Virgins at the HAU theatre and in other areas where an effort was made to

50 Mumford (2015) discusses the connections between reality TV and the documentary theatre practices of Rimini Protokoll. 51 “Was ist sozusagen der Einsatzpunkt bei Migration? […] Es wird halt schnell so zum Modethema […] und wird oft nicht hinterfragt aber was ist denn der Punkt daran? […] [Es ging] bei uns in der Arbeit, in der Inszenierung, […] um diese Unmöglichkeit, diese Absurdität, dass wir – das bürgerliche Publikum – ins Theater gehen und die armen Illegalen angucken, und was ist dann sozusagen das Resultat, dass wir unser eigenes schlechtes Gewissen beruhigen, oder was ist das? […] [E]s [ist] eine Art Kampf […] zwischen Bühne und Zuschauer.”

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attract postmigrant audience members to the theatre had the potential to become places of “real” encounter amongst audience members and Muslim theatre practitioners, the same cannot be said with regard to the likely engagement of individuals without legal residence status as audience members for the production in Cologne (cf. Wille 2008, 30).52 Furthermore, the experience of undocumented immigration is arguably on the margins of, rather than central to, the experience of the postmigrant reality the theatre was purporting to reflect.53 The desire for a “real” experience within the safe boundaries of an evening at the theatre thus seems to be exactly what Bussenius was keen to undermine in this particular instance.54 Helga Kraft suggests that in the case of the Cologne production in particular: The androcentric effect of the production was certainly not helped by the director’s choice to have some of the women’s texts performed by men, and vice versa. The form of gender-swap could not override the affected macho language or make gender differences visible. (Kraft 2011, 135)55

While Kraft sees the director’s choices as a failed dramaturgy, they can alternatively be understood as reactions to precisely the problematic aspects of the play-texts and the circumstances of its commissioning. This

52 In comparison, on 21st June 2014, the akademie der autodidakten (sic) based at the Ballhaus held an evening dedicated to the refugee protest camp established between 2010 and 2014 at Oranienplatz, Berlin by asylum seekers. It consisted of a film created by inhabitants of the protest camp, followed by a discussion with the participants of the film. The theatre thus became part of a show of solidarity with those making themselves vulnerable by participating in the camp and associated protests. The evening is advertised at http://www.ballhausnaunynstrasse.de/.veranstaltung/refugee_strike__beyond_21. 06.2014 [last accessed 8 July 2014]. 53 Schauspiel Köln preferred the terms “with international roots” or “with a background of migration” (“mit internationalen Wurzeln” or “mit Migrationshintergrund”). The term “postmigrant” at the time was very much tied to the Ballhaus. 54 In our interview, Bussenius differentiated the task she felt the Shadow Voices production was engaged in from participatory forms of theatre such as that of a project at the HAU during which exchange between postmigrant artists, non-migrantized artists, and a diverse audience took place. 55 “Es hat sicher dem androzentrischen Effekt des Stücks nicht abgeholfen, dass die Regisseurin einige Texte der Frauen von männlichen Schauspielern vortragen ließ und umgekehrt. Diese Art von Geschlechtertausch konnte die aufgesetzte Macho-Sprache nicht übertünchen oder Genderdifferenzen sichtbar machen.”

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Fig. 2 Patrick Gusset as “the Dealer” in Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel’s Shadow Voices dir. by Nora Bussenius (2008). Photograph © Sandra Then-Friedrich

direction thus attempted to maintain and thematise those frictions, rather than resolving them for the audience. The production’s engagement with the use of race and racial hate speech within the monologues of Shadow Voices can perhaps also be situated in this context. Colour was played with throughout the premiere production, with actors not only smearing themselves in a number of paint colours, but also throwing the paint used over their heads and across the stage. Jamaican-Swiss actor Patrick Gusset, who was cast in two of the “African” roles, that of the Rome-based immigrant of monologue three and the conspiracy theorist and drug dealer of monologue eight, began the performance with his face already smeared in black paint. As he moved from the role of the “Roman” into that of a “Dealer” who tries to forge his own identity amongst the various ascriptions he is confronted with, Gusset then also applied thick white paint over half of his face (Fig. 2). Similarly, Swedish-born actor Andreas Grötzinger tipped a tub of yellow paint over himself as he declaimed in the role of the Moroccan (monologue 3) “I’m ‘n Arab, the Minus-Moroccan” (Zaimoglu and Senkel 2008a, 12; see Fig. 3).56 Grötzinger then later donned a exag-

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Fig. 3 Andreas Grötzinger as “the Moroccan” in Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel’s Shadow Voices dir. by Nora Bussenius (2008). Photograph © Sandra Then-Friedrich

geratedly starched skirt in order to perform the monologue of the female Ukrainian ex-au pair. A highly performative and continual process of racially-coded colour usage thus took place throughout the premiere production. As the reviewer for national newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung remarked, this play with paint gave the evening an aesthetic that 56 “Ich bin n Araber, der Minusmarok”.

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was akin to that of performance art. The reviewer commented that this marked the actors as “free as theatre figures from their own, in some cases dark, skin colour” (Boenisch 2008).57 This pointed play with colour against the canvas of the actor’s body appears to have been designed both to prevent the audience from perceiving the actors as “authentic” undocumented migrants, and to comment on the ways in which colour is used to establish borders between “other” irregular migrants within many of the Shadow Voices monologues. The title of this review, “For some stand in the dark”,58 is drawn from Brecht’s Dreigroschenoper ( Threepenny Opera). The use of Brecht quotations can also be found on the programme for the premiere (Schauspiel Köln 2008) and Boenisch amongst others also made reference to Brecht’s well-known line, “the passport is the most noble part of a human being”.59 This reference to a now canonical figure of early twentieth-century political theatre perhaps helps contextualise the reviewers’ disappointment in the aesthetic choices made here. In our interview, Bussenius also highlighted that space for improvisation was left for the actors in terms of where and when they disturbed one another’s monologues in order to further the “performance” character of the piece and so that “this freaky, dirty element remains” (2011 personal interview).60 As El-Saeidi’s interviews with several of the actors involved show, however, the production was also not without its issues for those involved. In response to the question whether he had ever felt reduced to “the exotic” rather than treated as an actor, one actor made reference to his experience of Shadow Voices , for example, as one in which he was encouraged to connect to the character primarily in relation to his own, very different, background of migration (2009, 123). A reduction of the professional to the biographical is thus potentially at work here even in attempts to move beyond it via distanciation. Speaking in general about the relationship between migration and documentary theatre in 2010, Mark Terkessidis stressed that:

57 “frei von ihrer eigenen, teils dunklen Hautfarbe als Theaterfiguren”. 58 “Denn die einen stehn im Dunkeln”. 59 “der Pass ist der edelste Teil von einem Menschen”. 60 “dieses Freakige, Dreckige bleibt”.

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This opening of the institutions of high culture cannot be valued enough, however, here too the problem remains that young people with a background of migration are mostly reduced to “the street” […]. They themselves get little from this. Sometime the project ends and hardly any of those involved remain at the theatre as actors. What is more, the focus continues to be on the aesthetic needs of an educated bourgeois public, as such plays have only very limited success when it comes to attracting the so-called uneducated classes into the theatre. (2010b, 199)61

Terkessidis is referring here to the fashion for engaging with migration via plays in which postmigrant youths should present themselves on stage, such as in the Homestories project which took place across Germany in 2011.62 However, his comments about the limited after-effects for those involved also resonate with critiques from El-Saeidi (2009) and Sharifi (2011) of the situation at Schauspiel Köln, where audience structures did not appear to change significantly at first and several of the professional actors originally engaged with a high degree of publicity soon quietly left the ensemble. As El-Saeidi and the actors he interviews point out, “nobody likes to be used for a corporate identity, that goes for a German migrant too” (2009, 105).63 However, whatever the original motivation, he also suggests the action of creating this ensemble did have some useful repercussions: Even if the concept of Schauspiel Köln is still not really recognizable, there is still something positive: the leading individuals in the theatrical world

61 “Man kann diese Öffnung der Hochkulturinstitutionen gar nicht genug würdigen, doch auch hier bleibt das Problem, dass die Jugendlichen mit Migrationshintergrund meist auf ‘die Straße’ reduziert werden […]. Sie selbst haben wenig davon. Irgendwann endet das Projekt, und kaum einer von den Mitwirkenden bleibt als Schauspieler am Theater. Zudem geht es weiterhin um die ästhetischen Bedürfnisse eines bildungsbürgerlichen Publikums, denn es gelingt mit solchen Stücken nur sehr begrenzt, die sogenannten bildungsfernen Schichten ins Theater zu locken.” 62 A more detailed examination of the dynamics at work in these productions should be undertaken in order to be fair to the participants and organisers in various projects which will have worked in particular ways, in response to particular circumstances. See, for example, the very nuanced discussion of the ways in which such plays can be both empowering and reductive in Soufi Siavash (2011, 83–86; 88) and Köhler (2010). 63 “[k]einer möchte für eine Corporate Identity benutzt werden, auch ein deutscher Migrant nicht”.

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have realised that there is a discrepancy here which needs to be resolved. (2009, 106)64

I would refer to this as the “performative effect” of the experiment. As Annika Marshall highlights in the related, but different, context of theatre with asylum-seekers in Germany which boomed in 2015, “it is not only productive but necessary to ask and interrogate what cultural institutions actually do ‘do’ and whether their commitment […] might be ‘nonperformative’ (Ahmed 2004, 3) – that is whether they perform an image of themselves rather than changing their organisation” (2018, 160). Sara Ahmed explains in her examination of diversity policies in universities that there is often a “paradox between, on the one hand […] diversity as an official language used by institutions and, on the other, how practitioners experience those institutions as resistant to their work” (2012, 17).65 This would certainly seem to correspond to the situation outlined by El-Saeidi above. However, Ahmed argues that, “[i]f organizations invest in diversity or equality, even as shiny veneers, we can ‘do things’ with their investments” (2012, 110–11). In the case of Schauspiel Köln, the scope for migrantized practitioners to do things with the investment made by the theatre into opening its doors to the social reality of the city appears to have been circumscribed. We might want to characterise both the change in ensemble there, and the work with illegal immigration carried out by Shadow Voices , as ultimately failing to move beyond what Marshall calls “dramaturgical and ‘non-performative’ commitment” (2018, 160). However, it is also important to note that even Zaimoglu/Senkel’s more problematic semi-documentary plays at least offered an (if frustrating and highly imperfect) opportunity for professional postmigrant actors to perform professional main roles, even if not changing much for the undocumented immigrants whose aestheticised narratives the actors in this case perform. This stands in comparison with the documentary or “Ready-Made” approach which relies on “migrant” bodies on stage

64 “Auch wenn das Konzept des Schauspiel Köln noch nicht wirklich erkennbar ist, hat es trotzdem was Positives: Die führenden Persönlichkeiten der Theaterwelt haben erkannt, dass es hier eine Diskrepanz gibt, die es auszugleichen gilt.” 65 Ahmed also uses the language of performativity and raises the manner in which documents which do not translate into action can be considered “non-performatives” (2012, 11; 56–60; 116–20).

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to perform “themselves” and creates a preference for pieces in which “no professional actors, but rather talented immigrants from various countries” are engaged in performing elements of Germany’s hitherto “overlooked” reality (Kraft 2011, 135).66 As Marshall highlights, such work for new immigrants to Germany constrained by the asylum system (as opposed to undocumented migrants outside of this system) can have material benefits (2018, 159); however, it offers less of an opportunity for sustained shifts in the professional make-up of the institutions. Furthermore, while in many ways ineffectual and, as Sharifi highlights, uninformed by existing, more successful practices within Cologne’s smaller theatres, performing the role of an “engaged” theatre itself created some change and, perhaps, more awareness of the limitations of the theatre’s initial attempts to open its structures and respond to the postmigrant realities of the city it aimed to mirror. Returning to the language of performativity above, we can term these unlooked-for outcomes or initially failed performatives as also rendering “misfires” which change the action arising from the utterances—in this case on institutional change—in an unforeseen and unintended manner (Butler 1997, 161). Despite the cleft between the Schauspiel Köln’s proclaimed aims and its actual manner of engagement with postmigrant actors, the attempt to mirror the ethnic diversity of the reality of Germany as a country of immigration nonetheless created space for further debate on casting practices and the very ethnically homogenous institutional cultures of many of Germany’s state-funded theatres. I highlight this not in an attempt to overwrite the language of “failure” which came to be associated with the attempt at Schauspiel Köln (and which could be said to foreclose further attempts in this vein) with that of success; rather I am interested in drawing attention to the complexities of the ways in which cultural change is at work in Germany’s institutions.67

66 “keine Berufsschauspieler, sondern talentierte Immigranten verschiedener Länder”. 67 Elsewhere I explore this via a focus on “formatting”, in relation to what Anamik Saha

(2018) terms the “rationalizing/racializing logic” of artistic production in the cultural industries. See Stewart (2021 forthcoming).

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Shadow Voices at the Ballhaus: Shaping Institutional Realities With these complexities in mind, I turn to the second production of Shadow Voices which took place the same year during Dogland, the opening season of the Ballhaus Naunynstraße project. At first glance, the presentation of the aims of the Ballhaus Naunynstraße project may seem similar to that of Schauspiel Köln. In a 2008 interview Tunçay Kulao˘glu, co-leader of the theatre, explained: it is about having social realities which stand in relation to migration present within the productions. That is our guiding principle. So the productions of the opening festival “Dogland”, programmatically relate to the era after migration. […] It’s as much about social reality as about individual stories which have not been represented in this way before, or which have been represented only from the perspective of the majority society. It hits us viscerally when stories and protagonists are reduced to particular aspects. And we are a network which discovers and supports young artists. (in Kulao˘glu and Lengers 2009, 18).68

However, there are many key differences between the projects. While at Schauspiel Köln the focus was on presenting a “representative ensemble”, the drive to open the Ballhaus Naunynstraße appears to have recognised and put more emphasis on developing the particular support mechanisms necessary for fostering and enabling postmigrant artistic work (cf. Langhoff and Ohr 2010). Rather than a fixed ensemble, a more flexible, project-based way of working taken from Langhoff and Kulao˘glu’s experience in film was also developed (Kulao˘glu and Lengers 2009, 18).69 In comparison with the Schauspiel Köln production of Shadow Voices, the Ballhaus production directed by Nurkan Erpulat took only the four 68 “es geht darum, dass sich gesellschaftliche Realitäten, die im Zusammenhang mit Migration stehen[,] in den Inszenierungen wiederfinden. Das ist unsere Leitlinie. So beziehen sich programmatisch die Produktionen des Eröffnungsfestivals ‘Dogland’ auf die Ära nach der ersten Migrationsphase. […] Es geht sowohl um gesellschaftliche Realität als auch um individuelle Geschichten, die so bisher nicht dargestellt wurden, oder eben nur aus der Perspektive der Mehrheitsgesellschaft. Bauchschmerzen haben wir, wenn die Geschichten und die Protagonisten auf bestimmte Aspekte reduziert werden. Und wir sind ein Netzwerk, das jünge Künstler entdeckt und fördert.” 69 On the role of precarious cultural labour within the Ballhaus as an institution see Nobrega (2014).

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most extreme monologues—those of the Eastern European prostitute, African male prostitute, “Minus-Moroccan”, and African drug dealer— and cut each to create four texts of approximately equal length. Liberianborn actor Aloysius Itoka played the anti-African “Minus-Moroccan”, Yugoslavian-origin actress Vernesa Berbo took the role of the “African” drug dealer, while Murat Seven appeared as the female prostitute and Michael Wenzlaff was cast as the Black male prostitute. The casting of Shadow Voices makes it clear that for the Ballhaus a postmigrant ensemble is not a move towards “self-representation” in the sense of “one-to-one” casting. In a different context, that of the academic research community, Umut Erel argues: The demand that female migrants should research and write about female migrants is a political position which demands recognition of the fact that female migrants are not only objects, but also producers of knowledge […] However, the question “who speaks for who?” is often read on another level – as a question of the authenticity and identity of the speaker. (2007, 158)70

Equally, we can understand the Ballhaus’ approach as one which rather aims to shift individuals with a background of migration from subject of representation to subject producing representation, whether as actor, director, playwright, dramaturge or artistic director. That such a stance is necessary is reflected in the conflation of actor and character in the assessment of Erpulat’s casting choices by the reviewer for the Berliner Zeitung: Erpulat has chosen four actors who fit the respective monologues. But they have swapped roles amongst one another, which somewhat dampens the resentments which they feed off. (Anonymous 2008)71

70 “[Die] Forderung, dass Migrantinnen über Migrantinnen forschen und. schreiben sollen, ist eine politische Stellungnahme, die Anerkennung dafür fordert, dass Migrantinnen nicht nur Objekte, sondern auch Produzentinnen von Wissen sind. […] Allerdings wird die Frage ‘Wer spricht für wen?’ oft auf einer anderen Ebene gelesen – als eine Frage der Authentizität und Identität der Sprecherinnen.” 71 “Erpulat hat sich vier Schauspieler ausgesucht, die zu den jeweiligen Monologen passen. Aber sie haben untereinander die Rollen getauscht, was die Ressentiments, von denen sie zehren, etwas aufweicht.”

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The biographies of, for example, Aloysius Itoka, an actor who was born in Liberia, trained in New York, and is now resident in Berlin, and the African drug dealer of Shadow Voices could hardly be more different. However, the shared skin colour between the actor and the figure for a role in which he was not even cast is deemed to naturally affect the energy bought to the performances in this review. The Ballhaus Naunynstraße production also placed a different focus on the precariousness of the lives of paperless immigrants expressed within the dramatic texts of Shadow Voices. Rather than being performed on the main stage of the theatre, each of the monologues was lodged in its own space in the cellar, attic or spare nooks of the building. Audience members were divided into four groups and the groups took turns to watch the different monologues under the guidance of “Guides” dressed prosaically in uniforms identifying them as employees of the theatre.72 The miseen-scène of each monologue not only meant that “their unusual situation [functions as] an image of their invisible existence on the margins of society” (Granzin 2008),73 but also engaged with the precariousness of this existence in particular ways. The monologue of the drug dealer was delivered in a small room lit only by a lamp driven by the pedal power of the actress on an adapted exercise bike (Erpulat 2008). Berbo’s performance in this role thus referenced the continual effort necessary for the undocumented figure’s survival as well as playing with the idea of in/visibility. The monologue of the Eastern European prostitute on the other hand took place in a room filled with living butterflies emphasising the vulnerability of the sex worker’s position and creating a subtle reference to the opera Madame Butterfly.74 While the Ballhaus production of Shadow Voices was less overtly metatheatrical than the premiere at Cologne, any simple identification of actor with figure was broken not only by the purposeful “cross-casting” but also by the prosaic figures of guides in red t-shirts

72 This would not be clear from the script alone; however, the audience movement and guides can be seen in the audiovisual recording and is confirmed by the mention of “Guides” and “supervisors” (“Betreuer”) in the programme as well as references to the division into groups in a number of reviews. 73 “ihre abseitige Lage [funktionierte als] Bild für die unsichtbare Existenz am Rand der Gesellschaft”. 74 Katrin Sieg discusses Madame Butterfly as coding for the “tragic feminized colonial” in the European theatrical sphere (2002, 248).

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with headphones who marshalled the four audience groups through the experience. An element of voyeurism appears to be played on here in ways reminiscent of the HAU’s X-Wohnungen (X-Apartments ) project from 2004 (see Garde and Mumford 2016, 95), connecting the practices developed there with this new location.75 At the same time, the play became a way for audiences to literally explore the new theatre and the delivery of the monologues four times in a row by each actor highlighted the cast members’ professional “achievement” (Granzin 2008).76 For the final scene of the Ballhaus production, the audience was reunited and gathered on the theatre’s main stage while the actors moved between the auditorium seats in a way which closely echoed but also reversed the mise-en-scène of the premiere production (see Fig. 4). As Tunçay Kulao˘glu has highlighted, the aim of the Ballhaus project was not to simply give “those who are always spoken about […] the chance […] to speak about themselves”, but rather to allow a postmigrant artistic perspective the space to emerge (in Kulao˘glu and Lengers 2009, 19). Rather than mirroring the tensions at work in performing a semidocumentary piece on illegal migration as an evening’s entertainment for an educated middle-class audience, the staging at the Ballhaus can be read as choosing to shape the interaction in ways designed to make that audience attentive to the stories being told and to their own involvement in the process. The play remains problematic and not every production staged at the Ballhaus fully fulfils the theatre’s aims. Indeed, Sieg has drawn attention to the simultaneous occurrence of the “long overdue inclusion of postmigrant theater in the funding logic of German national culture” and the trend for documentary theatre, to warn that the national nature of this funding may contribute to productions which take a celebratory rather than critical attitude to European myths of cosmopolitan inclusion that bely the realities of fortress Europe (2011, 181).77 Rather than channelling funds into solely an on-stage critique, it is important to highlight 75 Garde and Mumford also mention Erpulat playing with voyeurism in his contribution

to the 2008 version of X -Wohnungen, which took place the same year as this premiere (2016, 103). 76 “Leistung.” 77 Sieg compares this to the ways in which, in Austria, the Vienna Burgtheater’s productions of Elfriede Jelinek have instead “channelled state funds into profound and powerful critiques of European selective cosmopolitanism” (2011, 181). Such comparison suggests

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Fig. 4 Vernesa Berbo, Michael Wenzlaff, Murat Seven and Aloysius Itoka as unnamed characters in Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel, Shadow Voices dir. by Nurkan Erpulat (2008). Photograph © David Baltzer/bildbuehne.de

however that the Ballhaus has been significant in channelling the scripts set up by intercultural funding criteria in ways which also foster new practices and often critically challenge structures that act as barriers to inclusion behind the scenes. In the particular instance of Shadow Voices , while the gathering of the audience on-stage and exploration of the theatre which the production involved might suggest an emphasis on intercultural understanding or undifferentiated commonality, to the very end a clear-cut division still remained, and was dramaturgically highlighted, between the very different positions occupied in the “intercultural performance space” by the audiences and the characters at the heart of the play. Since that this is the route which postmigrant theatre “should” take, however, placing extraordinarily heavy expectations on emerging artists and a new house with little regard for the material differences in the funding and sustainability of the Burgtheater as compared to the Ballhaus. It also leaves existing tendencies for the theatrical establishment to “speak for” or “about” migration in tact.

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Dogland, the rerouting of the funding script of interculturalism into the practices of postmigrant theatre has had significant impact on the cultural sphere. Cultural practitioners such as Erpulat, and artistic directors, such as Shermin Langhoff, who have moved between the Ballhaus and other theatres, have played an important part here in not only reframing but also creating space for the presence of Turkish-origin and other migrantized practitioners in German theatre. More broadly, work at the Ballhaus has challenged other theatres to raise their game with regard to representation both on-stage and behind the scenes (see also Weiler 2014, 227), whether through programmatic statements by the theatre’s artistic directors in the German media or via the artistic statements made by the plays and performances themselves.

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rehearsal] at Schauspiel Köln, Cologne, 19 April 2008. Accessed thanks to Nora Bussenius/Schauspiel Köln. Butler, Judith. 1997. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge. Carroll, Jerome, et al. 2013. “Introduction: Postdramatic Theatre and the Political.” In Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance, edited by Karen Jürs-Munby, Jerome Carroll, and Steve Giles, 1–30. London: Bloomsbury. Castañeda, Heide. 2008. “Illegal Migration, Gender and Health Care: Perspectives from Germany and the United States.” In Illegal Migration and Gender in a Global and Historical Perspective, edited by Marlou Schrover et al., 171–88. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Cheesman, Tom. 2007. Novels of Turkish German Settlement: Cosmopolite Fictions. Rochester, NY: Camden House. Cheesman, Tom, and Karin Ye¸silada. 2012. “Preface.” In Feridun Zaimoglu, edited by Tom Cheesman and Karin Ye¸silada, 1–11. Oxford: Peter Lang. Chow, Rey. 2002. The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Czerwonka, Sandra. 2011. “Nicht Mangel, sondern Besonderheit: Die Spiegelung des Migrationsbegriffs auf deutschen Bühnen.” In Theater und Migration: Herausforderungen für Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis, edited by Wolfgang Schneider, 77–81. Bielefeld: transcript. Dede Ayivi, Simone. 2018. “Internationalität  = Interkultur. Eine Schwarze Deutsche Kritik.” In Allianzen: Kritische Praxis an weißen Institutionen, edited by Elisa Liepsch and Julian Warner, 74–83. Bielefeld: transcript. El-Saeidi, Omar. 2009. “Der deutsche Schauspieler mit Migrationshintergrund: Das Spannungsgeflecht zwischen gesellschaftlicher Realität und Umsetzung in der deutschen Theater- und Medienlandschaft.” Unpublished Diplomarbeit, Hochschule für Musik und Theater Rostock. Erel, Umut. 2007. “Auto/biografische Wissensproduktionen von Migrantinnen.” In Re/visionen: Postkoloniale Perspektiven von People of Colour auf Rassismus, Kulturpolitik und Widerstand in Deutschland, edited by Kien Nghi Ha, 147–62. Münster: Unrast. Erpulat, Nurkan (dir.). 2008. Schattenstimmen, written by Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel. Unpublished audiovisual recording, Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Berlin. Accessed thanks to Fereidoun Ettehad/Ballhaus Naunynstraße. Garde, Ulrike, and Meg Mumford. 2016. Theatre of Real People: Diverse Encounters at Berlin’s Hebbel am Ufer and Beyond. London: Bloomsbury.

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Gintersdorfer, Monika, Viola Hasselberg, Mark Terkessidis, and Rita Thiele. “Migration, Identitätspolitik und Theater”. Heimspiel 2011. Cologne, April 1. Audio recording. http://www.heimspiel2011.de/en/migration_identitae tspolitik_und_theater.html. Göktürk, Deniz, et al. 2011. Transit Deutschland: Debatten zu Nation und Migration. Constance: Konstanz University Press. Gondorf, Ulrike. 2008. “Fazit: Kultur vom Tage.” Summary of live review broadcast on Deutschlandradio Kultur, April 20. Granzin, Katharina. 2008. “Illegale Schmetterlinge.” die tageszeitung, November 24. Günter, Manuela. 1999. “‘Wir sind bastarde, freund…’: Feridun Zaimoglus Kanak Sprak und die performative Struktur von Identität.” Sprache und Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 83: 15–28. Hennecke, Günther. 2008. “Willkommen in der Spießerhölle.” Kölnische Rundschau, April 22. Keim, Stefan. 2011. “Migration ist selbstverständlich: Das Schauspiel Köln beleuchtet die multikulturelle Gesellschaft.” In Theater und Migration: Herausforderungen für Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis, edited by Wolfgang Schneider, 91–98. Bielefeld: transcript. Köhler, Norma. 2010. “Neugier-Ich: Subjektorientierte Biografiearbeit als interkulturelles Theater.” In Irritation und Vermittlung: Theater in einer interkulturellen und multireligiösen Gesellschaft, edited by Wolfgang Sting et al., 129–44. Berlin: Dr W. Hopf. Nobrega, Onur Suzan Kömürcü. 2011. “‘We Bark from the Third Row’: The Position of the Ballhaus Naunynstraße in Berlin’s Cultural landscape and the Funding of Cultural Diversity Work.” Türkisch-deutsche Studien 2: 91–112. Nobrega, Onur Suzan Kömürcü. 2014. “Postmigrant Theatre and Cultural Diversity in the Arts: Race, Precarity and Artistic Labour in Berlin.” PhD Diss., Goldsmiths. Kraft, Helga. 2011. “Das Theater als moralische Anstalt? Deutsche Identität und die Migrantenfrage auf der Bühne.” In GeschlechterSpielRäume: Dramatik, Theater, Performance und Gender, edited by Gaby Pailer and Franziska Schößler, 121–39. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Kulao˘glu, Tunçay, and Birgit Lengers. 2009. “Ballhaus Naunynstraße: Bühne für postmigrantische Geschichten.” Dramaturgie: Zeitschrift für die dramaturgische Gesellschaft: 17–19. Lacan, Jacques. 1989. Écrits: A Selection. London: Routledge. Langhoff, Shermin, and Kristina Ohr. 2010. “‘Theater kann eine Identitätsmaschine sein’: Interview mit Shermin Langhoff.” nah & fern: Das Kulturmagazin für Migration und Partizipation 43: 18–23.

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Loos, Amanda. 2002. “Symbolic, Real, Imaginary.” In University of Chicago Theories of Media Keywords Glossary, edited by W. J. T. Mitchell et al., n.p. http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/symbolicrealimaginary.htm. Marcus, Dorothea. 2011. “Was ist eigentlich aus der Kölner Akademie der Künste geworden? Ein Interview mit dem Migrationsforscher Mark Terkessidis, der sie mitentwickelt hat.” Akt: Die Kölner Theaterzeitung 23 (May): n.p. http://www.theaterzeitung-koeln.de/archiv/akt23-mai-2011/ aus-der-koelner-theaterszene-mai-2011/interviewt/. Marshall, Annika. 2018. “What Can Theatre Do About the Refugee Crisis? Enacting Commitment and Navigating Complicity in Performative Interventions.” Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 23 (2): 148–66. Mumford, Meg. 2015. “100% City and Popular Factual Television: A New Game Plan for Managing Proximity to People?” In Rimini Protokoll CloseUp: Lektüren, edited by Johannes Birgfeld, Ulrike Garde, and Meg Mumford. Hannover: Wehrhahn. Perumal, Murali. 2013. “Debatte über (Post-)Migranten an deutschen Theatern – Ein offener Brief des Schauspielers Murali Perumal an die Süddeutsche Zeitung.” Nachtkritik. https://www.nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=8880:debatte-migranten-an-deutschen-theaternein-offener-brief-des-schauspielers-murali-perumal-an-die-sueddeutsche-zei tung&catid=101:debatte&Itemid=84. Peters, Nina. 2011. “Die Umkehrung des eigenen Blickes: Beobachtungen und Bekundungen aus dem Blickwinkel Berliner Theater.” In Theater und Migration: Herausforderungen für Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis, edited by Wolfgang Schneider, 169–76. Bielefeld: transcript. Raddatz, Frank. 2008a. “HAU 1, 2, 3: Matthias Lilienthal im Gespräch.” Theater der Zeit 63 (2): 16–20. Raddatz, Frank. 2010. “Authentische Rezepte für ein unvergessliches Morgen: Der Wunsch nach dem Echten in Zeiten globalen Wandels.” In Reality Strikes Back II: Tod der Repräsentation: Die Zukunft der Vorstellungskraft in einer globalisierten Welt, edited by Kathrin Tiedemann and Frank Raddatz, 139–62. Berlin: Theater der Zeit. Reinelt, Janelle. 2009. “The Promise of Documentary.” In Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present, edited by Alison Forsyth and Chris Megson, 6–23. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Saha, Anamik. 2018. Race and the Cultural Industries. Cambridge: Polity. Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. London: Penguin. Schauspiel Köln. 2008. Schattenstimmen, programme. Cologne: Schauspiel Köln. Accessed thanks to Nora Bussenius/Schauspiel Köln.

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Schmeller, Johanna. 2008. “German Ernst.” die tageszeitung, April 30. http:// www.taz.de/1/archiv/digitaz/artikel/?ressort=ku&dig=2008%2F04%2F30% 2Fa0119&src=GI&cHash=9f9ef6a0b0. Schmidt, Gary. 2008. “Feridun Zaimoglu’s Performance of Gender and Authorship.” In German Literature in a New Century: Trends, Traditions, Transitions, Transformations, edited by Katharina Gerstenberger and Patricia Herminghouse, 196–213. New York: Berghahn. Scholze, Christian. 2011. Personal Interview, Castrop-Rauxel. Scholze, Christian. 2015. “Theater macht Schule. Interkulturelle Bildung in Castrop-Rauxel.” In Kunst verbindet Menschen: Interkulturelle Konzepte für eine Gesellschaft im Wandel, edited by Tina Jerman, 180–86. Bielefeld: transcript. Sharifi, Azadeh. 2011. Theater für alle? Partizipation von Postmigranten am Beispiel der Bühnen der Stadt Köln. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Sharifi, Azadeh, and S. E. Wilmer (eds.). 2016. Special Topic: Theatre and Statelessness in Europe. Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, 14. Sieg, Katrin. 2002. Ethnic Drag: Performing Race, Nation, Sexuality in West Germany. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Sieg, Katrin. 2011. “Class of 1989: Who Made Good and Who Dropped Out of German History? Postmigrant Documentary Theater in Berlin.” In The German Wall: Fallout in Europe, edited by Marc Silberman, 165–83. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Sieg, Katrin. 2016. “Refugees in German Documentary Theatre.” Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, 14: n.p. Soufi Siavash, Mariam. 2011. “Wer ist “wir”? Theaterarbeit in der interkulturellen Gesellschaft.” In Theater und Migration: Herausforderungen für Kulturpolitik und Theaterpraxis, edited by Wolfgang Schneider, 83–90. Bielefeld: transcript. Stewart. Lizzie. 2017. “Postmigrant Theatre: The Ballhaus Naunynstraße takes on Sexual Nationalism.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 9 (2): 56–68. Stewart. Lizzie. 2021 forthcoming. “‘The cultural capital of postmigrants is enormous’ (Kulao˘glu): Postmigration in theatre as label and lens.” In The Postmigrant Condition: Art, Culture and Politics in Contemporary Europe, edited by. Moritz Schramm et al. Berlin: transcript. Terkessidis, Mark. 2010a. “Die Heimsuchung der Migration. Die Frage der interkulturellen Öffnung des Theaters.” Neue Spieler, alte Städte: Favoriten 2010, edited by Aenne Quiñones und Tom Mustroph, 5–10. Dortmund: Theater der Zeit/Theaterfestival Favoriten. Terkessidis, Mark. 2010b. Interkultur. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Thiele, Rita. “Wie migrantisch kann ein deutsches Stadttheaterensemble sein?” Dramaturgie: Zeitschrift für die dramaturgische Gesellschaft, 02/2009: 14. Wedig, Anja. 2012. Personal interview. Bremen, July 3.

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Weiler, Christel. 2014. “Theatre and Diversity.” In The Routledge Handbook of German Politics & Culture, edited by Sarah Colvin, 218–29. London and New York: Routledge. Wille, Franz. 2008. “Schleich di, Fremder!” Theater heute 49 (6): 26–30. Zaimoglu, Feridun. 2012. Personal Interview. Kiel, June 5. Zaimoglu, Feridun, and Günter Senkel. 2008a. Schattenstimmen. Reinbek: Rowohlt Theater Verlag. Zaimoglu, Feridun, and Günter Senkel. 2008b. “Schattenstimmen.” Theater heute 49 (7). Play Insert: 1–19.

Celebrating the New “Normal”? Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Perikızı and the Festival Context

Mythologising Migration---Performing Diversity In 2010, in celebration of its year as European Capital of Culture, Essen and the Ruhr area staged a theatrical project named Odyssee Europa (Odyssey Europe). This project took place over a series of weekends during which audience members signed up to participate in an “odyssey” of their own through North Rhine-Westphalia, an area rebranded as the Ruhr Metropole in Essen’s bid to become 2010 European Capital of Culture. Each odyssey consisted of a weekend-long journey, both theatrical and physical, in which the audience moved from town to town, theatre to theatre, creating “the staging of a whole region” (Pape 2010) through a conscious act of displacement.1 The project commissioned plays from various “international” playwrights, amongst them, Emine Sevgi Özdamar. Despite being resident in Germany for several decades, having been active in the German theatrical establishment in the 1970s and 1980s and having won prestigious prizes for her German-language prose work, Özdamar was presented as a “Turkish” playwright (Schauspielhaus Bochum et al. 2010)—displaced in, and exoticising, the German theatrical landscape.

1 “die Inszenierung einer ganzen Region”.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 L. Stewart, Performing New German Realities, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69848-5_7

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Her dream play, Perikızı, tells the story of a young Turkish woman similarly displaced, whose dream-like odyssey departs from Turkey and takes her into a strange and mythologised Europe. This premiere production of Perikızı under the direction of Ulrich Greb of the Schlosstheater Moers was singled out as one of the most successful Odyssee Europa plays by a number of critics. Its popularity was also reflected in anecdotal reports of audience comments, the Moers production’s invitation to the NRW theatre festival and in audience numbers (Zimmermann 2010).2 More than 25 years after Özdamar first began writing for the stage, the figure of the displaced woman seemed to “fit”. Indeed, part of the Ruhr area’s stated aim as European Capital of Culture was to use the year to create a new understanding of an area often perceived as suburban, post-industrial sprawl as a European metropolis characterised by diversity. In the region’s initial application to the European City of Culture Scheme, a heavy emphasis was thus laid upon interculturalism. As Rolf Parr explains, “the combination of Essen and Istanbul (with holiday makers streaming in one direction and labour migration in the other)” made Essen an attractive prospect to the relevant EU committee (2012, 150).3 Continuing this project, the introduction to the book in which the Odyssee Europa plays were published characterises Odysseus as a “symbol of the modern European” (Sloane 2010, 7), and, through the inclusion of Özdamar’s play, also as a symbol of the economic migrant.4 These conflations might be seen as a welcome acknowledgement of the “epic” quality of the experiences of Europe and Germany’s “newer” subjects.5 At the same time, however, not only is the association of Odysseus’ unwilling travels, during which he was subject to the whims of the Gods, very different from the safe and secured movement of EU citizens from one EU country to another; redrawing the lines of inclusion in this way also

2 In the 2009–2010 season, Perikızı was performed fourteen times to a total of 2111 audience members. In the same season Der elfte Gesang (The Eleventh Song ), the contribution of well-known German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig to Odyssee Europa was staged six times to a total of 999 viewers (Deutscher Bühnenverein 2010, 253, 276). 3 “die Kombination Essen und Istanbul (mit Urlaubströmen in die eine Richtung und Arbeitsmigration in die andere)”. 4 “Chiffre des modernen Europäers”. 5 This would be consistent with Özdamar’s earlier declarations that the life of a guest

worker is “a novel” (2001, 48: “ein Roman”).

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runs the risk of obscuring the EU (and Germany’s) role in excluding particular migrant subjects from belonging.6 Following the questions raised with respect to institutional attempts at diversity work in the previous chapter, a closer examination of the ways in which the commission of Perikızı for Odyssee Europa relates to the programme’s view of freedom of movement as a quintessential element of life in contemporary Europe will be undertaken here. A year later, Perikızı was staged again, this time as Germany celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the bilateral recruitment agreements which initiated large-scale Turkish labour migration to West Germany. The tone of the events put on to mark this anniversary was overwhelmingly positive: Angela Merkel met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan, for example, and a special train was put on from Istanbul to Munich to commemorate the journey taken by many Gastarbeiter (Guest workers) in the 1960s (see Popp 2011). Repeated references to the “success” of Turkish migration to Germany suggested an interpretation of this migration as both desired and endorsed by the German state, while at the same time linking the topics of migration and integration (Ozil et al. 2011, 7). Only the year before, however, a best-selling book by German politician Thilo Sarazzin, Deutschland schafft sich ab: Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen (Germany Is Doing Itself In: How We Are Gambling With Our Country 2010), had told a very different story, claiming in language strongly influenced by biological racism that the Turkish population in Germany was causing the nation to decline. Furthermore, the celebrations stood in contrast to the state ambivalence which, as Rita Chin details, characterised the first few decades of large-scale Turkish migration to Germany (2007, 94). Perhaps in response to this, the Ballhaus Naunynstraße marked this anniversary more critically, with a programme titled Almancı! 50 Jahre Scheinehe (Almancı! 50 Years of Sham Marriage) and a new production of Perikızı by Berlin-based Israeli director Michael Ronen.7 6 Ernst and Heimböckel make this point with regard to the emphasis on interculturalism and the European Cities of Culture programme more broadly (2012, 7). 7 I am leaving the Turkish words Almancı (which means “a Turk who lives in

Germany”) and Perikızı (“fairy child”) untranslated in titles in order to preserve the effect of the Turkish vocabulary in the German context for the English-language reader. Michael Ronen is the brother of Yael Ronen, who became an in-house theatre director at the Gorki theatre, Berlin, under the artistic direction of Shermin Langhoff and Jens Hillje.

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Perikızı differs significantly from Özdamar’s Alamania plays (addressed in the earlier chapter, “Scripts of Migration”), not only in its popularity and relatively rapid succession of productions, but also in that the protagonist is female. It also appears to be more autobiographical, containing references to Özdamar’s own reception as a writer and to the accusations that her first novel Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei hat zwei Türen, aus einer kam ich rein, aus der anderen ging ich raus (1991; Life is a Caravanserai: Has Two Doors I Came in One I Went Out the Other) had been plagiarised in Feridun Zaimoglu’s hit 2006 novel Leyla.8 At the same time, Perikızı shares certain qualities with Özdamar’s earlier plays, such as a focus on migration and the inclusion of characters and quotations from German, Turkish and other European sources. References to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Friedrich Hölderlin’s Hyperion, Heinrich Heine’s Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen (Germany: A Winter’s Tale), pop hits singer Heino and Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy thus abound. As per the terms of its commission, the play also goes back to one of the “foundational” European myths and reworks, figures and episodes from Homer’s Odyssey.9 Having disobeyed her grandmother’s warning not to look in the mirror at nights, the young protagonist, an aspiring actress named Perikızı (or fairy-child), is transported from her Turkish home to a mythologised West Germany/Europe.10 There she encounters Turkish women transformed into hens and pigs by a Circe-like enchantress, three German Cyclops with a guilt-complex (die Schuldgefühlgiganten/The giant feelings of guilt ) and a wolf who plagiarises her work then proceeds to snort cocaine through a rolled-up copy of her manuscript while the German press watches on indulgently. The actions of the wolf identify him as a clear reference to Zaimoglu, while the fact that he is characterised as wolf also functions to align the fictionalised Zaimoglu with the Turkish fascist

8 This plagiarism accusation and associated debate in the German press have been addressed in Cheesman (2007, 190–95), Dayıo˘glu-Yücel (2012), Gramling (2010), Senocak ¸ (2006) and Warner (2011). I do not wish to enter into this debate here, but rather to focus on the implications of its reappearance in fictional form within this play. 9 A list of the writers quoted is provided on the final page of the dramatic text (2010, 333). See also Schößler (2010, 84–90). A number of Hölderlin’s poems and fragments in addition to those found in Hyperion are also quoted. 10 These two areas are conflated in the language of the dramatic text.

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movement, the Grey Wolves (see also Schößler 2010, 90–91).11 Immediately following this, Perikızı descends into Hades where she is welcomed by the ghosts who have accompanied her from Turkey—those of her grandfather, killed in the First World War, and of two Armenian brides— as well as by the ghosts of literary figures such as Hölderlin encountered during her journey. In the final scene of the dramatic text, however, we are returned to a slightly adjusted version of the opening lines of the play, creating a circular framing of the main action.12 In addition to drawing on Homer’s Odyssey and including many other intertextual links, many scenes in Perikızı are based on and rework the first two chapters of Özdamar’s 1998 novel The Bridge of the Golden Horn (Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn).13 As suggested by the reference in the plot of Perikızı to the real-life plagiarism affair of 2006, the narrative of migration to Germany presented here is, however, in some respects darker and more explicitly traumatic than that presented in the earlier novel. This can be seen, for example, in the alterations to the portrayal of the protagonist’s fellow female guest workers in the dramatic text. The literal transformation of female Turkish guest workers into hens in the play is an extension of an image used in the earlier novel (see also Schößler 2010, 86). In The Bridge, the female Turkish guest workers are portrayed as a heterogeneous group through the multiple ways in which the women divide themselves into “sugars”, “donkeys”, “children” and “whores” in

11 Reference may also be being made through the character of the wolf to the wolf-

pack in the prologue to Zaimoglu’s Leyla (2006, 7–8). Material from Schößler’s (2010) article also appears in her 2013 book—here I refer simply to the 2010 article to avoid duplication. 12 The penultimate line of the dramatic text is “The sea has retreated, who knows why” (“Das Meer hat sich zurückgezogen, wer weiß, warum”), suggesting that a certain danger has, albeit arbitrarily, and perhaps only momentarily, receded (Özdamar 2010, 333). The opening line of Perikızı, “The sea is rising, who knows why” (“Das Meer steigt wer weiß warum”), is also included in Özdamar’s (2009) lament for Armenian campaigner Hrant Dink titled “Bitter Water” (“Bitteres Wasser”; 40). In a footnote there, this line is identified as Dilek Dizdar’s German translation of a line by Turkish poet Ece Ayhan, the poet who gave Özdamar the name ‘Sevgi’, and who is the subject of her 2007 Turkish-language novel. 13 In the opening scene of Perikızı, some dialogue from pp. 12–14 of Özdamar’s second novel reappears. Leaving home is a minor scene in The Bridge and does not serve as the opening to the novel but is preceded by an account of buying bread in Berlin (2002, 11). In Perikızı, leave-taking is given more prominence and is longer, stressing the departure from Turkey (2010, 282–85).

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Germany14 —groupings which centre on behavioural and, increasingly, sexual choices (Özdamar 1998, 42).15 In the dramatic text of Perikızı, however, the heterogeneity of the Turkish population both at home and abroad becomes expressed primarily through attitudes towards nationalism (cf. Schößler 2010, 88). Thus, Hen One attacks Perikızı for being Armenian and cries “Donkey, you are insulting my Turkishness”, while two further hens chorus “Save yourself this Turkish nonsense | we’re all the same once we’re under the ground” (Özdamar 2010, 307).16 This language directly references article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which makes “insulting Turkishness” punishable by law and which has been a stumbling block in Turkey’s application to join the EU (see Konuk 2010, 172–73).17 Article 301 has frequently been used to silence or punish discussion of controversial elements of Turkish history, such as the Armenian genocide, and has been invoked against both Orhan Pamuk and the Armenian rights campaigner Hrant Dink, whose death Özdamar laments in a short piece from 2009, “Bitter Water” (“Bitteres Wasser”). The effect of referencing it here is to create parallels between the increased restrictions on free speech in Turkey today and the historical fascist violence which took place in Turkey in the 1970s, coterminous with much Turkish migration to the FRG.18 Debates over Turkish national identity are thus privileged in the dramatic text of Perikızı over the concern with German history which is often stressed with relation to Özdamar’s novels.19 Furthermore, the suggestion that Perikızı is Armenian aligns the protagonist against the dominant group in the workers’ hostel and positions her as non-complicit 14 “Zuckers,” “Esels,” “Kinder,” “Huren”. 15 For insightful discussions of the role of sexuality in the novel, see, for example, the

analysis by Monika Shafi (2003, 204) and Beverly M. Weber (2010). 16 “Esel, du beleidigst mein Türkentum”; “Erspar dir deinen Türkenwahn | unter der Erde werden alle gleich sein”. 17 Article 301 is typically translated into German using the phrase “Beleidigung des Türkentums”. 18 Weber suggests that the “violence which caused Özdamar to leave Turkey is, in many ways, the founding violence throughout her prose” (2013, 181). 19 See, for example, Kader Konuk’s insightful discussion of Seltsame Sterne as an interaction of Turkish pasts with German memory culture; here, Konuk emphasises that Özdamar’s work is “concerned with quintessentially German questions, while being firmly grounded in both the German literary canon and the specificity of German history” (2007, 234).

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in the notion of an ethnically pure Turkishness. This concern with questions of Turkish, rather than German nationalism, can be seen as consistent with the author’s recent turn to writing in Turkish; in 2007, she published her first Turkish-language novel, The Hunchback as his Own Tailor, Memories of Ece Ayhan: The Zürich Diary of 1974 and Letters from Ece Ayhan (“Kendi kendinin Terzisi Bir Kambur”: Ece Ayhan’lı anılar, 1974 Zürih günlügü, Ece Ayhan’ın mektupları). However, via the presentation of the plagiarism affair, it also becomes interwoven with the traumatic experience of being received in reductive manner as a bearer of Turkish culture in Germany, which, as Schößler highlights (2010, 90), thus also forms a key thematic concern within the play. While sexuality is no longer a focus in the dramatic text, as will be seen in this chapter sexual violence against the body of the protagonist becomes a central element of both productions of Perikızı. Both productions to be examined here make use of the imagery of Little Red Riding Hood, the classic cautionary tale against women straying from their socially prescribed path (Zipes 1993, 78).20 As a result, Özdamar’s representation of female migration in Perikızı can be read very productively in relation to analyses of the representation of women and feminist issues in her earlier novels by scholars such as Beverly M. Weber (2010) and Leslie A. Adelson (2005, 123–69, 150–58). This is particularly the case with the production of Perikızı directed by Michael Ronen for the 50 Jahre Scheinehe festival of the Ballhaus Naunynstraße in 2011, which reasserted Özdamar’s earlier, novelistic intervention in what Beverly M. Weber refers to as the dominant narrative of Gastarbeit as a male phenomenon (2010, 39). Approximately twenty per cent of Turkish guest workers recruited between 1968 and 1973 were in fact women, employed to fill jobs in the German electronics and service industry as German female workers moved into more upwardly mobile jobs (Weber 2010, 40 n. 7). However, this does not fit with the dominant narrative of gender relations in Turkish migration to Germany, epitomised by the image of the Turkish woman as “the suffering Suleika” (Ye¸silada 1997),21 a victim-figure in need of rescue from both Turkish men and her own supposed “false consciousness” (Weber 2010; Chin 2010). As 20 It was particularly with the extremely popular Brothers Grimm version of Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood) that “the tale became an explicit narrative of law and order” (Zipes 1993, 66). 21 “die geschundene Suleika”.

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activists and scholars have repeatedly pointed out, this historical reality is therefore often overlooked both in popular memory and in academic research. As I will suggest, the use of the Little Red Riding Hood trope in productions of Perikızı also, however, moves the play beyond being solely a challenge to historiographical narratives, and into an intervention into, or rescripting of, the symbolic realm. A concern with gender and sexuality is certainly reflected on the level of the festivals within which the two productions to be examined here took place. As the inclusion of the phrase “Sham Marriage” (Scheinehe) in the programme celebrating 50 years of Turkish labour migration to Germany suggests, the production at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße can be seen as embedded within a critique of the power relations at work in the fifty years of Turkish migration to and settlement in Germany. The invocation of marriage firmly genders the parties involved in this migration. In her research into attitudes towards Turkish women in West German feminism, historian Rita Chin highlights that “[m]igrant women have been the targets of intense interest and scrutiny in most Western European countries since the 1970s and have often served to measure an immigrant group’s level of integration or assimilation” (2010, 571). If the figure of the female migrant is often used to draw lines of belonging and exclusion not only within the FRG but also in the broader European context, an examination of social and literal scripts suggests the need for an exploration of which roles she might assume, or become positioned in, within the Odyssee Europa project and beyond. This chapter thus also provides an opportunity for exploring the framing at work when the premiere of a new play is tied to a particular festival, programme or event.22 This is a circumstance which has also been the case with several of the Zaimoglu/Senkel plays performed at the Ballhaus theatre and examined earlier in this study (see the preceding two chapters on Black Virgins (2006) and Shadow Voices (2008)). However, a close examination of the role of the festival is particularly pressing in the case of Perikızı, as both productions of the play thus far took place

22 Although I will focus on reading both productions of Perikızı in the context of the

festivals and programmes for which they were produced, it is also important to note that, as successful pieces, the productions at both Moers and the Ballhaus also moved into the respective theatres’ repertoires, making them accessible outwith the festival context which initially framed them. Furthermore, the aims of the playwright and director do not necessarily coincide fully with those of the festival in which they are positioned.

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within programmes which were actively positioning themselves in relation to national and transnational symbolic frameworks.23 Indeed, while this study focuses on the German national context, the very terms of the commission of Perikızı necessitate a consideration of the Europeanisation of that context, that is to say the “integration” of Germany itself into a broader European entity, in recent years.24 In her 2010 article on the play and its relationship to “precarious masculinity”, Franziska Schößler provides a short summary of the commissioning context, before proceeding to a close analysis of Perikızı based largely on the dramatic text: The prominent reference to Homer relates to two different, and thoroughly contradictory aims. The first is to do with creating a connection back to a collective “originary narrative” as a source, as a European “origin story” […]. The other is to revitalise an old story that tells of a wandering journey […] and of homelessness or a delayed return home. This tension between the creation of identity and pluralisation can also be seen in European cultural policies, which try simultaneously to promote cultural unity and cultural diversity. In Article 151, paragraph 1 of the EC Treaty we find the following: “The Community shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore” (Schößler 2010, 80).25

23 Although Schößler alludes to the premiere’s context, her main focus is on reading

the six plays involved in the Odyssee Europa project as dramatic texts in relation to one another (2010, 82–83). While also useful, this leaves little room for analysis of the broader narrative imposed by the Odyssee Europa festival in its programmes and marketing materials. Recent articles on Perikızı by Ana Calero Valera (2015) and Stefani Kugler and Ariana Totzke (2013) also focus on the dramatic text. 24 The language of integration is frequently used in sociopolitical studies of the

relationship between the EU and its member states (Heimböckel 2012, 32). 25 “Der profilierte Bezug zu Homer verfolgt zwei unterschiedliche, durchaus widersprüchliche Ziele: Zum einen geht es um die Rückbesinnung auf eine gemeinsame Ur-Erzählung als ‘Quelle’, als ‘Ursprungsgeschichte’ Europas […]. Zum anderen wird eine alte Geschichte revitalisiert, die von einer Irrfahrt erzählt […] und von Heimatlosigkeit bzw. einer verzögerten Heimkehr. Diese Spannung zwischen Identitätsfindung und Pluralisierung wiederholt sich in einer europäischen Kulturpolitik, die kulturelle Einheit und kulturelle Vielfalt gleichzeitig zu fördern versucht. In Artikel 151, Abs. 1 des EG-Vertrags heißt es: ‘Die Gemeinschaft leistet einen Beitrag zur Entfaltung der Kulturen der Mitgliedstaaten unter Wahrung ihrer nationalen und regionalen Vielfalt sowie gleichzeitiger Hervorhebung des gemeinsamen kulturellen Erbes’.” The English rendering

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Katrin Sieg suggests that the influence of European funding sources on opening up opportunities for postmigrant theatre has been significant; however, she does not elaborate on this further (2011, 174). The circumstances of the commission of Perikızı thus make it ideal for examining not only the impact of EU-funded projects for Turkish-German theatre, but also how processes of dramatic and social scripting are affected when the European dimension of contemporary German identity explicitly comes into play. In this chapter, I will thus further examine what Schößler identifies as the “tension between the creation of identity and its pluralisation” at the heart of the Odyssee Europa project and Ruhr.2010 and will relate this more concretely to the aesthetics of the play in its premiere production. If the female body is often used to represent the nation-state, here the association of the feminine with the intercultural is also worth unpacking further. In the latter part of this chapter, I therefore examine the ways in which contemporary discourses on interculturalism as cultural policy in the theatrical sphere inform the play’s commission, production and presentation. According to Beverley Weber, Özdamar’s writing exists at a complex nexus of resistance – not only to the tendencies to write immigrant, especially Turkish women, as victims of cultural oppression but also to write a national history that enables this reduction by imagining Turkish history as “outside of Europe”. (2013, 188)

As this chapter will show, the commission of Perikızı positions Özdamar (and migration) as central to a Europeanisation of the so-called Ruhr Metropolis. This positioning leads me to raise the question of what happens to the “nexus of resistance” which Weber identifies as typical of Özdamar’s work when the boundaries of inclusion shift. Might the embrace of the female migrant as dramatic figure indicate a normalisation of migration and an expansion of the “reality” to which state-subsidised theatre in Germany relates? Or does this embrace demand particular cultural work of the playwright and scripts she produces? In this chapter, I will therefore explore how representations of migration, and particularly female migration, within the German theatre relate to “performances” of of the quotation from the EC Treaty is taken from the English-language version of this legislation.

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diversity and gendered scripts of integration on a national or transnational level.

“Integration Has Its Price” The organisers of Ruhr.2010, the name given to the year-long “MegaEvent” (Hitzler 2013) within which Odyssee Europa took place, situated this year as purposefully future-orientated and chose to interpret the title of European Capital of Culture “not as a prize […] but as funding for one of Europe’s biggest identity-work projects” (Piekenbrock 2010, 8).26 This conception of the title as an opportunity for developing a metropolitan Ruhr identity, and of such an identity as unfixed and changeable, is evident throughout the language used in the planning, description and marketing of Ruhr.2010. Oliver Scheytt and Nikolaj Bauer, academics who were also heavily involved in the conception of the Ruhr.2010 project, have thus characterised the aims and values of the event as follows: RUHR.2010 initiates an internal search for identity as well as external change of image. The Ruhr cultural metropolis which will be newly developed in this way aims also to provide a model for Europe beyond the year 2010. It is not for nothing that the motto of Ruhr2010 is: “Transformation through Culture, Culture though Transformation”. […] The (brand) values of RUHR.2010 are: unfinished, inspiring, capable of transformation. (2010, 44)27

This language, together with the further conceptualisation of the Ruhr Metropole as a “European city in emergence” (Betz 2011),28 bears distinct

26 “nicht als Prämie […], sondern als Arbeitsstipendium für eines der größten Identitätsprojekte Europas”. 27 “RUHR.2010 stiftet eine interne Identitätsfindung sowie einen externen Imagewandel und fördert regionale Kooperationen sowie den Aufbau nachhaltig wirkender Kulturstrukturen. Die so neu entwickelte Kulturmetropole Ruhr soll auch über das Jahr 2010 hinaus Modellcharakter für Europa besitzen. Nicht von ungefähr lautet das Motto von RUHR.2010 ‘Wandel durch Kultur, Kultur durch Wandel.’ […] Die (Marken-)Werte von RUHR.2010 sind: unfertig, inspirierend, wandlungsfähig.” 28 “europäische Stadt im Werden”.

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traces of a Deleuzean approach to culture, an approach which positions culture as always in emergence.29 The attraction and relevance of Özdamar as a writer for such a project is clear when one looks at Deleuzean readings of Özdamar’s texts by scholars such as Margaret Littler (2007) and Kate Roy (2008). Roy, for example, suggests: In these texts, difference-in-itself transforms a majoritarian idea of “Germany” […]: they [countries such as Germany] become not entities to be “different from” (and indeed not entities at all) but assemblages that are transformed through the different repetition of “familiar” histories, texts and objects. (5)

The commission thus initially seems to point to an interest in the epistemology present in Özdamar’s texts rather than to a reduction of the writer to representative Turkish-German figure. It also places her alongside more established and internationally renowned playwrights such as Enda Walsh and Roland Schimmelpfennig who were also commissioned to write new plays for the Odyssee Europa project. In positioning Özdamar as a Turkish rather than a German author, however, Turkey may be included within Odyssee Europa’s conception of Europe, but Özdamar herself is located as a representative from outside Germany (the FRG is represented instead by Schimmelpfennig). Furthermore, as a European author, Özdamar is arguably not only presented as exotic; her presence also contributes to the exoticisation of the Ruhr area suggested by its reimagination through Odyssee Europa as Mediterranean archipelago (see Fig. 1).30 As the brackets in the reference to “(brand) values” above indicate, the use of Deleuzean language in Ruhr.2010 also suggests an uneasy coalition between, on the one hand, an embrace and institutionalisation of concepts of culture and indeed existence linked with the thought of the 29 For a discussion of the Ruhr Metropole as Deleuzean rhizome, see Ernst (2010). 30 Closer examination of the artistic biographies of each of the “European” authors

commissioned for Odyssee Europa shows that each had a close connection to the German cultural sphere prior to the festival. Peter Nádas, for example, lived in Berlin in the early 1990s and has won the Kafka Prize (RUHR.2010 et al. 2010, 441–48). While bilingualism and homes in more than one country are common denominators amongst these authors, this strong German connection suggests that, despite the rhetoric of Europeanness, it is a “familiarised” version of European theatre which is presented here.

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Fig. 1 The map of the Ruhr area created by raumlaborberlin for Odyssee Europa audience members. Image © raumlaborberlin

European intellectual Left and, on the other, the values of market capitalism. While the commission of the play might seem to indicate a point of arrival for Özdamar as dramatist in Germany, it is striking that this play also presents her most scathing literary attack on her own treatment as a “Turkish-German” author. In exploring the role of social scripting in both the commission and critique this play presents, it is interesting to note the ways in which this new fictionalised semi-autobiographical work both returns to and disrupts an identification of the author with an idealised image of successful integration in Germany. Here, I will begin with a close reading of the dramatic text in order to suggest that this happens literally, via the prophecies of the character of Perikızı’s father, as well as structurally, via a refunctionalisation of textual scenarios which, in their first incarnation in Özdamar’s novels, functioned to embed the Turkish author in both the German every-day and German history (cf. Minnaard 2008, 70–71; Konuk 2007, 234).

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As already indicated, a fantastical version of the plagiarism affair which clouded the relationship between Özdamar and Zaimoglu occupies a prominent place in the dramatic text, as does a repeated criticism of the reduction of the work of Turkish artists from the existential and aesthetic plane to the sociological (for critiques of this reduction from the academic sphere see Adelson 2006, 38; Minnaard 2008, 58; Mani 2007, 192). The character of Perikızı’s father explicitly links this reductive view to the representative role expected of the Turkish artist in Europe. In the opening scene of the dramatic text, also quoted in the opening prelude of this book, as he warns Perikızı against leaving Turkey for Europe (a space which becomes conflated with Germany in the play), the father declares: Look! The wives of our countrymen are cleaning ladies there. And on a European stage a Turkish woman is a Turkish woman and a Turkish woman is a cleaning lady. That is the daily reality and in the theatre it becomes the nightly reality. In the theatre you’ll only be able to have a career as a cleaning lady. (290)31

When Perikızı rejects the possibility that this will be the case for her, he continues: Perhaps you will be able to become famous over there in Europe […] but you will find no peace. They will praise you and write that you are the pioneer of the Turkish artists, that you are the one who can enlighten the oppressed Turkish girls, that you are a bridge between Turkey and Europe, that you are the only emancipated Turkish woman, that you are the best example of integration, that you are, are, are, are. (290)32

There are clear references to Özdamar’s own artistic career here as well as to her reception, which has frequently positioned her as a “bridge

31 “Schau, die Frauen unserer Landsleute sind dort Putzfrauen. Und auf einer europäischen Bühne ist eine türkische Frau eine türkische Frau und eine türkische Frau ist eine Putzfrau. Das ist die tägliche Realität und am Theater wird es nächtliche Realität. Du kannst am Theater nur als Putzfrau Karriere Machen.” 32 “Du kannst da in Europa vielleicht berühmt werden, […] aber du wirst keine Ruhe finden. Sie werden dich loben und schreiben, dass du Pionierin der türkischen Künstler bist, dass du Aufklärer der unterdrückten türkischen Mädchen bist, dass du eine Brücke zwischen der Türkei und Europa bist, dass du die einzige emanzipierte Türkin bist, dass du das beste Beispiel für Integration bist, bist, bist, bist.”

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between the cultures”.33 Within the father’s warning here, we find an excess of subordinate clauses in the German introduced by the word “dass” (“that”) and the repetition of “are, are, are, are” (“bist, bist, bist, bist”) which is also given more prominence in the German where the verb occupies the final position in each of the clauses. These linguistic features highlight the excess of expectation placed on the ethnicized artist and what Rey Chow refers to as “a duplication that, explicitly or implicitly, establishes equivalence between a cultural practice and an ethnic label” (2002, 123). In this scene, Perikızı playfully asks “Are you a prophet then, father? Are you Tiresias?” (Özdamar 2010, 290),34 addressing him as the blind prophet of Homer’s Odyssey. Although Perikızı is clearly poking fun at her father here, her later fate in the play seems to lend her father’s “prophecies” authority. While the Deleuzean language of the framework within which the play was commissioned might seem to free Özdamar from the expectations associated with the Turkish-German woman writer, the dramatic text of the play highlights the traumatic effects which demand for an easily placeable identity can have within a national context not open to an acknowledgement of itself as also “in emergence”. The journey from Turkey to Germany taken by the protagonist of Perikızı suggests The Bridge of the Golden Horn as the main intraoeuvre connection for the play. However, key leitmotifs are in fact taken from several of Özdamar’s other novels and short stories. In being re-contextualised, they also take on new functions. The characters of the protagonist’s grandmother, dead grandfather and the ghosts of two Armenian brides will be familiar to readers of Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei (1998; Life is a Caravanserai) and Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde (2003; Strange Stars Stare at the Earth), for example.35 Schößler notes in passing that a concern with the dead can be traced as a theme throughout Özdamar’s oeuvre (2010, 86). This is an element of Özdamar’s poetics which Kader Konuk, amongst others, has explored in ways which suggest that this concern manifests itself to different effect in 33 The positioning of Turkish-German writers in this way is discussed critically by, for example, Adelson (2006, 38–39). 34 “Bist du denn ein Hellseher, Vater? Bist du Teiresias?” This line was cut in the Moers production. 35 Özdamar’s short story “Der Hof im Spiegel” forms another important intertext: the mirror motif also appears there (2001, 42).

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each work (Konuk 2007, 239; Bird 2003, 204–206). In Strange Stars , references to the death of the narrator’s grandmother are linked to the grandmother’s memory of the much-debated Armenian genocide, for example (Mani 2007, 111). Within Strange Stars, this association seems to function both as a way of symbolising what goes missing with the death of the grandmother (a direct connection to or first-hand memory of an unacknowledged piece of history) and as a way of making present the lost grandmother through the narrator’s own repetition of the handful of words with which she is left. You have seen so many of the dead. The Armenians as well. Sometimes you would stand up and cry out: “How the Armenian girls plunged from the bridges!” You had brought their children food. An old Armenian woman lived with you. […] Grandmother, you are dead, I stand here in East Berlin and think about you with Gabi and Steve. You are dead and what is left is a handful of your words. (Özdamar 2003, 227)36

In the dramatic text of Perikızı, the grandmother’s words appear again; however, they do so to different effect; here, the grandmother’s lament for the Armenian brides becomes a leitmotif which in each repetition throughout the play is accompanied by a nosebleed. This motif is initiated in the opening scene of the play in Turkey when Perikızı asks the grandmother what she has dreamt about: (Two young women, the Armenian brides, appear wearing aprons over their clothes, as in 1910, and leave again. Grandmother suddenly bleeds violently from her nose.) Grandmother: Abooo. Abooo. How the Armenian brides plunged down from the bridges. How the Armenian brides plunged down from the bridges. With their young eyes, that wanted to be blind, they saw hell and fire on this Earth; their aprons still over their clothes, barefoot, big eyes, big hands, feet enlarged from the death march, their children as

36 “Du hast so viele Tote gesehen. Auch die Armenier. Manchmal bist du aufgestanden und hast geschrien: ‘Wie sich die armenischen Mädchen von den Brücken gestürzt haben!’ Du hattest ihren Kindern Essen gebracht. Eine alte Armenierin lebte bei dir […] Großmutter, du bist tot, ich stehe hier in Ostberlin und denke mit Gabi und Steve an dich. Du bist tot, und übriggeblieben ist eine Handvoll deiner Wörter.”

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skeletons at their feet, the fire in which they walked, walked, and walked was seven times hotter than hellfire. (Özdamar 2010, 275)37

This motif reappears when an argument over nationalism with the chicken-women of the workers’ hostel in Germany is interrupted by the grandmother’s repetition of the lament and simultaneous nosebleed (307).38 It then occurs for a third time at the climax of the plagiarism scene where Perikızı, taking on the voice of the grandmother, also laments the Armenian brides and suffers a nosebleed (331).39 The association of the nosebleed with the memory of the Armenian brides as well as its transference from the grandmother to Perikızı herself thus functions to draw lines of traumatic relation between the fate of the Armenians and Perikızı’s own treatment in Germany at the hands of both her countrymen, who lapse into fascism, and the German press, who abuse her and are presented as blind to this “foreign” fascism. Such an association could seem problematic, or even self-aggrandising. As Konuk points out in her analysis of Seltsame Sterne, however, such associations do not necessarily draw lines of equivalence, but can also be read as signalling “causally and temporally disjunctive, but figurally connected, experiences of empathic suffering” (2007, 244). This can also be seen if we follow a reading of the dramatic text which focuses on intertextuality as part of what Liesbeth Minaard has called “a search for webs of Relation […] as a process of changing mentalities and transforming communities” in Özdamar’s work (2008, 93). Given the significance of this search for Özdamar’s politics and aesthetics, it is important to note 37 “Zwei junge Frauen, die armenischen Bräute, tauchen auf, mit Schürzen über ihren Kleidern wie um 1910, und gehen ab. Großmutter blutet plötzlich heftig aus der Nase. GROßMUTTER: Abooo, Aboooo. Wie die armenischen Bräute sich von den Brücken heruntergestürzt haben. Wie die armenischen Bräute sich von den Brücken heruntergestürzt haben. Gesehen haben sie mit ihren jungen Augen, die blind sein wollten, die Hölle und das Feuer auf dieser Erde, die Schürze noch über ihren Kleidern, barfuß, die Augen groß, die Hände groß, die Füße groß vom Totenmarsch, ihre Kinder als Skelette vor ihren Füßen, das Feuer, in dem sie lange liefen, liefen und liefen, war siebenmal heißer als das Höllenfeuer.” 38 The grandmother also suffers a nosebleed during the monologue of the two Armenian brides in the scene “Perikızı’s Dream” (Özdamar 2010, 312; “Perikızıs Traum”). 39 In this scene, a further nosebleed is suffered by the character of Käuzchen, an owl, who the stage directions of the dramatic text suggest is linked with the figure of the grandmother.

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the ways in which these webs are re-woven in the premiere production of this play. The cut of the script used for the Moers production of Perikızı reduces some of the references to Özdamar’s own career, as well as cutting the leitmotif of the nosebleed completely. However, the traumatic effects of multiple demands on the migrantized figure are instead played out via the physical performance which accompanies some of the most seemingly banal sections of the text.40 The moment where the German singer Heino appears singing his hit version of the German folksong “Muss i’ denn, muss i’ denn | Zum Städtele hinaus”41 in the published version of the text (Özdamar 2010, 300–301), for example, is picked up and extended in the Moers production as a seduction scenario (Schlosstheater Moers 2010). In the published version of the dramatic text, Heino is unable to see Perikızı, creating the first moment of her invisibility as a person in Germany (on invisibility see Schößler 2010, 87). In the Moers production, however, Heino is revealed crooning and sprawled pseudo-seductively on a small stage set-up in one section of the larger performance area. From his position on this stage, he not only sees Perikızı, but also lures her to him with an additional rendition of “Komm in meinen Wigwam (Regenbogen-Johnny)” (Schlosstheater Moers 2010; “Come into my Wigwam / Rainbow Johnny”). The curtains are then closed over them both, the music stops and animal-like growls as well as thumps to the closed curtain suggest a sexual attack is carried out on Perikızı, who finally emerges with her handbag forced fully over her head. The addition of the “Wigwam” song is significant for a discussion of the negotiation of pre-existing social scripts within the play—here the script of Orientalism. Following the popularity of Karl May and Indian impersonation groups, a “fictional Wild West emerged as a theatre for the racial imagination in postwar West Germany”, one in which the figure of the native American created a “juxtaposition of primitivism and modernity” and so served to keep ethnicized Others firmly in their place (Sieg 2002, 24, 28). The use of this song, which tells the story of an unnamed male seeking out a Native American girl, to lure Perikızı thus places her in the role of exoticised and desired Other. However, the negative 40 Connections to the pre-1961 relations between Turkey and Europe are also reduced by cutting the laments for the dead grandfather. 41 “Must I go, must I go | out to the wee towns”; the song was adapted in English into “Wooden Heart”, famously sung by Elvis Presley.

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effects of responding naively to this interpellation are suggested by the sexualised attack on her body. The bag placed roughly over Perikızı’s head, obscuring her personhood, will be echoed in the final scene of this production in which the plagiarist grey wolf wraps and then bites her head, leaving bloody traces on the white binding at the end of the play (Schlosstheater Moers 2010; see Fig. 2). This, together with the sugges-

Fig. 2 Katja Stockhausen as Perikızı, and Holger Stolz, in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Perikızı, dir. by Ulrich Greb (2010). Photograph © Christian Nielinger/www.nielinger.de

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tion of sexual violence, forms a new visual leitmotif, replacing that of the nosebleed.42 Sexualised violence against the body of the protagonist is also used to connect the demand for assimilation and its traumatic effects in the Moers production. Again, this connection is developed out of fleeting references in the text: in this case a piece of dialogue which is relatively innocuous and which strikes a minor rather than a major note in the published version of the play. G uest worker: You tell me where is whorehouse? The man from Die Zeit Newspaper: You go to the court house. Guest worker: No court house, whorehouse. The man from Die Zeit Newspaper: You go to court house. Behind court house is whorehouse. (Özdamar 2010, 317–18).43

In the Moers production, the characters named the giant feelings of guilt (Schuldgefühlgiganten) in the dramatic text appear at this point on homemade stilts, dressed as grey-suited bureaucrats. These giant feelings of guilt deliver the lines attributed to a guest worker in the dramatic text and, together with the Man from Die Zeit newspaper, begin circling Perikızı in a predatory manner, repeating the word “whorehouse” aggressively.44 Continuing to repeat this, the giant feelings of guilt then take Perikızı’s hands and force her to accompany them into a telephone booth on stage against her will. As Perikızı struggles to escape from this booth-cum-bordello, the Man from Die Zeit newspaper delivers a speech on integration originally taken from the scene titled “Discourse of Assimilation” in the dramatic text. Declaring “integration has its price” (Schlosstheater Moers 2010; Özdamar 2010, 318), he prevents Perikızı 42 Schößler notes the Heino intertext as a “low culture” version of the Odyssey and suggests that, although it does critique the working conditions in which Gastarbeiterinnen found themselves, somewhat oddly Heino is portrayed as a rapist due to “the intellectuals’ classic resentment of folk music” (2010, 89; “das klassische Ressentiment der Intellektuellen der Volksmusik gegenüber”). 43 “GASTARBEITER: Du mir sagen wo ist Puffhaus?

DER ZEITMANN: Du gehen bis zum Rathaus. GASTARBEITER: Nixis Rathaus, Puffhaus. DER ZEITMANN: Du gehen bis zum Rathaus. Hinter dem Rathaus is Puffhaus” These lines are also included in the Karagöz texts (Özdamar 1982, 69–70; see the chapter on “Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Early Plays (1982–2000)” on these). 44 “Puffhaus”.

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from escaping and provides punctuation to his speech by repeatedly slamming the door to the booth shut.45 Integration, a process often problematically understood as synonymous with assimilation in the German context, thus becomes associated with violence to the person of the migrant woman.46 Perikızı eventually emerges from the telephone booth/brothel carrying flowers and a gift basket, and wearing a plastic sash—packaged in a manner suggesting the material “rewards” of her submission. A visual association with Little Red Riding Hood is also created here through the combination of the actress’ red dress and the basket of goods she carries. As Jack Zipes’ detailed study of Little Red Riding Hood shows, this fairy tale “raises issues about gender identity, sexuality, violence, and the civilizing process in a unique and succinct symbolic form”, and can be read as emphasising the physical and moral dangers to women in particular of disobedience and of straying from their allotted path (1993, 343).47 While Özdamar’s dramatic text plays more explicitly with another, perhaps more transnational myth of female transgression through repeated references to the unlocking of a fortieth room, it is the triad of grandmother, young female protagonist and wolf on which the 2010 production focuses.48 Although both tales share an emphasis on the dangers of female (sexual) curiosity and disobedience, perhaps ironically given the scene’s critique of assimilation, this creates a new, arguably more Germanised point of reference for the audience: literally packaging Özdamar’s shifting, transnational reference points in ways which are not only more visually striking but also more easily consumable. Assimilation becomes associated overwhelmingly with a sexualised violence here, drawing parallels between a view of “integration” which has often been propagated in Germany and a supposedly “un-European” 45 “Assimilationsdiskurs”. “Integration hat ihren Preis”. The cut of the text at this moment thus follows the published version of the dramatic text exactly. However, the performances accompanying the words are in no way based on the stage directions of Perikızı as published and so function to resignify these two episodes. 46 Chin provides a detailed discussion of the shifting meanings of integration in the

German context prior to unification (2007, 96–99, 150–160). 47 The emphasis on female sexuality in Little Red Riding Hood is also highlighted by Bruno Bettelheim (1989, 169–83). 48 In Western Europe, this is the tale of Bluebeard; however, stories in which the door to a fortieth room is unlocked by a protagonist also appear to have a place in Turkish fairy tales as told today (for an example, see Walker and Uysal 1992, 297).

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oppression of the migrant woman.49 However, resistance to assimilation through a reactionary “return” to the migrant figure’s national or ethnic origins is portrayed as equally impossible. Having recited a poem in Turkish, Perikızı removes the plastic in which she has been wrapped, while traditional Turkish music is played. This music is soon revealed to be played by musicians perched on the back of a small APE car which is driven into the performance space by Perikızı’s mother. The mother, car and musicians were all present in the opening scene of the 2010 production, the only scene to be set in Turkey, and the appearance of this trio creates strong associations with the portrayal of Perikızı’s home at the start of the play. Realising where the music is coming from, Perikızı chases her mother and the musicians as they drive around the performance space, suggesting a desire to return to her roots. The car refuses to stop for her, however, and the music quickly becomes more military as actors wearing chicken masks march into the arena, wielding large red flags and moving in military formations (Fig. 3). The plain red flags are on the one hand an allusion to the red flag of Turkey, but on the other, when combined with the military marching and the German performance context also function to conjure up images of Nazi rallies. Perikızı and the audience are thus immediately confronted with the dangers of a turn to national and ethnic identity. New outlets are thus created for the moments of trauma in the 2010 premiere and, through the counterpoint of words spoken and action taken, the insidious nature of oppression within “democratic”, humanist Europe is revealed. While the content of the play is much altered in this production, the logic of Özdamar’s dream play is, however, maintained. The dream-play form and turn to mythic material are thus taken not as an opportunity for soothing synthesis, but rather as a means of connecting otherwise disparate signifiers and creating a rich visual texture, charged with points of disruption and unease. At the same time, this re-routing of the dramatic text’s imagery perhaps obscures the dramatic text’s concerns with historically specific moments of Turkish nationalism and even fascism

49 Despite the relatively recent adoption in many EU countries of women’s rights legis-

lation and the continued contests around this legislation within those countries, women’s rights are often positioned as an inherently “European value” which is under threat from the presence of “Muslim” migrants. For critiques of this “sexual nationalism” which focus on the German context and Turkish-German cultural production, see Adelson (2005, 127–32), Weber (2010, 39), Sieg (2010, 152, 169) and Chin (2007, 158–73).

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Fig. 3 Scene with marching hens and APE van in Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Perikızı, dir. by Ulrich Greb (2010). Still from audiovisual recording

which remain overlooked in public discourse both in Turkey and in Germany, in favour of discussions of assimilation and integration more familiar to a white German audience.

An Intercultural Odyssey: Ruhr.2010 as Framing Narrative Having focused so far on the “web of Relation” which the dramatic text and the performance of particular scenes in the Moers production weave, I now want to return to the further lines of affiliation and boundaries drawn not only around the text but also around Özdamar as an author by the framing of the production within Odyssee Europa and Ruhr.2010. According to a 2008 interview with Aslı Sevindim, one of the artistic directors of Ruhr.2010, “the successful application of RUHR.2010 to be European Capital of Culture was explicitly focused on the themes of migration and interculturalism” (Raddatz 2008, 20).50 As noted in the “Introduction chapter, the discourse of “interculturalism” 50 “[d]ie erfolgreiche Bewerbung von RUHR.2010 zur europäischen Kulturhauptstadt basierte ausdrücklich auf den Themen Migration und Interkulturalität”.

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has a long history in Germany and is frequently associated with a sociological approach which characterises cultures as homogeneous, closed constructs. Within the literary sphere, a focus on interculturalism has often contributed to what Leslie A. Adelson and others have critiqued as a narrative which positions Turkish-Germans in particular as “between two worlds” (2005, 1–4). More recently, however, Mark Terkessidis has provided a Deleuzean redefinition of Interkultur “as ‘Culture-inbetween’, as a structure undergoing transformation, as something which is not whole or complete, or at least not yet” (2010, 131).51 The similarity between his language and the language employed by the organisers of Ruhr.2010 discussed earlier in this section makes his approach of particular interest here. In contrast to the understanding of culture as something tied to the ethnicized or racialized identities of authors “with a background of migration” (“mit Migrationshintergründen”) which is frequently adopted in literary studies which use the “intercultural” framework, Terkessidis emphasises “culture” as a product of organisations and institutions, rather than bound to people via ethnicity (2010, 11–68, 179–81). Furthermore, Terkessidis’ conception of Interkultur (“interculture” or “interculturalism”) creates a situation in which rather than the migrant being the exception to the rule—a category to be dealt with specially and separately—the migrant becomes the paradigm for the contemporary subject (2010, 108). This positions Interkultur as an alternative to both the programme of multiculturalism and the rhetoric of assimilation. The inclusion of an extract of Terkessedis’ work in the programme for Perikızı/ Odyssee Europa makes it clear which “version” of interculturalism the Schlosstheater Moers aligned itself within the Odyssee Europa project. The language of “emergence” shared between Terkessedis and the organisers of Odyssee Europa, Ruhr.2010, suggests a further point of connection between his approach and the broader aims of the festival. In the aforementioned 2008 interview, Sevindim expanded on the reasoning behind the focus on Interkultur and migration in Ruhr.2010 using the language of normalisation and stressing the role of theatre and the arts in both reflecting and shaping social reality:

51 “als ‘Kultur-im-Zwischen,’ als Struktur im Wandel, als etwas, das nicht ganz ist oder noch nicht”. Sharifi also briefly addresses Terkessidis’ concept of interculturalism as a positive alternative (2017, 373).

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A European Capital of Culture does not only have the task of presenting and celebrating itself, but also of addressing European themes. In this regard the theme of migration is highly virulent. I am delighted that migration is finally being recognised as a societal reality. At least in the Ruhr area. […] If we understand cultural diversity as a socio-political issue, then theatre, literature and film can make a big difference – insofar as a sense of this as simply normality is created. (Sevindim in Raddatz 2008, 16–22)52

Sevindim’s language here echoes that of Karin Beier the same year in Cologne (see the previous chapter on Shadow Voices (2008)), and again the invocation of “simply normality” or the discourse of normalism raises the question of whose reality is considered normal, i.e. representative, and how that might affect the identification and acceptance of an artistic representation. In terms of social scripting, it is also important to note that, as in Terkessedis’ version of Interkultur, in Sevindim’s phrasing the migrantized subject is not required to either adapt to or remain outside the structures already in place (i.e. a normative or even mimeticist demand is not being placed on particular subjects). Instead, these structures themselves and the bounds of the normal are required to shift.53 A widening of the view of the reality of contemporary Germany, held both by the theatre establishment and by the theatre-going public, is certainly suggested by the series of lectures which opened Odyssee Europa, which were delivered by figures such as Terkessidis himself. In the description of this lecture programme, the “meandering journey” of Odysseus was described as paradigmatic for contemporary experience: “Driven by homesickness and doubts, at times courageous, at times cowardly, Odysseus becomes a symbol of those who are released into freedom, who

52 “Eine europäische Kulturhauptstadt hat nicht nur die Aufgabe, sich zu präsentieren und sich selbst zu feiern, sondern auch europäische Themen aufzugreifen. Da ist das Thema Migration nun äußerst virulent. Ich freue mich, dass die Migration endlich als gesellschaftliche Realität erkannt wurde. Jedenfalls im Ruhrgebiet. […] Wenn wir kulturelle Vielfalt als gesellschaftspolitisches Thema begreifen, können Theater, Literatur, Film viel bewegen – indem einfach eine Normalität herbeigeführt wird.” 53 This could be seen as an example of what Jürgen Link has referred to as “flexible normalism” (Link and Hall 2004).

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develop their being in action” (Hänig 2009).54 The association of physical and geographical dislocation with existential or ontological freedom has been a common trope of twentieth-century thought and, like the association of migration with the Odyssey created by the commission of Perikızı, arguably functions to “add value” to or elevate the experience of migration here.55 The suggestion that identity is developed through experiences and not simply the result of one’s ethnic or national origins also highlights the links between this positioning of Odyssee Europa, Ruhr.2010’s broader concept of the Ruhr area as a “Metropolis in emergence” and the explicitly Deleuzean nature of Terkessedis’ redefinition of Interkultur as “Culture in emergence”.56 While Terkessedis is careful to distinguish between the position occupied by the economic migrant, the asylum seeker and the privileged tourist in his own account of Interkultur, however, in the framing narrative of Odyssee Europa, these categories become problematically conflated. The Odyssee Europa programme, for example, introduces the project as follows: The collective journeys concentrate on two questions above all: In the future, what will become art on our stages? And how can theatre and dance play across the traditional lines of separation between milieus, generations, languages, and cultures in a modern urban society? In Odyssey Europe the transformations in a world which is characterised by migration, shifting senses of belonging and changing bonds have created a space for themselves. The motif of [Odysseus’] wandering is made here to a kind of elementary form of these experiences. (Piekenbrock 2010, 11)57

54 “Irrfahrt”; “Von Heimweh und Zweifeln getrieben, mal mutig, mal feige, wird Odysseus zur Pilotfigur eines in die Freiheit entlassenen, der sein Sein im Ereignis entwickelt”. 55 As Konuk highlights, the condition of exile is often associated with existential distance, an association which “wrongly implies that critical thinking is first made possible by the trauma of deracination and, hence, cannot be learned” (2010, 166). 56 “Metropolis im Werden”; “Kultur im Werden”. 57 “Die gemeinsamen Suchbewegungen konzentrierten sich vor allem auf zwei Fragen:

Was wird in Zukunft auf unseren Bühnen zur Kunst? Und wie können Theater und Tanz in einer modernen Stadtgesellschaft die traditionellen Trennlinien zwischen Milieus, Generationen, Sprachen und Kulturen überspielen? In Odyssee Europa haben sich die Veränderungen einer Welt, die durch Migration, wechselnde Zugehörigkeiten und

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This somewhat romantic positioning of migration as a quintessential experience of life in contemporary Europe was further emphasised by the physical movement which the festival required of its audience members. Audience members who signed up for Odyssee Europa as a whole were issued with transport including bus and boat rides, travel insurance and a local host with whom they would stay and tour the region, as well as a map of the Ruhr area reworked as a Mediterranean-style island archipelago (Fig. 1).58 The experiences and encounters which took place between performances were thus also framed as central to the project and indeed were subject to their own dramaturgy as created by raumlaborberlin, a network of architects who specialise in urban renewal through experimental interactions with space. (Maak 2010, 439)59 As will be seen shortly, however, such expanded dramaturgy was to have significant impact on the affordability and accessibility of the whole event, in ways which also speak to the inequalities in mobilities which the discourse of EU freedom of movement often hides. This emphasis on mobility was further echoed in the Moers production of Perikızı. Moers Schlosstheater has a capacity of only twenty to one hundred viewers, and the company has acquired a reputation for working with space both within and beyond these limitations (Kirsch 2008). The Moers production of Perikızı took place not within a traditional black box theatre space but in an ex-tennis hall on the outskirts of the town. The large hangar was divided into three sections for this

wandelnde Bindungen geprägt ist, einen großen Raum geschaffen. Das Motiv der Irrfahrt wird hier zu einer Art Elementarform dieser Erfahrungen.” 58 This process is described in several reviews (Spiegel 2010; Behrendt 2010; Hinnenberg 2010). Unless noted otherwise all reviews of the world premiere were accessed thanks to Schlosstheater Moers. 59 The group was also involved in X -Wohnungen (see the chapter “The ‘Neo-Muslima’ Enters the Scene”) and their own description of their work is available at www.rau mlabor.net [last accessed 8 August 2014]. This element of Odyssee Europa was received enthusiastically by Hubert Spiegel writing for the Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung: “A tiny theatre miracle really does take place here – but inbetween the performances, during the bus journeys or at home with your hosts” (“Es findet tatsächlich ein kleines Theaterwunder statt – aber zwischen den Aufführungen, während der Busfahrten oder zu Hause bei den Gastgebern”). Dirk Pilz, amongst others was more critical, however, stating: “The theatre was confined to a cage of marketing and so damned to voluble actionism” (2010; “Das Theater wurde in den Marketingkäfig gesperrt und so zum geschwätzigen Aktionismus verdammt”).

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production, each joined only by small, tunnel-like spaces, which the audience members were expected to negotiate individually at two distinct points in the play. The first of these transitions took place following the opening scene, as Perikızı left her home in Turkey. The opening scene played out in a sparse setting surrounded on two sides by the audience seated on banks of church pews and on the third by a towering wall of cardboard boxes. The identification of this space as “Turkish” was created through dialogue and the arrival of an APE vehicle and band of Turkish musicians. The cardboard box wall then came alive as the ghosts of the Armenian Brides appeared by pushing boxes aside to reveal themselves, literally emanating from the fabric of the space Perikızı occupied. Shortly afterwards, the Brides then removed more boxes, this time at ground level, creating a maze-like tunnel through the wall of cardboard. Having declared her wish to leave home, the actress playing Perikızı was lured with the audience through this tunnel into the next space. Once within space two, which the director’s cut of the script designated “Germany” but could equally be considered a dream-space, the audience members were not directed to traditional seating but instead had to position themselves on military campbeds spread out across the floor. The action of the performance in this space was not confined to solely one area but moved around within the space, focusing on various stations such as trapezes strung from the ceiling, a photo/phone booth positioned relatively centrally which actors could also climb onto (visible in Fig. 3), videos and images projected onto the cardboard wall through which the audience had come and an extremely small stage situated directly opposite this cardboard wall (visible in Fig. 4). Depending on the campbed chosen, the audience member would therefore have to orientate themselves towards the action or at some points decide between various potential points of focus. This activated the audience members as individual viewers and meant that a multiplication of viewpoints on any one point of action (or, perhaps, a “rhizomatic” viewing effect) would be created rather than a centre-orientated image shared by all viewing the production. So while the Ruhr.2010 programmers aimed to unify members of the public through the experiences and events created for the Ruhr’s year as European Capital of Culture, the audience members of Perikızı were unified only through a shared sense of dislocation. Most of the production took place in this larger, central space and “Space 3: the 39th Room” was used only for the very final scene, “In

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Fig. 4 Audience movement in Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Perikızı, dir. by Ulrich Greb (2010). Still from audiovisual recording

Hades”.60 Following the plagiarism scene, at the end of which the actress playing Perikızı lay fully naked on the floor, having been stripped violently by the giant feelings of guilt, the actor playing the father appeared. Quoting lines from Hölderlin’s poetry, he assisted Perikızı into space three through a small hole in the back of this stage area.61 The audience was also invited to follow Perikızı into this space (shown in Fig. 4) by the father/Hölderlin, who called “Come! Into the open, Friend!” (Schlosstheater Moers 2010; Özdamar 2010, 322).62 For the very short final scene here, no chairs were provided, and instead, the audience members were pressed together, standing, to create a party atmosphere. Celebratory music played while Perikızı was anointed for a wedding by her family and Turkish tea and Turkish delight were shared with the audience.

60 “Raum 3: Das 39. Zimmer”; “Im Hades”. 61 The reference to Hölderlin is significant as it invokes exile, as well as the historical

turn to and appropriation of Ancient Greece in German literary culture. 62 “Komm! Ins Offene, Freund!” The quotations used at this point are taken originally from Hölderlin’s Der Gang aufs Land. Other quotations from Hyperion and Brot und Wein also occur in the dramatic text (Özdamar 2010, 322–23).

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The interactive nature of both this particular performance and the festival in which it was embedded seems to function to align the audience with the migrant protagonist Perikızı. Mimetic identification with her is actively created through the audience member’s physical imitation of her journey within the theatrical space. While this may have increased the audience’s empathy for the migrant protagonist, the alignment of the audience with Perikızı through shared movement arguably also obscures the differences between the privileged tourist and the guest worker stressed precisely by critics such as Terkessidis (2010, 11–38). Indeed, the price of a ticket for the whole Odyssee Europa experience was e259 and, as reviewer Hubert Spiegel (2010) comments, this impacted significantly on the audience demographic, which he characterised as “mostly white-haired […] the educated classes out on an adventure”.63 Similarly, writing in Theater der Zeit, Meike Hinnenberg characterised the festival critically as more “duty-free cruise”64 than experimental theatre (2010, 36–37). The dynamics of Odyssee Europa would thus seem to correspond to Ralf Parr’s conclusion in his discussion of Ruhr.2010 as a whole: “Taken overall, neither a mixing of the agents involved, nor of the various audience factions took place in the programme as actually realised” (2012, 162).65 Odyssee Europa seemed thus to provide a means for an older, wealthier audience to safely tour an exoticised Ruhr area, perhaps mimicking the differentiated mobility regimes which EU-Europe engenders, rather than engaging meaningfully with the transformative potential of migration. In terms of the representation of reality here, however, it is important to note the ways in which the reception of Perikızı contrasts with the reception of Özdamar’s mixture of myth and modern migration in the 1980s, when Karagöz in Alamania was received poorly by critics who claimed not to know “where is where exactly” (Friederiksen 1986; see the chapter on “Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Early Plays (1982–2000)”).66 In 2010, it was precisely this disorientating aspect which seemed to account for her newer play’s success. On the one hand, the dream-play form

63 “weißhaarig zumeist […] Bildungsbürger auf Abenteuerfahrt”. 64 “Butterfahrt”. 65 “Tendenziell fand dann im tatsächlich realisierten Programm weder eine Mischung der Akteure noch eine der Publikumsfraktionen statt.” 66 “wo ist nun wo”.

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and the prolific use of mythic and fantastical figures in Perikızı allow “a blending of memories, experiences, free inventions, absurdities, and improvisations” which might seem to indicate a turn away from “the Real” and a mythologisation of migration.67 On the other hand, the acceptance of a particular uprootedness as the defining reality in contemporary life offers another interpretation of the use of the dream-play form. By subtitling the play “A Dream Play” in what seems a direct reference to Strindberg, Özdamar may be seen to suggest a situation in which the “real” story is best told through the distorting lens of the dream-world. An examination of the play in its premiere production as part of Odyssee Europa and Ruhr.2010 then suggests that the embrace of Özdamar’s “dramaturgy of disorientation” (Boran 2004, 150; “Dramaturgie der Orientierungslosigkeit”) might indicate a normalisation of migration for the German theatrical establishment and its more traditional audiences, as well as an expansion of the “reality” to which German theatre relates. At the same time as we have seen, this normalisation is not without its own issues. While the framing of the premiere of Perikızı situates the migrant woman as central to new European values and dynamic ways of life, arguably this not only erases Europe’s own role in excluding migrantized women from belonging but also fails to provide space for the memories and experiences she carries.

˙ Perikizi at the Ballhaus: “50 Years of Sham Marriage” The concept of migration as central to German society is returned to critically in the framing of the second production of Perikızı I will look at briefly in the final part of this chapter: Michael Ronen’s 2011 production for the festival Almancı! 50 Jahre Scheinehe (Almancı! 50 Years of Sham Marriage) at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße. As the programme for the Almancı! festival puts it, here the migrant or postmigrant figure does not become paradigmatic, but rather stands “at odds to the established cultural contexts of both Germany and Turkey” (Ballhaus Naunynstraße

67 Thus, the mirror in the stage directions of the dramatic text is not used as reflection but rather as a gateway taking the protagonist “through the looking glass,” in the style of Alice in Wonderland.

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2011).68 Indeed, the Ballhaus has consistently situated itself as a disruptive voice from the margins, claiming to “bark from the third row” (see Nobrega 2011). Shermin Langhoff, the artistic director of the theatre at the time of the Almancı! festival, has summarised the theatre’s ethos as follows: For us post-migrant means that we critically question the production and reception of stories about migration and about migrants which have been available up to now and that we view and produce these stories anew, inviting a new reception. (Langhoff, in Schacht 2011)69

Rather than situating itself as a future-orientated identity-building project, the Almancı! festival explicitly looked to the past in a year celebrated widely in the German press as the fiftieth anniversary of the Turkish presence in Germany. While the Odyssee Europa project was embedded in a discourse of Europeanisation and metropolisation, the title Almancı, an implicitly derogatory Turkish word for Turks who migrated to Germany (Mandel 2008, 241, 327), alerts us to a purposefully alternative positioning at work here. The Ballhaus production made use of a circus aesthetic which captured elements of the comic, slapstick turns Özdamar writes into the dramatic text,70 as well as the exploration of the performativity of identity for which her writing is known more generally (see, e.g., Shafi 2003, 206). Elmira Bahrami, the actress playing Perikızı, for example, played the violin within the performance, performed acrobatics with a suspended hoop and—together with the other actors—participated in the production’s comic use of clowning skills. The traveling or migratory tradition of circus performance itself is useful in considering the Ballhaus’ representation of the displaced woman and how it might compare to that of the Odyssee Europa festival. The metatheatrical nature of the references to circus in this production also draws attention to the positioning of the postmigrant

68 “quer zu den etabilierten Kulturkontexten sowohl Deutschlands als auch der Türkei”. 69 “Postmigrantisch heißt für uns, dass wir die bisherige Produktion und Rezeption von

Geschichten über Migration und über Migranten kritisch befragen und neu anschauen, neu produzieren und neu zur Rezeption einladen.” Transcription my own. 70 The dramatic text includes stage directions such as “Chaplin Number at the Sausage Stand” (“Chaplin-Nummer an der Wurstbude”; Özdamar 2010, 302).

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theatre practitioner, a theme which was continued through political statements in the Almancı programme, and the addition of new text included in Ronen’s production of Perikızı. A significant example of this is the plagiarism scene from Özdamar’s dramatic text, which in the Ballhaus production was reworked to explicitly suggest, instead, a rape scene. In this scene, perhaps the most prominent one in the Ballhaus production, a newspaper man dressed as a ringmaster replaced the figure of Zaimoglu as (grey) wolf and, hearing Perikızı sing, declared her the “Pioneer of the Turkish artists”.71 He then turned her over to Liesel and Gretel, two white German feminists who offer to “rescue” Perikızı from what they assume is her oppressive and abusive family. With their traditional German names, Liesel and Gretel also seem to step out of German fairy tales. The figure of the West German feminist thus becomes merged with emblems of more conservative views present in the German cultural imaginary, highlighting the ways in which a left-wing or feminist political leaning does not prevent otherwise politically engaged groups becoming a mouthpiece for stereotypes about Turkish women in Germany.72 Blind both to the actual danger to Perikızı and to their own role in enabling this, in the Ballhaus production Liesel and Gretel strip her naked for the ringmaster who, it is suggested, rapes her.73 This is not shown directly but is suggested in the performance via a knife-throwing performance and the blood which subsequently flows down the legs of the actress playing Perikızı. While in the Moers production, symbolist Red Riding Hood imagery and subtler suggestions of sexual violence 71 “Pionierin der türkischen Künstler”. The Ballhaus has a good working relationship with Zaimoglu and has staged a number of his plays since it opened in 2008. The decision not to include this section of the scene in the play and to express the trauma of the protagonist’s reception in Germany symbolically in this way may have been a pragmatic one. 72 This certainly seems to reflect and comment on historical reality. See, for example, Chin’s discussion of the shortcomings of German feminist groups’ engagements with Turkish women in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s (2010, 567). 73 In the published version of Perikızı, the Wolf forces a head-scarf on Perikızı during his attack on her in the plagiarism scene (Özdamar 2010, 331). In the Ballhaus production, however, Perikızı is not forced to cover her head but rather to strip, shifting the critique to address a European tendency to equate female nudity with sexual and individual freedom. This equation is often used to attempt to discipline migrantized women in Europe in particular ways and Katrin Sieg discusses it in more detail in her analysis of the premiere production of Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins (2010, 151–52).

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were used to explore assimilative demands on the migrant figure, here we see a shift to a more explicitly symbolic rape scene. The image of Perikızı in a red cape with blood pouring down her legs makes these suggestions explicit in the advertising material for the 2010 Ballhaus production (Fig. 5), again alluding to Little Red Riding Hood, a fairy tale which has also been analysed in great detail by Jack Zipes as a rape narrative (1993, 77). Although perhaps somewhat heavy-handed, the Ballhaus production thus retains a critical view of the violence done to the semi-autobiographical protagonist of Özdamar’s dramatic text as artistic persona by her reception in Germany. In altering the figure and actions of the Wolf, however, it articulates this violence via sexual rather than textual violence, an attack on the protagonist’s body rather than on her written work. According to Weber, in Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn, a major intertext for Perikızı and a point of inspiration for Ronen: the tendency on the part of the men around the main characters to sexualise women’s bodies, then encode that sexuality as value for consumption by men in the name of politics […] reveals affinities between the left in both Germanies and Turkey and the Turkish right. (2010, 47)

While sexuality is used both as “the structuring principle of intellectual and political growth” in Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn and as a means of critiquing sexual values common across the political spectrum and national boundaries (Weber 2010, 44), as we have seen in the earlier part of this chapter, sexuality is replaced by a focus on nationalism and fascism as structuring principle in the dramatic text of Perikızı. In Ronen’s production at the Ballhaus, however, it was precisely the sexual elements of the narrative as presented in the earlier novel which were returned to by way of alterations to the script. Here, sex again becomes a structuring principle, but this time in a manner which I think is intimately related to the Ballhaus’ broader critique of representations of labour migration to Germany on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Turkish-German recruitment agreements. While still including purportedly left-wing circles in Germany such as that of the women’s movement, represented by Liesel and Gretel, the explicitly symbolic rape of the protagonist by a member of the cultural establishment shifts the main focus of the critique to the role such attitudes play in cultural and literary circles. The main target of criticism thus becomes those who position themselves as the humanist

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Fig. 5 Publicity Flyer advertising production of Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Perikızı, dir. by Michael Ronen as part of the Almancı programme (2011)

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purveyors, gatekeepers and consumers of high culture, and the role which they play in the circulation of, and violence inherent in, discourses of assimilation and integration in contemporary Germany.74 This criticism is made explicit when, immediately after the suggested rape scene, Elmira Bahrami, in her role as Perikızı, swings above the audience in a hoop, blood streaming down her legs, and exclaims: I’m not an animal! I’m not an animal!! I’m not an animal!!! […] Do I look as if I am a threat to you? No? Sure! Why don’t you do something to stop this? Why are you so cold? So uninterested? Why are you just watching? Its me! Perikızı! […] I want respect, I want recognition, I want applause! For my abilities! For the thing I can really do! Acting! […] You think you have paid for the show and can expect a performance? […] I shit on your theatre tickets. (Ronen 2011)75

This monologue, which breaks the fourth wall by explicitly addressing the audience and its role in the theatrical event, was written additionally by the dramaturgical team and inserted into the Ballhaus theatre’s version of the Perikızı-script. Rather than creating a means of audience interaction and identification with the protagonist, as was the case with such interactive elements in the Moers production, this confrontational speech functions to draw lines between audience and protagonist. This highlights the differences in their positions and also the tensions present within the symbolic space which the Ballhaus, as self-declared “postmigrant” theatre, occupies.76 This monologue, with its direct address to the audience and reference to entrance tickets and the spectator, is also markedly metatheatrical. In calling attention to the actress on stage as actress it relates the experience of the protagonist of the play, and Özdamar’s critique of the 74 This can be seen as a continuation of the action of drawing links between Turkish and German, left-wing and right-wing attitudes to women which Weber identifies in Özdamar’s novels (2010, 47). It also creates a far more pointed critique of a particular target than is typically the case in Özdamar’s writing. 75 “Ich bin kein Tier! Ich bin kein Tier!! Ich bin kein Tier!!! […] Sehe ich so aus, als wäre ich eine Bedrohung für euch? Nein? Sicher! Warum tut ihr nichts dagegen? Warum seid ihr so kalt? So gleichgültig? Warum schaut ihr nur zu? Ich bin es doch! Perikızı?! […] Ich will Respekt, ich will Anerkennung, ich will Applaus! Für meine Fähigkeiten! Für das, was ich wirklich kann! Schauspielern! […] Wer schaut hier wen an! […] Ihr denkt, ihr habt für die Show bezahlt und erwartet eine Leistung? […] Ich scheiße auf eure Eintrittskarten.” 76 For a very critical view of this position, see Hoffner (2008).

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dynamics of her own reception as cultural figure, to recent debates on postmigrant representation in German theatre. While individual postmigrant plays, particularly those staged at the Ballhaus theatre, have been much lauded from the mid-2000s on, as the previous chapter on “Performing Institutional Change” already indicated, debates about casting remain prolific. This is reflected in the inserted monologue’s insistence on the actress being taken seriously as an actress— that is, as a cultural practitioner rather than as a representative body on stage. A concern with the ways in which migrantized artists are positioned is also apparent in the broader framing of the play. In the foreword to the Almancı! 50 Jahre Scheinehe programme, following a brief history of Turkish migration to Germany, we find the following political statement: the integration debate of the past few years defines migration and being different almost exclusively as a cultural, legal and economic problem. […] It’s only recently that a very few of these people have also begun to be perceived as producers of culture or artistic practitioners. A construction that is otherwise seen as the cause of manifold shortcomings then selectively enjoys positive attention […]. An Almancı is always driven by a longing for the Other, no matter where she is. She counters the demand for integration with a demand for the tolerance of ambiguity. (Ballhaus Naunynstraße 2011)77

By making this point and countering a belated discourse of integration with a demand for tolerance of ambiguity, the programme highlights the negative effects of the delay in implementing policies which accommodated migrants on the part of the German state and indicates that the inclusion of Turkish-German theatre has been the exception rather than the rule. It also demands a move beyond a mimeticist debate which positions the postmigrant figure as either “ethnicized problem” or “integrated purveyor” of acceptable cultural goods, highlighting ambiguity and ambivalence as acceptable, indeed desirable characteristics.

77 “so definiert die Integrationsdebatte […] Migration und Anderssein fast ausschließlich als kulturelles, rechtliches und ökonomisches Problemfeld […]. Erst in den letzten Jahren werden einige wenige dieser Menschen auch als Kulturschaffende wahrgenommen. Punktuell genießt dann eine Konstituiertheit positive Aufmerksamkeit, die ansonsten eher als Ursache mannigfaltiger Missstände gilt […]. Eine Almancı ist immer von der Sehnsucht nach dem Anderen getrieben, egal, wo sie gerade ist. Der Forderung nach Integration setzt sie die nach Ambiguitätstolerenz entgegen.”

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The Ballhaus production thus embraces displacement and discord somewhat differently to the production for Odyssee Europa. In Odyssee Europa, displacement might be said to function as a means to reconsolidate or reconceptualise the sense of belonging of a region characterised by large-scale migration in relation to inclusion within Europe. In contrast, the rhetoric of the Almancı programme and Ronen’s directorial emphasis suggest that the Ballhaus provides space for, and aims to provoke, a more ambivalent positioning of migration and postmigrant life. Indeed, Ronen’s production might also be said to highlight displacement as an ethic in itself; as a means of moving beyond the scripting demanded by restrictive categories, rather than as a means of scripting a new stability. This is arguably made to an imperative by the “moral authority” of a Jewish child-ghost which was inserted into the Ballhaus production as a way of telling the story of the Ballhaus itself, which housed Fremdarbeiter (forced foreign labourers) during the Third Reich (Ronen 2011).78 This “Jewish child” appears in the women’s hostel one night and urges Perikızı to continue to go her own way: “You cannot afford to follow all the rules and bow your head before everyone! Don’t do it, Perikızı. Listen to your heart, dance out of line, and never try to fit in” (Ronen 2011).79 The inclusion of this injunction to misbehave comes directly before a highly comic slapstick scene set in a factory in which Perikızı fails to perform her piece-work properly and is sacked (ibid.).80 It therefore positions her failure to work effectively as partly political and so functions as a critique of both social and economic conformity in a manner which counters the more restrictive moral imperative of the traditional Little Red Riding Hood tale.81 Admittedly, Perikızı’s deviance from the straight and narrow 78 The history of the Ballhaus building is available at http://www.ballhausnaunynstra

sse.de/geschichte, last accessed August 26, 2014. This added to the metatheatricality of the play and pointed to physical layerings of history in Berlin. 79 “Du darfst nicht alle Regeln folgen und dein Haupt vor allen beugen! Mach das nicht, Perikızı. Hör auf dein Herz, tanz stets aus der Reihe und reih dich niemals ein”. 80 In the dramatic text rather than being sacked, she is sent to collect dog faeces in the woods (Özdamar 2010, 316). 81 According to Karen Leeder, in the European tradition, “a ghost is seen as a sign

of unfinished business: a disturbance in the symbolic, moral, or epistemological order that can be resolved once the ghost has delivered its message and fulfilled its mission” (2012, 103). This disruptive function is also highlighted by Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf who positions the spectral in Seltsame Sterne as a motif via which Özdamar’s texts disrupt “the categorical difference between autobiography and fiction” (2008, 149; “die kategoriale

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paths of traditional Turkish womanhood or well-behaved Gastarbeiterin, into the realm of the aesthetic results in traumatic violence. However, the perpetration of that symbolic violence is laid firmly at the door of the German cultural establishment. Perikızı herself, like the audience, is actively encouraged not to stay in her pre-scripted place, but to continue to “dance out of line” (Ronen 2011).82

Works Cited Adelson, Leslie A. 2006. “Against Between – Ein Manifest gegen das Dazwischen.” Text und Kritik 9 (6): 36–46. Adelson, Leslie A. 2005. The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature: Toward a New Critical Grammar of Migration. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ballhaus Naunynstraße. 2011. Almancı! 50 Jahre Scheinehe. Programme. Accessed December 1, 2016. http://www.foerderband.org/_data/ALM ANCI_PROGRAMMHEFT.pdf. Behrendt, Eva. 2010. “Den Ruhrpott mit der Seele suchen.” Theater heute 51 (4): 24–28. Bettelheim, Bruno. 1989. The Uses of Enchantment. New York: Knopf. Betz, Gregor. 2011. “Das Ruhrgebiet – europäische Stadt im Werden? Strukturwandel und Governance durch die Kulturhauptstadt Europas RUHR.2010.” In Die Zukunft der Europäischen Stadt. Stadtpolitik, Stadtplanung und Stadtgesellschaft im Wandel, edited by Oliver Frey and Florian Koch, 324–42. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft. Bird, Stephanie. 2003. Women Writers and National Identity: Bachmann, Duden, Özdamar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boran, Erol M. 2004. “Eine Geschichte des türkisch-deutschen Theaters und Kabaretts.” PhD diss, Ohio State University. Accessed May 1, 2010. http:// etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?osu1095620178. Calero Valera, Ana. 2015. “Glokalisierungsprozesse auf der Bühne: Emine Sevgi Özdamars Karagöz, Keloglan, and Perikızı.” Lendemains 160: 54–63. Cheesman, Tom. 2007. Novels of Turkish German Settlement: Cosmopolite Fictions. Rochester, NY: Camden House.

Unterscheidung von Autobiografie und Fiktion”). The ghosts in the published version of the dramatic texts could thus also be interpreted as a way of signalling the disruptive state of being, the creating of ripples in epistemological orders, which Özdamar’s work often advocates. 82 “tanz aus der Reihe”.

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Chin, Rita. 2007. The Guest Worker Question in Postwar Germany. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chin, Rita. 2010. “Turkish Women, West German Feminists, and the Gendered Discourse on Muslim Cultural Difference.” Public Culture 22 (3): 557–81. Chow, Rey. 2002. The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Dayıo˘glu-Yücel, Yasemin. 2012. “Authorship and Authenticity in Migrant Writing: The Plagiarism Debate on Leyla.” In Feridun Zaimoglu, edited by Tom Cheesman and Karin E. Ye¸silada, 183–99. Oxford: Peter Lang. Deutscher Bühnenverein. 2010. Wer spielte was? Werkstatistik des deutschen Bühnenvereins 2009/2010. Cologne: Mykenae. Ernst, Thomas. 2010. “Das Ruhrgebiet als Rhizom: Die Netzstadt und die ‘Nicht-Metropole Ruhr’ in den Erzählwerken von Jürgen Link und Wolfgang Welt.” In Literaturwunder Ruhr, edited by Hanneliese Palm et al., 43–70. Essen: Klartext. Ernst, Thomas, and Dieter Heimböckel. 2012. “Verortungen der Interkulturalität und die Perspektiven der vergleichenden Kulturhauptstadtforschung. Einführung und Überblick.” In Verortungen der Interkulturalität. Die “europäischen Kulturhauptstädte” Luxemburg und die Großregion (2007), das Ruhrgebiet (2010) und Istanbul (2010), edited by Thomas Ernst and Dieter Heimböckel, 7–20. Bielefeld: transcript. Friederiksen, Jens. 1986. “Steh auf, Männchen!” Die Welt, May 7. Gramling, David. 2010. “The Carawanserai Turns Twenty; Or, New German Literature – Turns Turkish?” Alman Dili ve Edebiyatı Dergisi - Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur 24: 55–83. Hänig, Marc Oliver. 2009. “Vorverkaufstart für die Redenreihe ‘Die Erfindung der Freiheit – Exegese eines Epos’ als Prolog zur Odyssee Europa.” Press Release. Essen für das Ruhrgebiet, October 9. Accessed July 24, 2013. http://www.essen-fuer-das-ruhrgebiet.RUHR.2010.de/no_cache/pressemed ien/pressemitteilungen/detailseite/article/vorverkaufstart-fuer-die-redenr eihe-die-erfindung-der-freiheit-exegese-eines-epos-als-prolog-z.html. Heimböckel, Dieter. 2012. “Interkulturalität interdisziplinär denken: Ansätze zur Erweiterung ihrer Komplexität.” In Verortungen der Interkulturalität, 21–38. Hinnenberg, Meike. 2010. “Die Reise zu den Lotophagen.” Theater der Zeit 65 (4): 36–37. Hitzler, Ronald, et al. 2013. Mega-Event-Macher: Zum Management multipler Divergenzen am Beispiel der Kulturhauptstadt Europas RUHR.2010. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Hoffner, Ana. 2008. “Hunde, die bellen… Keine Geschichten über Migration.” Kulturrisse: Zeitschrift für radikaldemokratische Kulturpolitik. Accessed December 1, 2016. http://kulturrisse.at/ausgaben/042008/kunstpraxen/ hunde-die-bellen-…-keine-geschichten-ueber-migration.

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Kirsch, Sebastian. 2008. “Die Kraft der Ränder.” Theater der Zeit 63 (3): 28–31. Kugler Stefani, and Ariana Totzke. 2013. “Nationalismus und Völkermord in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Theaterstück Perikızı – Ein Traumspiel.” In Sprachen und Kulturen in (Inter)Aktion. Teil 1 Literatur und Kulturwissenschaft, edited by Elke Sturm-Trigonakis and Simela Delianidou, 107–20. Peter Lang: Frankfurt am Main. Konuk, Kader. 2007. “Taking on German and Turkish History: Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Seltsame Sterne.” Gegenwartsliteratur: Ein germanistisches Jahrbuch 6: 232–56. Konuk, Kader. 2010. East West Mimesis: Auerbach in Turkey. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Leeder, Karen. 2012. “‘After the Massacre of Illusions’: Specters of the German Democratic Republic in the Work of Volker Braun.” New German Critique 39 (2): 103–18. Link, Jürgen, and Mirko M. Hall. 2004. “From the ‘Power of the Norm’ to ‘Flexible Normalism’: Considerations after Foucault.” Cultural Critique 57: 14–32. Littler, Margaret. 2007. “Anatolian Childhoods: Becoming Woman in Özdamar’s Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei and Zaimo˘glu’s Leyla.” In Cultural Exchange in German Literature, edited by Eleoma Joshua and Robert Vilain, 176–90. Rochester, NY: Camden House. Maak, Niklas. 2010. “Schnitt ins Offene: Über raumlaborberlin und die Lust am Verlorensein.” In Theater Theater: Odyssee Europa, aktuelle Stücke 20/10, edited by RUHR.2010 et al., 429–40. Fischer: Frankfurt am Main. Mandel, Ruth. 2008. Cosmopolitan Anxieties: Turkish Challenges to Citizenship and Belonging in Germany. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mani, B. Venkat. 2007. Cosmopolitical Claims: Turkish-German Literatures from Nadolny to Pamuk. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press. Minnaard, Liesbeth. 2008. New Germans, New Dutch: Literary Interventions. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Nobrega, Onur Suzan Kömürcü. 2011. “‘We Bark from the Third Row’: The Position of the Ballhaus Naunynstraße in Berlin’s Cultural landscape and the Funding of Cultural Diversity Work.” Türkisch-deutsche Studien 2: 91–112. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 1982. Karagöz in Alamania. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Autoren. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 1992. Das Leben ist eine Karawanserei hat zwei Türen aus einer kam ich rein aus der anderen ging ich raus. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. [1998] 2002. Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 2001. “Der Hof im Spiegel”. In Der Hof im Spiegel, by Emine Sevgi Özdamar, 11–46. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch.

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Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 2003. Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde: Wedding – Pankow 1976/77. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 2007. “Kendi kendinin Terzisi Bir Kambur”: Ece ˙ Ayhan’lı anılar, 1974 Zürih günlügü, Ece Ayhan’ın mektupları. Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 2009. “Bitteres Wasser.” In Odessa Transfer: Nachrichten vom Schwarzen Meer, edited by Katharina Raabe and Monika Sznajderman, 40–49. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Özdamar, Emine Sevgi. 2010. “Perikızı.” In Theater Theater: Odyssee Europa, 271–333. Ozil, Seyda, ¸ et al. 2011. “Vorwort.” Türkisch-deutsche Studien 2: 7–10. Pape, Ulf. 2010. “Die Helden des Potts.” SpiegelOnline, March 2. Accessed December 1, 2016. http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,681 148,00.html. Parr, Rolf. 2012. “Wen (alles) adressiert eigentlich eine ‘Europäische Kulturhauptstadt’? Das Beispiel ‘Essen für das Ruhrgebiet.’” In Verortungen der Interkulturalität, 149–69. Piekenbrock, Marietta. 2010. “Vorwort.” In Theater Theater: Odyssee Europa, 8–13. Pilz, Dirk. 2010. “Odysseus im Pott.” NZZ Online, March 1. Accessed thanks to Schlosstheater Moers. Popp, Maximillian. 2011. “Bittere Heimat: 50 Jahre Gastarbeiter aus der Türkei.” Spiegel Online, November 1. Accessed December 1, 2016. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/50-jahre-gastarbeiter-aus-dertürkei-bittere-heimat-a-795268.html. Raddatz, Frank. 2008. “Theater als Identitätszentrifuge.” Theater der Zeit 63 (4): 16–22. Ronen, Michael (dir.). 2011. Perikızı. Written by Emine Sevgi Özdamar. Adapted by Michael Ronen and Tunçay Kulao˘glu. Unpublished Audiovisual Recording, Ballhaus Naunynstraße. Berlin. Accessed thanks to Chantal Kohler/Ballhaus Naunynstraße. Roy, Kate. 2008. “Cartographies of Identity: ‘East’ and ‘West’ in the works of Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Leïla Sebbar.” PhD diss., University of Manchester. RUHR.2010 et al. (eds). 2010. Theater Theater: Odyssee Europa, aktuelle Stücke 20/10. Fischer: Frankfurt am Main. Sarazzin, Thilo. 2010. Deutschland schafft sich ab: Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen. Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. Schacht, Martin. 2011. “50 Jahre Scheinehe.” ARTE.DE, October 31. Accessed June 15, 2013. http://www.arte.tv/de/theaterfestival-50-jahre-scheinehe/ 4238696,CmC=4236326.html. Schauspielhaus Bochum et al. 2010. Odyssee Europa: Sechs Schauspiele und eine Irrfahrt durch die Zwischenwelt. Programme.

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Scheytt, Oliver and Nikolaj Bauer. 2010. “Begreifen, gestalten, bewegen – die Kulturhauptstadt Europas RUHR.2010. Die Kulturhauptstadtbewerbung von Essen und der Effekt auf die gesamte Region.” In Intervention Kultur: Von der Kraft kulturellen Handelns, edited by Kristina Volke, 42–57. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft. Schlosstheater Moers. 2010. “Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Perikızı: Ein Traumspiel, Strichfassung, Fassung 27.02.2010.” Unpublished cut of Perikızı, as dir. by Ulrich Greb. Accessed thanks to Schlosstheater Moers. Schößler, Franziska. 2010. “Das Theaterevent ‘Odyssee Europa’ der Kulturhauptstadt Essen: Prekäre Männlichkeit und Emine Sevgi Özdamars Traumspiel Perikizi.” Zeitschrift für Interkulturelle Germanistik 2 (2): 79–96. Schößler, Franziska. 2013. Drama und Theater nach 1989: Prekär, interkulturell, intermedial. Hannover: Wehrhahn. Senocak, ¸ Zafer. 2006. “Authentische Türkinnen.” Die Tageszeitung, June 22. Accessed December 1, 2016. http://www.taz.de/1/archiv/?dig=2006/06/ 10/a0321. Shafi, Monika. 2003. “Joint Ventures: Identity Politics and Travel in Novels by Emine Sevgi Özdamar and Zafer Senocak.” ¸ Comparative Literature Studies 40 (2): 193–214. Sharifi, Azadeh. 2017. “Theatre and Migration.” In Independent Theatre in Contemporary Europe: Structures—Aesthetics—Cultural Policy, edited by Manfred Brauneck and ITI Germany, 321–416. Bielefeld: transcript. Sieg, Katrin. 2002. Ethnic Drag: Performing Race, Nation, Sexuality in West Germany. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press. Sieg, Katrin. 2010. “Black Virgins: Sexuality and the Democratic Body in Europe.” New German Critique 37 (1): 147–85. Sieg, Katrin. 2011. “Class of 1989: Who Made Good and Who Dropped Out of German History? Postmigrant Documentary Theater in Berlin.” In The German Wall: Fallout in Europe, edited by Marc Silberman, 165–83. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Sloane, Steven. 2010. “Grußwort.” In Theater Theater: Odyssee Europa, 7. Spiegel, Hubert. 2010. “Odysseus kommt nicht nach Oberhausen.” Faz.net, March 2. Accessed thanks to Schlosstheater Moers. Terkessidis, Mark. 2010. Interkultur. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Wagner-Egelhaaf, Martina. 2008. “Autofiktion & Gespenster.” Kultur & Gespenster 7: 135–49. Walker, Warren S. and Ahmet E. Uysal. 1992. More Tales Alive in Turkey. Lubbock, TX: Texas Technical University Press. Warner, Chantelle. 2011. “A Turkish Tale: Genre, Subjectivity, and the Controversy around Feridun Zaimo˘glu’s Leyla.” Gegenwartsliteratur 10: 254–75.

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Weber, Beverly M. 2010. “Work, Sex, and Socialism: Reading Beyond Cultural Hybridity in Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn.” German Life and Letters 63 (1): 37–53. Weber, Beverly M. 2013. Violence and Gender in the “New Europe”: Islam in German Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ye¸silada, Karin E. 1997. “Die geschundene Suleika. Das Eigenbild der Türkin in der deutschsprachigen Literatur türkischer Autorinnen.” In Interkulturelle Konfigurationen, edited by Mary Howard, 95–114. Munich: Iudicum. Zaimoglu, Feridun. 2006. Leyla. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Zimmermann, Dietmar. 2010. “Migrantensorgen, allegorisch.” Theater pur. Accessed thanks to Schlosstheater Moers. Zipes, Jack. 1993. The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood, rev. 2nd edition. New York and London: Routledge.

Conclusion: Scripting New Realities

The research at the heart of this book was begun in 2011 and primarily completed in 2014 just prior to the “long summer of migration”1 to Germany. In 2015, cross-Mediterranean migration into the EU began to make headlines in central and northern Europe with a rapid increase in numbers of people using this route to flee the war in Syria. Following initial political hesitations, the response to the so-called European migration crisis in Germany saw the state adopt a more “open door” approach, particularly towards refugees coming from Syria, and a growth in a range of civil initiatives aimed at creating ways to support and connect with new arrivals to the country (Holmes and Castañeda 2016). These came to be known under the umbrella term of “Wilkommenskultur” (a culture of welcome) and included a plethora of new theatrical work, largely focused on using theatre as rapid response engagement with newly arrived refugees; making migration, for a time, all-present in German-language theatre.2 With this has also come, quite suddenly, intensive scholarly attention to theatre-making and migration in Germany. This attention has 1 This is the term used by Yurdakul et al. (2018). 2 For a detailed engagement with “Willkommenskultur” see Bock and Macdonald

(2019).

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largely concentrated on projects which engage non-professional actors from the newly arrived refugee population from Syria, as well as with those who have made their way from the African continent. At the same time the long and arduous work which has gone into creating space for sustained and non-reductive engagement with migration within the German theatrical sphere, as well as the history of factors impeding that work, are perhaps overlooked. This runs the risk of leaving current enthusiasms in both the cultural and academic sphere uncontextualised, artistic and activist labour unacknowledged. Equally, there is a certain amnesia when it comes to aspects of the historical record of migration to Germany, including its interaction with theatre and performance histories. In this study then I have dwelt with Turkish-German scripts of postmigration, as scripts with an aesthetics, politics and performance history which have reflected a longer history of theatre and migration in the German context. In focusing on theatrical work by Emine Sevgi Özdamar and by Feridun Zaimoglu in his collaboration with Günter Senkel, my aim has been not to employ their status as Turkish-born German-language playwrights, or as German citizens of Turkish heritage, as a label necessarily suggesting lines of shared influence, affiliation or artistic development between the artists themselves. Rather I highlight this positioning in order to trace the points of contact between ethnicized or migrantized conditions of production and aesthetic product. The genealogies of the performances arising from these theatre scripts reveal both the influence of cultural policy on the theatre produced in West Germany, and an ongoing tension between theatre as a source of “knowledge” about or even management of Turkish-German social life, and theatre as a site of aesthetic encounter with Turkish-German artistic vision and experimentation. Attention to these scripts, both literal and metaphorical, thus highlights that conditions of migrantized life in postmigrant Germany are not overwritten or transcended by theatre: rather those conditions shape also the space, resource, timing and reception or evaluation of such work in ways often disavowed. At the same time such scripts become a means of pushing at those conditions, prompting them to “unfold” in new ways: in the very act of creating space for a particular production, and through the shared aesthetic experience of the audience and artistic producers. An examination of the plays of Özdamar and Zaimoglu/Senkel in performance functions to denaturalise the discourse of postmigrant theatre as a “new” phenomenon, as an artistic event which Germany had been avidly

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waiting for. Working from the script outwards, in place of this discourse it offers a glimpse into the complex artistic and practical negotiations surrounding the presence and absence of theatre by Turkish-German writers, directors and performers on the contemporary German stage in the process of re-scripting of this theatrical landscape.3 The playwrights whose scripts have been addressed here, Özdamar and Zaimoglu/Senkel, are still active and their dramatic oeuvre has continued to unfold and alter throughout the course of this research. Zaimoglu/Senkel’s plays from the early to late 2010s include Alpsegen (Alpine Blessing 2011), Bildergeschichten I and II (Picture Stories 2011, 2012), Moses (2013), Luther (2017), Die Zehn Gebote (The Ten Commandments 2016), Babylon (2019) and two plays from 2015 and 2018, focused on Nibelungen saga, a myth often appropriated as a founding ethno-national myth in Germany.4 These works show Zaimoglu and Senkel turning to subject matter more concerned with legends and traditions rooted in Germany, whether these be those of the Bavarian Alps, those associated with the country’s art history, or those of the (German-)Jewish and German Protestant tradition. Alpine Blessing and Picture Stories I and II seem to concentrate on artistic positioning and a move away from Zaimoglu’s more politically provocative poses. However, the staging of his Moses at Oberammergau, home of the traditional Passion Play, and the engagement with the Nibelungen saga for the traditionally culturally conservative Nibelungen-Festspiele Worms, suggests a simultaneous continuation of a desire to push at exclusionary notions of German culture and history and of a commissioning practice which capitalises on and allows him to extend his reputation as 3 This study is therefore intended as one of several beginnings in the exploration of this theatrical work rather than an authoritative or in any way complete history, and should be read in combination with recently and soon to-be published book-length studies by scholars such as Ela Gezen, Nora Haakh, Onur Suzan Nobrega, Priscilla Layne, Damani Partridge, Azadeh Sharifi, Jonas Tinius and Jamele Watkins to name a few. 4 These plays are titled Siegfrieds Heldentaten (Siegfried’s Heroic Deeds, 2015) and Siegfrieds Erben (Siegfried’s Heirs, 2018) These were followed by another play titled Siegfried which premiered in 2019, but which took Siegfried Wagner, the son of Richard Wagner, famous for his operatic engagement with the Nibelungenlied, as its focus. Zaimoglu/Senkel have also experimented with writing for the opera, providing the text for Aufstand (Uprising, 2012), a new opera about the Elberfeld uprising of 1849 with music by composer Enver Yalçın Özdiker, for Discount Diaspora (2011), a Berlin-based production created for the Neuköllner Oper, and for a new production of Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Abduction from the Seraglio, 2019).

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provocateur. Zaimoglu’s own scope to shape the cultural sphere has also been extended through invitations to judge theatre prizes such as the Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis in 2012 and facilitate drama workshops. If in 2004, Erol Boran could describe the German theatrical sphere as a “closed shop” for Turkish-German theatrical practitioners, a decade and a half later Zaimoglu has become one of the figures who holds at least some of the keys. While Zaimoglu/Senkel’s latest theatrical work might be considered symptomatic of Zaimoglu’s own continued assertion of belonging within the German cultural sphere, Özdamar’s writing and production history continues to follow a very different trajectory. As of the time of writing Özdamar’s most recently advertised play, Dying on Foreign Ground (Sterben in der Fremde, 2011) has yet to be staged. This piece looks beyond the German cultural sphere literally and metaphysically to ask what death, illness and old-age mean in migration. A concern with death can be seen throughout Özdamar’s literary and theatrical oeuvre and often appears as a link to tradition and family (Konuk 2007, 239). In Dying, however, this theme takes a previously unprecedented prominence and death becomes the place of ultimate otherness. Özdamar’s cosmopolitan politics also come strongly to the fore in this piece which thematises not only the fictionalised deaths of friends and lovers, but also the death of asylum seekers and other irregular migrants on the borders of a Europe which the writer seems to feel increasingly unhappy to identify with. Considering Özdamar’s Dying on Foreign Ground in 2014 was a stark reminder that those theatre practitioners involved in earlier instances of Turkish-German theatre will only be available to comment and participate in scholarship on this subject area for so long.5 There is then a particular urgency to engagement with the cultural practitioners of her generation while this is still possible. The historicising, multi-source approach to performance analysis used in the engagement with Özdamar’s theatrical work in this study is one which could productively be extended to other past moments of Turkish theatre in Germany and to a broader

5 The need to acknowledge and archive the achievements of the first generation of Turkish-German labour migrants in particular was emphasised by Karin Ye¸silada amongst others at a workshop on Transnational German Studies which took place in Warwick and Berlin, 19-26/05/2013.

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range of postmigrant theatre histories.6 The number of companies, practitioners and productions touched on in Erol Boran’s study, as well as the fruitfulness of recent work by Ela Gezen, indicates just how much research there is still to be done in this area. As the repertoire of postmigrant theatre expands, such an approach can also be taken further with regard to the plays and productions we can expect to see emerging on German stages over the next few years. It was possible to re-open an examination of a more contemporary piece, the premiere of Black Virgins (Schwarze Jungfrauen), for example, as many theatres in Germany today make internal video-recordings of premiere performances of new productions. I hope that this study has demonstrated the potential of a historicising approach to contemporary performance analysis particularly for understanding theatre which emerges from new sociopolitical constellations. Thinking of these scripts as generative and in themselves performative has also generated new theoretical connections. To attend to the ways in which these dramatic scripts provide ways in to exploring the broader rescriptings of the German theatrical establishment and its associated institutional and symbolic realm, I have brought work in Turkish-German literary and cultural studies into conversation with recent developments in Theatre and Performance Studies. If the former has long sought ways to engage the cultural production of migration in a situated manner which attends to the new trajectories (Adelson 2006) and assemblages this both registers and brings into being (Littler 2006), the latter has methodologies which enable a consideration of how “realities are explicitly enacted into being” in and via the theatrical sphere (Knowles 2017, 7). In the process I have moved between a consideration of scripts as material objects, as starting points for imagining and performing new models and realities, and in an extended sense, as a conceptual tool for thinking through the culturally observed and institutional directives which drive and shape our world. Doing so has allowed for an exploration of the relationship between the sociopolitical scripts a society often expects its migrantized or minority subjects to follow and which shape the way these subjects are “heard”, the literal scripts produced by those subjects and the multiple ways in which the productions of plays arising from these scripts can themselves help create new realities within and beyond the theatrical sphere. 6 The fact that many of Özdamar’s prose texts began life as dramatic monologues suggests that a practical archival approach could also productively be brought to bear on a new study of Turkish-German literature.

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New Realities to Script In 2015, as the cross-Mediterranean migration interwoven into Dying on Foreign Ground began to make headlines in central and northern Europe with a rapid increase in numbers of people using this route to flee the war in Syria, my understanding of this play and of the significance of Turkish theatre in Germany began to take on a further aspect. Here then I want to point towards the ways in which scripts of postmigration have also created space for the scripts of more recent migrants to Germany today, by briefly addressing the relationship between work carried out by theatre practitioners around Turkish-German access to the stage and the response to the so-called refugee problem on the part of theatres.7 I bring this book towards a close then, with consideration of a scene in Özdamar’s Dying. On a summer’s day on an island off the coasts of Turkey and Greece, the characters of the playwright, her husband and her friend Mustafa are alerted by Mustafa’s shephard, Vahap, to the presence of a dead dolphin on a nearby beach. On arrival they discover a seagull chick, lying ill by the dead dolphin: MUSTAFA THE BRILLIANT: Death never stops on this sea. Today dolphins, tomorrow Africans. […] A seagull comes and keeps watch by the ill [baby] gull. SEVGI: Look a seagull has come, it’s sticking by the ill seagull. VAHAP: A month ago they collected 25 corpses here. All were swollen, all fat from death. Four children and women amongst them. What loneliness. MUSTAFA THE BRILLIANT: If the dead had a tongue, wouldn’t they say: starts to compose: Here I stand,

7 This is far from the only way in which such work extends into scripts of coalition with other practitioners engaging with or against experiences of discrimination, exclusion and migrantization in Germany today. The Ballhaus Naunynstraße has since become a key venue for Black German performance, for example, while the Gorki theatre engages extensively with Jewish-German experience, Eastern European and Balkan contexts and migration experiences. Such work increasingly also unfolds beyond these theatres (at venues such as the Sophiensaele), and beyond Berlin, however for many theatres there remains a tendency to ‘trend-following’ in terms of which postmigrant perspectives are deemed most relevant, which can rapidly turn coalition to competition.

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with deep, serious frown lines, pale cheeks, dark words with a nocturnal coat of shadows my heart soaked through with impotence it drives me from place to place it drives me on, it drives me away I’m a homeless star To the sound of gypsy music playing forth I went up into the town, out of the town To collect the calendars of lives shutting closed. Sevgi hanım, don’t cry, forgive me for letting these shipwrecked sentences - words said by the black, weary sun - bloom like black flowers in front of you here. Look Sevgi hanım, look at this dying seagull: it dies. The other seagull will stay with it, till it dies. It accompanies the other. It doesn’t leave it all alone in the corridor of the dead. (13–15).8

The relational complex present in Özdamar’s Perikızı extends here across and beyond the Turkish-German relationship, drawing in relations to the African continent and highlighting Turkey as key coordinate in migration dynamics at the borders of the EU. The dead dolphin and dying gull here both trigger the memory of and mourning for those individuals who have lost their lives crossing the Mediterranean. In doing so, they simultaneously connect these human deaths at the borders of EU-Europe to ecological death and destruction, positioning cross-border migration not 8 “GLANZ MUSTAFA An diesem Meer hört der Tod nicht auf. Heute Delfine, morgen Afrikaner. […] Eine Möwe kommt und hält bei der kranken Möwe Wache. / SEVGI Schau her, eine Möwe ist gekommen, sie bleibt bei der kranken Möwe stehen. / VAHAP Vor einem Monat haben sie hier 25 Leichen eingesammelt. Alle waren aufgeblasen, alle dick vom Tod. Darunter vier Kinder und Frauen. Was für eine Einsamkeit ist das. / GLANZ MUSTAFA Wenn der Tote eine Zunge hätte, würde er dann nicht sagen: / Dichtet. Hier stehe ich /mit tiefen, ernsten Falten, /blassen Wangen, dunklen Worten / mit nächtlichem Mantel aus Schatten / das Herz durchtränkt von Ohnmachten / es treibt mich von Ort zu Ort / es treibt mich hin, es treibt mich her / bin ein heimatloser Stern / beim Klang vor sich hin spielender Zigeunermusik / ging ich stadtaufwärts, stadtauswärts die Kalender zu sammeln vom / sich zuschlagenden Leben. / Sevgi hanim, weine nicht, verzeihe mir, dass ich vor euch hier von der schwarzen, wehmütigen Sonne gesagte Worte, schiffsbrüchige Sätze als schwarze Blumen blühen lasse. Schau, Sevgi hanim, schau auf diese sterbende Möwe: Sie stirbt. Die andere Möwe wird, bis sie gestorben ist, bei ihr bleiben. Sie begleitet sie. Sie lässt sie auf dem Totenkorridor nicht allein.”

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only as something which should be as natural as the free movement of animals such as birds and sea mammals, but also as triggered by an array of factors, including climate change. A transnational perspective connected both to Turkey and Germany thus makes cross-Mediterranean migration visible differently, while interconnectivity across species or “type” suggests the living gull and human witnesses embody solidarity both in offering support and mourning for vulnerable bodies. In this play, Özdamar also reflects on her generation’s experiences of dispersal from Turkey, with characters such as Eray, Schirin and Aydin, friends of the protagonist’s youth who died in Tokyo, Duisburg and Düsseldorf, respectively, having left Turkey for political reasons. Appearing in this context, this scene thus also draws connections between contemporary migrations to Germany and the politically-driven migration which took place from Turkey into Germany and a number of other countries following the coups there in the 1970s and 1980s. These are also triangulated with German-Jewish exile from Germany via appearances within the play from Walter Benjamin and Peter Zadek. Such connections are also drawn in the work of other institutions and directors who appear in this study who have engaged in coalition work with newer arrivals to Germany. Current work at the Maxim Gorki theatre, Berlin, which is currently run by the former artistic director of the Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Shermin Langhoff, is important to highlight here. Under her leadership, the profile of the theatre has changed dramatically, building on the work at the Ballhaus through the creation of a more ethnically diverse ensemble, a new-writing studio, “Studio ”, and now an “Exile Ensemble” for displaced artists. The Exile Ensemble has gone on to produce acclaimed multilingual productions—both devised pieces developed by the ensemble, and new productions of Heiner Müller—as well as a more sustained platform for professional artists who could no longer work in their country of origin. In interviews Langhoff specifically draws on the experience of Turkish artists who left Turkey in the wake of the military coups alongside explaining the importance of such an ensemble: “Since the [Turkish] Republic was founded, there have been many military coups in Turkish society and many turning points during which whole generations of intellectuals, mostly left-wing, were being destroyed or driven out of the country. Germany experienced this exodus in the early 1980s, also the early 1970s, when many intellectuals arrived from Turkey. Now it’s another turning point, another generation

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is being silenced” (Deutsche Welle 2018). The interventions into institutional structures that were made under the label “postmigrant theatre” allowed spaces to be created for this work at the Gorki, while also making space for further engagement with contemporary Turkish state persecution whether via plays which explore the current political situation in Turkey such as Nurkan Erpulat and Tunçay Kulao˘glu’s Love it or leave it! (2016), theatre columns by exiled journalist Can Dundar, or events commemorating the murder of Armenian activist Hrant Dink in Turkey. As the address to African deaths in the Mediterranean within Özdamar’s 2011 script signals, such coalition work, or a script of solidarity, has also preceded and has potential to exceed the more media-driven rhetoric of crisis and conclusion which characterised the reportage on the events of 2015. On 21st June 2014, for example, the akademie der autodidakten (academy of autodidacts) based at the Ballhaus held an evening dedicated to the refugee protest camp established by asylum seekers between 2010 and 2014 at Oranienplatz, Berlin. A central message of the protest camp was that “no person is illegal” (“kein Mensch ist illegal”). The evening at the Ballhaus was titled “Refugee Strike & Beyond”. It consisted of a film created by inhabitants of the protest camp, followed by a discussion with the participants of the film. The theatre thus became part of a societal show of solidarity with those making themselves vulnerable by participating in the camp and associated protests.9 Sticking with the Berlin context, although this is far from the only context to consider here,10 examples of refugee engagement which merge artistic methods of research and awareness-raising with the development of resources and networks for paperless people in Berlin have also been taken up at the Gorki under its new leadership.11 Strategies of 9 The evening is advertised at http://www.ballhausnaunynstrasse.de/veranstaltung/ref ugee_strike__beyond_21.06.2014 [last accessed 08/07/2014]. 10 For an introductory overview of theatrical engagement in response to increased numbers of refugee arrivals in Germany, see Wilmer (2018, 189–208). 11 A three-day event dedicated to refugee strategies of resistance titled Berlin Calling Lampedusa took place in January 2014, for example, while 2015 saw the inclusion of Refugees’ Library, a “[p]lay reading of court reports of asylum hearings in administration court Tiergarten” which as part if a broader project aimed “to make the archive library available to refugees as a resource of information to prepare for their own hearings” (https://gorki.de/index.php/en/berlin-calling-lampedusa-refugee-protest-andother-strategies-of-resistance; https://gorki.de/index.php/en/refugees-library; for more on the Refugees’ Library project see https://refugeeslibrary.wordpress.com/). The same

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social sculpture engaged by the HAU theatre at the beginning of postmigrant theatre movement are thus actively continued here and are in the process also of moving beyond the German and even the theatrical context. Ayse Ça˘glar, for example, locates the presence of refugees and undocumented migrants on to Viennese stages in wake of interventions made under the name of postmigrant theatre in Germany (Ça˘glar 2016, 14), while in Denmark the concept is being developed further as a means of arguing for structural change in the cultural sphere (see Vitting-Seerup 2017). At the same time postmigrant theatre is at risk of becoming a limiting label itself. Such coalition work may also locate newly arrived artists in a manner which they in turn find restrictive, for example. Speaking to the influential German theatre website Nachtkritik in April 2019, Syrian actor Anis Hamdoun notes, “I have been here about five years and despite this immediately ended up pigeonholed under postmigrant theatre […] When I talk to a theatre they often tell me: well, you can go to the Gorki” (Diesselhorst et al. 2019).12 This speaks to the challenge the postmigrant theatre movement now faces in using its newly established but still embattled place at the edges of the establishment to maintain a critical role rather than cementing new structures of inclusion and exclusion; to

theatre under Langhoff’s leadership has also played host to projects which take an actionist approach to intervening in the public sphere. These include the Erste Europäischen Mauerfall (First European Fall of the Wall 2014) project by the controversial Zentrum für politische Schönheit (Centre for Political Beauty), in which the white crosses which commemorate those who died crossing the Berlin Wall were taken to border fences in Greece, Bulgaria and Spanish Melilla, which mark the edges of the EU. This was followed by an “audience” who had signed up via the Gorki theatre travelling on buses from the theatre to Bulgaria, ostensibly to cut down sections of the fence raised there to keep refugees from entering from Turkey. A connective relationship between German histories and contemporary experiences of war, unjust division and flight, which provokes objects of German memory culture into new activation can also be seen in Manaf Halbouni’s Monument, the Berlin iteration of which was commissioned as part of the Gorki’s programme Herbstsalon (Autumn Salon) in 2017. This sculpture consisting of three upturned busses, inspired by a barricade built on the streets in Aleppo in 2015, was placed in front of the Brandenburg Gate in central Berlin. 12 “Ich bin hier seit ungefähr fünf Jahren, und bin trotzdem sofort in der Schublade postmigrantisches Theater gelandet […] Wenn ich mit einem Theater spreche, sagt man mir oft: Du kannst ja zum Gorki gehen.”

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engage with new migrations without slipping into either being replaced by or exploiting this engagement.13 Recently, Langhoff has revisited the term “postmigration”, a term which has also been key for this study: Postmigrant theatre […]. If the word is going to be good for something, then it works only as the fusion of the artistic energies of people who are ready to dis-integrate themselves from old narratives to create a space for new, common narratives. […] This is why the word ‘postmigrant’ is so precious to me: it tells me about the possibility of thinking the world further and shaping [or redrafting] it. (Langhoff 2018, 309–10)14

The cumulative performative effect of the productions examined here has been significant in terms of “thinking the world further and shaping it”, rescripting it. In particular it has involved a shift away from the policy scripts of multiculturalism or even interculturalism, to create a mode of critical engagement specific to the circumstances of migrantization in the wake of labour migration. Kira Kosnick suggests that “the concept of postmigration was also an attempt to intervene in societal perceptions of reality both academically and politically”. An attempt which “comes close to what J. L. Austin called a performative utterance in his speech act theory – an utterance that is connected to an action which can succeed or fail (Austin 1975)” (2018, 159).15 Kosnick links this to the potential for changes in social science research and in societal discussions and indeed the term has been taken up extensively there. Sociologist Regina Römhild, for example, draws on the positioning and perspective she identifies in the theatre at the Ballhaus Naunynstraße from 2008 onwards to

13 On dynamics of “contestation and solidarity” between Turkish and Turkish-origin residents of Berlin and newly arriving inhabitants from Syria see Togral Koca (2019). 14 “Postmigrantisches Theater […]. Wenn das Wort etwas taugen soll, dann funktioniert es nur als Fusion künstlerischer Energien von Menschen, die bereit sind, sich aus alten Narrative zu desintegrieren, um einen Raum für neue, gemeinsame Narrative zu schaffen. […] Deshalb ist mir das Wort ‘Postmigrantisch’ so kostbar: Es erzählt mir von der Möglichkeit, die Welt weiterzudenken und zu entwerfen.” 15 “der Begriff postmigrantisch [war] auch ein Versuch, mit Konzepten wissenschaftlich und politisch in gesellschaftliche Wahrnehmungen von Wirklichkeit zu intervenieren. Das kommt dem nahe, was J. L. Austin […] eine performative Aüßerung genannt hat – eine Aüßerung, mit der eine Handlung verbunden ist, die gelingen aber auch misslingen kann (Austin 1975).”

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wish for a similar “dramaturgical perspective” on migration in sociological research (Römhild 2014, 46). A perspective which has the aim “not just to study migration as part of society, but conversely – and even more so – to observe society from the perspective of migration, in the sense of examining it from the margins it has itself created” (Römhild 2017, 69).16 What Kosnick suggests very briefly then, takes on far greater significance when we look at the ways in which the cultural producers whose work prompted this conceptualising of postmigration move into the theatrical sphere. A new perspective developed by cultural practitioners “to explore migrant agencies, histories, lives and sociabilities beyond the culturalizing and ethnizing logics of migration scholarship and public discourses” (Ça˘glar 2016, 2), thus raises questions of importance both for theatre practitioners and institutions beyond the German context who wish to centre migration and respond meaningfully to newer instances of migration through the arts. It provides a perspective for an academic field which in engaging theatre and migration needs to give such work the sustained attention usually reserved for more “successful” cultural production, in order to look more carefully beyond the latest mediatized spectacle.

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16 This in itself is not a new idea. John Berger similarly identified the migrant worker in twentieth-century Europe as “not on the margin” but rather as “central to understanding modern experience” (Berger and Mohr 1975, cover copy). Activists in Germany in the early 1990s drew on Italian operaismo (workerism) to shape a political movement which viewed the perspective of migration as central (Heidenreich 2013, 359).

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Index

A afrofuturism, 170 akademie der autodidakten, 206, 277 Akın, Fatih, 157, 168, 190 Algan, Beklan, 19, 24 alienation Marxist, 93, 94. See also Verfremdung animals on stage, 67, 75, 84, 85 archive, ix, 1, 2, 19, 28, 31, 32, 65, 76, 78, 79, 87, 272, 273, 277 Arkada¸s Theater, Cologne, 19, 202 Armenian genocide, 230, 240, 241. See also Dink, Hrant Artaud, Antonin, 87 Article 301 (Turkish constitution), 230 assimilation, vii, 13, 107, 125, 232, 244–248, 258, 260 audience, 3–6, 8, 12, 15, 21, 30, 33, 40, 42, 65, 67, 70, 71, 75, 80, 83, 84, 86, 88, 89, 92, 94, 95, 100, 109–112, 115–117, 120–124, 126, 128, 132–137,

140, 154, 155, 158, 172–178, 191, 193, 196, 202, 204–207, 209, 210, 215–217, 225, 226, 245–247, 251–255, 260, 263, 270, 278 authenticity, 45, 46, 74, 91, 94, 127, 131, 132, 153–156, 158, 159, 161, 162, 169, 171, 173, 176–178, 185, 188, 197, 198, 209, 214 autobiography, 14, 153, 199, 228, 237, 238, 242, 258, 262 Ayhan, Ece, 62, 229, 231 B “background of migration”, 5, 7, 8, 12, 22, 42, 43, 137, 150, 152, 156, 167, 175–177, 188, 191, 193, 196, 198, 201, 206, 209, 210, 214, 248 Bahrami, Elmira, 256, 260 Ballhaus Naunynstraße, 3, 12, 13, 27, 41–43, 50, 137, 150, 169, 187, 189, 213–218, 227, 231, 232,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021 L. Stewart, Performing New German Realities, Contemporary Performance InterActions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69848-5

313

314

INDEX

255–258, 260–262, 274, 276, 277, 279 Almancı! 50Jahre Scheinehe, 227, 255, 257, 259, 261, 262 Beyond Belonging , 149, 150, 156, 157, 167, 168, 176, 189 Dogland, 188, 213, 218 Baumbauer, Frank, 118, 120, 123 Beier, Karin, 27, 188, 192–194, 200, 201, 249 Berbo, Vernesa, 214–216 Besson, Benno, 24, 73, 82 Beuys, Jospeh, 189, 278 blackfacing, 132 Black German theatre, 22, 136, 170, 274 Bochumer Ensemble, 24, 70, 84, 88, 155 Brecht, Bertolt, 24, 25, 36, 69, 82, 83, 93, 209 Cherry Thief, The, 93 Threepenny Opera, The, 209 Bussenius, Nora, ix, 194, 202, 204–206, 208, 209

C Calis, Nuran David, 114, 138, 177, 195, 196 canon, 2, 66, 75, 121, 136, 230 casting, 6, 66, 85, 109, 112, 125, 132, 133, 188, 193, 200, 202, 212, 214, 261 Catwoman, 89 Cavafy, Constantine P., 228 CDU, 80, 85 Çelik, Neco, vii, ix, xi, 4, 32, 137, 150, 157, 158, 161, 163–174, 176 Chaplin, Charlie, 82, 256 circus, 70, 256

citizenship, 12, 16, 18, 22, 46, 47, 49, 65, 97, 108, 112, 188, 192, 198 Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 154, 165–167, 169, 173, 176 colonialism, 5, 45, 47, 73, 126, 170. See also postcolonialism commedia dell’arte, 79, 82 confession, 171, 178 cultural policy, 18, 20, 25, 33, 37, 68, 88, 94, 185, 189–192, 234, 270, 279 relationship to Ausländerpolitik, 68

D death, as theme, 230, 240, 272, 274, 275, 277 Deleuzean thought, 29, 35, 38, 39, 236, 239, 248, 250 Demirkan, Renan, 62, 71–73, 82 Dink, Hrant, 229, 230, 277 documentary theatre, 26, 78, 154, 158–160, 163, 168–171, 174, 185, 187–189, 191, 194–200, 204, 205, 209, 211, 216 Dorn, Dieter, 118–121 dream, 7, 8, 63, 77, 78, 92–94, 186, 226, 240, 241, 246, 252, 254, 255 Dundar, Can, 277

E emancipation, 113, 154, 155, 158, 161, 162, 165, 172, 238 Enlightenment, the, 80, 86, 88 Ensler, Eve Vagina Monologues , 161 Erdo˘gan, Recep Tayyip, 227 Ernst Busch Academy, 138

INDEX

Erpulat, Nurkan, 5–7, 12, 34, 114, 138–141, 187, 188, 196, 213–218, 277 Crazy Blood (Verrücktes Blut), 6, 114, 139, 140 On the other side: Are you gay or are you Turkish? (Jenseits Bist du schwul oder bist du Türke?), 196 ethnicity/ethnicization, 15, 17, 20, 22, 23, 29, 39, 44, 45, 47, 66, 99, 110, 113–115, 124, 127, 131, 132, 136, 139–141, 152–154, 159, 171, 173, 188, 212, 231, 239, 242, 246, 248, 250, 261, 270 ethnic drag, 28, 34–36 “professional ethnic”, 189, 199 “protestant ethnic”, 113, 115, 135 European Capital of Culture, 49, 225, 226, 235, 247, 249, 252 European Union (EU), 16, 18, 47, 186, 216, 226, 227, 230, 233, 234, 246, 251, 254, 255, 262, 269, 272, 275, 278 Exile Ensemble, 276 exotic/exoticism, 91, 154, 209, 225, 236, 242, 254 F Fanon, Frantz, 131 feminism, 18, 82, 231, 232, 257 fidelity, 115, 120 Flintstones, The, 134 folklore, 63, 71, 72, 82, 91 Bluebeard, 245 Brothers Grimm, 231 fairy tale, 245, 257, 258 Little Red Riding Hood, 231, 232, 245, 258, 262 Frederick the Great, 131 Freedom Party (FPÖ), 97

315

Fremdarbeiter (forced foreign labourers), 262 funding, 17–20, 26, 37, 51, 94, 167, 189, 190, 216–218, 234, 235 G gatekeeping, 260 gender, 37, 63, 90, 91, 152, 192, 206, 231, 232, 235, 245. See also Islam, “Muslim women, representation of” German Islam conference, 152, 153 German unification, 1, 6, 7, 16, 17, 95, 107, 138, 245 Greb, Ulrich, x, 226, 243, 247, 253 Grey wolves, 229, 243, 257 Grötzinger, Andreas, 207, 208 guestworkers, representation of, 11, 19, 29, 44, 61–63, 65, 72, 77, 80–82, 86, 88, 92, 94, 125, 126, 229, 231, 244, 263 Gusset, Patrick, 207 H Hades, 229, 253 Hagen, Sheri, 109, 133 ˙ sçi Tiyatrosu, 19 Halkevi I¸ Hamdoun, Anis, 278 hate speech, 5, 157. See also homophobia; racism HAU (Hebbel am Ufer), 3, 37, 149, 155–157, 173, 174, 189, 198, 205, 206, 216, 278 Heidelberger Stückemarkt, 6, 139 Heine, Heinrich, 228 Heino, 228, 242, 244 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 40, 121 Hillje, Jens, 5, 138–141, 227 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 228, 229, 253 Holtz, Jürgen, 75, 77, 78

316

INDEX

Homer, 228, 229, 233, 239 homophobia, 199 hybridity, 35, 46, 195 I iconoclasm, 121, 124, 126 ˙ Ikinci Yeni, 71, 72 illegal immigration. See irregular/undocumented migration Innsbrucker Kellertheater, 65, 95 integration, 6, 7, 13, 18, 125, 152, 192, 194, 227, 232, 233, 235, 237, 238, 244, 245, 247, 260, 261 National Integration Plan, 18, 192 interculturalism, 13, 17, 35, 37, 39–41, 51, 65, 76, 177, 185, 189, 191, 193, 217, 218, 226, 227, 234, 247–249, 279 intercultural action plans, 18, 49, 188, 190, 192 intercultural theatre, 37, 39–41, 192, 202 interweaving performance cultures, 41 intertextuality, 63, 74, 75, 89, 94, 138, 169, 173, 239, 241, 258 irregular/undocumented migration, 185, 186, 198, 200, 202–206, 209, 211, 215, 216, 272, 277, 278 Islam, 12, 16, 124, 125, 142, 151, 153, 154, 161, 162, 167, 169–172, 175, 176 Muslim life in Germany, 16, 151, 152, 175, 206 Muslim women, representation of, 4, 151, 152, 157, 158, 161, 167, 169–171, 178. See also Neo-muslima Itoka, Aloysius, 214, 215, 217

J jazz, 122 Jelinek, Elfriede, 11, 97, 216 Jentsch, Julia, 128, 129 Jewish representation, 99, 131, 262, 271, 274, 276 Junges Theater Bremen, 50, 108–110, 150, 191

K Kafka, Franz, 131, 140 Kanak Attak, 108, 110 Karagöz (Turkish shadow theatre), 62, 78, 79, 84, 91 Karge, Manfred, 24, 25, 72, 78 Kitt, Eartha, 89–92, 94 Kiyak, Mely, 7, 8, 34 Kroetz, Franz Xaver, 81 Kulao˘glu, Tunçay, x, 150, 167, 213, 216, 277 Kurtiz, Tuncel, 62, 73, 74, 77, 78

L labour migration, 7, 15, 23, 42, 44, 46, 68, 69, 76, 138, 226, 227, 232, 258, 279 Lacanian thought, 198 lamination, 187, 199 Langhoff, Lukas, 156 Langhoff, Matthias, 24, 25, 69, 72, 78, 156 Langhoff, Shermin, vii, 13–15, 43, 50, 150, 156, 157, 167, 189, 213, 218, 227, 256, 276, 278, 279 Langhoff, Thomas, 156 Langhoff, Wolfgang, 156 LCC, 24 Lilienthal, Matthias, 155, 156, 189 Luk, 50

INDEX

M Madame Butterfly, 2, 215 margin/marginalization, 11, 13, 23, 29, 44, 62, 66, 91, 161, 206, 215, 256, 280 marketing, 30, 42, 43, 96, 124, 158, 178, 233, 235, 251 Marx brothers, 82 Marx, Karl, 64, 93, 160 Maxim Gorki theatre, 7, 108, 137, 140, 150, 165, 190, 227, 274, 276–278 memory, 42, 65, 230, 232, 240, 241, 275, 278 Merkel, Angela, 227 metatheatre, 1, 68, 87, 132, 139, 140, 205, 215, 256, 260, 262 Mican, Hakan Sava¸s, 34 migrantized/migrantization, 7, 8, 11, 15, 16, 18, 22, 23, 26, 27, 33, 40, 42, 47, 100, 135, 139, 157, 158, 173, 174, 187, 189, 193, 200, 202, 211, 218, 242, 249, 255, 257, 261, 270, 273, 274, 279 military putsch, 1971, 15, 24, 69 mimesis, 36, 38, 45, 48, 66, 74, 81, 94 mimeticism, 39, 72, 94, 115, 125, 132, 142, 249, 254, 261 coercive mimeticism, 47, 125, 131 mimicry, 14, 45, 46, 72, 73, 81, 82 Mo˘gul, Tu˘gsal, x, 190 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 136, 162, 271 Mülheimer Dramatikerpreis, 150, 159, 272 Müller, Heiner, 1, 25, 62, 71, 83, 84, 157, 276 multiculturalism, 13, 20, 37, 43, 51, 96, 162, 171, 192, 195, 200, 248, 279

317

Münchner Kammerspiele, x, 109–111, 117–120, 123–125, 130, 134, 136, 137

N nationalism, 91, 95, 97, 230, 231, 241, 246, 258 nationalism, methodological, 43, 44 nationalism, sexual, xi, 246 Naturalism, 36, 80, 85, 169, 170 Nazism, 34, 111, 126, 246 Neo-muslima, 151–153 Neuköllner Oper, 271 Nibelungen-Festspiele Worms, 271 Nibelungen saga, 271 Nida-Rümelin, Julian, 118, 123 normalism, 249

O Odyssee Europa, 49, 225–227, 232–236, 247–251, 254–256, 262 Öngören, Vasıf, 19, 23, 24, 28 operaismo, 280 Ören, Aras, 28, 34, 62 Orientalism, 45, 72, 73, 79, 89–91, 197, 242 Orkan, Senih, 75 Özdamar, Emine Sevgi, 1, 2, 12–14, 16, 21, 23–27, 31, 34–36, 38–40, 48–51, 107, 114, 156, 225, 226, 228–231, 234, 236–239, 241, 242, 247, 254, 255, 260, 263, 270–273 Bitter Water (Bitteres Wasser), 229, 230 Bridge of the Golden Horn, The (Brücke vom Goldenen Horn, Die), 14, 23, 51, 83, 89, 229, 239, 258

318

INDEX

Carreer of a Cleaning Lady (Karriere einer Putzfrau), 48, 64, 84 Courtyard in the Mirror, The (Hof im Spiegel, Der), 48, 64, 239 Dying on Foreign Ground (Sterben in der Fremde), 51, 272, 274, 276, 277 Hamlet Ahmed, 48 Karagöz in Alamania (play), 49, 50, 61–67, 69–71, 73–80, 84, 86–89, 92–95, 155, 244, 254 Karagöz in Alamania (short story), 64, 71, 84–87 Keloglan in Alamania, 1, 31, 65, 66, 95–100 Kendi kendinin Terzisi Bir Kambur, 231 Life is a Caravanserei (Leben ist eine Karawanserei, Das), 25, 228, 239 Noahi, 48 Perikızı, 2, 49, 51, 226–234, 238–248, 250–260, 262, 263, 275 Strange Stars (Seltsame Sterne), 14, 83, 91, 230, 239, 240, 262 Özdamar, Emine Sevgi Karagöz in Alamania (play), xi, xii Özdiker, Enver Yalçın, 271 Öziri, Necati, 34, 114 P Pamuk, Orhan, 230 Pazarkaya, Yüksel, 19, 34, 62 Perceval, Luk, ix, 27, 109, 112, 116, 117, 119–124, 128–130, 133, 134, 137, 141, 142 performance analysis, methodology, 16, 27, 30, 272, 273 performativity, 14, 22, 28, 38, 39, 51, 63, 107, 124, 140, 170, 197,

204, 208, 211, 212, 256, 273, 279 non-performatives, 211 speech acts, 279 Perumal, Murali, 188, 200, 201 Peymann, Claus, 24, 69, 70, 155 Pirandello, Luigi, 132 plagiarism, 228, 229, 231, 238, 241, 253, 257 Plato, 36, 46, 74 Polat, Ay¸se, 37 postcolonialism, 42, 44, 45, 74, 111, 122 postdramatic theatre, 21, 37, 51, 65, 76, 83–85, 89, 94, 134, 156, 158, 160, 162, 187, 196–198 postmigrant theatre, 12, 13, 15, 18, 22, 26, 28, 33, 34, 38, 39, 41, 42, 50, 96, 139, 140, 150, 155, 158, 167, 168, 173, 175, 177, 178, 185, 187–189, 191, 196–199, 206, 210–214, 216–218, 234, 257, 260, 261, 270, 273, 277–279 postmigration, xi, xii, 13, 14, 23, 39, 41–44, 48, 52, 135, 139, 141, 142, 152–156, 171, 173, 178, 189, 206, 212, 255, 261, 262, 270, 274, 279, 280 post-show discussions, 29, 121, 173–176 precarity, 98, 186, 205, 213, 215, 233 Presley, Elvis, 242 Puccini Madame Butterfly, 1

Q quota, 193, 201, 202

INDEX

R race/racialization, 5, 15, 22, 34–36, 42, 45, 62, 111–113, 121, 125, 126, 132, 133, 135, 136, 142, 170, 171, 187, 192, 200, 207, 208, 212, 242, 248 racism, 95, 97, 126, 200, 207, 227 Ragonese, Marita, 196 raumlaborberlin, x, 237, 251 ready-made, 174, 197, 211 reality, 3, 12, 36, 38, 63, 66, 70–72, 77, 78, 94, 95, 99, 126, 127, 130, 135, 152, 159, 162, 178, 191, 193, 197, 198, 200, 205, 206, 211–213, 232, 234, 238, 248, 249, 254, 255, 257, 279 reality television, 205 refugee crisis, European (2015), 11, 196, 269, 274, 277 theatrical responses to, 196, 270, 277, 278 Regietheater(director’s theatre), 21, 123, 137 Rimini Protokoll, 160, 205 Röggla, Kathrin, 160 Romanticism, 113, 120–122, 139, 141 Ronen, Michael, ix, 3, 227, 231, 255, 257–260, 262, 263 Ronen, Yael, 227 RSC, 111, 112 RUHR.2010, 49, 234–236, 247, 248, 250, 252, 254, 255

S Saarländisches Staatstheater, 196 Sarazzin, Thilo, 227 Schaubühne Berlin, 19, 24, 72 Schauspiel Frankfurt, x, 31, 49, 62, 64, 65, 70, 75, 77–79, 87, 108 Schauspiel Graz, 109

319

Schauspiel Hannover, 27, 31, 138, 150, 177, 196 Schauspiel Köln, 27, 71, 185, 188, 192–194, 200–202, 205, 206, 209–213 Schiller, Friedrich, 4, 5, 17, 114, 138, 139 aesthetic education, 4, 139 Robbers, The, 4, 114, 138, 139 Schimmelpfennig, Roland, 226, 236 Schlingensief, Christoph, 99, 100 Schlosstheater Moers, x, 2, 226, 242–244, 247, 248, 251, 253 Scholze, Christian, ix, 50, 150, 175, 189, 190 Almanya (adaptation of Koppstoff), 190 science fiction, 4, 154, 165, 169, 170, 174 scripts, 2, 3, 8, 12, 15, 16, 20, 21, 29, 30, 33, 34, 36–38, 41, 47, 48, 51, 52, 62, 65, 72–74, 76, 79, 94, 95, 109, 114, 115, 118, 123, 124, 126, 127, 131, 133, 135, 154, 157, 176, 185, 189, 215, 217, 218, 232, 234, 235, 237, 242, 249, 252, 258, 260, 262, 270, 271, 273, 274, 279 self-representation, 185, 188, 199, 214 semi-documentary theatre. See documentary theatre Senkel, Günter, 4, 12, 25–27, 108, 109, 113, 117, 118, 123, 127, 128, 131, 134, 135, 191 Seven, Murat, 214, 217 Sevindim, Aslı, 247–249 sexuality, 12, 72, 151, 152, 154, 157, 158, 172, 186, 200, 230–232, 245, 258 sexual violence, 231, 244, 245, 257, 258

320

INDEX

Shakespeare, William Hamlet . See Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Hamlet (2010) Midsummer Night’s Dream, 192, 228 Othello. See Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Othello (2003) Romeo and Juliet . See Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Romeo und Julia(Romeo and Julia) Solingen, 99, 100 SPD, 80, 85 Spengler, Volker, 86, 87 Staatstheater Kassel, 188 Staatstheater Oldenburg, 31, 65, 96, 98 Stechel, Jette, 194 Strindberg, August, 255 Studio , 137, 276 subaltern/subalternity, 45, 153, 158, 159 syncreticism, 25, 26 religious, 171 theatrical, 25, 26 T Taner, Holdun, 72 Thalheim, Robert, 196 Thalia Theatre, 109, 117, 142, 151 Theater Bonn, 196 Theater der Keller, Cologne, 109, 124 Theater der Welt, 157 Theater Operation, 190 Theatertreffen, 6, 12, 138, 192 Theodoridu, Sonia, 77, 91 Thieme, Thomas, 109, 116, 128–133 Thomas, Jens, 122, 134, 142 Tiyatrom, Berlin, 19, 20 translation, vii, 5, 6, 16, 17, 23, 44, 90–92, 110, 111, 113–117, 120–122, 133, 135, 140, 141, 152, 229

Turkish ensemble at the Schaubühne. See Schaubühne Berlin Turkish-German cinema/film, 20, 27, 33–35, 51, 107 Turkish-German literature, 20, 22, 27, 29, 34, 35, 39, 40, 44, 45, 47, 51, 107, 273 Turkish-German, use of term, 15, 19, 20, 22, 51, 270

U Ülgen, Meray, 19, 34 Uska Dara/Üsküdara, 89, 90

V Verfremdung, 83, 85, 170 violence, 6, 23, 93, 94, 127, 135, 200, 230, 245, 258, 260, 263. See also sexual violence

W Walburg, Lars-Ole, ix, 50, 150, 174–177 Walraff, Günter, 80 Walsh, Enda, 236 Wedekind, Frank, 136, 138, 149 Lulu, 136, 149 Spring’s Awakening (Frühlings Erwachen), 114, 138 Wedig, Anja, ix, 150, 191 Weiss, Peter, 24, 86–88, 160 Investigation, The (Ermittlung, Die), 160 Marat/Sade, 24, 86, 87 welcome culture, 269 Wenzlaff, Michael, 214, 216 Werktreue. See fidelity Westfälisches Landestheater, 108, 150, 175, 177, 189–191

INDEX

X X -Wohnungen (X – Appartments), 37, 157, 216, 251

Y Yeginer, Murat, 96, 98 youth theatre, 96, 100, 196, 210

Z Zaimoglu/Senkel, 3, 16, 21, 23, 25, 26, 38, 40, 48, 50, 51, 108, 109, 113, 114, 117, 118, 122, 125, 135–137, 140, 141, 149–152, 154, 157, 160, 176, 185, 187, 191, 194, 195, 204, 211, 232, 270–272 Abduction from the Seraglio (Entführung aus dem Serail, Die), 136, 271 Alpine Blessing (Alpsegen), 137, 271 Babylon, 271 Black Virgins (Schwarze Jungfrauen), 3, 12, 27, 32, 36, 50, 149–154, 157– 160, 162–164, 166, 167, 169–171, 173–178, 185, 187, 189–191, 200, 205, 257, 273 Casino Casual (Casino Leger), 48, 108, 149 Discount Diaspora (2011), 271 Half so Wild (Halb So Wild), 48, 149 Hamlet (2010), 48, 114, 136, 137, 141, 190 Headstuff (Koppstoff), 190 Julius Caeser (2011), 48 Lulu Live (2005), 48, 136, 137, 149 Luther (2017), 271 Max und Moritz (2007), 48, 136

321

Molière: A Passion (Molière: Eine Passion), 48, 136 Moses (2013), 271 Nathan Messias (2009), 48, 136, 168 Othello (2003), 50, 108, 110, 111, 113–127, 129–131, 133–136, 138, 141, 149 Picture Stories I & II (Bildergeschichten I and II), 271 Romeo und Julia (Romeo and Julia), 48, 136, 149 Shadow Voices (Schattenstimmen), 50, 185–188, 190, 191, 193, 194, 196, 198–203, 205, 207–209, 211, 213, 215, 217 Siegfried, 136 Siegfried’s Heroic Deeds (Siegfrieds Heldentaten), 137, 271 Siegfried’s Hiers (Siegfrieds Erben), 137, 271 Ten Commandments, The (Zehn Gebote, Die), 271 Uprising (Aufstand), 271 Yes. Do it. Now (Ja. Tu es. Jetzt), 48, 108, 149, 191 Zaimoglu, Feridun, 12–14, 25, 26, 34, 35, 38, 39, 107, 108, 110–116, 120–122, 124–126, 132, 141, 151–153, 156, 157, 159, 160, 168, 174, 187, 191, 194, 195, 198, 200, 228, 238, 257, 271, 272 Headstuff (Koppstoff), 108, 110, 157, 190 Kanak Sprak, 14, 108, 110, 111, 113, 114, 124, 126, 127, 152, 153, 157, 159, 187, 191 Leyla (2006), 228, 229 Twelve Grams of Happiness (Zwolf Gramm Glück), 157