Sebastian Hartmann’s play “The One and His Own” was shown at the Deutsches Theater

One of the most notable theatrical events of the outgoing European season was the performance of Sebastian Hartmann’s “The Only One and His Property”: the production of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin was included in the program of the Theatertreffen festival (an analogue of our “Golden Mask”). How a play based on the philosophical work of Max Stirner (1844) became a modern musical hit and why its success was short-lived, tells Alla Shenderova.

Sebastian Hartmann is a director of the middle generation, originally from Leipzig. A lover of “not just reciting literature, but embodying it on stage”, he often takes great novels as a basis – Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot”, Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain”. At the same time, according to the canvas of the classics, he always “embroiders” his own.

A philosopher close to the left Hegelians, the author of the most famous work in the history of anarchism, Max Stirner (pseudonym of Johan Kaspar Schmidt) was not very successful during his lifetime. His portrait, reminiscent of a caricature, was made by Engels – in the 1840s, together with Marx, he attended the same left Berlin circle as Stirner.

An apostle of egoism and a radical individualist who outstripped Nietzsche, he began to be considered after his death. Of course, no one put his book in the theatre, because you can’t put it on. Unless, of course, you approach it with traditional measures: conflict, characters and plot. None of this interested Hartmann much. However, when the playwrights of the Deutsches Theater (in the German theater they are full-time directors and editors all rolled into one, there are many premieres, therefore there are several playwrights in the theater) offered him to stage Stirner’s book, he at first refused.

“When I read Stirner for the second and third time, I realized his incredible strength, insane fury in the best sense of the word … They are connected, first of all, with the egoism that we feel today in society: and which makes us despair of that we no longer have sympathy for what is happening nearby, not to mention another continent … On the other hand, we are no longer able to stay in the mental space – we immediately read everything as a guide to something … “

In general, Hartmann put Stirner’s book exactly in this way: on the one hand, he turned it into a series of bewitching, but abstract paintings, considering which the viewer can swim on the waves of his own associations. On the other hand, six plastic and musical actors are sometimes thrown around with something like short manifestos of selfishness, for example, “It’s right for me! It is right!”, or they build a whole number around the German word “vielleicht” (“maybe”) – the performance is in a mixture of German and English. And then they abruptly switch from words to actions: yelling, fighting, drowning one of the actresses in a crystal bath (she’s a coffin), and then they sing something joyful in chorus.

All of these sketch scenes are melted into music with the help of multi-instrumentalist composer PC Nackt. To begin with, the director invited him to write down his musical associations for the book, and only then came up with a libretto for his music, “making Stirner not a supplier of keywords, but an interlocutor.”

On an empty stage stands a white tower made by the director himself – a cross between Tatlin’s tower and ancient Iraqi Malvia (a tower with a ramp that spirals like a snail’s shell). As soon as the musicians sitting in the pit begin to play, the turntable starts to move. Six travelers endlessly wander up the tower – and still find themselves at the bottom. Sometimes they leave the tower and find themselves at the forefront. The light changes, Thilo Baumgertel’s video projections turn the structure into a station from which the train leaves (3D glasses at this moment will help to see that both the platform and the station are destroyed – the train seems to be going nowhere). And then all of a sudden, on the side of the white “shell” are projected the faces of the actors, disguised as silent movie stars (the operator with the camera walks right there, next to them). They silently declare their love and jealousy. The actor, resembling an operatic bass, falls on the opponent with his fists. In the next scene, the entire group leaves the screen, appearing on stage in the form of a funeral procession – a “killed” robot in yellow boots is carried in their arms.

Cabarets and sparkles, languid glances and raucous monologues, echoes of the Threepenny Opera’s zongs and electronic music – the performance seems like a kind of potpourri or even a journey through the history of German theater since the beginning of the 20th century. There is no usual narrative plot, but there is an emotional plot.

The climax is the transformation of the tower into a kind of huge beehive (music and light at this moment seem especially viscous, almost intoxicating). All this seems very beautiful, but too abstract. Therefore, in the finale, the director abruptly switches from abstraction to reality: the lights in the hall come on, something clicks in the orchestra pit, and the musicians go to the forefront. The last zong is performed huddled around the piano, like children in a singing lesson. Or how they used to sing in Christophe Marthaler’s performances full of nostalgic humor in the old days. Both seem to be the past today.

Hartmann’s performance itself has to go into the past. As already mentioned, he was among the best productions of the season. But quartermaster Ulrich Huon and his entire team, who have run the Deutsches Theater since 2009, are leaving the theatre. Someone – like Huon – retired, someone – leaves for other cities, promote other troupes. There’s nothing to be done – the Germans firmly believe in the rule: it’s better not to sit out than to sit out.