Theater goes Reality TV

"Master and Margarita"
at the Volksbuehne in Berlin, Germany
directed by Frank Castorf
after the novel by Russian poet Michail Bulgakov

Reviewed by Yvonne Spielmann
Professor of Visual Media
Braunschweig School of Art

We are getting used to a visual world of machine vision where webcameras, telepresence and remotely controlled telerobotics transmit live images that produce a new kind of reality effect. These machine images are not necessarily linked to live presence in front of a camera or any recording device. Moreover, live images stream in networked, real time and eventually interactive media environments challenge the belief in what we see and perceive. The attribute 'live' refers more to the actual presence of the transmission process of electronic signals itself but does not indicate if what we perceive is past, present, prercorded, simulated or acutally happening 'next door'. Criteria to distinguish 'life' and 'live' on the technological level conflate.

What is happening is a significant shift in vison from seeing to knowing. We can only rely on the visual information that is presented if we know that what we see is real. Whereas machine vision that comes to us directly confuses the understanding of what is an image's reality and its meaning to the extent that completely separate levels of reality are conflated and the perceiver loses orientation. What is real or live in media presence is not so easy to decide when it comes to telepresence and Reality TV. The question is who will tell the difference between which reality is what and who knows if there really is a difference between reality and its transmission in technological presence or if things are already merged in the reality that we live in?

In his satire "Master and Margarita" the poet Michail Bulgakov envisages the conflation of real and unreal by drawing a picture of Stalinist Soviet Union as a schizophrenic state where the Devil enters Moscow of the 1930's and causes confusion so that the unreal becomes reality and reality turns into fiction. In adapting the novel by Michail Bulgakov, written in 1940 as a reflection upon Stalinist Soviet Union and probably addressed to Stalin himself as the first expert reader, theater director Frank Castorf of the Volksbuehne in Berlin takes up the timely role of reality television and video observation and uses them as contemporary metaphors that stress the merger of realities and loss of orientation in Moscow of the 'thirties. From the start the parallels are clearly set between control systems under Stalin and technological supervision of our time through public and private cameras and publicly displayed imagery of intimacy. What Bulgakov draws together in this piece of fantastic literature is state control turned into a staged metaphor of multiple realities that unfolds how the belief of a difference between actual and virtual collapses. Differences or reality turn into sameness.

The performance is divided in three areas that, according to the three levels of the story, capture and display different forms of presence. The performance takes place simultaneously in different sections of the stage, not all are visible to the audience. The novel as it is transformed for stage performance by theater director Castorf works with the principle of simultaneity that interrelates various levels of narration: first the narrator ("The Master") who tells the content of the novel and refers to scenes from the crucifixion of Christ in Jerusalem as a metaphor of Stalin's terror; secondly the portrayal of state control and confusion that reflects people's powerlessness, their fears, anxieties, disbelief and failures to understand the structure that surrounds them; and finally the level of fantastic fiction where Christian mythology and a 'real' devil meet against the background of chaotic bureaucracy of Stalin's Moscow. The performance jumps back and forth and in the end the levels of reality converge in the same presence and Jesus commands the devil to let the Master and Margarita go. In the beginning the Master went mad and had lost his love Margarita.

The stage design corresponds to the narrative structure. In front of the audience there is a conventional theater decoration with two interconnected rooms and one on the roof where the later reunification of the Master and Margarita takes place. Behind the decoration, and not visible to the audience, are the rooms of the asylum (two cells and a shower), plus another interior room in Moscow where conspiracy of the devil develops. In the back of the stage there is open space plastered with architectural models of modernist Moscow that are in the end set on fire. And somewhere in the back of the stage Pilatus and Jesus meet in a bath tub. We get to know all these different places because every space is recorded with live video camera and tracking camera that moves around the scenery in 360 degrees. What is happening in the back of the stage is displayed on one large screen on the top of the decoration, where we also read advertisement for sex film and the prognostic headline "I want to believe".

Ironically, believing becomes problematic in the context of a multiple reality theater performance where the religious connotation of the question of faith is juxtaposed with question to believe in the visual world. Even when we see the tracking for the video camera and its operators the audience is not assured of the reliability of the visuals displayed on screen. It takes the viewer a while to realize that everything we see on screen really is live recording of live acting for video camera on and behind the stage. Clues of live staged reality and referentiality are given in brief moments when we see actors changing rooms and opening doors in the asylum that lead into the visible front of the stage.

Mostly, however the recording behind the stage depicts closure where actors are spatially squeezed in and also prisoners of internal visions. The montage of scenes on the screen gives the visual picture of different live images. Together, they produce the effect of real-time simulation on theater stage. It compresses the omnipresence of state and media supervision in a schizophrenic view. As in reality TV, the reality of the theater show must go on, live recording does not allow interruption or moments of privacy. In the interpretation of the leading metaphor 'Stalinism equals lunatic asylum', theater director Castorf 'shoots' a live-video on stage in which being captured inside the asylum is no better than being outside where the 'real' devil mixes realities. Enclosure is everywhere and proof of reality must fail because the levels of perception, belief and common sense collapse. It is then no surprise that the inserted narration of Jesus and Pilatus on the eve of crucifixion enters the primary level of narration and fictional characters go back and forth between videofilm and theater.

Where author Bulgakov's vision starts from his experiences in the Soviet system of the 1930's, Castorf's media vision of the novel as a theater play takes up the mergers of realities in our society that through the combination of live performance and overall media presence constitute the notion of never-ending Reality TV. In this setting television is no longer an escape from reality, on the contrary the structure of the theater unfolds another principle where in general everybody can become author of his/her own reality that is happening simultaneously on a video screen and has been live recorded. Double-vision that in pathological terms indicates schizophrenia is also meant to express the merger of multi-level media through the amalgamation of live images and live action on stage.

In combining both systems, Stalinist state control and today's media control, the theater performance of Bulgakov's novel states that overall presence of supervision creates not only fear and anxiety in the individual but generates a schizophrenic state of being that becomes quotidian. The general feeling of omnipotent state and media apparatuses that possibly intervene anywhere and any moment increases alert and the wish to escape into another world. In Bulgalov's satire that was banned from publication till 1966 (that is 26 years after the death of its author) escape from despotic tyranny and Kafkaesque bureaucracy is not possible but leads to double-minded talk and parallel worlds that reflect the same kind of enclosure: one being the lunatic asylum, another telling the encounter between Jesus and Pilatus on the eve of crucifixion. Theater as a live performing medium is now reflecting the convergence of realities through the use of media that merge different realities. Theater's live mix incorporates the fictional level of Jesus and Pilatus into higher complexity consisting of live performances on stage and staged video-live-performances, both shifting between real Moscow and the 'real' devil and the reality of the asylum.

The novel and its adaptation on stage present what in psychoanalysis is called double-bind when one world competes with another reality. On stage the two worlds are connected via video-camera and doors on stage that open to proof the link. Things get more complex when not only Moscow and the asylum, but also the devil and Jesus and Pilatus enter the stage of parallel of worlds. Here, the collapse is complete: inner vision and outer reality, but also inside spaces and outside physicality are both, real and unreal in the same instant. We have reached the reality of virtual simulation, not as usual in cyberspace, but in a theater performance that beats telepresence. Do not miss this theater performance when coming to Berlin.