The road to paradise

By Nehad Selaiha

No confusing art and religion but to each his own Faust. There are puppets -- Pinocchio -- and the ultimate puppet master, Mephisto

Except on rare occasions, my response to statements of this kind which seem to confuse art and religion and make of the artist something of a saviour, a spiritual leader, or a holy saint, is a mixture of irritation and deep suspicion. Unfortunately, they have become quite fashionable and the trend was probably started, quite innocently, by the great Austrian director Max Reinhardt who sought a model for theatre in the Catholic Church. Defending his model he argued: "The Catholic Church, which aims at the most spiritual, the most supernatural, does so by means which appeal directly to our senses.... it surrounds us with the mystical dimness of its cathedrals; it charms our eye... it fills our ear... it stupefies us by the odour of its incense. And in such an atmosphere of sensuousness, the highest and the most holy reveals itself to us. We reveal ourselves and we find the way to our innermost being, the way to concentration, to exaltation, to spiritualisation."

I have no quarrel with the bit about sensuousness: theatre is perhaps one of the most intensely sensuous experiences you can come across (and for more reasons than Reinhardt cares to mention); but if one is looking for a genuine religious experience that is led up out of the real, physical world, or wants to be spiritually uplifted, I do not think theatre is the place one should go. What about Ciulli and his talk of making theatre to create paradise? It faintly echoes Reinhardt, but the echo is deceptive. If you ask Ciulli the question Reinhardt put to himself -- "How to make a play live in our time?" -- you will find that he has no ready models or formulas and you will hear no mention of spiritualisation. He will lead you by the hand to a quiet corner of his busy office, offer you vodka, coffee, schnapps and cigars, and remain silent for some moments. Puffing away at his cigar (he is never seen without one, and some suspect they sprout naturally out of his hand), he looks ageless and disturbingly enigmatic -- at once a venerable sage and an impish satyr. When he is ready, he will tell you in a gentle, confidential tone that theatre is all about relating -- relating to the self, to the other, to one's society and culture, as well as to other societies and cultures, to history, the present and the future. A play lives to the extent that it manages to relate to any or as many of these; but relating is never easy or final. It is a continuous task that involves a partial loss in crossing over to the other and bridging the gaps. The gaps may be political, existential, psychological, or religious but in all cases the task requires great courage, tolerance and honesty -- and also faith and a willingness to surrender and integrate.

This explains a lot of things: the multicultural, religious and ethnic composition of the Theater an der Ruhr company, the obvious political character of its productions, its active championing of the rights of minorities and the oppressed, and its guiding policy of cultural interaction. It also clarifies what Ciulli means when he uses the word "paradise". The paradise he and his company long and hope to create in and through the theatre is not a transcendental concept but a profoundly political one.

In pursuing his political paradise, Ciulli relinquished the security of home and country and turned his back on philosophy. With a doctorate in philosophy in his pocket, he left the safe cloisters of academia (in 1960) to pitch a tent outside Milano, his home city, and launch a roving, mobile theatre which he significantly christened Il Globo. For two years he toured the Italian countryside with his company, shunning the big cities with their bourgeois audiences and relating to the grass roots. The next step was moving to another country and relating to a different culture. In Germany he was always on the move, working in various theatres and many cities before he finally established his own permanent ensemble in 1980 and found a home for it in tiny Mulheim. But the company stays at home only part of the year, to perform and host guest companies; the rest of the year it spends on the road, travelling, performing, and relating to other artists and cultures.

For 18 years, this brave contingent of 12 actors, led by Ciulli, with the company's dramaturg, Helmut Schafer, and its scenographer, Gralf-Edzard Habben, worked hard to establish theatre as, and at, the leading edge of political consciousness and make it function as an agent for the continuous assimilation, accommodation and integration of different cultures. This spirit has informed the production process at every stage and in every aspect. The method of work adopted by the company is most unorthodox: they do not start with a text but with the issue or subject they most relate to at the time, both personally and politically. Violence, racial conflict and discrimination, economic exploitation, unemployment and education are examples. The subject decides which text is chosen; but the text is not treated as a complete, final, or closed statement but, rather, as an open space where everyone can exercise their creativity. The play may be Brecht's Drums in the Night, Gorky's The Lower Depths, Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters, or what you will; it does not make a difference. The same rule applies to them all: no text is sacred. And no classic goes into the Theater an der Ruhr and comes out whole, if it comes out at all. It is used as a starting point, a launching pad, and material for improvisation in the process of building the performance script. In this process, the actors are as actively involved and creative as the director, the scenographer and the dramaturg. They bring their own memories, experiences, loyalties and anxieties into the text until it explodes under the pressure.

The performance script that this collaborative process of creative exploration and intense interaction with present day reality and the chosen text yields is an intricate, fascinating mosaic in which fragments of the text crisscross with personal and collective memories, images of the present, faint traces and echoes of other texts, nightmarish fantasies, and elements from popular culture, folklore and religion. One may not approve of this way of making use of the classics, or any dramatic text (and many do not, calling it hacking, mauling and mangling the text), but it is integral to the work and philosophy of the Theater an der Ruhr, and it usually produces provocative and thrilling results.

The company's latest production, Pinocchio Faust, which visited Cairo last week and was performed twice at Al-Salam Theatre, is a case in point. Here, Carlo Collodi's popular book, Pinocchio (1882), which has become a classic, is superimposed upon the old popular legend that built up around the German wandering conjurer, Faust, in the 16th century, the many street puppet shows it inspired in Italy afterwards (of which Goethe actually saw one during a trip to Italy), and Goethe's own Faust. The dialogue between the sources produces stunning correspondences and shattering insights and ironies. As the characters and incidents culled from the various sources merge, paradoxes pile up: Geppetto, who sits in the first scene by his fireplace carving the wooden doll that would become Pinocchio, becomes Mephisto inhabiting his hell, Pinocchio's father in other scenes, and "the Father" on some occasions. The connection between Pinocchio and Faust is established through Geppetto-Mephisto in the puppet show scene in which Pinocchio sits on stage, in the dark, after trading his school books for a theatre ticket, watching the prologue to Goethe's Faust I ("The Prologue in Heaven" in which Mephisto obtains permission from the Lord to ruin the soul of Faust) performed by puppets manipulated from high up by Geppetto-Mephisto-the-Father. When the doll playing the Lord jumps down to where Pinocchio sits and Pinocchio is threatened to be thrown into the fireplace as a punishment for his truancy and misbehaviour, the identification between him and Faust is complete. The story of Pinocchio's creation, childhood and education becomes the story of Faust and, perhaps, of all of us.

In the second part we see what all this education and drilling we have seen in the first part has done to Pinocchio-Faust. The stage is stripped completely bare, except for the fireplace at one side and a computer at the back. Pinocchio (played by a different actor) declaims from a wheelchair Faust's soliloquy which opens Goethe's play. The march of progress and enlightenment has yielded nothing but disillusionment and despair. Geppetto-Mephisto comes to his aid and, disguised as a gaudy whore, seals the contract with a vampirish kiss. Pinocchio-Faust has liberated himself from his education, his heritage and cultural past and the liberation takes the form of literally murdering his childhood and former self in the figure of the pupil (played by the actress who played Pinocchio in the first part) who comes for a lesson.

Pinocchio-Faust is the first part of a trilogy which traces the progress of Faust from childhood, through manhood, to old age and death, and with it the march of European civilisation. It is also part of a larger and more ambitious project dreamt up by Ciulli. In every culture there is a Faust, he thought; he may bear another name and start from different premises but he is bound to have raised the same questions that tortured Goethe's Faust and to have had the same passions and longings. Why not discover all the unknown Fausts, bring them together, compare them and establish a dialogue between cultures and religions? And what better route can one follow on such an expedition than the Silk Road, that ancient trade route that once linked China with the West and carried goods and ideas between the civilisations it passed through? And so the Silk Road theatrical project was born. The Theater an der Ruhr started with its own version of Faust which, with the help of the Goethe Institute, will visit every country that was once on the Silk Road. It has already visited Turkey and its visit to Egypt is part of the project. In turn, every country involved in the project will prepare its own Faust (partially funded from the project's budget) that will be hosted by The Theater an der Ruhr. In Egypt, Intisar Abdel-Fattah (who won the award for best production in the last CIFET) has already prepared his contribution, Drums for Faust, which the whole Theater an der Ruhr company watched last Monday.

Ciulli's dream is slowly coming true. As he travels eastward, down the Silk Road, he will also be travelling into the past, down history, and voyaging through alien cultures, like an explorer in search of his paradise.