The Bad LSD Trip of an Overambitious Interior Designer in the 1970s (And Other Experiences of German Theatre)
Barbara Burns talks to author and director Joseph (Joe) Prestwich, whose book Staging Germanness in Contemporary British Theatre was recently published in Legenda's Transcript series. This is an Open Access title, so anybody can read it free of charge.
BB. Congratulations on your new book, which looks at Anglo-German theatrical exchange and how ‘Germanness’ is represented on the contemporary British stage. I believe you came to this research via a slightly unusual route.
JP. After studying German for my undergraduate degree, I did a vocational MA in Acting at the Guildford School of Acting, and worked as an actor and theatre-maker for a few years. When it came to starting this research project, I was looking for a way to combine my interests in German and British theatre. I remember being surprised at the number of German-language productions and plays in translation that were being produced in London, and other cities in Britain, at this time, and thought: what’s going on here? What is the significance of this abundance of German theatrical culture in Britian? And what might it reveal about a British perception of Germanness at this turning point in the UK’s relationship with Europe? It was a desire to answer these questions that brought me back to my alma mater to conduct the research as part of my PhD.
BB. German theatre is well funded, which frees it to be experimental and provocative, and makes it different from the more pragmatic, commercially driven British scene. What did you discover about how German theatrical culture is received in the UK, and what approach does your investigation take?
JP. The book is structured around six case study productions, staged in London, that engage with German theatrical culture in some way. The first chapter looks at German plays translated into English (‘travelling texts’), the second explores German-language productions that toured to the UK (‘travelling productions’), and the third examines German practitioners who work in the UK (‘travelling practices’).
I discovered that a tension exists in how German theatrical culture is seen in Britain: it is both lauded and viewed with suspicion, and continues to get tied up into stereotypes. But it also offers new perspectives through which theatre artists can explore contemporary themes and connect with social and cultural issues. From this point of view, I argue that bringing German theatrical culture to Britain should continue to be seen as an opportunity for productive collaboration and development.
BB. Your book examines a range of productions performed in Britain between 2016 and 2020. This is of course the period immediately after the Brexit referendum, when economic and cultural relations between the UK and Germany were under some strain. To what extent is this post-Brexit political context significant in terms of your study?
JP. Part of the reason why I chose this period was to see whether theatre-makers engaging with German theatrical culture would use their platform to comment on Brexit and Britain’s relationship to Germany and Europe. This turned out not to be the case. Brexit was neither a topic within the productions themselves, nor would it really be addressed in reviews or the framing of the productions. There are productions in this period that in fact highlight Anglo-German cultural division, which surprised me.
The period became more significant in terms of how policy changes related to Brexit would affect the work as I was writing about it. One political function of the book is to make readers aware of the barriers to Anglo-German theatrical collaboration that were coming into existence (and that are now in force), and the potential cultural and social consequences of these hurdles.
BB. One of the German directors on whom you focus is Thomas Ostermeier, whose striking adaptations of Shakespeare have toured the world. Is it fair that Ostermeier has a ‘bad-boy’ reputation, and why is he so keen on using stage mud?
JP. Ostermeier is a really interesting example of a German director whose work is not especially typical of the contemporary German theatre scene, and yet who has come to represent the face of German theatre to the wider world. His production of Hamlet, which came to London in 2011, was seen at the time to rip up the rulebook on how to stage Shakespeare, with a lead performance by Lars Eidinger that broke the fourth wall in chaotic and unpredictable ways. It’s for this radically divergent production that Ostermeier gained his ‘bad-boy’ reputation.
As for the mud, I suppose on one level he is ‘throwing mud’ at the classics, making Shakespeare messy in order to find new meaning in his plays. On another level, it’s an example of symbolism over naturalism, mud representing the moral decay of the characters in Hamlet as they seek power, love, and revenge. It’s also really, really fun to see actors on stage rolling around in mud…
BB. Of the six case studies which you examine, is there one that was especially controversial?
JP. The first example that comes to mind is The Doctor by Robert Icke. This was a controversial production for its provocative take on identity. Icke cast the production in an interesting way, so that actors were playing against their casting type. This meant men playing women, trans actors playing cis characters and vice versa, and white actors playing Black characters. Audiences in Britain are increasingly used to seeing actors play characters that reflect their actual identities, and so this dissonance caused some shock (and gasps in the production I saw) but also prompted some useful conversations around identity and art.
BB. In German theatre, stage design, lighting, and sound techniques tend to be more important and more innovative than in the British tradition. Can you give us an example of modern German scenography and explain the thinking behind it?
JP. A contemporary example might be the scenographic work of Markus Selg. I saw a production at the Volksbühne in Berlin in 2024 designed by him called The Works, which one German reviewer described as ‘an interesting combination of a ghost train and the bad LSD trip of an overambitious interior designer in the 1970s’. The audience were invited on stage to explore the ‘set’, which included psychedelic colours and patterns, climbable structures, rooms, and abstract 3D sculptures.
I suppose the thinking behind this sort of scenography is to explore a theme (here: the relationship between art and an artist’s life) in an abstract way, and to force the audience to think and make connections. It is in no way naturalistic, nor are there easy symbolic parallels to be made, but it is certainly provocative and thought-provoking. And this is all happening within a traditional proscenium arch theatre! You can see the influence of this sort of set design in the fringe and alternative theatre scene in Britain (I’m thinking of theatres such as the Yard in East London), but it hasn’t hit the mainstream in the same way as in Germany.
BB. How did your chosen topic go as a research project?
JP. When I started my PhD, on which this monograph is based, I had a background in performance, rather than an academic, research-led one. So a big challenge for me was to feel confident and grounded in the academic discipline I was entering. In terms of the research itself, I was surprised at how a focus on Germanness led to such a wide variety of other themes: feminism, women in theatre, identity politics, race and racialization, Shakespeare, class, morality – the list goes on! For me, this demonstrates the power of drawing on German theatrical culture in Britain, as it can become a conduit for questioning the traditions of British theatre, culture, and society.
BB. How do you see the future of German theatrical culture in a post-Brexit Britain where cross-border mobility for travelling artists can be problematic?
JP. I worry for it. Since finishing my book, I’ve noticed a significant reduction in the number of both German-language productions touring to the UK and Anglo-German co-productions. There are certainly fewer German-language plays being staged in translation in Britain too. That said, in 2021, the Arts Council England, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, British Council, Creative Scotland, Fonds Soziokultur, Goethe-Institut London, and Wales Arts International / Arts Council of Wales all grouped together to support a new funding pot for socially oriented Anglo-German collaborative projects. This is a useful step forward in thinking creatively about how the British arts sector can facilitate Anglo-German exchange in a socially engaged way. Thomas Ostermeier has recently directed two West End productions in English with celebrity casts. This perhaps hints at what the future of German theatrical culture in Britain might look like: a low-risk approach that brings already high-profile German theatre to produce commercial work in the UK.
BB. Apart from your day-job as an academic, you’re also a theatre practitioner. Can you tell us a bit about the companies and initiatives you’re involved in?
JP. My practice these days centres around improvisation. I am Assistant Director of ShakeItUp Theatre, which is an improvised Shakespeare company based in London. We’ve been going since 2018, perform our flagship show all over the UK and Europe, and now perform yearly at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. As we are quite experienced improvisors, we also run workshops for corporate clients and actors, as well as for groups who might not get access to the arts otherwise. For example, we ran a 10-week improvisation course at HMP Pentonville in 2020/2021, and a course for the addiction charity Change Grow Live in 2022.
From 2021 to 2023, I worked with the Young Vic Theatre on a really fun theatre-in-education project called INNOVATE, through which I brought improvisation to classrooms in an inner-London secondary school. And I work regularly in Germany with the company Theater Frankfurt. I’ve performed with them (in German!) and return annually to perform our improvised Shakespeare show there too.
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