Not long before his death, Chistoph SCHLINGENSIEF was interviewed by Florian Malzacher. Here he is talking about his cancer, films, and redemption :
Florian Malzacher : Your work always builds on itself and develops further certain themes, motifs, and also aesthetic approaches. Mea Culpa has now become the third part of a trilogy about your illness with cancer.
I have certainly produced work that was deliberately and purposefully
The best things were those that developed unintentionally, where the
work, for example, came into being as a result of an invitation out of the
blue. That is even more clearly the case with the three pieces about
cancer. They came out of nowhere – out of the shock that came with this
illness. And, of course, it turned everything upside down. Suddenly all of
my 350 kilometre-per-hour plans—my life at the time was super fast—
were brought to a halt. But at the same time I didn’t see any reason to
brake because cancer has to do with death and with the limitations of
time that one has, but that wasn’t really clear to me at the time. It was
actually a massive disruption. Like something that wants to prevent you
from doing the work that is pulling at you. When I looked at the X-ray, I
suddenly became very hot, as if I had made a huge mistake. The first
thing I felt was a certain sense of guilt. In that moment, I probably
already sensed: This is really such an insane rupture it is almost
impossible to imagine. And then a flood of questions followed: What
happens now? Operation? Radiotherapy? Chemotherapy? Will I still exist
after the operation? And will I still have a voice afterwards? Because the
doctor thought that he might have to remove my vocal nerves. And then
you wake up and you can speak—that was really such a relief. Then my
appetite returned and I came to terms with the whole situation, so I was
optimistic. That is something that has remained with me. That is to say: I
always have moments when I think: This is great, things go on. And then
I fall to pieces again, you know: A complete nervous wreck, with
absolutely no idea about how to cope with it, and I just think: It’s all
over. And there is no way of driving a wedge between myself and it, or of
flinging open a window.
It was thus pure expediency to say: good, if you have fear, then talk
about fear. So the old automatism returned: If you have a problem, don’t
think it away, deal with it. Then use it, grab it, and channel your sorrow
into a comrade-in-arms. So I had to give form to it, create images, in
order to cope with it and at first I thought: We will make a film as soon
as I get out of hospital. A comedy about someone who has cancer and
who only meets crazy people. Then I thought: That would just be the old
sales and suppression strategy, i.e. how do I give form to it in a way that
people notice that I’m in control—and of course I’m not in control of it at
all! It’s the complete opposite. It is probably the hardest experience of
my life. In this case, I can stand neither above nor below it. This time I
have definitely landed somewhere else. I am in it.
I have certainly produced work that was deliberately and purposefully
developed to attract attention and nothing more. But sometimes that was
a mistake because doing that turned out to be completely uninteresting. The best things were those that developed unintentionally, where the
work, for example, came into being as a result of an invitation out of the
blue. That is even more clearly the case with the three pieces about
cancer. They came out of nowhere – out of the shock that came with this
illness. And, of course, it turned everything upside down. Suddenly all of
my 350 kilometre-per-hour plans—my life at the time was super fast—
were brought to a halt. But at the same time I didn’t see any reason to
brake because cancer has to do with death and with the limitations of
time that one has, but that wasn’t really clear to me at the time. It was
actually a massive disruption. Like something that wants to prevent you
from doing the work that is pulling at you. When I looked at the X-ray, I
suddenly became very hot, as if I had made a huge mistake. The first
thing I felt was a certain sense of guilt. In that moment, I probably
already sensed: This is really such an insane rupture it is almost
impossible to imagine. And then a flood of questions followed: What
happens now? Operation? Radiotherapy? Chemotherapy? Will I still exist
after the operation? And will I still have a voice afterwards? Because the
doctor thought that he might have to remove my vocal nerves. And then
you wake up and you can speak—that was really such a relief. Then my
appetite returned and I came to terms with the whole situation, so I was
optimistic. That is something that has remained with me. That is to say: I
always have moments when I think: This is great, things go on. And then
I fall to pieces again, you know: A complete nervous wreck, with
absolutely no idea about how to cope with it, and I just think: It’s all
over. And there is no way of driving a wedge between myself and it, or of
flinging open a window.
It was thus pure expediency to say: good, if you have fear, then talk
about fear. So the old automatism returned: If you have a problem, don’t
think it away, deal with it. Then use it, grab it, and channel your sorrow
into a comrade-in-arms. So I had to give form to it, create images, in
order to cope with it and at first I thought: We will make a film as soon
as I get out of hospital. A comedy about someone who has cancer and
who only meets crazy people. Then I thought: That would just be the old
sales and suppression strategy, i.e. how do I give form to it in a way that
people notice that I’m in control—and of course I’m not in control of it at
all! It’s the complete opposite. It is probably the hardest experience of
my life. In this case, I can stand neither above nor below it. This time I
have definitely landed somewhere else. I am in it.
Florian Malzacher : You made notes with the help of a dictaphone…
Yes, even in the first weeks, I recorded nearly every day what I
experienced there and what happened when the doctor or the palliative
nurse came etc. And in the evenings, I didn’t listen to it again. I did,
however, cry and talk into the device, when nobody was there. It wasn’t a
speech, or material, at that stage, for a book. It was simply a collection of
everything that was racing through my head at the time. And then I had
the idea of making a piece out of it—which I began to rehearse in the
flat… from an automated bed with a remote control from the hospital.
That was immediately a flop because, as a result of the Chemo, I wasn’t
able to continue. Aino, my girlfriend at the time and now my wife1, tried
to reconstruct the material that I had worked on laboriously in the flat, on
the rehearsal stage of the Maxim Gorki Theater. That resulted in the first
performance of Zwischenstand der Dinge ( The Current State of Things)
which took place in a very intimate atmosphere with no press allowed. I
made it while still in shock. Guests were invited solely via a text message
—no other announcement was made. We had sixty or seventy seats for
people including neighbours and friends, but also Bob Wilson and Volker
Spengler, Werner Schroeter, who has cancer himself, Martin Wuttke…
And because it was an evening without pressure and without a discussion
afterwards, it was an incredible source of power for me: We pulled it off.
Somehow it worked.
At that point I thought: Stick with this theme. And Zwischenstand was
further developed into Kirche der Angst ( A Church of Fear for the
Stranger in Me) for the Ruhr-Triennale, as a sort of requiem or ‘cancer
mass’. It was a huge success yet a different kind of success than
previously. Something really happened between the audience and us – it
was sincere and, to a certain extent, tragic. I also appeared in a short
scene at the end of the performance that utilized the liturgy of a Catholic
mass. But on the fifth or sixth evening, I thought: That’s enough. I don’t
want to make touring theatre, or something, for people with cancer. That
can’t be the case and it has no future. And then came the third part in the
Burgtheater Vienna and, with it, the risk that people would perhaps think:
Yeah, yeah, here he goes again about his illness… But then the situation
changed again. The metastasen suddenly disappeared as a result of a
tablet, something which, according to the doctors, wasn’t really possible
in that period of time. After four or five weeks, I had a CT scan in which
none could be found! How does that come about? The third part of the
trilogy is concerned with life going on. What do you do, when you step
back into reality, but you can’t perceive it as real because you previously
thought you were already dead?
When someone dies, it is the loneliest path there is. It is not about
hand-holding or whatever: My father smiled at the end. That was,
however, a smile that I couldn’t understand. Was it, perhaps, the smile of
someone face to face with a secret society that had taken him in? To see
that was a heavy burden for me because he also told us that, in two weeks,
he would be dead. And in two weeks he was dead. They are exceptional
circumstances and we lack the criteria for working through them.
Yes, even in the first weeks, I recorded nearly every day what I
experienced there and what happened when the doctor or the palliative
nurse came etc. And in the evenings, I didn’t listen to it again. I did,
however, cry and talk into the device, when nobody was there. It wasn’t a
speech, or material, at that stage, for a book. It was simply a collection of
everything that was racing through my head at the time. And then I had
the idea of making a piece out of it—which I began to rehearse in the
flat… from an automated bed with a remote control from the hospital.
That was immediately a flop because, as a result of the Chemo, I wasn’t
able to continue. Aino, my girlfriend at the time and now my wife1, tried
to reconstruct the material that I had worked on laboriously in the flat, on
the rehearsal stage of the Maxim Gorki Theater. That resulted in the first
performance of Zwischenstand der Dinge ( The Current State of Things)
which took place in a very intimate atmosphere with no press allowed. I
made it while still in shock. Guests were invited solely via a text message
—no other announcement was made. We had sixty or seventy seats for
people including neighbours and friends, but also Bob Wilson and Volker
Spengler, Werner Schroeter, who has cancer himself, Martin Wuttke…
And because it was an evening without pressure and without a discussion
afterwards, it was an incredible source of power for me: We pulled it off.
Somehow it worked.
At that point I thought: Stick with this theme. And Zwischenstand was
further developed into Kirche der Angst ( A Church of Fear for the
Stranger in Me) for the Ruhr-Triennale, as a sort of requiem or ‘cancer
mass’. It was a huge success yet a different kind of success than
previously. Something really happened between the audience and us – it
was sincere and, to a certain extent, tragic. I also appeared in a short
scene at the end of the performance that utilized the liturgy of a Catholic
mass. But on the fifth or sixth evening, I thought: That’s enough. I don’t
want to make touring theatre, or something, for people with cancer. That
can’t be the case and it has no future. And then came the third part in the
Burgtheater Vienna and, with it, the risk that people would perhaps think:
Yeah, yeah, here he goes again about his illness… But then the situation
changed again. The metastasen suddenly disappeared as a result of a
tablet, something which, according to the doctors, wasn’t really possible
in that period of time. After four or five weeks, I had a CT scan in which
none could be found! How does that come about? The third part of the
trilogy is concerned with life going on. What do you do, when you step
back into reality, but you can’t perceive it as real because you previously
thought you were already dead?
When someone dies, it is the loneliest path there is. It is not about
hand-holding or whatever: My father smiled at the end. That was,
however, a smile that I couldn’t understand. Was it, perhaps, the smile of
someone face to face with a secret society that had taken him in? To see
that was a heavy burden for me because he also told us that, in two weeks,
he would be dead. And in two weeks he was dead. They are exceptional
circumstances and we lack the criteria for working through them.
Florian Malzacher : Can one actually grasp something like that in a production?
It can only function via music, and perhaps also via beliefs, i.e.
individual beliefs. One couldn’t go further with some sort of objective
realism. Only through that which is ritualistic, almost sacred can one
produce something that is befitting and moving. And the third part Mea
Culpa was perhaps the most difficult: an uncertain resurrection, a
celebration of life in the face of the inevitability of death.
In the middle of the stage, almost invisibly, I presided over the church,
that is, the Kirche der Angst. Within it the ritual continues and someone
there celebrates a requiem while outside are the treatment rooms and life
follows its normal course… It is once again an argument
[ Auseinandersetzung] with the realization that redemption is actually a
concept that is completely misunderstood, and which one connects with
something great and sublime. But redemption is the most individualistic,
small, and awful step that there is. Because he who is done for, who seeks
only to be redeemed gives himself over to total loneliness and surrenders
everything that makes him who he is. That he is then told that everything
will be fine and that he can cope—this is not really what is on his mind…
If one has been through such a situation and come through it, one has
more interest in people than before. One sees them differently. I look at
them as if I were already standing a step outside of them. One looks at
them perhaps not more exactly, not analytically, but longer. Humans and
human life gain a different value. Everything is no longer taken for
granted.
Sometimes of course, I slip into old mechanisms in my work, but they
don’t really come through. It doesn’t become a show, because I don’t
want that anymore. The distance is greater.
Florian Malzacher : Previously you were always on stage and committed to being involved. It was precisely this lack of distance that defined your work. From the earliest theatre productions on, you had to be able to join in, because otherwise you couldn’t respond to the reactions of the public and the actors’ routines. And now suddenly this composure?
Yes. I already had that with Kirche der Angst, when I simply pull back
and my team reconstructs the work. And then I say, let’s put that in for
now, and I lean back and look at it. Previously I didn’t permit such a
situation. I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want anything finished which is
why I hesitated until the premiere. I was downright afraid that it would be
finished. Now I mould the ‘sculpture’ more in my mind, and no longer
believe that I have to work on it with an axe, hammer and a chisel. Now I
can turn off more quickly. I am more interested in the total composition,
which means that I need to be able to observe everything. And I also
don’t fiddle around with the actors’ bodies as I used to and flip out in
front of their faces, so that they no longer know how they should act. In
the past, I always had muscular pain in the evening, because I actually
wanted to play all of the roles. And now I just write the texts and
concentrate more on looking. That is my job.
...
Florian Malzacher : So the step into the specifically political and the step into the performative went hand in hand?
I can’t really explain how that happened. However it has to do with the
fact that I did not do it out of resolve. It simply turned out that way. Also,
the motivation to found a political party arose only because I simply
thought: that’s quite enough of Kohl now. How does one found a political
party? And above all, the slogan ‘Vote for yourself’—I found that
interesting! Beuys had previously come up with the slogan, but I didn’t
know that…Perhaps I was always already political but just from an
aesthetic point of view. And what I am doing now is perhaps even more
political because it assumes that the individual can’t deal with himself.
Florian Malzacher : The move out of film and into the performative—can you describe why film was no longer sufficient? What made you seek out the live event and direct contact with the audience?
It was already the case for me while making films as a youngster:
When I got a helicopter to fly up and down in front of a bank with the
camera trained on it and actors from the Oberhausen City Theatre running
around under it—and we were sixteen or seventeen years old—it was
naturally a sensation for the place! The moment was priceless; one was
suddenly a film director! I think that for me the film work was about the
adventure of shooting. The greatest thing—including the crises and so on
—was that one was really trembling and shaking. It nearly made you an
addict, the shot of adrenalin you got when there was a bit of fluff on the
film or when material was returned that was out of focus or developed
incorrectly.
It was already the case for me while making films as a youngster:
When I got a helicopter to fly up and down in front of a bank with the
camera trained on it and actors from the Oberhausen City Theatre running
around under it—and we were sixteen or seventeen years old—it was
naturally a sensation for the place! The moment was priceless; one was
suddenly a film director! I think that for me the film work was about the
adventure of shooting. The greatest thing—including the crises and so on
—was that one was really trembling and shaking. It nearly made you an
addict, the shot of adrenalin you got when there was a bit of fluff on the
film or when material was returned that was out of focus or developed
incorrectly.
Florian Malzacher : Nonetheless you stopped making films for a while.
The free form of working that I had envisioned simply didn’t work out.
I thought that the funding bodies would gradually realize that I was
serious and would finance my projects, but it became more and more
difficult. Then – at some point – they said yes, they would give me
money again, but I would have to promise not to make any more films.
That was meant humorously, the way everything is always supposed to be
funny. But it hit me rather hard. So, nothing worked anymore, although
the Terror film was coproduced, it wasn’t shown on television. Not even
now! So I sort of gave up and worked on films for schools.
The free form of working that I had envisioned simply didn’t work out.
I thought that the funding bodies would gradually realize that I was
serious and would finance my projects, but it became more and more
difficult. Then – at some point – they said yes, they would give me
money again, but I would have to promise not to make any more films.
That was meant humorously, the way everything is always supposed to be
funny. But it hit me rather hard. So, nothing worked anymore, although
the Terror film was coproduced, it wasn’t shown on television. Not even
now! So I sort of gave up and worked on films for schools.
Florian Malzacher : So you stopped making films more for financial reasons and not out of the desire for another medium. Rather a less-than-ideal solution?
Yes, after I shot Terror 2000 in 1993, the Volksbühne called. Terror
2000 was a very important film for me. It also resulted in punch-ups in
the cinema. The Berlinale turned it down and so people showed the film
in rented cinemas. My films were considered scandalous anyway—and I
liked playing along with it. It was fun for me because I found the films to
be honest—they really portrayed how Germany was at the time. Frank
Castorf, head director of the Volksbühne, and dramaturge Matthias
Lilienthal liked the film, and Lilienthal phoned and asked if I would like
to come. I didn’t know the Volksbühne and so I called friends who said:
‘you have to go, that is the theatre’ and ‘wow, crazy, insane’. So I went
there and saw Clockwork Orange4 where Herbert Fritsch was hanging on
a plank that rose up higher and higher and he hung on—three metres, four metres
and, at some point, I left the room because I thought: ‘I can’t
watch that anymore’. The guy is half mad and I am absolutely not
interested in seeing whether he falls down. And then Lilienthal caught me
in the stairwell and asked me where I was going, and I said to him quite
openly that that wasn’t for me. But then he started yacking away…
anyway I said to him I must have my team with me. At the time, they did
all that stuff. We were all living in a huge flat in Charlottenburg. There
were, I think, fifteen of us and a tiny toilet. Actually it was pretty bad but
it was, of course, a great space to try things out in. And the production
100 Years CDU came out…and in fact only Marianne Hoppe thought it
was great. She thought it was like theatre in the twenties, a revue. The
others ripped it to shreds and I was actually disappointed as well, but
Lilienthal wanted me to continue.
Florian Malzacher : Making theatre is always for the moment. Was it sometimes too ephemeral for you?
I always have the feeling that film people know that films can also be
seen later. One can get hold of them in ten or in fifty years. A film critic
knows that when he writes something now, he has to stand by it or admit
that his opinion changed over the course of time. Film people have a
different rhythm in consideration to, and in defence of, their work. And
theatre people know; ah well, fine. If it’s crap today, then tomorrow
there’ll be Hamlet, and then that and then that…that’s the difference. In
theatre I grasped more and more that it only made sense if I could take
something away with me, if I developed myself. I certainly believe, and
one can see it in my work more and more, that I am a repeat offender.
I always have the feeling that film people know that films can also be
seen later. One can get hold of them in ten or in fifty years. A film critic
knows that when he writes something now, he has to stand by it or admit
that his opinion changed over the course of time. Film people have a
different rhythm in consideration to, and in defence of, their work. And
theatre people know; ah well, fine. If it’s crap today, then tomorrow
there’ll be Hamlet, and then that and then that…that’s the difference. In
theatre I grasped more and more that it only made sense if I could take
something away with me, if I developed myself. I certainly believe, and
one can see it in my work more and more, that I am a repeat offender.
Florian Malzacher : During that period, you deliberately expanded your stage activities to include the press. Sometimes one had the impression that you were playing with the media more than they were playing with you.
That appeared to be the case at the time, above all in relation to the
party Chance 2000. There I obviously pulled out all the stops that I could
think of. We would laugh ourselves silly at night about the reports that
came out and stuff that was printed. But in other respects, I am still
surprised at how some things were blown up out of nothing. Sometimes I
hadn’t done anything at all except that destiny had perhaps sorted the
cards that way. For example, some years ago, Der Spiegel wrote an article
saying how dilapidated, washed up, and lacking in ideas I was. That came
out the week before I did the container in Vienna [ Please Love Austria].
And afterwards, everybody wanted to hug me; people turned up at the
airport and wanted autographs. And today, in regard to my illness, one
sees people who celebrate me because they can suddenly find a way to
understand my work and recognize something in it…like honesty and so
on—but I was always honest. They are only noticing it now. Only when
one has had a syringe in the arm or has gone through three withdrawal
treatments is one considered to be a decent person. In any case they,
themselves, are the purest. And now the Bild Zeitung [tabloid newspaper]
wants to do home stories and talkshows are calling me up…and
everything I say is blown up and turned into a political issue, even when
I’m just being silly. I think to myself: What a shame, I can no longer say
nor do something simply normal. And then I just shut up and don’t do
anything. My illness gives me the advantage of saying: I don’t want to
talk to you, or, I am tired. That is also different from before.
But in contrast, critics or journalists feel themselves to be part of the
production—as if there were no outside perspective from which to report
about the work… That is a great effect because the boundaries between
art and non-art, between production and reception are fluid. I like the
notion that everyone is contributing to my artwork, including the critics
and journalists and also the audience, so that it assumes its own
independent existence.
That appeared to be the case at the time, above all in relation to the
party Chance 2000. There I obviously pulled out all the stops that I could
think of. We would laugh ourselves silly at night about the reports that
came out and stuff that was printed. But in other respects, I am still
surprised at how some things were blown up out of nothing. Sometimes I
hadn’t done anything at all except that destiny had perhaps sorted the
cards that way. For example, some years ago, Der Spiegel wrote an article
saying how dilapidated, washed up, and lacking in ideas I was. That came
out the week before I did the container in Vienna [ Please Love Austria].
And afterwards, everybody wanted to hug me; people turned up at the
airport and wanted autographs. And today, in regard to my illness, one
sees people who celebrate me because they can suddenly find a way to
understand my work and recognize something in it…like honesty and so
on—but I was always honest. They are only noticing it now. Only when
one has had a syringe in the arm or has gone through three withdrawal
treatments is one considered to be a decent person. In any case they,
themselves, are the purest. And now the Bild Zeitung [tabloid newspaper]
wants to do home stories and talkshows are calling me up…and
everything I say is blown up and turned into a political issue, even when
I’m just being silly. I think to myself: What a shame, I can no longer say
nor do something simply normal. And then I just shut up and don’t do
anything. My illness gives me the advantage of saying: I don’t want to
talk to you, or, I am tired. That is also different from before.
But in contrast, critics or journalists feel themselves to be part of the
production—as if there were no outside perspective from which to report
about the work… That is a great effect because the boundaries between
art and non-art, between production and reception are fluid. I like the
notion that everyone is contributing to my artwork, including the critics
and journalists and also the audience, so that it assumes its own
independent existence.
Florian Malzacher : When your work is discussed, mention is soon made of the way in which boundaries between art and life are blurred. When you were directing in Bayreuth, an analogy was made—by the media, but also by you yourself —between Parsifal and Schlingensief. When you became ill, that was taken to a new level. It actually seemed as if the narrative were scripting your life and not the other way around, as if your life were retrospectively heading towards this moment, were a novel.
I often thought in terms of film when I was young—a walk with my
parents through the forest in Duisburg existed only insofar as I
considered possible plots and characters. Then, things partially began to
take on a life of their own and something would occur that I had
previously seen in a dream or fantasy, but only because the possibility
already existed anyway. That is not artificial—and it is simply logical
that such things happen. But this Bayreuth story is more difficult—also
for me personally—to comprehend. I had dreamt of the phone call asking
me to direct. Then it actually happened. I thought that it was somebody
playing ‘Candid Camera’. And now with the illness, I sometimes think
that perhaps I instigated it somehow. That I was really thinking of Heiner
Müller’s fate, or said at some stage: ‘After this it’s all over, then I will
get cancer’5. But this illness is not just my concern. Rather, it is also
related to society and not only because we are all breathing in the same
toxins, but also because we don’t know what we have to defend anymore.
Our immune system is—and here I am not being esoteric—one body and
in itself has to be very finely calibrated. The human being must be
considered in its entirety. And one forgets that when he allows himself to
be constantly distracted and has to permanently enact a role as if he were
somebody that he is in fact not, then, he cannot protect who he really is.
He just lets it all go and loses himself—and that paves the way for such
low immunity problems. I fear that that is what I practised myself: All
doors wide open and we are producing the greatest things the world has
ever seen! And, to top it off, the Parsifal material; I wasn’t the right
person for it until I got myself so worked up about it. And out of the
wound of Amfortas came my illness. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe that
itself is the old megalomania, if I think that even the illness is my fault.
Florian Malzacher : Alongside actors, you have always included lay people in your work. How did that come about—did you want more ‘reality’ on stage? Or did their disruptive presence interest you, as counterparts to the more routine actors?
The so-called lay people play themselves rather than roles on stage. It
is always exciting to watch them and they are also a challenge for the so-
called profis. There are professional actors who can’t stand being
together with lay people on stage. It plunges them deep into self-doubt…
Florian Malzacher : For a long time now Africa has also been a recurring motif in your work. Is that an exotic place of longing or is it somewhere that really exists, somewhere that you really found on your travels?
I often thought in terms of film when I was young—a walk with my
parents through the forest in Duisburg existed only insofar as I
considered possible plots and characters. Then, things partially began to
take on a life of their own and something would occur that I had
previously seen in a dream or fantasy, but only because the possibility
already existed anyway. That is not artificial—and it is simply logical
that such things happen. But this Bayreuth story is more difficult—also
for me personally—to comprehend. I had dreamt of the phone call asking
me to direct. Then it actually happened. I thought that it was somebody
playing ‘Candid Camera’. And now with the illness, I sometimes think
that perhaps I instigated it somehow. That I was really thinking of Heiner
Müller’s fate, or said at some stage: ‘After this it’s all over, then I will
get cancer’5. But this illness is not just my concern. Rather, it is also
related to society and not only because we are all breathing in the same
toxins, but also because we don’t know what we have to defend anymore.
Our immune system is—and here I am not being esoteric—one body and
in itself has to be very finely calibrated. The human being must be
considered in its entirety. And one forgets that when he allows himself to
be constantly distracted and has to permanently enact a role as if he were
somebody that he is in fact not, then, he cannot protect who he really is.
He just lets it all go and loses himself—and that paves the way for such
low immunity problems. I fear that that is what I practised myself: All
doors wide open and we are producing the greatest things the world has
ever seen! And, to top it off, the Parsifal material; I wasn’t the right
person for it until I got myself so worked up about it. And out of the
wound of Amfortas came my illness. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe that
itself is the old megalomania, if I think that even the illness is my fault.
Florian Malzacher : Alongside actors, you have always included lay people in your work. How did that come about—did you want more ‘reality’ on stage? Or did their disruptive presence interest you, as counterparts to the more routine actors?
The so-called lay people play themselves rather than roles on stage. It
is always exciting to watch them and they are also a challenge for the so-
called profis. There are professional actors who can’t stand being
together with lay people on stage. It plunges them deep into self-doubt…
Florian Malzacher : For a long time now Africa has also been a recurring motif in your work. Is that an exotic place of longing or is it somewhere that really exists, somewhere that you really found on your travels?
For a long time now I have felt deeply connected to Africa. I have shot
films in different African countries and I frequently feel more at home
there than I do in familiar Europe. The idea for an opera house with a
school and a church and a hospital ward is moving closer to being
realized in Burkina Faso. The money and the support are there. I am
obsessed with this anti-colonial cultural exchange of life forms. But that
is a big topic and we will have to speak about it another time …
films in different African countries and I frequently feel more at home
there than I do in familiar Europe. The idea for an opera house with a
school and a church and a hospital ward is moving closer to being
realized in Burkina Faso. The money and the support are there. I am
obsessed with this anti-colonial cultural exchange of life forms. But that
is a big topic and we will have to speak about it another time …
Translated by Anna Teresa Scheer and Tara Forrest
Endnotes
1. Translators’ Notes: Schlingensief and Aino Labarenz were married
in August 2009.
2. Dietrich Kuhlbrodt was a lawyer at the Hamburg District Court for
the persecution of crimes under National Socialism. In addition to
working as a film and theatre critic, he has also performed in many
of Schlingensief’s films and stage productions.
3. Schlingensief is referring here to his 1990 film The German
Chainsaw Massacre: The First Hour of Reunification.
4. Clockwork Orange (1993) based on the novel by Anthony Burgess
(1962), was directed by Frank Castorf and featured a scene in which
actor Herbert Fritsch (known for his risk-taking) was suspended on a
plank that was raised 5 metres above the stage with no safety net or
railings to grasp.
5. Dramatist and director Heiner Müller directed Wagner’s Tristan and
Isolde (1995) at Bayreuth and subsequently died of cancer in the
same year.
6. Here Schlingensief is referring to the unconventional film Menu
Total, Meat Your Parents (1986), which he made with German
comedian Helge Schneider in the main role as a crazed character who
kills his parents.
7. Mensch, Mami, wir dreh’n ’nen Film (1977) was a humorous short
film made by Schlingensief.
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| Christoph Schlingensief: Art Without Borders, 2010 Edited by Tara Forrest and Anna Teresa Scheer |
