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    ‘Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’’ Review: A Bittersweet Premiere

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    An Arabic production of Wajdi Mouawad’s 1991 work, planned to open in Lebanon, was canceled because of his perceived ties to Israel. It found a home in France.What happens when the roots you long for keep eluding you? This question has long been central to the work of the playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad, and never more so than in a new production of his 1991 work “Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’.”Currently the director of Théâtre National de la Colline, a high-profile Parisian playhouse, Mouawad was born in Lebanon. In 1978, he fled the country’s civil war with his family, at the age of 10. As a writer, he has returned to his Lebanese heritage over and over — and this year, he went back to the country to stage his first production with local actors, an Arabic-language adaptation of “Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’.”But in April, just weeks before the premiere, Le Monnot playhouse in Beirut was forced to cancel all performances of the play over Mouawad’s perceived ties to Israel, which Lebanon considers an enemy state. Several Lebanese lobbying groups had called for the show to be stopped, with one, the Commission of Detainees Affairs, filing a legal complaint with the country’s military courts and demanding Mouawad’s arrest.According to a report in the French newspaper Le Monde, Mouawad was accused of allowing the Israeli Embassy in France to pay for three plane tickets in 2017 to bring two Israeli actors and a translator to the country for his production “All Birds.” In another perceived transgression, last season Mouawad programmed a work by the Israeli artist Amos Gitai at the Théâtre National de la Colline.Mouawad quickly left Lebanon. In a public statement, the Beirut venue blamed “unacceptable pressure and serious threats made against Le Monnot as well as some artists and technicians.”It was an astonishing turn of events for a playwright who has always asserted his Lebanese identity, regardless of his childhood exile, and dissected it onstage. In the end, in lieu of Beirut, “Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’” premiered over the weekend at the Printemps des Comédiens, a theater festival in Montpellier, France, ahead of an international tour (whose dates remain to be confirmed) with the cast that was scheduled to perform in Lebanon.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wajdi Mouawad's 'Mother': Was It Worth It?

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      By asking the singer Bertrand Cantat to contribute to his latest show, the director Wajdi Mouawad has overshadowed his own production.PARIS — Traumatized individuals reach a standoff. They talk past each other; the more powerful party is too hurt to mitigate the pain they inflict. Ultimately, no one wins.Recently, this story unfolded both on- and offstage at La Colline — Théâtre National, the Paris playhouse led by the Lebanese-born theatermaker Wajdi Mouawad, one of the biggest names in contemporary French theater. In November, Mouawad unveiled a very personal new play, “Mother” (“Mère”), inspired by his family’s exile from Lebanon during the country’s civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990. In the weeks leading up to the premiere, however, “Mother” became embroiled in conflicts of its own.In early October, the hashtag #MeTooThéâtre began trending in France; with it came a wave of testimonies about sexual abuse and harassment in the country’s playhouses and drama schools. A collective of the same name was created to agitate for change, and Mouawad’s programming was quickly singled out for criticism. In 2022, La Colline theater is set to host a production by the director Jean-Pierre Baro, who has been accused of rape, a charge he denies. Additionally, the composer and singer Bertrand Cantat, who was convicted of killing his partner Marie Trintignant in 2003, was commissioned by Mouawad to create the music of “Mother.”It’s not the first time Mouawad has hired Cantat. In 2011, the singer even appeared onstage in one of Mouawad’s shows, a play titled “Women” (“Des Femmes”). The ensuing controversy led to the cancellation of a number of tour dates and Cantat’s withdrawal from the cast when the production played at the Avignon Festival.Wajdi Mouawad and the actress Aida Sabra, who plays his mother in the production.Tong-Vi NguyenMouawad’s response to #MeTooThéâtre has been rigid. In an open letter on Oct. 19, he likened his detractors to “a contemporary form of the Inquisition” and said they were engaged in a “lynching.” He added that claims should be adjudicated only in court. On Oct. 19, a demonstration in front of La Colline delayed the “Mother” premiere by 30 minutes. The protesters called on Mouawad to resign, and booed the audience members walking into the theater.Was it worth it? That question should be asked of Mouawad, who has been known until now as a progressive supporter of multicultural stories and a promoter of young artists. On opening night, when he came out into the auditorium for a preshow announcement, he carried on as if nothing had happened. Yet this stance interferes with the reception of what is otherwise a strong production, to which Cantat actually made a minimal contribution.The French singer Bertrand Cantat, who was convicted of murdering his partner Marie Trintignant in 2003. Mouawad’s inclusion of Cantat’s music in the production has drawn criticism, and it’s not the first time he has hired him.Xavier Leoty/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe play is centered around Mouawad’s own mother, Jacqueline. In 1978, she fled war-torn Lebanon with her three children, while her husband stayed behind. The family landed in Paris, where they spent the next five years anxiously waiting for the phone to ring, with news that they could return home.“Mother” recreates vignettes from their fractured home life amid an unfussy wooden set. Two superb Lebanese actresses, Aida Sabra and Odette Makhlouf, play Jacqueline and Mouawad’s sister Nayla. (His brother is mentioned, but not shown.) While the young Mouawad is played by a child, Dany Aridi on opening night, the director himself is never far away. Throughout, Mouawad observes the proceedings up close onstage, moves furniture and props around and, ultimately, takes the spotlight to confront his mother, who in real life died from cancer in 1987.There is a harrowing amount of raw pain in “Mother.” In a vivid mix of Arabic and French, Sabra perfectly captures Jacqueline’s deteriorating mental health, and the unprocessed anger she projects on to her children. She berates her young son for not learning French faster, yet never really adjusts to life in Paris. On the phone, early on, she cries: “I am in ruins.”Members of the cast, including Makhlouf and Mouawad, at far left. The play is being performed at La Colline — Théâtre National in Paris through Dec. 30.Tong-Vi NguyenFurther weaving reality into fiction, Mouawad cast Christine Ockrent, a well-known news anchor who was a near-daily presence on French television in the 1980s, in her first stage role. In her best broadcast voice, Ockrent reads dispatches from Lebanon, but also becomes an imaginary presence in the characters’ lives, chatting with the children and cooking with Jacqueline.Mouawad’s own meta-dialogue with his mother is both the high point of the show and a clue to his overall state of mind. “I wrote this scene to talk to you,” he tells Sabra, playing Jacqueline. He has been unable to cry since his mother’s death, he adds, before pleading with her to tell his younger self “that you love him, once.”It doesn’t take a therapist to see that Mouawad’s grief, at this point, goes far beyond acting. Onstage, he mentions the loss of his father to Covid last year; his long-term theatrical collaborator and mentor, François Ismert, also died in early September. In a scene near the end of “Mother,” Mouawad pulls out a gun and pretends to shoot himself, seven times.What of Cantat? His contribution amounts to six recorded songs — no more than 15 minutes, over two and a half hours. Several of them are raspy reinterpretations of classic French songs from the era the play is set in, and Cantat is buried down the list of credits. On opening night, unsurprisingly, he didn’t come out for a bow.The young Mouawad is played by a child, Dany Aridi, on opening night, at left, with his mother Jacqueline, played by Sabra. Sabra perfectly captures Jacqueline’s deteriorating mental health, along with her unprocessed anger.Tong-Vi NguyenThe songs are too anodyne, and fleeting, to add much to “Mother.” It is pretty disturbing, however, to hear Cantat sing sensual lines at one point to Makhlouf, as Mouawad’s sister. For those in the audience who are aware of the singer’s identity, and there will be many, moments like this are an obstacle suspending disbelief. Cantat may have served his prison sentence for murder, but that doesn’t mean his presence is neutral; it actively distracts from the story of “Mother,” something no other singer would have done. (As a friend from Lebanon pointed out after the show, a Lebanese composer would also have been a more coherent choice.)Mouawad may be too deep in his feelings to realize this. He has always been hierarchy-averse, and his open letter about #MeTooThéâtre, as well as “Mother,” make it clear that he sees himself as on the side of the oppressed. “I won’t be pitted against the notion of a victim. I was a victim,” he wrote. But two things can be true at once. The traumatized boy who experienced exile grew up to become the powerful artistic director of one of France’s most prestigious theaters. Criticism comes with the territory; an understanding of the zeitgeist in which theater productions come to life should, too.In any other context, “Mother” would have been hailed as an unqualified success. Yet the presence of Cantat on the creative team is the hill on which Mouawad has chosen to die. From the audience perspective, it’s simply not worth it.MèreThrough Dec. 30 at La Colline — Théâtre National in Paris; colline.fr. More

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      Avec 'Oedipe', Wajdi Mouawad sonde les fractures du passé

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      Pour sa mise en scène l’opéra de Georges Enescu, le libano-canadien Wajdi Mouawad sonde les traumatismes de la compagnie — et les siens. “Quand on est soi-même complètement fracturé, on construit”.The New York Times traduit en français une sélection de ses meilleurs articles. Retrouvez-les ici.PARIS — Peu avant le début des répétitions pour sa mise en scène de l’“Œdipe” d’Enesco à l’Opéra de Paris, Wajdi Mouawad a une idée qui s’avère insolite. Il rédige un lexique de toutes les références obscures du livret — comme “l’eau de Castalie”, une source sacrée de Delphes — et l’envoie au chœur.Wajdi Mouawad, qui a 52 ans et dirige le Théâtre national de la Colline à Paris, est alors stupéfait d’apprendre que c’est la première fois que les choristes reçoivent un tel document. Quand il rencontre les techniciens de l’Opéra pour leur expliquer l’histoire de cet “Œdipe”, une curiosité composée dans les années 30 qui s’inspire du mythe grec, leur réaction est la même, se souvient-il dans un entretien: les metteurs en scène prennent rarement la peine de leur accorder beaucoup d’attention.“C’est étrange, parce qu’on me dit : ‘c’est formidable, tu dis bonjour’, ” confirme-t-il. “J’ai l’impression d’arriver dans un monde traumatisé qui maintenant trouve que son traumatisme est la normalité.”Traumatisme : le mot pourrait résumer ces dernières années à l’Opéra de Paris,volontiers frondeur. Fin 2019 et début 2020, les grèves provoquées par la perspective d’une réforme des retraites ont creusé un déficit de 45 millions d’euros, sur un budget de près de 230 millions d’euros. Et encore, c’était avant que la pandémie n’oblige à annuler plus d’une année de productions. (Des spectacles ont eu lieu en septembre et en octobre de l’année dernière, mais la compagnie a dû attendre fin mai pour reprendre sa programmation régulière.)L’“Œdipe” qui débute lundi à l’Opéra Bastille, la plus vaste scène de la compagnie, inaugure une nouvelle ère. Il s’agit de la première production commandée par Alexander Neef, le nouveau directeur général de l’Opéra de Paris nommé il y a un an.Le choix de Wajdi Mouawad ne doit rien au hasard. Avant d’arriver à Paris, Neef a dirigeait la Compagnie nationale d’opéra de Toronto où il a co-produit les premiers pas de Mouawad dans l’univers de l’opéra. C’était “L’Enlèvement au sérail” de Mozart, en 2016, qu’Alexander Neef qualifie d’ “une des expériences les plus gratifiantes que j’aie connue avec un metteur en scène.”“Sa force en tant qu’artiste, c’est qu’il a vraiment à cœur de travailler avec les gens,” explique Alexander Neef lors d’un entretien dans son bureau. “Avec “Œdipe”, j’espérais qu’il arrive à ressouder la compagnie. Il faut presque lui demander de ne pas être trop gentil.”Le retour d’ “Œdipe” sur la scène parisienne s’est fait attendre. Unique opéra de Georges Enesco, l’œuvre a été créée en 1936 au Palais Garnier. Elle n’a jamais été reprise à l’Opéra de Paris depuis cette date, alors que d’autres compagnies d’opéra s’y sont récemment intéressées. La première production nord-américaine a eu lieu en 2005 à l’université d’Illinois. En Europe, Achim Freyer a offert une mise en scène applaudie au Festival de Salzbourg il y a deux ans, sous la baguette d’Ingo Metzmacher que l’on retrouve à Paris.Wajdi Mouawad, au centre, lors d’une répétition d’ “Oedipe” à l’Opéra de Paris.Eléna Bauer/Opéra national de ParisPlus que la qualité de l’oeuvre, Alexander Neef pense que ce sont les accidents de l’histoire qui expliquent le manque d’intérêt pour cet “Œdipe” en dépit de critiques élogieuses au moment de sa création. En 1936, le New York Times rapportait les propos du compositeur et critique français Reynaldo Hahn évoquant une œuvre “grandiose, élevée, minutieusement élaborée, toujours imposante et qui force l’admiration.”“Après 1945, sa musique est passée de mode,” avance Alexander Neef à propos de la partition d’Enesco. “Pour beaucoup de compositeurs après l’Holocauste, la musique tonale n’avait plus lieu d’être.”Quand Alexandre Neef lui a proposé le projet, Wajdi Mouawad s’est avant tout intéressé au livret. Le metteur en scène a beaucoup fréquenté la légende d’Œdipe: en trente ans de carrière, il a monté l’ “Œdipe roi” de Sophocle trois fois. Et en 2016, il a même écrit une pièce intitulée “Les Larmes d’Œdipe”, qui relie la tragédie à la situation politique actuelle de la Grèce.Edmond Fleg, le librettiste d’ “Œdipe”, a largement puisé dans “Œdipe roi” et “Œdipe à Colonne”, du même Sophocle, pour les troisième et quatrième actes de l’opéra. (Le premier et le deuxième explicitent le contexte de la pièce.) “C’est un peu résumé, mais ce sont les mêmes répliques,” confirme Wajdi Mouawad. “Je me suis dit que j’avais de la place pour raconter cette histoire.”Composer des histoires est une priorité de toujours pour Wajdi Mouawad, qui est né au Liban en 1968. Sa famille a fui la guerre civile quand il avait dix ans, s’installant d’abord en France puis au Québec.“Quand j’essayais de comprendre la guerre du Liban, soit on me disait qu’il n’y avait rien à comprendre, soit on me disait : ‘c’est à cause des autres’,” se souvient-il. “Je manque tellement de récits.”Après une formation d’acteur à l’École nationale de théâtre du Canada à Montréal, Wajdi Mouawad se fait remarquer avec une tétralogie épique intitulée “Le Sang des promesses”, qui fait le tour du monde. Composée de quatre volets, “Littoral” (1999), “Incendies” (2003), “Forêts” (2006) et “Ciels” (2009), la pièce joue sur les thèmes du traumatisme intergénérationnel, de la guerre et de l’exil.Son travail a fait découvrir le théâtre contemporain à nombre de milléniaux francophones. À son retour à Paris en 2016, à la direction du théâtre de la Colline, Wajdi Mouawad se démarque du goût européen actuel pour les productions non linéaires et très conceptuelles. Lisa Perrio, une actrice qui a travaillé plusieurs fois sous sa direction, le confirme : “Il aime le dramatique, le pathos, et ça marche.”“C’est la chose la plus dure de ma vie que j’aie eu à jouer,” ajoute-t-elle, “parce que ça te demande tellement d’émotion.”Pour Wajdi Mouawad, le postmodernisme est un luxe incompatibe avec certains traumatismes. “Je suis le post-modernisme,” dit-il. “La guerre du Liban, il n’y a pas plus post-moderne. La déconstruction, c’est un truc de riches. Quand tout va bien, on déconstruit. Quand on n’a pas les moyens – quand on est soi-même complètement fracturé – on construit.”“Quand tout va bien, on déconstruit,” dit Wajdi Mouawad. “Quand on n’a pas les moyens – quand on est soi-même complètement fracturé – on construit.”Julien Mignot pour The New York TimesEn mars, un an après le début des perturbations causées par la pandémie, la Colline est un des premiers théâtres français à être occupé par des manifestants. Les étudiants et les travailleurs de la culture exigeaient le soutien du gouvernement et le retrait de la réforme de l’assurance-chômage. Très vite, le mouvement s’est étendu à plus de cent théâtres.Contacté par téléphone, Sébastien Kheroufi, un des premiers élèves-comédiens à s’être installé à la Colline, dit que Wajdi Mouawad est un des rares metteurs en scène de renom à avoir réservé un accueil chaleureux aux occupants . “Un soir, il n’a pas hésité à rester avec nous plusieurs heures après ses répétitions parce qu’on avait besoin de parler,” se souvient-il.La levée de l’occupation fin mai reste toutefois une source de frustration pour Wajdi Mouawad. Avec son équipe, il a proposé aux étudiants de rester pour la réouverture et de prendre la parole avant les spectacles. Wajdi Mouawad espérait aussi créer une troupe permanente de jeunes comédiens à qui il offrirait des contrats à l’année.Christopher Maltman, center, in a rehearsal of “Oedipe” at the Paris Opera.Elisa Haberer/Opéra national de ParisIls ont fini par refuser “parce que l’idée venait de nous et qu’ils ne voulaient rien nous devoir,” juge-t-il aujourd’hui. Un coup dur pour cet homme qui a horreur de la hiérarchie et n’a pas hésité à rédiger une lettre ouverte dépitée dans laquelle il revient sur l’ “échec” de toutes les parties engagées dans l’occupation.Puis, début septembre, au beau milieu des répétitions d’ “Œdipe”, François Ismert, son dramaturge de longue date, est décédé. “C’était vraiment quelqu’un de solaire, d’atypique,” dit ce dernier. Ismert l’avait ouvert à Sophocle dans les années 1990, “et pas que”, se souvient-il. “À tout le reste, sans jamais être dans un rapport paternaliste.”À l’approche de la première, cette disparition continue de se faire sentir. Mais le metteur en scène tâche de donner un sens au chaos.“Je sais que tout est en ruines,” soupire-t-il avant de rejoindre le studio de répétition. “Mais il faut bien en faire quelque chose, de ces ruines.” More

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      With a Rare ‘Oedipe,’ the Paris Opera Pulls Together

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      Staged by the playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad, Enescu’s opera helps inaugurate a new era for the storied company.PARIS — Ahead of rehearsals for his staging of George Enescu’s “Oedipe” at the Paris Opera, the playwright and director Wajdi Mouawad did something unusual. He put together a glossary of all the obscure references in the libretto — like “the water of Castalia,” a sacred spring in Delphi — and sent it to the chorus.Mouawad, 52, who runs the Théâtre National de la Colline in Paris, was taken aback to find the choristers had never received anything like it. When he approached the company’s technical crew to explain to them the story of “Oedipe,” a rarity from the 1930s based on the Greek myth, their reaction was similar, he said in an interview — few directors ever bothered to pay them much mind.“It’s odd, because I hear, ‘It’s wonderful, you say hello,”” Mouawad added. “I feel like I’m stepping into a traumatized world that now believes its trauma is the norm.”Trauma is not a bad way of describing the past few years at the fractious Paris Opera. In late 2019 and early 2020, labor strikes over a pension policy overhaul resulted in a 45 million euro deficit in a budget hovering around 230 million euros. And that was before the pandemic forced the cancellation of over a year’s worth of performances. (While some performances took place in September and October last year, the company didn’t resume its regular schedule until late May.)So “Oedipe,” which opens at the Opera Bastille, the company’s larger theater, on Monday, may just inaugurate a new era. It is the first production that was commissioned by Alexander Neef, who took over as the Opera’s general director last year.It is no coincidence that he turned to Mouawad. In his last job, leading the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, Neef co-produced Mouawad’s first stab at opera, a 2016 production of Mozart’s “The Abduction From the Seraglio,” that Neef calls “one of the most satisfying experiences that I’ve ever had with a director.”“His strength as an artist is that he really wants to work with humans,” Neef added in an interview in his office. “With ‘Oedipe,’ my hope was that he would pull the whole company together. Sometimes, you almost need to encourage him not to be too nice.”The return of “Oedipe” to the Paris stage has been a long time coming. Enescu’s only opera, it had its premiere at the company’s smaller, ornate Palais Garnier in 1936, but has never been revived there, even as other opera houses took a belated interest in it. The North American premiere took place at the University of Illinois in 2005, while Achim Freyer directed an acclaimed staging at the Salzburg Festival two years ago, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, who will return to the score in Paris.Mouawad, center, during a rehearsal for “Oedipe.”Eléna Bauer/Opéra national de ParisNeef believes the course of history, rather than quality, explains the long lack of appetite for “Oedipe,” which earned positive reviews upon its premiere. The New York Times reported in 1936 that the French composer and critic Reynaldo Hahn had described it as “imposing, lofty, minutely elaborated” and “always compelling admiration.”“After 1945, I think the music had fallen out of fashion,” Neef said of Enescu’s lush score. “For a lot of composers writing after the Holocaust, it couldn’t be tonal music anymore, for a long time.”When Neef first approached him, Mouawad was less concerned with the score than with the libretto. The legend of Oedipus was familiar to him: In his 30-year career, Mouawad has staged Sophocles’s “Oedipus the King” three times. In 2016, he also wrote a play, “The Tears of Oedipus,” that tied the character’s plight to modern Greek politics.The librettist of “Oedipe,” Edmond Fleg, closely based the third and fourth acts on “Oedipus the King” and another play by Sophocles, “Oedipus at Colonus.” (The first and second acts flesh out the plays’ background.) “It’s slightly summarized, but the dialogue is essentially the same,” Mouawad said. “I thought I would have space to tell this story.”Storytelling has long driven Mouawad, who was born in Lebanon in 1968. When he was 10, his family fled the civil war, moving first to France, then to French-speaking Quebec.“When I tried to understand the Lebanese civil war, I was either told that there was nothing to understand, or that it was the fault of others,” Mouawad said. “There was a gaping lack of stories in my life.”After training as an actor at the National Theater School in Montreal, Mouawad rose to prominence with an epic tetralogy, “The Blood of Promises,” that has been produced all over the world. Composed of “Littoral” (1999), “Scorched” (2003), “Forests” (2006) and “Skies” (2009), it delved into intergenerational trauma, war and displacement.His work has served as an introduction to contemporary theater for many French-speaking millennials. Even after he moved back to Paris in 2016 to direct the Théâtre de la Colline, Mouawad steered clear of the prevailing European taste for nonlinear, highly conceptual productions. Lisa Perrio, an actress who has worked with Mouawad several times in recent years, said that “he loves drama, pathos, and it works.”“When everything is fine, you deconstruct,” Mouawad said. “When you can’t afford it — when you yourself are completely fractured — you build.”Julien Mignot for The New York Times“His work is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to perform,” she added, “because it requires so much emotion.”To Mouawad, postmodernism is a luxury beyond the means of those who have experienced deep trauma. “I myself am postmodernism,” he said “There is nothing more postmodern than the Lebanese war. Deconstruction is a rich person’s thing. When everything is fine, you deconstruct. When you can’t afford it — when you yourself are completely fractured — you build.”In March, a year into the disruption caused by the pandemic, the Théâtre de la Colline was one of the first French theaters to be occupied by protesters. Students and arts workers demanded government support and the withdrawal of changes to unemployment benefits. The movement soon spread to over 100 playhouses.Sébastien Kheroufi, who was among the drama students who first entered La Colline, said in a phone interview that Mouawad was one of the few high-profile directors to extend the occupiers a warm welcome. “One night, he even stayed with us for several hours after his rehearsals because we needed to talk,” Kheroufi said.Yet the end of the occupation, in late May, left Mouawad frustrated. He and his team offered the students the opportunity to stay on for the reopening and speak before shows; Mouawad also hoped to start a permanent youth company, offering year-round contracts to young actors.Christopher Maltman, center, plays the title role in “Oedipe.”Elisa Haberer/Opéra national de ParisThey ultimately said no, Mouawad now speculates, “because the idea had come from us, and they didn’t want to owe us anything.” It was a blow for the hierarchy-averse Mouawad, who reflected on the “failure” of all parties of the occupation movement in a despondent open letter.Then, in early September, just as rehearsals for “Oedipe” were in full swing, Mouawad’s longtime dramaturg François Ismert passed away. “He was such a luminous, atypical person,” Mouawad said. Ismert had introduced him to Sophocles in the 1990s — “and not just that,” he said. “To everything else, without ever being paternalistic.”The loss loomed over the approaching premiere. Days before, though, Mouawad remained intent on sifting through the chaos.“I know everything is in ruins,” he said, before returning to the rehearsal room. “But we have to make something of those ruins.” More

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      With ‘Dramazon Prime,’ Streamed Theater Goes Head-to-Head With TV

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      A German playhouse realizes it’s no longer competing merely against other local venues for audience attention.MUNICH — When playhouses throughout the world first closed their doors in the early days of the pandemic, many scrambled to upload recorded performances to their websites as a way of staying connected to their audiences. The result was an overwhelming — but short-lived — explosion of archived theater that varied in artistic and technical quality. Virtually all of it was free.Since then, a growing number of theaters have flirted with pay-per-view formats, devoting lavish resources to professionally filmed productions for online premieres. Along with ensuring that the show goes on, these pay-per-streams are designed to test the hypothesis that people are willing to open their wallets for quality shows they won’t find anywhere else.It took decades before anyone figured out how to successfully charge for media content on the internet. It’s easy to forget just how difficult it was to convince people that digital subscriptions were worth paying for. That pay-per-view theater has taken off so quickly seems one measure of how the pandemic has changed the way people consume culture.Here in Germany, theaters like the Volksbühne, in Berlin, and the Bavarian State Opera, in Munich, are finding that audiences starved for culture are willing to fork out significant sums to virtually experience the drama that they love and miss.Perhaps nowhere else have these streaming efforts been so focused and abundant as at Schauspiel Köln, the main theater in Cologne, in western Germany.In little more than a year, its pandemic-era streaming platform, Dramazon Prime, has become an increasingly sophisticated and flexible online showcase. Indeed, its programming has evolved to something resembling an actual theater schedule, with nightly streams of new and recent productions.Birgit Walter, left, and Kristin Steffen in Christopher Marlowe’s “Edward II,” directed by Pinar Karabulut.Ana LukendaAnd despite the bad play on words, the platform’s name indicates that, even early in the pandemic, the Cologne theater had a key insight: When they offer programming online, playhouses are no longer merely competing against other local venues for audience attention. They need to contend with streaming giants like Netflix that lure us with the promise of endless “content.”Dramazon Prime’s recent schedule shows how Schauspiel Köln is attracting virtual audiences with finely wrought streams of everything from traditional to experimental productions that tinker with formats reminiscent of film and TV.Recently, the theater unveiled its most elaborate digital production to date, a six-part mini-series based on Christopher Marlowe’s “Edward II.” Cheekily updating the 1592 tragedy for the streaming age, “Edward II: The Love Is Me” is a sendup of Netflix costume dramas, with sitcom and soap operatic touches. Each episode runs between 20 and 40 highly stylized minutes, with glamorous sets (it seems to have been largely shot in a shuttered luxury hotel) and costumes that liberally mix Elizabethan dress and modern styles.This “Edward II” was directed by the young German director Pinar Karabulut. As in her recent “Mourning Becomes Electra” for the Volksbühne, she shows a flair for pop cultural pastiche — but it threatens to overwhelm the production. She wears her movie mania on her sleeve, and one often tires of all the fangirl references to the likes of Scorsese, Tarantino and Luca Guadagnino. There’s sex and camp and violence galore.The most consistently enjoyable parts of the series are the lavish opening credit sequences, which establish a slick, tongue-in-cheek tone that the episodes struggle to sustain. The more sexually explicit installments are prefaced with disclaimers that the actors have all been tested for the coronavirus, and advise viewers never to engage in unprotected sex, in an apparent sendup of American “trigger warnings.”Nicola Gründel in Elfriede Jelinek’s “Black Water,”  directed by Stefan Bachmann.Tommy HetzelA more distilled version of theatrical madness packaged as film is “Black Water,” a short feature based on the latest play by Elfriede Jelinek, the Austrian Nobel laureate. “Black Water” had its world premiere in Vienna shortly before the pandemic hit, in a production that ran to three and a half hours; the Dramazon Prime version, by the theater’s artistic director, Stefan Bachmann, is a mere half-hour. It features six of the company’s actors reciting bitter and often darkly comic monologues in a cocaine-fueled bacchanal, trapped in a freight elevator and, later, huddled together on the floor of a bathroom. There’s lots of belching, Red Bull-guzzling and expulsion of bodily fluids. And I would be hard pressed to tell you what any of it means.Even when dealing with more conventional stage works, Dramazon Prime seems committed to making online drama that is more than a secondhand theatrical experience.“Birds of a Kind” by Wajdi Mouawad, directed by Stefan Bachmann.Tommy HetzelBold camerawork and editing distinguish Bachmann’s production of Wajdi Mouawad’s “Birds of a Kind,” which premiered before a live audience in September. For its stream (which is subtitled in English), the theater enlisted the cameraman Andreas Deinert, who devised a rigorous and restrained visual style that cuts between wide- and split-screen compositions to show the characters from multiple perspectives. In the end, the cinematography and editing are far more impressive than the play itself, a sprawling and overwrought family saga set against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with dialogue in German, English, Hebrew and Arabic.A more harmonious blend of stagecraft and camerawork comes in an emotionally shattering version of “The Grapes of Wrath.” Rafael Sanchez’s production sets the action of John Steinbeck’s vast American tragedy in various backstage sites, with simple props to suggest the locations crossed by the Joad family on their journey from Oklahoma to California during the Dust Bowl years. Sanchez is the Schauspiel Köln’s in-house director, and his production (also subtitled in English) succeeds at being at once epic and intimate.Martin Reinke, left, and Seán McDonagh in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Krafft AngererAs with all the Dramazon Prime streams, you pay what you want to watch “The Grapes of Wrath”: For most productions, you can select a price between 1 and 100 euros. According to Jana Lösch, a theater spokeswoman, people tend to choose amounts that reflect what they would ordinarily spend for a night at the theater. Even so, online ticket sales don’t nearly cover the theater’s operating costs, let alone generate profit, Lösch said.I’ve heard similar things from other theaters: Nobody’s expecting to get rich from selling online tickets. Then again, state-subsidized theaters in Germany, such as the Schauspiel Köln, do not rely on box-office receipts the same way Broadway or West End venues do. Generous government support for the arts here in the best of times means theaters and other culture venues can still forge ahead in the worst. But state largess is not enough to ensure the show goes on. For that, you need determination, creativity and a willingness to experiment with new formats and aesthetic possibilities. More