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The director of the Berliner Volksbühne was one of the great playwrights and directors of the German-speaking theater scene. His productions were ad hoc events that emerged in exchange with the performers and will never be repeatable. An obituary.
René Pollesch is associated with numerous invigorating theatrical moments. For me it’s also a very personal one: it was a tiring day at work. The head hurt. In the evening there was theater, I asked myself why I had chosen this profession and what kind of profession it actually was.
On the death of René Pollesch
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He knew the Berliner Volksbühne like hardly anyone else when he took over the management of the house: now artistic director René Pollesch has died at the age of 61.
The Berliner Volksbühne announced that his death on Monday was completely sudden and unexpected. Volksbühne spokeswoman Lena Fuchs initially did not provide any information about the exact circumstances of death. “We are all shocked,” she told the German Press Agency.
Then an hour and a half of pollesch – and I came out feeling like I had just been born. Invigorated, inspired, the headache gone. It was his secret how he always managed it. Speech loop after speech loop, you couldn’t always follow it into all the twists and turns of the discourse. And left the theater strengthened and inspired.
Pollesch was indispensable
There was a lot of quick talking on Pollesch’s theater evenings – the past tense hurts when writing. Pollesch was an integral part of German-speaking theater. Now he’s gone. And with him his pieces:
Legend: Director René Pollesch (right) and Martin Wuttke during the photo rehearsal for the theater “Calvinismus Klein” in December 2009 at the Schauspielhaus Pfauen in Zurich. KEYSTONE / Ennio Leanza
Pollesch’s theater evenings were ad hoc events, created in exchange with the performers, not re-enactable and subject to a ban on re-enactments. They were pieces of speech, an associative brainstorming session, whereby the word “storm” is to be taken literally: a thunderstorm of speeches, a flash of ideas and a thunder of discourse.
Pollesch’s texts worked through their content quickly and pointedly, in an inimitable mixture of current basis and theoretical superstructure. They always represented an excessive demand, for the performers and the audience. It was the most enjoyable overwhelm.
Pollesch took a closer look at the theater
René Pollesch always had a clear view of diffuse issues. There was no shortage of these. The world delivered it to him free of charge. The capitalization of everyday life, the marketing of everyone and everything, including emotional life, for example. “You just have to be yourself,” says every twelve-year-old today.
Legend: René Pollesch in 2007 during rehearsals in the Prater of the Volksbühne at Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz Berlin. IMAGO / DRAMA-Berlin.de
Pollesch’s lightning machine could be ignited by something like this: What defines me? What does objectivity mean? If you shouldn’t judge people by their appearance, what should you judge? Such questions were typical Pollesch questions. They also referred to the theater itself. Can the play be taken seriously? From apparent existence?
He also took a close look at theater acting, under the theory lens and the joke lens, at theater acting and spectator acting. What do artist myths mean in the age of their technical reproducibility? He liked to stage something like this as a big show, with aesthetic borrowings from the boulevard and Broadway, with verve and pop and intellectual verve.
Nothing is OK
“Throw away your ego!” One of his plays was called “Calvinism Klein” and another, in Protestant Zurich, of course, “I look you in the eyes, social context!” a third. You just have to let the title melt in your mouth. Just a few days ago, his last work premiered at the Berlin Volksbühne, where René Pollesch has been artistic director since 2021: “yes, nothing is ok”.
Nothing is okay. It sounds like a bitter conclusion today. Playing theater is worth it, even if society doesn’t want to change. René Pollesch once emphasized this in a Reflexe program. I miss him so much.
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Radio SRF Culture, Culture News, February 27, 2024, 7:00 a.m.