The German word for the day is: Fremdgehen. It means cheating. It’s the kind of cheating that has nothing to do with tests or filling out forms or getting US citizenship.
As some of my (worst)writing and (worst)reading friends have probably realized, I have a little bit to do with that really small country in the middle of Europe. Not only do I live against my will in said country but I also enjoy the language. More on that in sec. Of course, some call the place I live Deutschland, others call it things that … If I wrote them here I might find myself censored. That’s right. With all the talk of China censoring the Internet, they are not alone. But I won’t get into that. Unlike Germany, China has yet to find itself annexed becausing of losing some silly war. China also seems to enjoy the sadistic abuse of existing for the unholy dollar.
Digress.
Since I live in Germany I also have to find ways of getting along with the Germans. One of those ways has been to simply stop producing theater. For them, at least, it seems to have worked. For me, I’ve only avoided that impending heart attack and put my playwriting career on hold; seriously, the heart-thing hasn’t shown it’s face since I produced The Good Criminal. Of course, the Germans are still stuck with their behemoth subsidy sucking theater landscape and have yet to produce any decent actors or, goodness forbid, a writer that transcends all things German. (Which I think would be the least the Germans could do with a yearly national theater budget of almost 2 billion Euros!)
Challenge: Please tell me the name of a German playwright that has been produced in NY or London in the last few years but hasn’t worked in either city? My bet is the question cannot be affirmatively answered. Most German playwrights can only (afford to) write for their subsidized stages.
I won’t even start on German theater directors. Except to say… What would German theater directors do without the comfort of their pseudo-communist houses that all think it’s part of the game to run-up budgets in order to save their budgets?
So my quest to get along not just with the Germans but the situation of having to live here and not be able to make theater can only be summed-up via a quote from a play the likes of which could never be written by a German.
“I have always been dependent on the kindness of strangers.” -Blanche DuBois, aka Tennessee Williams, Street Car Named Desire.
Recently I came across one of those strangers. He’s a German publisher. He seems to like my blog style and also the way I complain about having to live among his kind. In the wake of this meeting he proposed that I write about a particular author. The author is dead but according to Verlag André Thiele (VAT), he is up & coming. I’ve always wanted to spend time on one particular author – outside the perverted authority of academia and whacked-out professors. The author that I get to study?
Oh. This is also kind of “Fremdgehen” – at least as far as this blog is concerned.
The author that I will be spending time with for the next eight months to a year is Peter Hacks. I’m sure I’ll post some stuff about him here later. But the key thing to keep in mind about this dude is that, in the 1950s he was one of them “intellectuals” that went from “The West” to “The East”. (Talk about Fremdgehen!) He collaborated with Bertolt Brecht and eventually achieved a certain level of fame – even internationally. I plan on reading all of his published works and will post regular articles about that work at a forum within the Peter Hacks website. The site, of course, is in German but I will posting/writing in English – the publisher wants to open Hacks up to a broader audience.
You can read my posts in a Peter Hacks forum titled The Naked Classic. I’ll also post a link in my blogroll.
Here’s to ranting about real authors – even if they were commies! Also, even though my heart is far from the place I have to live, I really love reading German.
-tgs-
