PRESS

October 24, 2007

Süddeutsche Zeitung October 21, 2007

Ewige Nachkriegszeit

Start in New York: Das German Theater Abroad auf US-Tour

Irgendetwas müssen Kati, Rob und Micha falsch gemacht haben. Während Ronald Marx, der rührige Gründer der seit elf Jahren erfolgreichen Berlin-New Yorker Theatergruppe German Theater Abroad (GTA), Unterstützung von der Bundesregierung, der Bundeskulturstiftung und den Berliner Festspielen an Land zog, sind die drei Helden seiner aktuellen Produktion, Roland Schimmelpfennigs neuestem Stück „Start Up“, schutzlos den Gesetzen des Marktes ausgesetzt. Was genau die drei Protagonisten nach Amerika geführt hat, erfährt man nicht, doch es waren wohl –wieder einmal – Elvis, der Western und die Sehnsucht nach dem großen Himmel.

Gekommen sind sie jedenfalls, um Theater zu „machen“. Nach Tausenden Meilen in ihrem Bus sind sie angekommen – im Nirgendwo – und beschließen, das sei der richtige Ort für deutsche Kultur. Rob (Nils Nellessen) und Micha (Nicolai Tegeler) sind ausgehungert – und so treuherzig, dass sie damit sogar Ike entwaffnen, von dem sie einen leerstehenden Laden für ihre „Kulturtankstelle“ mieten wollen, obwohl sie weder Miete noch Kaution bezahlen können.

Im echten Leben sieht es, wie gesagt, etwas rosiger aus. Der frisch lackierte GTA-Bus parkte mit Video-Equipment beladen vor dem kleinen Theaterraum im New Yorker East Village, wo die Premiere von „Start Up“ stattfand. Und eben brach die Truppe mit den drei deutschen und zwei amerikanischen Schauspielern nach Westen auf. Sieben Wochen lang wird sie durch Orte wie Sautee Nacoochee, Georgia, Birmingham, Alabama und Death Valley Junction, California, ziehen. Deutsches Subventionstheater zwischen CarWash und Dairy Queen – und weit und breit kein Goethe-Institut: Das dürfte interessant werden.

Für die New Yorker Aufführungen musste die Weite des Landes noch simuliert werden. Die Rückblenden, die per Video eingespielt werden, wurden in Coney Island und der Brandenburger Westernstadt Templin aufgenommen. Später sollen die Abenteuer, die die Truppe unterwegs erlebt, in die Inszenierung finden – eine Art inszenatorische Rückkopplung. Auch in New York war die Videokamera jedoch schon viel im Einsatz und blies etwa Kussszenen zu Hollywood-Closeups auf.

Die Idee ist reizvoll, aber sie hilft nicht hinweg über die Klapprigkeit des Stücks, das streckenweise zu einer Revue der größten Deutschland- und Amerika- Klischees herunterkommt. Coca-Cola und Rosinenbomber, „Ich bin ein Berliner“ und „Jailhouse Rock“ – nichts darf fehlen, als seien die Deutschen, selbst wenn sie jung und wild sind wie Kati, Rob und Micha, in einer ewigen Nachkriegszeit eingesperrt. „Hitler ist also der Grund, warum ihr hier keinen Videoverleih aufmachen wollt?“, fragt Ike (Roland Sands) die guten, rotbackigen Deutschen, und bringt damit die Absurdität nur teilweise ironisch auf den Punkt.

Wenigstens Kati (Lisa-Marie Janke) hat die Zeichen der Zeit erkannt. Sie hat genug von ihren Künstlern und bleibt bei Ike, der alle Geheimnisse des örtlichen Video-Markts kennt. Die Jungs ziehen unterdessen mit seiner erfrischenden Tochter Liz (Myxolydia Tyler) weiter gen Westen. Vor lauter Sturm und Drang vergessen sie dabei ganz das Theatermachen.

JÖRG HÄNTZSCHEL

October 18, 2007

LEO Weekly (Louisville, Kentucky) October 16, 2007

THEATER
Saturday, Oct. 20
‘Start Up’

The Germans are coming — danke to Specific Gravity Ensemble, the Louisville theater company that will play host to the one-night-only performance of German Theater Abroad’s multi-media play “Start Up.” While GTA is mostly known for performing in New York (fulfilling its mission to promote German theater in other countries), its associate company, Road Theater USA, ventures into flyover country. In “Start Up,” a band of young Germans, played by three German actors, make their way across America to find their fortune. Two American actors play the people they meet in launching their start-up. The cross-country tour of this farce, by German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig, takes the ensemble from New York through 24 cities over seven weeks. In the process, two Austrian video artists are documenting the trip and incorporating filmed montages into the play.

Daniel Brunet, Road Theater’s associate director/associate producer, said the company chose Louisville in large part because it is “a hotbed for new plays,” given the presence of Actors Theatre’s Humana Fest.

Specific Gravity artistic director Rand Harmon decided to help the company present the production when Road Theater members were here in June scouting locations. Harmon says both companies share the same artistic goal: to produce unconventional new work that addresses contemporary life. The performance takes place at the former home of Mom’s Music, so seating is limited.

—Elizabeth Kramer

Original Mom’s Music Building
2920 Frankfort Ave.
384-2743
www.specificgravityensemble.com
www.roadtheater.org
$15, $12 students; 8 p.m.

Pittsburgh Post Gazette (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) October 17, 2007

Stagebus Review: German 'Start Up' starts here, heads west

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

By Christopher Rawson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


GTA Company
From left, Ike, Liz, Micha and Rob, with Liz and Ike looming videographically behind them in "Start Up."
The Germans are coming! . . . nope, they've already left!

Perhaps in retaliation for our having just sent a joint American-German production from Pitt to Stuttgart, GTA's Road Theater USA trundled into town by bus yesterday with its first post-NYC, one-night stand on a country-wide, seven-week tour of "Start Up," an ironic, loosely-structured German-American comedy about some Germans traveling the U.S. by bus and doing something like what seems to be going on in the play.

GTA, which stands for German Theater Abroad, was established in New York in 1996 and has grown as a conduit for theater between the two countries. "Start Up" is by Roland Schimmelpfennig, a hot young German playwright, or at least hot enough for Pittsburgh to have heard of him, since Quantum did his "Arabian Night" in 2003.

So this is big stuff or at least has impressive credentials, and it's funky and eccentric, as well, which makes it embarrassing that only a handful of us turned out on an admittedly-rainy Tuesday night to see the show at the Cultural Trust space called SPACE, a perfect self-mirroring venue for a self-mirroring theatrical event.

And "Start Up" started up in exactly that mode, delayed by the 10 or 15 minutes lost when its bus turned over the wrong bridge and encountered a forest of the dreaded orange barrels that strike fear into the hearts of natives, let alone cultural ambassadors from across the pond.

But this is no reincarnation of Ken Kesey and his band of feckless troubadors. The company of five actors is supported by at least as many techies, manning a long stage-side table of computers, running substantial recorded video segments, live video inserts, musical underscoring and such. And they didn't really arrive just at that moment, since the recorded video included some shot around town.

The story concerns three young Germans, Rob, Kati and Micha, footloose (well, busloose) in America, arriving in yet another town to rent a space in which to start a start up something -- most likely a theater, since that's about as vague a cultural import as one can imagine, but perhaps it's going to be a video store, since all the world's videos laid end to end add up to a pretty thorough archive of culture.

The video these young Ameriphiles are most obsessed with is mainly American, replete with images of the prairie and wild west. This makes for some comedy when a travel narrative voice-over speaks of the endless dark countryside and the strange absence of food, while the video shows them roaming about Pittsburgh -- but it does make metaphoric sense, come to think.

Having found a space to rent very much like SPACE, Micha begins to dicker with Ike, its American owner. Rob is off chasing some obsession at that point, perhaps food, and Kati isn't sure that she's going to stay the course, everyone's started to stink so much from living continually on the bus. There's plenty of comedy of cross-purposes, since Ike's experience of Germans is pretty well limited to "Das Boot" and "Judgement at Nuremberg," and Micha and Rob, once he appears, don't actually have the money to make good on the contract they've signed.

Kati finally turns up at the space/SPACE, but not before Ike's randy, gold-booted daughter, Liz. While Liz and Micha get to know each other by tumbling about on the sofa that dominates the set, the others (tracked by video) are off prospecting for food and exploring relationships of their own. Eventually they score big at several ethnic restaurants and bring back so much food I was hoping they were going to share it with us, because it was long enough into the evening that my stomach was rumbling. (The show runs more than 100 intermissionless-minutes, but I trust they'll trim it as they move westward.)

Along the way, there's a long, illustrated lecture on modern German-U.S. history, full of military cemeteries, the Marshall Plan and the dubious aftermath to 9/11. It struck me as dryly ironic, and sometimes obviously so, but I wasn't always that sure of the tone.

Ultimately, roles are exchanged and the road trip in the play begins anew -- as it must, because the company is going to be in Cincinnati on Thursday, in Louisville the next day, and so on.

The sky is different in America, they agree; "it's beautful, this valley, this city" (which works better for Pittsburgh than it will many places). To the strains of "Love Me Tender," the final segment plays out on video, with our actors in western costume, their bus replaced by horses. "We felt like new-borns," says Liz. "Our skin was like untracked snow."

So what's it all about? American myths seen from afar, certainly, and that fascinated gaze then refracted through American eyes; the ubiquity of cultural stereotypes, which may be true for all that; the longing for connection and context and home. Hunger is a metaphor and the cultural melting pot a kind of sustenance. Hopefulness is not dead. I guess.

It's about lots of things. As I finish this, it's past midnight, so I expect I'll digest it all as I sleep.

I enjoyed the cast. Nils Nellessen (Rob) is the romantic bad boy, Nicolai Tegeler (Micha) the alarmed pal who gets more than he'd hoped for and Lisa-Marie Janke (Kati) the laconic go-along who thinks she's a tough cowgirl but discovers another dimension. The Americans (both African-American, by the way) are Roland Sands, as a deceptively garrulous Ike, and Myxolydia Tyler, a fiery-sweet Liz.

If you're interested, you can arrange to catch "Start Up" on its travels as it heads south and westward, tracking it via www.ROADTHEATERUSA.org (the capital letters matter).

As to last night's tiny audience, my wife reminds me that's fine, because my job is to have and report on these experiences on behalf of you who don't have the time. But surely a couple of college classes (students of dramaturgy, filmmaking or Germany, for example) could have made this a class event? I wanted somebody to discuss it with, and Melanie Dreyer, the creator of that Stuttgart adventure and former director of Schimmelpfennig who probably could have explained it, escaped before I could waylay her to continue the cross-cultural dialogue.

October 16, 2007

The Week in Germany October 12, 2007

The Week in Germany: Culture

October 12, 2007

On the Road: German Theater Abroad Brings Contemporary German Theater to a Town Near You





Look for this bus on highways in America, Photo, Jean Cook

In its production of Roland Schimmelpfennig’s new play “Start Up”, the New York theater collective German Theater Abroad is going to great lengths to show that it takes setting seriously. In October and November, an international cast and crew will hit the road in a lime green school bus with a dark comedy about the travails of a group of young Germans that hope to strike it rich selling German culture in “Anytown, USA”.

From Paris, Texas to Death Valley Junction, California, many of the towns on GTA’s upcoming tour are far off the beaten path for contemporary European theater – if such a path even exists beyond the five boroughs of GTA’s US home base.



Roland Schimmelpfennig is one of Germany's most produced contemporary playwrights , Photo: GTA



Founded by the New York-based German-American actor Ronald Marx 10 years ago to mount contemporary German plays in translation abroad, GTA earned major critical attention with last year’s “Stadttheater New York Festival.” Stadttheater transplanted the typical offerings of a German state-funded theater to New York for a month. “Start Up” will be GTA’s first national tour.

Casinos, airplane hangars and ghost towns

According to associate producer Daniel Brunet, the idea of hitting the road began as a rather modest experiment with a handful of venues before snowballing into a cross country tour.

“We thought we might be able to do eight cities at first,” explains Brunet, who moved to Berlin to pursue a directing career in 2001 on a Fulbright Grant. A five-week location-scouting odyssey with Marx and dramaturg Dagmar Domrös, however, netted the company shows in 24 venues ranging from an airplane hangar in Alabama to the Armagosa Opera House in Death Valley Junction, California.

This real journey through an American landscape of ghost towns and roadside kitsch mirrors the onstage action and will figure large in the play through sketches shot by a team of videographers along the way.

Field of Dreams

The play itself is also a journey through the complex ways that Germans imagine America. For the hopeful entrepreneurs Rob, Micha and Kati, America is both a land of enormous material and psychic bounty and a lonely desert. On the one hand, it is a Styrofoam cornucopia of takeout food and high-calorie snacks and the perfect backdrop for a make-believe pioneer subplot (shot in hilarious costumes at a mock-up western village in northeastern Germany.) On the other hand, America is a dangerous and lonely place, where the failure to plan ahead puts one at the risk of starving between impossibly spaced gas stations and “certain practices” might land you in jail depending on what state you are in.

Of course, it does not help that the starving Germans’ business plan revolves around a particularly ethereal commodity – German theater. Their idea is to create a “cultural gas station”, an oasis where one can tank up the mind.

As it turns out, the market for the young Germans’ field of dreams in Anytown, USA might be smaller than anticipated. When their prospective landlord Ike expresses doubt about their business plan and suggests opening a video store instead, the earnest would-be importers are forced to examine whether they can reconcile their high ideals with peddling the classics of German cinema alongside American pop culture exports like Tremors and Pulp Fiction.

Schimmelpfennig’s script, which pokes as much fun at the naïve Germans as it does at America’s cultural exports, is pessimistic about the Germans’ prospects for taking German theater to market in the land of Hollywood and Broadway. GTA is forging ahead with pretty much the same plan anyway. After 10 years in the cultural import-export business, they know that there is more to it than money.

'külTHATSOUNDSCOOL October 13, 2007

Saturday, October 13, 2007

PLAY: "Start Up" (GTA's Road Theater USA)

Start Up is destined to be one of those plays that is more remembered for its vehicle (an obnoxiously green school bus on a sixteen-state road trip to bring theater to the heart of America) than for its concept. That's unfortunate, because the actual ideas of this play are some of Roland Schimmelpfennig's strongest, and certainly the most accessible for America. (No surprise, it was written for our uncultured shores.) Our three ambitious and clueless German heroes (Kati, Rob, and Micha) have come pursuing the loftiest of American dreams. They want to start a business, yes, but not an easily marketable one: they want to theatrically share German culture. Instead, the proprietor, Ike, keeps pleading that they open a video store instead ("There's a real need for a video store").

So what's more important: culture or capitalism? It's a very good question to be asking, especially for theater, an enterprise which isn't always economically feasible. GTA, a company run by actor Ronald Marx (who last brought us the 2006 Stadttheater at HERE Arts Center), is looking to do both, by boldly marketing eccentric modern shows not just to New Yorkers, but to those who would be tourists, and he'll be bringing the theater to Kentucky, Tennessee, George, Arizona, and a lot of other hub cities that we wouldn't normally associate German theater with.

To handle such an enterprise, however, GTA has turned to a shaky multimedia presentation that keeps getting in our faces, only to back away. Start Up starts up by pumping the audience up with the Rocky theme, but then plunges them into a darkness lit only by the tech team's open laptop computers and a microwave that is steadily working its way through a popcorn bag. Later, Micha and Liz start to get a little wild and crazy, only for the show to cut to a lengthy documentary-style segment that follows Rob, Kati, and Ike as they journey around NYC to get food. (This segment may have been filmed live, but it hardly matters: theater is never as raw as it is when it's directly in front of us.)

The only place where this works is when the pace breaks so that Micha can lecture us (complete with PowerPoint slides) on Germany's economic fall and rise ("Nobody remembers the Marshall plan anymore"). It's a ballsy demonstration of the very type of "theater" that nobody likes to sit through, but it's necessary for contrast with the only types of conversations Ike (the American) can have with anyone outside his culture, with films as a sort of bastardized universal language. America is, according to the characters, "a country of cinematography," and it's not hard to see that: clips of Das Boot segue into recently filmed segments of the touring Germans in front of local landmarks (like Doc Holliday's over on 10th and A, or Coney Island), and conversations often wax on a yearning for the Western vistas of rolling hills (one scene overlaps one such rustic monologue with a lengthy zoomed tracking shot of New Yorkers walking by PS 122).

The filmed portions of Start Up are a little hard to take in; Schimmelpfennig's writing works best in close proximity, where he can still surprise you with an act of violence (Start Up happens to be calm and demonstrative, but Roland Sands, as Ike, is able to at least threaten it at any moment). On stage, it's also easier to see the talents of the cast, who act so casually familiar with one another that it really does almost feel like we're intruding on their business affairs, even when there's a panel of people on laptops stage left, or a boom mike operator following them around. Which, you know, really does sound a lot like America after all.

Posted by Aaron Riccio

October 15, 2007







October 12, 2007

Freitag October 12, 2007

Go West
IM GESPRÄCH
Theater aus Deutschland tourt durch die USA

Seit elf Jahren arbeitet die Gruppe German Theater Abroad am Kulturaustausch zwischen Deutschland und Amerika. Jetzt treibt es die Theateraktivisten um Ronald Marx auf den Spuren der großen Trecks Richtung Westen: eine Theaterreise, von New York aus einmal quer durch die USA. Siebeneinhalb Wochen, 6.000 Meilen, 24 Orte. Das "Roadtheater USA" wird dokumentiert und kann online verfolgt werden. Im März soll die Aufführung in Berlin zu sehen sein.

FREITAG: Was haben die Amerikaner davon, wenn Sie deutsches Theater in die USA exportieren?

RONALD MARX: Sie lernen etwas Neues kennen. Zur Zeit unserer Gründung hatten wir das Anliegen, dem etwas einseitigen Import amerikanischer Kulturgüter etwas entgegenzusetzen. Am Anfang mussten wir erst einmal ein Display schaffen. Wir haben also in New York gezeigt, was es bei uns außer Brecht noch so gibt.

Sie wollten per Angebot eine Nachfrage generieren. Wie weit ist Ihnen das gelungen?

Mit dem Festival "New German Voices" haben wir in New York deutsche Autoren vorgestellt. Simone Schneider, Alexej Schipenko, Daniel Call, Thomas Jonigk, Albert Ostermeier und Marius von Mayenburg. Die waren damals alle noch ganz jung. Nach den Lesungen wurde mit dem Publikum diskutiert, über die Unterschiede der Gesellschaften geredet, in denen wir leben. Im vergangenen Jahr konnten wir das Projekt "Stadttheater New York" realisieren. Da haben wir Arbeitsweisen im deutschen Theaterbetrieb vorgestellt, die Traditionen, den Reichtum, den wir im Verhältnis zur dortigen Situation haben. Die Düsseldorfer Intendantin Amelie Niermeyer ist nach New York gekommen und hat von der Arbeit am Stadttheater erzählt. Das ist bei den Künstlern vor Ort auf großes Interesse gestoßen.

Wie arbeiten Sie für Ihre Produktionen zwischen New York und Berlin?

Wir stecken gerade mitten in den Proben mit einem gemischten Team. Die Schauspieler, die ich in den USA gecastet habe, mussten erst mal Pässe beantragen. Schon daraus lässt sich einiges schließen. Die Reibung in der Gruppe entsteht aus den unterschiedlichen Theaterkonventionen, die jeder im Rücken hat, und das vermittelt sich den Zuschauern. Denen wird nicht etwas Fertiges als deutsche Avantgarde vorgesetzt, es geht um den Dialog, intern und extern.

Wie lief die Zusammenarbeit mit Roland Schimmelpfennig, der "Start up" als Auftragswerk für das Projekt geschrieben hat?

Schimmelpfennig fand, dass es in diesem Stück um uns gehen müsste, und er musste eine Form finden, die an den verschiedensten Orten funktioniert. "Start up" ist eine Komödie, die davon handelt, wie junge Leute aus Deutschland in den USA Theater machen wollen. Sie suchen dafür einen Raum und verhandeln mit dem Vermieter, dem das alles sehr seltsam vorkommt. Das ist die sehr konkrete Ausgangssituation, mit der das Stück beginnt. Und viel mehr passiert da eigentlich auch nicht. Es geht um den Versuch, sich gegenseitig zu erklären und sich einander anzunähern, so schwer das ist.

Welchen Stellenwert hat die deutsch-amerikanische Geschichte für Ihr Projekt?

Eine Figur im Stück hält einen Monolog und referiert die Historie von 1945 bis heute. Das inszeniere ich als trockenen Powerpoint Vortrag. Das ist aber nicht die Art Kulturaustausch, die wir suchen. Wir machen etwas anderes, das sich auf der Ebene der Individuen abspielt. Da geht es um uns und unser Amerikabild, das stellen wir mit unserem Projekt zur Diskussion.

Welche Reaktionen erwarten Sie vor Ort?

Wir gastieren etwa in Edmonton, einem wunderschönen Ort mit 10.000 Einwohnern im Bundesstaat Kentucky. Dort wird seit zehn Jahren Der Zauberer von Oz gespielt, von einer Laienspielgruppe. Das ist alles, was es dort an Theater gibt. "Start up" ist für die Leute dort mit Sicherheit befremdlich. Keine Ahnung, was da passieren wird.

Stellen Sie irgendwelche Effekte Ihrer Arbeit auf die New Yorker Theaterszene fest?

Einige der von uns vorgestellten Autoren sind jedenfalls in New York nachgespielt worden, auch Schimmelpfennig. Tatsache ist, dass in New York seit zwei Jahren das Interesse an internationalen Gruppen, an Theaterarbeit aus Europa wächst. Ich sehe da aber mehr den Zusammenhang zur politischen Situation in den USA. Das hat mit dem Widerstand gegen Bush zu tun. Wir haben jedenfalls immer Leute getroffen, die unvoreingenommen waren und Lust hatten, nach den Aufführungen mit uns zu reden. Und das ist genau das, was wir wollen.

Das Gespräch führte Anna Opel
www.roadtheater.org

Back Stage October 10, 2007

Start Up
October 10, 2007
By A.J. Mell

This uncategorizable production from GTA's Road Theater USA casts a gently absurd light on German-American relations by using that most American of literary metaphors, the road trip. Written for the company by acclaimed German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig (and translated by Daniel Brunet), the piece sends up cultural stereotypes and mythologies in a charmingly oblique and playful way.

Fiction and reality bleed into each other at indeterminate points, because Start Up is a theatre piece about a German theatrical trio touring America in a whimsical green bus performed by a German-based troupe touring the country in a whimsical green bus. Our innocents abroad are Rob (Nils Nellessen), Micha (Nicolai Tegeler), and the more cynical Kati (Lisa-Marie Janke), who find themselves broke and hungry in an unnamed small town. A down-to-earth realtor named Ike (Roland Sands) takes them under his wing and rents them an empty storefront, which the three friends hope to turn into a performance space. Ike and his semi-nymphomaniac daughter Liz (Myxolydia Tyler), however, have agendas of their own.

This straightforward story alternates with large-screen projections (courtesy of Austrian video artists Claudia Rohrmoser and Herr Schobel) and occasional narrative digressions — notably a chronicle of German-American relations from the invasion of Normandy to the war in Iraq. Director Ronald Marx gives this motley assemblage an appropriately low-key rhythm that highlights the script's droll humor.

Start Up confirms how large the mythology of the West looms in the European image of America. For these idealistic, peripatetic artistes, the land east of the Mississippi might as well not exist; their America is all dusty little towns and wide-open spaces. (You can tell the Germans from the Americans because the Germans wear cowboy hats and Western shirts.) The piece has its bemusing moments as well as its occasional longueurs, but it wins you over with its formal adventurousness, charming performances, and sweetness of spirit.

Presented by GTA's Road Theater USA
at Performance Space 122, 150 First Ave., NYC.
Oct. 7-14. Tue.-Sat., 8:30 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 4:30 p.m.
(212) 352-3101 or (866) 811-4111 or www.theatermania.com.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung October 11, 2007

Premiere in New York
Hilfe, die Deutschen kommen im Bus!
Von Jordan Mejias, New York

Das ZDF ist auch dabei: Schimmelpfennigs Kultur-Bus

11. Oktober 2007

Lustiges, Ulkiges, Urkomisches hat das amerikanische Theaterpublikum gern, ob am Broadway oder bei einer sogenannten Performance in einem Atelier. Wenn ihm also nicht nur ein Stück, sondern ein Theaterabenteuer als hilarious angekündigt wird, ist das bereits die halbe Miete. Aber wie wäre die andere Hälfte zu bezahlen? Die Frage stellt sich umso dringender, als der zuständige Dramatiker aus Deutschland kommt. In jenen Breiten soll ja eher das Gegenteil von lustig geschätzt werden.

Alles nur Klischees? Das führt nun direkt zum Thema, dem sich Roland Schimmelpfennig in „Start Up“ widmet, seinem neuesten Theaterstück, das seine Uraufführung in New York erlebte. Oder zumindest eine seiner Uraufführungen. Denn was nächste Woche am Nationaltheater in Mannheim über die Bühne geht, wird mit den anderthalb Stunden im Performance Space 122, dem noch malerisch verschmuddelten Theaterlabor auf der Lower East Side, wohl kaum übereinstimmen. Es ließe sich sogar ohne größeres Risiko voraussagen, „Start Up“ sei in Amerika ein völlig anderes Produkt als in Deutschland. Nicht nur weil Schimmelpfennigs Text von Daniel Brunet geschickt ins Amerikanische übertragen wurde. „Start Up“, obwohl in New York sozusagen uraufgeführt, befindet sich weiterhin im Entstehen und bedient sich dabei neuester Technik.

Theater in Echtzeit und Video
Es beginnt auf der Straße vor dem sanierungsbedürftigen Backsteinbau. Dort steht ein grünlackierter Schulbus, der Thespiskarren des „German Theater Abroad“. In ihm wird die deutsch-amerikanische Truppe die kommenden sieben Wochen durch Amerika fahren, zwischendurch in einem verfallenen Casino in Las Vegas oder einer Galerie an der mexikanischen Grenze oder in einem Dorfgemeinschaftshaus in Arizona „Start Up“ aufführen und zugleich weiter entwickeln. Im Gepäck haben die fahrenden Komödianten nämlich nicht bloß ein paar Videokonserven, die es zwischen den live gespielten Szenen zu kosten gibt. Videokünstler begleiten die Tournee, und zwar so, dass sie sogleich in die Darbietung einfließen kann. Und als wäre das nicht genug, reist das ZDF mit, um das Ganze zu dokumentieren, und auch das Internet ist dabei.

Theater also in Echtzeit und in Video, sowohl aufgezeichnet als auch simultan, vermischt Gespieltes und Erlebtes. Damit aber nicht genug. Schimmelpfennig verarbeitet in „Start Up“ auch die Sisyphusarbeit des „German Theater Abroad“, eines transatlantisch aktiven Ensembles, das sich seit elf Jahren müht, den Kulturaustausch zwischen Amerika und Deutschland in Schwung zu bringen. Der deutsche Theaterbus rollt unter der Regie von Ronald Marx folglich durch Amerika ebenso wie durch die mal mehr, mal weniger fiktive Handlung.

Diese kreist um drei junge Deutsche, die es nach Amerika verschlagen hat. Auch seiner Mythen wegen. Gleichwohl legen es Kati, herb realistisch gemimt von Lisa-Marie Janke, und Rob, missionarisch verträumt gespielt von Nils Nellessen, und Micha, im missionarisch dozierenden Ton vorgeführt von Nicolai Tegeler, in ihrer Abenteuerlust darauf an, die amerikanischen Barbaren, für die sich das Leben in Angebot und Nachfrage erschöpft, mit deutscher Theaterkultur zu versorgen. In einem namenlosen Kaff treffen sie Ike, gespielt von Roland Sands, einen schwarzen Vietnamveteranen, der ihnen einen leeren Laden vermieten will, weil er Geld braucht, um das Gebiss seiner Tochter Liz, die von Myxolydia Tyler ungehemmt forsch hingestiefelt wird, karrieretauglich herrichten zu lassen. So bekommt das teutonische Trio reichlich Gelegenheit, in seinem importierten Überlegenheitsgefühl zu schwelgen.

Allzu dick aufgetragen
Wäre da nicht das Geld, das den Theaterexperimentatoren fehlt. Ihre Geschäftsidee: Sprit für den Kopf. Eine Kulturtankstelle. Es kommt, wie es kommen muss. Die Amis sind weniger doof, als von Berlin aus gedacht. Ike offenbart sich geradezu als Quelle der Lebensweisheit, und Liz verzehrt Micha auf dem Sofa, bevor er begreift, was ihm an vollends unpuritanischer Gastfreundlichkeit widerfährt. Allmählich verwischen sich die Nationalunterschiede, dafür formiert sich das Personal nach Charakterzügen. Kati, die Realistin, trennt sich von den beiden Phantasten, bleibt bei Ike und versucht es mit der Sesshaftigkeit. Liz schließt sich Rob und Micha an, um Amerika zu ergründen. Und sich selbst, klar. Nicht umsonst hat Jack Kerouacs Kultfahrtenbuch „On the Road“ dieses Jahr seinen fünfzigsten Geburtstag gefeiert.

Unterwegs im Auftrag der Kunst sind derzeit auch der amerikanische Filmemacher Mark Simon und der deutsche Medienkünstler Florian Thalhofer, der Erstere per Automobil durch Deutschland, der andere per Motorrad durch Amerika. „Start Up“ liegt somit voll im Trend. Deswegen führt das multimediale Spiel mit den Vorurteilen und Klischees, das Schimmelpfennig betreibt, nicht automatisch zu neuen, ungeahnten Einsichten.

Allzu dick aufgetragen ist die kulturmissionarische Naivität der drei Deutschen, allzu vorhersehbar der Wechsel im Kontrastprogramm. Oder will Schimmelpfennig, ein amerikanisches Provinzpublikum vor Augen, einen Jux sich mit einem pädagogisch wertvollen, binational verwendbaren Volksstück machen? Sollte das den ausgiebigen Lichtbildervortrag erklären, mit dem Micha, alles andere als uneigennützig und bestenfalls streckenweise lustig, einen Abriss der deutsch-amerikanischen Geschichte in einen Aufruf zur Völkerverständigung münden lässt? Aber vor dem kritischen Resumee, das nächstes Jahr nach der Darbietung des um die Reiseerfahrungen erweiterten Werks in Berlin zu ziehen wäre, sind noch sechstausend Meilen abzufahren. Darum jetzt nur: Gute Reise!

Text: F.A.Z., 11.10.2007, Nr. 236 / Seite 37
Bildmaterial: Jordan Mejias

Gothamist October 9, 2007


October 9, 2007
Daniel Brunet, Start Up
by John Del Signor

http://www.gothamist.com/

A new German theatrical road show called Start Up takes over P.S. 122 this week. The zany production fuses live performance with simulcast video to tell the story of some oh-so-sincere Germans as they struggle to acquaint America with their wondrous world of theater. Upon finishing their New York run this week, the team will pile into a tricked-out green school bus and embark on a 7 week tour of the states. But rather than bring their quirky show to the typical cosmopolitan cultural centers, the group will be performing in unconventional venues in tiny towns like Death Valley Junction and Edmonton, KY, where it’s likely the aging populous hasn’t seen German theater since D-Day.

Daniel Brunet, who translated the play into English, recently answered our questions about Start Up. The play continues through Sunday; tickets cost $20. (You can follow the group’s adventures virtually via their neat interactive website.)

What is Start Up? Start Up is a brand new play by Roland Schimmelpfennig commissioned by German Theater Abroad (GTA) especially for the Road Theater USA project. Schimmelpfennig is Germany's most produced contemporary playwright; his plays have been produced in over 50 countries and translated into over 20 languages.

Start Up is written for 3 German actors and 2 US actors and its premise, three young German traveling through the United States in search of a building to start up a business (a theater) mirrors our actual 7 week, 24 city road trip across the United States for performances of Start Up.

Tell us about a few of the venues where you will be performing your multimedia German performance piece. Our Artistic Director, Ronald Marx, dramaturg Dagmar Domrös, and myself set off on a five and a half week advance trip on May 28th, which took us from New York to Los Angeles in search of venues for the tour this fall. At the beginning, we were unsure how the response would be, particularly because we did NOT want to perform in traditional theater spaces…our production is actually built to be performed environmentally, site-specifically in a variety of non-theater spaces. We were amazed by the response and returned from the trip with 24 venues on our list. Some of the most interesting are:

An airport hangar in Birmingham, Alabama. Our contact there, Trish Coghlan, head of the Germany-Alabama Partnership, happens to operate a charter flight company out of it.

The Sanctuary of the Church of the Open Arms in Oklahoma City

The Aruba Hotel and Casino on the “wrong side” of the Strip in Las Vegas

And, perhaps the strangest place we’ll be performing is at the Amargosa Opera House and Hotel in Death Valley Junction, California, operated by Marta Beckett, who has been there ever since her trailer had a flat while she was vacationing in Death Valley with her then husband in 1967. Taking the trailer to a gas station, they came upon what was left of Death Valley Junction, an industrial town founded by the Pacific Borax Mining Company in 1924 and then abandoned in the 1940s. Marta caught a glimpse of the old community center through a hall in the wall and decided, on the spot, to refurbish it, turn it into a theater and perform her dance pantomimes there, which she has done ever since. She’s also painted an audience for herself on three walls of theater, a 16th century Spanish royal audience. We’ll perform in her old garage, where the trailer that brought her to Death Valley Junction still resides.

If someone at a gas station in Alabama asks you why he should come see Start Up, what will you tell him? I’d tell him that he should come out because we’ve come all the way from Berlin to thank him and the United States for everything that they’ve done for Germany since the second World War.

Part of the play delves into the horrific aspects of World War II. How do you feel about the current state of U.S.-German relations? Well, relations can refer to so many different levels…person to person, German and US relations are very open, affable and pleasant. And on the heads of state level, tension has certainly dissipated since the Chancellorship of Gerhard Schröder and Donald Rumsfeld’s invectives of “Old Germany”. Aside from Bush’s awkward massage of Angela Merkel last year, relations at the national level seem to be rosy.

Most New Yorkers oppose the Bush administration. Are most Germans able to distinguish between the actions of a rogue White House and the majority of Americans who bitterly disapprove of this administration? I think what always impresses me about Germans is the level of political awareness. I’ve certainly found myself in conversations with Germans who can discuss the minutia and fine details of US politics with me as articulately as any of their counterparts in the United States. A few years ago, an acquaintance expressed his frustration with the current state of world politics in a really enlightening manner, saying how unfair he found it that the actions of the United States often affect the entire world and yet the entire world does not have a voice in determining who runs the United States; they can only wait and hold their breath.

I think Germans are sometimes surprised by how relatively few people from the United States travel abroad. A figure I read a few years ago said that about 10% of US citizens hold passports; with the reforms concerning Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean, that figure has climbed to 21%, a record. Given their level of political acumen, the Germans are also pretty clear on the fact the 2000 and 2004 elections have been pretty bitterly contested.

Speaking in vast generalizations, where do you think the United States will be in 50 years? Well, I think that depends an awful lot on the world’s ability to begin to make true, measurable, realistic progress on climate change and radically, radically reducing the United State’s consumption of fossil fuels. Remember the news story a few months ago claiming that if we don’t reverse things immediately that most marine life will be extinct by 2050? We’re at a crossroads, historically, in my opinion. The time of the United States as the world’s uncontested superpower seems to be fading rapidly in the face of the rise of China, not to mention Brazil and India.

Favorite New York restaurant? The whole team has been spending an awful lot of time at Yaffa in the East Village.

Strangest experience thus far in New York? Certainly one of our guerilla marketing runs where all 14 of us jumped onto the tour bus (a lime green former school bus, tricked out for us by my father, Jeff Brunet, in upstate New York) and drove to Times Square armed with flyers and a megaphone to catch Broadway audiences members and TKTS buyers to let them know there was something interesting going on downtown.

One thing about New York City you'd change if you could? It’d be nice to relax New York just a tick or two…I always find it silly that everyone here works so long and so hard that I’m forced to make appointments a week or so in advance to hang out with my friends.

Favorite aspect of New York? The energy. New York is a pressure cooker unlike any I’ve ever experienced…it’s good for me to get away from it a few months a year, but I’ve never lived anywhere where I’ve been so productive.

Given the option of residing in either New York or Berlin, which one would you choose and why? Well, I guess that’s one thing that makes me typically American. I’ll say both. I’ve been spending half the year in Berlin and half the year in New York for the last year, after living full time in Berlin for three years and in New York for two years. The contrast between the two cities, between the notion of living in the cultural capital of my own country and being a stranger in a strange land in my adopted country is really exciting for me.

Berlin is inspiring, and its proximity to so many interesting European cities lets me travel much more freely and easily than if I were starting my trips from Brooklyn. I find German theater and performance very, very exciting and the similarities between my neighborhoods in each city (Williamsburg/Bushwick in Brooklyn and Kreuzberg in Berlin) are really interesting to me…both are suffering from rapid rent increases and gentrification and both have traditional, historical populations who are being forced out and becoming increasingly disturbed by this.

What differentiates the current Berlin experimental theater scene from New York? There are a lot of similarities and, indeed, a LOT of cross over. More and more theater makers and other New York artists are finding their way to Berlin. Both tend to be more overtly political than their mainstream counterparts, although German theater in general is a much more political medium than U.S. theater, which tends to be more concerned with the internal human experience than the external world, if you'll allow me a generalization. But in both cities, the experimental scene is marked by found spaces and tight budgets. Although, to be fair, that tends to mark the "off" scene in Berlin more than the "experimental scene". Berlin, with its specific history, has five state subsidized theaters and one, the Volksbühne would have to be characterized as experimental were it to be compared to its counterparts in the United States. And this is a multi million euro institution with 2 major performance spaces and several other ancillary ones, not one, but two clubs and a primary audience demographic of 18-49. Its focus tends to be auteur driven performance with the director as the primary author of the evening, often based upon freely adapted literary sources.

Independent Mirror (Mexico, New York) October 5, 2007

Local School Bus Pairs with German Theatre
by Kelly M. Freihofer

For the past several weeks a homestead in rural Palermo has been home for a school bus that is about to become famous. Jeff Brunet, of Palermo, has been called into service, quite unusual school bus service, by his son Daniel Brunet. Could the senior Brunet find a school bus and transform it into a traveling bus for a German acting troupe? The bus would carry the troupe from the East Coast to the West Coast with 24 performance stops on the way. Yes, Jeff Brunet could do it and, with a school bus transforming team, he did do it.

Daniel Brunet, son of Jeff and Jill Brunet of Palermo and a 1997 graduate of Mexico Academy and Central High School, has been involved in acting since the young age of 10 years old. His current position in the world of theatre is as an associate director/ associate producer with German Theatre Abroad which is based in Berlin, Germany and New York City, and aimed at bring contemporary German drama to the United States and vice versa. It is through this work that Brunet had come to request his father’s assistance for the upcoming theatrical work of German Theatre Abroad: Road Trip USA.

It was while Daniel Brunet was a student at MACS that he was first taste of the German culture. As a German student (he also studied French and Japanese), he traveled with MACS German Club on a month long exchange trip to Schneverdingen, Germany. Upon graduation from MACS, Brunet attended Boston University for Theatre Arts and Film Studies. In addition he studied acting in NYC and at Harvard during two summer breaks.

With a tremendous amount, and variety, of theatrical experience under his belt Brunet left Boston College and headed back to Germany when he was awarded a Fulbright grant to study theater direction in Berlin for a year. This grant was then extended to three years.

During Brunet’s time of study in Berlin, Germany, he began a working relationship with German Theatre Abroad, a company, now in it’s eleventh year, that brings contemporary drama across the ocean, and across cultures. Brunet continues to work for German Theatre Abroad, spending at least half of his time in Berlin, Germany
Up until this point in time German Theatre Abroad held their performances in Berlin and New York City. Ready to stretch out and see more of the United States, German Theatre Abroad hired playwright Ronald Schimmelpfennig to write a play called “Start Up” to be preformed during Road Theater USA. Brunet, an experienced translator, translated the play from German to English

“Start Up” focuses on the German people and their culture meeting and/or clashing with the American people, and their culture, in the form of a three Germans setting out to start up a business in the US. Along with the fictional play, Road Theater USA will integrate the reality of this acting troupe, which consists of three German actors, two American actors, two Austrian video artists, and seven members of the German Theatre Abroad team, traveling across the county in a made-over school bus to perform the show at 24 venues along the way, into the play.

To prepare for Road Trip USA, Brunet came to the states in June of this year along with the founder and artistic director of German Theatre Abroad, Ronald Marx, and the dramaturg, Dagmar Domrös. The trio traveled across the country for a number of weeks, paving the way for the show to come. The result was 24 scheduled stops, in sixteen different states, on a trip that will take seven weeks and cover 6,000 miles. The premier performance will be given at Performance Space 122 in New York City from October 6-13, and the last shows will be in Los Angeles, California, November 30, to December 2. In between the two coasts the bus will stop in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada.

The next step in preparation for Road Trip USA was to secure a means of transportation, specifically a school bus, for the group. This is the point at which Daniel Brunet called on his dad, Jeff Brunet, in Palermo. “I knew that if there was someone I could just call and ask for something crazy, like a school bus that needed to be converted for a cross country tour, that person would be my father,” writes Daniel Brunet. “He’s simply an amazingly able, knowledgeable, helpful person, as well as being very modest.
Sure enough, when Ronald Marx and Daniel Brunet flew to Central New York, Jeff Brunet had an appointment set up with New York Bus Sales. Once the bus was secured it became Jeff Brunet’s job to make it trip ready.

Jeff Brunet reached out for assistance with the bus transformation job and found Dave Yerdon, bus mechanic in Central Square, Dino Tortorelli, a mechanic and bus driver, and Jeff Blair to paint the bus with lime green paint donated by Butch Geersbeck in Hastings. A local graphic designer and artist, Wayne Goppelt did the decal work. Also on the team was Dave Yerdon’s son Craig Yerdon. All of this work was done on a volunteer basis.

Daniel Brunet’s father was not the only family member to play a role in this project. Brunet’s mother, Jill Brunet, did the copy editing of the English-language print material, and his sister, a professional publicist, is working on publicity for the Road Trip USA. “I’m thrilled that my family is able to be a part of this project: my parents have never been anything but supportive of my choice to pursue a life in art,” says Brunet.
Another angle of publicity presented itself through ZDF German Television, Public Service Broadcasting in New York City. ZDF German Television is the New York Bureau that covers NYC (and surrounding areas) and Canada news for Germany. Another crew from ZDF Television is covered the Road Trip USA preparation side of the story in Berlin, Germany. All of this coverage will be fitted together for a documentary to be aired in Germany at a later date.

ZDF German Television sent Foreign News Correspondent Uwe Kroeger, and Foreign News Cameraman Tal Larish to the Brunet home in Palermo to film the school bus transformation. Kroeger, a native of Germany, and Larish, originally from Israel, spent much of a Sunday afternoon interviewing and filming, and enjoyed a delicious smorgasbord prepared by Jill Brunet. “I think this is an interesting sort of project,” says Kroeger. “Most interesting is the reaction (of the crowds in the US).”

Periodically Kroeger and Larish will fly to the meet Road Theater USA while they are traveling across the country. The two man crew will join the troupe in about five to eight of the most interesting locations, and they will find out about America, discover what the mood of the country is, and experience the reactions of the audiences to the play.

So, with the venues set, the school bus purchased, and the publicity out, just what did it take to transform a regular school bus into a traveling performance bus? Beyond engine repair, the wheel chair lift came out and the fold out stop signs were removed. One seat was turned around and a table built in. Outlets were installed for ipods and a refrigerator put in place. Interior lights were added, as was a couch and pillows. Painting and graphic decaling was one of the last tasks, following the bus departed for New York City on Saturday, September 29. On Sunday, September 30, the bus made its debut in the Big Apple with a press conference at 4pm.

The group will sleep in hotels along the way, but the bus will be used as part of the set for each performance. They will likely shop for food as they travel, but on Thanksgiving Day members of the community that they are performing in (in Arizona), will invite the Road Theater USA travelers into their homes for dinner.

If the success of the planning, preparation, and publicity for Road Theater USA is any indication of the success of the show across the country, things are looking good for German Theater Abroad. Daniel Brunet’s father and his crew certainly did their part with the bus conversion, and his mother and sister with copy editing, and publicity. ZDF German television has the project well documented on both sides of the ocean. The lead men for German Theater Abroad did a tremendous job laying a trail across the US for Road Theater USA to follow, and the whole group worked hard during rehearsals in Germany. A lowly school bus in Palermo has made its way to the bright lights of New York City. All systems are go for this show.



Caption:
A school bus in Palermo stands ready to be converted into a touring bus that will cross the country with a group from German Theater Abroad presenting a performance called Road Theater USA in 24 locations between the East Coast and the West Coast. The bus transformation took place on the property of Jeff and Jill Brunt. The Brunet’s son, Mexico Academy and Central School graduate Daniel Brunet, works for German Theater Abroad in both Berlin, Germany and New York City. The first performance will be held in New York City from October 6-13. From left to right stand: Dino Tortorelli, Craig Yerdon, Dave Yerdon, Jeff Blair, Jill Brunet, Jeff Brunet, Tal Laush, and Uwe Kroeger.



Caption:
The Road Theater USA tour bus, painted in a bright lime green, left it’s temporary home in Palermo on Saturday, September 29, for New York City where it will meet with an acting troupe from Germany to travel across the country for seven weeks and 24 performances. The bus was converted from a school bus by Jeff Brunet and local assistants.

Story reprinted courtesy of Oswego County Weeklies

 
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