Alexander Karschnia – Nicola Nord&Co. Interview by Irene Moundraki from the National Theatre of Athens for the Magazine “Highlights” in 2005

You two have been working together as an ensemble. How does this function?

Alex: We are co-founders of an artists’ network called andcompany&Co. We have both studied theatre-, film- and media-studies at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main. I discovered practice out of theoretical curiosity; Nicola discovered theory after having been involved in practice for a long time.

Nicola: I made the conscious decision against acting schools and joined the university which also became my artistic education through different mentors, but mainly the teaching of Prof. Hans-Thies Lehmann who opened a whole new world for us beyond traditional theatre, who introduced us to an ‘other Brecht’, an un-orthodox reading and understanding of his theatre and how it is still unconsciously influencing new theatre makers, even performance art today.

• How is your experience in DasArts, this very pioneer institute? How do you work there?

Nicola: DasArts is a very unique place in the landscape of theatre and dance education. It is rather difficult to describe DasArts, and that already tells a lot about it, because it is always changing. Every artist I met who has been to DasArts, experienced a different DasArts, because it is truly a mobile art school, movable in its own methods and themes. As a post-graduate school for makers (theatre, dance, visual art and others) they constantly try to re-invent themselves in order to keep a dynamic educational model. They redefine their program twice a year, having so called ‘group-blocks’ with different mentors and themes from different artistic fields, during which 12-14 students meet to engage in a process of discovery, exchange and challenge. I participated in three of those blocks; in the second I wrote part of the script of our new piece: europe an alien and was able to invite andcompany&Co. to work on it. I just finished my third block with an Individual Trajectory, an intense study and research period, which ended in the solo-work: little red (room). I will finish DasArts in 2006 with my final project. DasArts is a place where connections are made – between theatre and society and theory and practice, and is therefore an ideal place for me as theatre-maker dealing with those issues, as well as for our group andcompany&Co. that also benefits from the great network, which DasArts has built over the years. The goal of DasArts is to constantly expand the vision what theatre might be, they keep on pushing boundaries without being afraid of taking risks, and are therefore a great and inspiring think- and do-tank in my work.

• What do you think about theatrical education?

Nicola: There is nothing like DasArts in Germany, if you want to make theatre, there are still not much more choices than to apply at a director’s school or at an actor’s school. Most of those schools are state-schools, connected to state-theatres, and even if the education might be technically excellent, the carrier of those who make it is preprogrammed: You end up in an ensemble of a state-theatre, if you are lucky you get to play bigger parts and this allows you at least some possibilities. We chose a different way, because we want to choose who we work with. I think that workshops, scenic projects or summer-academies are a great way to get ahead and to try out new forms. The workshop I gave last year for theatre students in Frankfurt, where we worked with the original sound material of the Frankfurter Auschwitz-Trial, had a very strong impact on my work in general. I believe that those intense periods of dealing with each other can have a deeper effect on someone, than years of common art-education. Brecht said that talent meant interest – and getting people interested, that is what I like to do when I give a workshop.

• What are the purposes of your company?

Nicola: We believe in collaboration as the very essence of theatre and also that theatre will cease to exist if it’s not searching for new collaborators from other fields (fine arts, photography, videomaking, etc.) But instead of a Wagnerian “Gesamtkunstwerk” we’re looking for a loose artistic association based on the idea of networking and the art of conspiracy. We work preferably with artists from different artistic fields, the other two co-founders of our company, Sascha Sulimma and I. Helen Jilavu, are a musician and a photographer. In our research period all of us work in our own fields and inspire the process, but at the end we do theatre together, putting everybody on
stage. The most important is to make all participants visible, even the technicians. For every production we invite new artists, for europe an alien there will be the graphic designer Louise Kolff and the Greek dramaturge Alexandros Efklidis, for our last production: for urbanites – nach den großen Städten, we invited a German filmmaker, an inventor of game shows and a theoretician, writing a dissertation about computer games. But the “&Co.” does not only include other artists, but also the members of the audience whose co-presence is the specific quality of theatre, who cofabulate (Brecht) and also co-produce a theatrical performance (Heiner Müller).

Alex: We want to undermine the distinction between actor and spectator and encourage the “spectator” to come out of the closet. For us the “stage” can be anywhere, a street, a club, an empty house or ruins of industrial culture, it doesn’t matter, what matters is that there is a place in society that is marked by quotation marks: “theatre”. We shouldn’t forget that in ancient Greece and in Elizabethan England plays were performed during daytime: the Erynnians as well as Hamlet’s ghost appeared in bright sun-light! (End of quote)

Nicola: That’s why we prefer theater without a roof.

• You have chosen to work a lot on political issues (p.e. refugees, exiles). Why do you choose them?

Alex: The crisis of liberal democracies because of mass-media has not become less since the early 1920’s, the triumph of the radio, it has become worse. The ‘theatricality of politics’ is a problem that is not to be solved by a new form of ‘authenticity’ or ‘purity’ of the political realm, but by staging a critique on the stage of theater, of using ‘theatricality against theatricality’: spy vs. spy.

Nicola: But that doesn’t mean, that our theatre is political, because of the issues we choose, rather we want to make theatre in a political way. Collaboration is rule nr. 1 for this project, nr. 2 is the way we deal with issues, for example the question of exile and refuge: We don’t use them as topics that are put on stage, but rather as challenges that question the whole idea of “stage”, “theatre” etc. Like Brecht said in 1936: “The modern audience member comes into the theatre as a customer but also like a refugee.” Rather than actors talking about refugees we want to work with this situation of theatre as refuge and actors as exiles, exiled on stage.

• Do you believe that theatre can have a serious part on facing and dealing with these problems?

Alex: Only very indirect, today theatres can probably only help facing problems by refusing to play their part, their role of ‘enlightened entertainment’, of cultural education and identity building. The idea of we-are-we has to be challenged, to fight with the invisible fourth wall that separates the stage from the audience is also a fight against the territorial border that keeps refugees outside – and sometimes citizens inside. And it is a never-ending fight, which is the first lesson, the most important one. We think that the question of borders and transgressions is a, maybe the central topic of today and we should start to face the fact that we are dealing with very new borders that are very flexible and very rigid at the same time.

• What do you believe that the theatre of today is? Do you think that you are working on a new kind of theatre?

Alex: The crisis of the theatre today is the crisis of the nation-state. We need a theatre for the global village, a theatre that cuts off its roots and starts to wander around again: Actors used to be migrants, they were traveling people, and it was a nomadic artform. The whole idea of a standing stage, of theatre inside a house was the dream of nation-builders, of artists-as-statesmen, cultural leaders (in Germany Lessing, Goethe & Schiller). We don’t believe in ‘world-theater’ in the sense of “the whole world is a stage” (Jacques in As You Like It), a ‘global theater’ as a some sort of Über-nationaltheatre, but a minor theater, a small stage, a theater as fluid as financial flows that materializes itself from time to time somewhere to mark a space with quotationmarks. QUOTE–UNQUOTE.

• Do you think that theatre has lost its autonomy and has to contribute with all other arts and with new tendencies?

Nicola: Sure. Theatres often remind us of deserted temples or empty churches. Instead of asking the believers to return we should change the religion and use the houses in the meantime for something else, for festivities, for gatherings, etc. The actors should go on strike together – in order to do something together, to finally find out what they could do if they collaborated. I believe that theatre-people already have a dream of how they would like to work, and they only have to wake up to make the dream come true. Some other artists could help to wake them up, they are already knocking on the doors of the theatres. Because there is a promise hidden in theatre-making: the
promise to do something together.

Alex: Actors are workers, the theatres today are sweat-shops, and they operate as agent of alienation, of alienated labor. But while the factories are dissolving and the work-force disintegrating, actors are still kept inside the walls. We have to fight alienation (Entfremdung) with alienation (Verfremdung): the A-Effect!

• Do you believe in the power of text? And how this power can be transformed in worldwide theatre language?

Alex: We take pleasure in text, we believe in text-theatre, but that’s something completely different as literature-theatre. Unfortunately theatres still believe in literature instead of in theatre, that is to say: in drama not only as a form, but as the norm. That is the spirit of the 19th century, but what was still well and alive in the 20th might change in the 21st. By looking beyond the dramatic theatre there is a lot to discover: we are living in a world of texts, we read when we are awake, we write while we are asleep. With Heiner Müller we believe that the theatre of the text has not started to exist yet, but we are looking forward to its arrival like others wait for UFO’s.

• Your last project is inspired a lot by Greece. You have returned to continue your research. What is about?

Nicola: Our project is called europe an alien and is inspired by a workshop that we were invited to give by Helene Varopoulou at the 5th theatre summer academy EXILES NOMADS REFUGEES in Soufli. We were fascinated by the sight of the Evros river, such a beautiful landscape, such a tough border: mine-fields like the death-strip that separated East from West Germany. It’s separating not only Greece from Turkey, but also the EU from non-EU or better said: not-yet-EU. This border is the ‘limes’ of the Union that prevents so-called ‘illegal aliens’, refugees and migrants to enter. For them it’s a deadly trap.

Alex: The peculiar thing about rivers is that they connect at the same time that they separate. Probably the days of the Evros as border-river are counted – just like the Rhine. You can already see the Evros-delta turn into a very special euro-region, it will attract many tourists, especially eco-tourists, for sure, which will probably be the end of the great nature which is there today – protected from people because it is a military zone! That’s why it is a natural reserve area, many birds are stopping there to rest from their natural migration routes. Ornithologists watch them with their special looking glass and are watched by soldiers with their special looking glasses…

Nicola: We travelled back to the Evros to find out more about Europe: We came in our bus from Germany to Greece: Exit and re-enter Europe. At the Greek border we had some problems with our passports (see our webdiary: www.andco.de). We crossed seven borders on the way, the last one was the border to Turkey, where the Evros is called Meriç Nehri. And we drove to the Bosporus to cross the bridge to Asia. The tricky thing about borders is that even if they disappear, they are not gone, they just move somewhere else. We want to now: where will the border move this time? And where do you draw the border between Europe an Asia then?

Alex: It seems that for the new Europe there are no borders, only a frontier like in the pioneer-days of the USA. This frontier is not directed towards the West but towards the East, but it is also facing ASIA as its ‘other’. Our play is alienation in itself, it is not bound to the real territorial border, but to an idea, an idea called “Europa”: europe an alien.