a poignant finish to a fabulous stay in berlin
Last night, our final night in Berlin, we saw the performance of Pulverschrift Berlin 1. Für Luise by Yoko Tawada performed by Lasenkan Theatre. I became aware of Tawada's fiction right after returning to San Francisco after living in Holland a couple of years ago. I love her descriptions of the confusion felt while in cultural limbo, the kind of hazy air of misunderstanding, mild resentment, and psychological dissonance that surrounds people who are trying to connect with a foreign culture, whether it be upon returning to their native culture after living abroad or while living in a foreign land. She is familiar with this theme, being Japanese and currently living in Germany. She often connects the many cultural dots between Germany and Japan, a sort of fascinating area to explore, I think.
The play last night followed in this theme, presented by three female actors and a kind of prop man controlling the slide projections and cleaning up onstage after the action took place, occasionally taking part in the onstage movement as well. Two of the other actors were Japanese, the third German. The theater piece was full of grunted accidental Japanese and grandiose Germanic pronouncements, with the actors taking turns playing historical political figures like Napoleon, rolling around in white powder on the floor, and wearing childish costumes. At one point they were moving as Sumo wrestlers but speaking in heavy thick-lipped German. Silly, absurd, surreal, and incredibly well-acted with amazingly stylized movement, this theater was mesmerizing. I only wish Lasenkan Theatre would hire me to do their sound design! Hey, that would mean I'd have a job waiting for me in Berlin, a brilliant excuse to go ahead and move there.