An October Fairy Tale for Berlin
A theatre curtain catches fire in the middle of a large square, a piano flies through the air and announces the end of western theatre. Thousands of people, crowded together, their eyes wide open and smiling with amazement, consternation or simple joy. Children laughing in a village in the desert high up in the North of Cameroon dangling like grapes from the branches of the surrounding trees – just like the audience in the venerable old trees of Vienna’s City Hall park who could no longer find seats in the stand …
When I look back at the theatrical events of Royal de Luxe, which I have been able to follow for over 15 years – beginning in Italy at a summer festival of street theatre at the end of the 80s and continuing via Cameroon, Australia and Chile – then there was nothing that was not possible and there was nothing that had already been invented. »Théâtre de creation«, the theatre of creation, this rather unusual phrase stands for Royal de Luxe as a theatre of invention which covers their application of an inexhaustible workshop full of wonders. Inventors, clowns, craftsmen and engineers, actors and artists – this company has been living for 30 years now in the spirit of the travelling players of commedia dell’arte, with Jean Luc Courcoult as its creative leader, director and writer all in one.
Alongside the giant history book »La véritable histoire de France« and the spoof desert epic »Le peplum« (both performances were shown in Berlin over ten years ago – and in the latter the aforementioned piano flew through the air) Jean Luc Courcoult created the first episode in his giants’ saga in 1993 »The Giant who Fell from the Sky«, in which a 14 metre high giant with gentle eyes, inspired by Jonathan Swift’s »Gulliver’s Travels« wandered loudly through the streets of Le Havre inside a huge steel structure. It was there too that I first saw the giant. And since then, perhaps not at first sight but shortly afterwards – in my memory of those huge yet gentle giant eyes and the sight of so many people of every age who without exception, even those who just happened to be passing by, were captivated by the charm of this theatre – I could feel a desire, a desire to make one of these giants’ stories of Royal de Luxe come true. That was 15 years ago. And in my home city of Vienna there are too many tram wires and the streets in the heart of the city are too narrow. I left the Wiener Festwochen a long time ago and in the meantime Jean Luc Courcoult has also created »smaller« giants, like the graceful Little Black Giant, who »came with them« from Africa and the magical Little Giant, who most recently chased a rhinoceros in Santiago de Chile – surrounded by an audience of one and a half million!
And now Berlin. I have run spielzeit’europa for the Berliner Festspiele for three years and all that time the giants have been with me. By now a great many others have been drawn into the gigantic preparations for the giants who are coming to Berlin: colleagues and partners, my wonderful team at the Berliner Festspiele, politicians, business, the media. In a poetic and moving fairy tale the giants will turn the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall into an unforgettable event from their own tender perspective in their own incomparable way. An event which measures up to the happiness and the great emotions of 1989 as a gift to the city, to its inhabitants and the painful past, to all spectators from near or far. An October fairy tale for Berlin.
Brigitte Fürle
Artistic Director spielzeit’europa | Berliner Festspiele
June 2009
