Prompt Pack: The Histrionic

PACK

An educational resource

Malthouse Theatre and Sydney Theatre Company present

THE HISTRIONIC (DER THEATERMACHER) Prompt Pack – Compiled by Clare Watson for Malthouse Theatre Youth and Education © 2012

CONTENTS Cast and Creative Team

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The Audience

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Introduction to the Prompt Pack

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Themes

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Synopsis

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Further Reading

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About the Playwright

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Worksheets

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Historical Context

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Watch The Histrionic Trailer: https://vimeo.com/39691129

Current Context

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Performance Style

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The Script

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Set Design

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Costume Design

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Sound Design

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Lighting Design

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Bruscon: The Character

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Listen to Daniel Schlusser, Director of the Histrionic talk about the four stages of the production process. https://vimeo.com/39613819 Listen the Meg Deyel, Stage Manager for The Histrionic talk about the four stages of the production process. https://vimeo.com/39613821 Listen to Josh Price and Katherine Tonkin talk about their process as actors on The Histrionic. https://vimeo.com/39621666

ABOUT MALTHOUSE THEATRE Malthouse Theatre is at once a treasured building, a theatre company, a creative site and an engine for change.

It is also the imaginative expression of a committed team of artmakers reaching out to an even larger number of local, national and international artists. All are dedicated to an ongoing conversation with audiences of exciting diversity and character.

This conversation chooses contemporary theatre as its vehicle: a compelling annual program of adventurous, multi-disciplinary work inspired by writers, directors, designers, choreographers, audio artists and performers.

Here, the combined possibilities of all theatre arts are offered centre stage – for entertainment, for inspiration, and even for fun.

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CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM Written by

Thomas Bernhard

Translated by Directed by

Tom Wright

Daniel Schlusser

Set and Costume Design Lighting Design

Composition and Sound Design

Marg Horwell Paul Jackson Darrin Verhagen

Performed by

Pictured left to right

Bille Brown Kelly Butler Barry Otto Josh Price Katherine Tonkin Jennifer Vuletic Edwina Wren

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“Theatre itself is an absurdity” Bruscon.

Prompt – cue, induce, make, motivate, persuade, encourage, stimulate, impel, inspire

Welcome to the Prompt Kit for The Histrionic. When an actor forgets or loses a line in a play we know they may need a prompt from someone who is on the script, who can provide a line or a cue so the actor can continue telling their story. This kit is aimed at providing just that – a series of prompts or cues that enable students to investigate and explore the background to the production, and to continue telling the story of The Histrionic. Whether you are studying Theatre Studies, Drama, English, Languages, Politics, History, Psychology, Philosophy or Music, the kit invites you to see how relevant and exciting contemporary theatre can be.

By the way, the kit is by no means definitive and the ‘prompts’ throughout the kit provide further references and activities. Who knows where you might end up?

The Histrionic: Synopsis As Bruscon is shown into The Black Hart by the Landlord, he surveys the venue in which he and his family will enact their historical comedy, The Wheel of History, and immediately expresses discontent that he - a great player, a national treasure – must perform in a place so low as this.

Preparations for the show begin immediately and despite his unconcealed dissatisfaction with the venue, Bruscon begins issuing instructions and demands. Among other things he requires that the window be kept shut to keep out the sound of the pigs outside, that Frittata Soup (the only thing worth eating in this mouldy rotten dump) be brought to him and that a second pillow, made of horse hair of course, be placed his bed. Most importantly, Bruscon requires a pitch-black blackout for his performance and, if the emergency exit light cannot be turned off for the duration of the show, he and his family will absolutely not perform. At any cost, the absolute blackout is imperative.

The Landlord leaves the performer to reconfigure the space with assistance from his fellow cast members: daughter, Sarah and crippled son, Ferruccio. Bruscon positions himself in an armchair while his children mop his brow, remove his boots and massage his feet. Sarah tells him that her consumptive mother is coughing again.

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At least schoolchildren are alive At least they respond Ask incisive questions Bruscon, The Histrionic.

Bruscon returns to rehearsing his own performance and adapting it to the new venue, while Ferruccio constructs the set around him. As he practises lines from his rewritten history – a strange amalgamation of great historical narratives and figures, which he has arrogantly reshaped to fit his art – he experiences rude interruptions from the grunting pigs outside. Utzbach, he says, will be the death of him. Thunder strikes and he sends his fellow performers out of the room. Believing that he is alone, Bruscon experiences an attack of weakness, which is witnessed by the Landlord.

The thunder continues and rain begins to pour down outside the theatre. The actors hide behind the curtain, making their final preparations for the show and watching the audience file in. Bruscon chides the other performers as the thunder outside builds to a terrible crescendo, which is in turn, punctuated by cries from the audience in the hall. Rain pours through the roof as Bruscon cries out that the parsonage is on fire. As the audience rush out of the hall, he collapses back into his armchair. Sarah embraces him and kisses him on the forehead tenderly.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT Bernhard’s life was marked by recurrent misfortunes, including the humiliation of an illegitimate birth and a childhood spent in part with a mother who never disguised her contempt for him, the physical illnesses that brought him several times close to death, the loss of his beloved grandfather as the result of a misdiagnosed illness, and his discovery of stupidity, brutality, and mendacity as the ruling passions of his fellow Austrians. Once he had discovered in the Scherzhauserfeld Project the aggressive verbal style that would permit him to transform his suffering into art, he held onto it with a tenacity that would give to each of his major novels an unmistakable air of authenticity.

Thomas Cousineau Thomas Bernhard was born in 1931 in the Netherlands, he was the illegitimate child of Herta Bernhard and never met his father, who was a carpenter. The year after his birth his mother returned to her homeland, Austria, where Bernhard was largely raised by his maternal grandparents. Bernhard’s grandfather, the author Johannes Freumbichler, was a very influential figure in Thomas’ life. He exposed Thomas to the Arts and promoted his interest in beautiful painting, music and theatre. Bernhard started writing professionally after the death of his Grandfather. Bernhard’s Lebensmensch (companion for life), whom he cared for alone in her dying days, was Hedwig Stavianicek (1894–1984), a woman more than thirty-seven years his senior, whom he met in 1950, the year of his mother’s death and one year after the death of his beloved grandfather. She was the major support in his life and greatly furthered his literary career.

As a young man he suffered from tuberculosis, Bernhard spent the years 1949 to 1951 as a patient in a sanatorium.

He trained as an actor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg (1955–1957) and was always profoundly interested in music: his lung condition, however, made a career as a singer impossible. After that he began work briefly as a journalist, then as a full-time writer. Bernhard died in 1989 in Gmunden, Upper Austria. In his will, Bernhard prohibited any new stagings of his plays and publication of his unpublished work in Austria. His death was only announced after his funeral.

Adapted from the following sources: http://www.facebook.com/pages/ThomasBernhard/113804608630207

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HISTORICAL CONTEXT

POST WAR AUSTRIA

“The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out “stop!”

Bertolt Brecht “Bernhard’s plays are very insular in a way, very parochial. He is punishing, informing, revivifying, eviscerating, Austria. His plays are a conversation Austria has with itself unlike Germany, which had to face up to its Nazi past, pay reparations and so on, Austria was able to re-constitute itself as a country and play at being one of the victim nations of the Nazi era, rather than complicit in its crimes. For this reason much was swept under the carpet and many in Austrian society felt that the same power and social structures that had been so welcoming of Hitler were still running the place. There was even a perception that Hitler’s Austrian-ness was being gently ignored. (This is one of the things that’s happening in the play when Bruscon realises there’s a picture of Hitler still on the wall, after all that has happened. The daffy old landlord isn’t necessarily a Nazi himself, he just doesn’t think it’s necessary to take such a picture down. As if a society has selective amnesia”.

Tom Wright

prompt List the things you already know about Austria. The cast of The Histrionic did this same activity in one of their first rehearsals.

To get you started, did you know that the following famous figures were Austrian?: Marie Antoinette Mozart Hitler

From mid 1938 Austria was partly governed by Nazis.

German military forces arrived in Austria and annexed the country (“Anschluss”), many Austrians were in support of this action.

“In November 1938, the Nazis launched the Kristallnacht pogrom in Austria as well as in Germany. Jewish businesses were vandalized and ransacked. Thousands of Jews were arrested and deported to concentration camps. Jewish emigration increased dramatically. Between 1938 and 1940, over half of Austria’s Jewish population fled the country. Some 35,000 Jews were deported to the Ghettos in eastern Europe. Some 67,000 Austrian Jews (or one-third of the total 200,000 Jews residing in Austria) were sent to concentration camps. Those in such camps were murdered or forced into dangerous or severe hard labor that accelerated their death. Only 2,000 of those in the death camps survived until the end of the war”.

Source: Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3165.htm After World War II, Austria was divided into four occupation zones. In 1955, Austria became free and independent for the first time since 1938. During the immediate postwar period, Austrian authorities began compensating Nazi victims, but many of these measures were later seen as inadequate. More disturbing, was the continuation of the view that prevailed since 1943 that Austria was the “first free country to fall victim” to Nazi aggression. This “first victim” view had been fostered by the Allied Powers in the Moscow Declaration of 1943, in which the Allies did not ignore Austria’s responsibility for the war, but nothing was said explicitly about Austria’s responsibility for Nazi crimes on its territory.

“When Bernhard was writing the play in the 1980s Kurt Waldheim was making a play to become President of Austria. He had served two terms as UN Secretary-General and was generally a pillar of the establishment. But he had also served in the Wehrmacht, was a Nazi and had some pretty serious involvement with war crimes in the Balkans during the war. In 1986, two years after the play premiered, Waldheim became President. During the eighties many felt that Austria was just a Bernhard play come to life”. Tom Wright “ And when Bernhard died he stipulated in his will that no new productions of his plays were to be done, ever, in Austria. The rest of the world he didn’t care about, but in Austria, no. The conversation was over. His productions always offended people in Vienna and were able to continually court controversy, as he portrayed upper-class and lower-class Austrians alike as insecure, mendacious, decaying”.

Tom Wright

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CURRENT CONTEXT So what do the plays mean outside of the context of Vienna in the late twentieth century? On one level it is interesting for us in Australia to enter into the spirit of another society, in a bid to understand the world as others see it. But some might want to think about what it means to be a small nation that is culturally dominated by a much larger one which speaks the same language. The sense that the real world, real life, is elsewhere, abroad. Or that real history happens on a world stage, not in our backblocks. Some Australians might want to deliberate on what it’s like for a society to have to come to terms with its past, particularly if there are shameful aspects to that past. And some of Bernhard/Bruscon’s rants, like Tiny little minds Xenophobia White-hot hatred of art Deep suspicion of abstraction Violent loathing of intellectualising Where else in the world Could be like this Hmm Art Art art Here no-one knows what it is The real artist Is weighed down, sucked down Into the morass While the charlatan The vapid boy next door With a golden retriever smile is adored They bow and wheedle To these athletes these footballers frauds these mannequins Inside their skulls veritable saharas

…might ring true for some, and cause us to wonder how much of our national characteristics are really our own, and how much of it is shared across the western world?

Tom Wright

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PERFORMANCE STYLE

prompt

“This is Beckett meets Fawlty Towers” Daniel Schlusser http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfl6Lu3xQW0 The idea was To write a comedy Which contained all comedies Every single one ever No doubt an absurd notion But easily within Bruscon’s abilities

prompt Is The Histrionic a comedy? Is it a tragedy? Is it neither?

Is it an existential farce? Is it biting political commentary?

Are there aspects of Theatre of Cruelty? Are there elements of Theatre of the Absurd? Are there Brechtian touches? Is it a love story?

Schlusser’s production of The Histrionic presents a mash up of styles. Most importantly it is a piece that makes us think about the construct of the theatre. It’s both set in ‘Utzbach’ and it’s set in the here and now. It is in and of the theatre scene that we live in. And in this play the theatre means the world, quite literally “all the world’s a stage”.

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The play is a monologue.

Elsewhere Bernhard wrote: These horrible Silent Roles Those perpetually quiet characters They do exist in reality One talks The other doesn’t They might have a lot to say But they aren’t allowed to They have to sustain the strain We burden the silent one With everything…

(Bernhard, Am Ziel) So why did Bernhard put these other characters in the play?

What is the function of these ‘Silent Roles’ in Schlusser’s production?

THE SCRIPT

SET DESIGN

Bernhard wrote monologues for the theatre. He often wrote his monologues for a specific actor. His work was iconoclastic and always provocative. He employed repetition and rhythm in his language. This production is a translation by Tom Wright. This is what Bernhard said in an interview when asked about his novels being translated: “Doesn’t interest me at all, because a translation is a different book. It has nothing to do with the original at all. It’s a book by the person who translated it. I write in the German language. You get sent a copy of these books and either you like them or you don’t. If they have awful covers then they’re just annoying. And you flip through and that’s it. It has nothing in common with your own work, apart from the weirdly different title. Right? Because translation is impossible. A piece of music is played the same the world over, using the written notes, but a book would always have to be played in German, in my case. With my orchestra!”

prompt How do you build a theatre inside a theatre?

In Marg Horwell’s set design there are no pints of ale, there are no hay bales. The patina that the script suggests isn’t present. Schlusser and Horwell are aiming to give the audience a sense of deliberate underwhelm as they enter the space. It is kept relatively bare but the space is littered with the detritus of ‘Art’ there are objects that have been seen on stage in great moments of Australian theatre, there are paintings and there are sculptures. Horwell plays with the audience’s sense of scale, at times giant vegetables and gargantuan teacups dwarf the actors. There are some Gothic elements of butchery present in the space. And most notably there is a stage on the stage.

prompt Is theatre always a translation?

Have a look at this production performed in the original German.

prompt Consider the variety of ways in which this prop item is emphasized in the performance:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?doc id=6211843667567764960# You could consider a comparative analysis of these two productions.

Read the following poem, do Shelley’s Ozymandias and Bernhard’s Bruscon have anything in common?: Ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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COSTUME DESIGN Marg Horwell has created a contemporary costume look that often blurs the line between actor and character.

Perhaps the actors have just arrived in their normal day wear and have suddenly found themselves on stage. Horwell talks about the ‘inherent theatricality’ in contemporary fashion and as a result has chosen and created items that aren’t overly ‘designed’ with ‘nothing colours’ and ‘muddy prints’. She has also worked towards making each bold choice bolder. Take a look at some of Horwell’s costume sketches.

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SOUND DESIGN

prompt

“I happen to be a musical person, and writing prose always has to do with musicality”.

Thomas Bernhard The sound design for The Histrionic is seemingly simple but in actuality it is multilayered and richly textured. To describe Darrin Verhagen’s sound design, it is perhaps most useful to employ the film terms: diegetic and nondiegetic. Diegetic sounds comes from the world of the play: the actors speaking, coughing, the pigs squealing outside, the water dripping in buckets, the sound of cooking, the sound of a vacuum cleaner. The nondiegetic sounds are heard by the audience but not the characters, in case of Verhagen’s score the non-diegetic sound includes both soundscape and music. These elements are used to enhance mood and bring emphasis to particular moments in the production. Silence is a central aspect of Verhagen’s design. A significant amount of the soundscape is barely audible to the audience…

Did you hear the doves in the ceiling? Did you hear the drones? These sounds are there so that when they are removed we are engulfed by a very present and pressing silence.

I hate this music I hate music In the theatre Between acts But people insist on music We have no choice Again (Ferruccio plays a few bars) Atrocious music Verdi well what did you expect I can’t even bear Mozart anymore Turn it off People don’t even know What they’re listening to As long as it’s music They don’t care People’s stupidity Has reached the stage That they can’t be without music Even for a minute Music soothes the retarded Music used to enthrall me Now it doesn’t I am more taken with Silence

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——Describe a moment in which non-diegetic sound builds tension?

——Discuss the effect on the audience of one diegetic sound.

——Is there an instance of ‘blur’ between diegetic and nondiegetic? Why? Bernhard wrote The Histrionic 28 years ago. What are your thoughts on Bruscon’s rant that “People’s stupidity has reached the stage that they can’t be without music even for a minute”. How is music present in your life?

How does music affect you?

LIGHTING DESIGN The lighting design for The Histrionic investigates the line between theatricality and non-theatricality. Paul Jackson, has worked predominantly architecturally rather than expressively. He has worked with almost all white lights to generate contrast without using colour. He describes his task as “being a game of focusing people’s attention” and aims to generate enough shadow and depth to allow the audience to focus and relax without creating a sense of the ‘contructed’ or ‘designed’.

Bruscon makes a big fuss about the darkness at the end of his play and demands to have the Exit lights extinguished. Bruscon’s Exit light obsession comically demonstrates how wound up we can get in petty, bureaucratic concerns. The design team has added two older Exit lights to the set.

prompt ——The production begins with the house lights and ‘workers’ on. Can you recollect your thoughts as you first sat down? What impact did lighting have on your initial impression?

——How are lights used to represent Bruscon’s theatre?

——What does the final flickering of the Exit signs mean?

BRUSCON: THE CHARACTER prompt ——Is Bruscon a monster or a victim?

——Schlusser described him as “a bear in a Berlin zoo” – what do you think this means?

A particular talent for the theatre Even when I was small A man born for the stage you see Histrionic Setting snares even when a very little child I wrenched myself out of home Smacked in the mouth belted Cracked on the skull by my father Complete mutual contempt Sadist definitely Self taught Sadist Autosadist Bruscon who never autographs anything Bruscon Living National Treasure Always refused to sign After all one of my signatures Worth a mint Not only a great actor A great dramatist Yes Bernhard offers the audience a number of monstrous patriarchs, “whether from history (Nero, Napoleon), Austrian self-flagellation (Metternich, Hitler) or World War II (Stalin Roosevelt, Churchill) they sit in comparison to the way monstrosity and tyranny function in the character of Bruscon.

On one level he could be read as emblematic of the country; self-obsessed, controlling, mawkish (kitsch), dictatorial, intolerant, insecure, in love with grandiloquent gestures more than sincerity.

In the opening section of the play he tells us he is a Staatsschauspieler, this is an untranslatable word meaning a State Actor, he has reached iconic status, he is officially acknowledged as a great artist by the Austrian government, he stands for and represents Austrian Art. Staatsschauspielers aren’t just actors, they’re Voices of the Nation. I’ve had to translate it as Living National Treasure as there’s no real equivalent in English (In the same way there’s no translation for theatermacher, it means literally maker of theatre, but it also has with it a sense of ‘always making a scene’, and colloquially feels like ‘drama queen’ or actor-laddie). So as a voice of the nation, so to speak, Bruscon has a symbolic role…”

Tom Wright

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THE AUDIENCE

THEMES

As Peter Brook wrote in The Empty Space “The only thing that all forms of theatre have in common is the need for an audience”. The Wheel of History misses out on an audience in Utzbach, however we’re sitting, as an audience, watching the lack of audience.

We all see different things in a theatre performance.

This section of the Prompt Pack explores some of the motifs and themes in The Histrionic. This list is certainly not definitive and a different production, performed at a different time, with a different audience may emphasize other themes entirely.

prompt ——Does Bruscon acknowledge the audience? Do any of the other characters acknowledge us?

TRUTH FICTION ACTING THEATRE

——Is there any audience endowment at work?

HISTORY

——Is there a fourth wall?

MEMORY

——How did Bernhard intend for the audience to feel throughout this work?

RESPONSIBILITY ACCOUNTABILITY CRUELTY MISOGYNY ABUSE LOVE EGO DICTATORSHIP DISABILITY BUTCHERS SOUP ILLNESS BUCOLIC ISOLATION BUREAUCRACY DENIAL ART AUSTRIA

prompt How many more themes and/or motifs can you add to this list?

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ON TRUTH

ON MISOGYNY

Actors always Misrepresent Deliberate lies my dear That’s what makes it theatre Representation is mendacity And represented mendacity is what we love That’s how I’ve composed my comedy Lies And that’s how it’s received Lies The writer is lying The actors are lying And the audience is lying too So the whole effect is one monumental lie

prompt If theatre is a monumental lie, why do we watch it and make it?

ON CRUELTY A recurrent theme in Bernhard’s writing is the cruelty that the dominant inflict on the vulnerable in society.

“The crippled schoolboy and Pittioni were for me the most important figures at the school; it was they who brought out, in the most depressing manner, all that was worst in a ruthless society, in this case a school community. Observing them, I was able to study the community’s inventiveness in devising fresh cruelties with which to torment its victims. I was also able to study the helplessness of the victims in the face of each new affliction, the increasing harm they suffered, their systematic destruction and annihilation, which became more terrible with every day that passed. Every school, being a community, has its victims, and during my time at the grammar school the victims were the geography master and the architect’s crippled son.”

Bruscon says: Women really do have the most Tremendous difficulties on stage They can’t quite grasp the big picture They won’t go to the extremes Plumb the depths soar No they won’t go to hell To that hell That hell that is theatre Everything they do is sort of And Bernhard says: I can only say that for a quarter of a century I have dealt with women only. I can hardly bear men. I can’t bear conversations with men. They drive me crazy.

Men always talk about the same things. About their job and about women. You cannot expect anything from men. A lot of men in one place are terrible. I even prefer gossiping women. Relating to women had always been useful to me. I learnt everything from women -- and my grandfather. I don’t believe I learnt anything from men. Men have always gotten on my nerves. Strange. After the death of my grandfather there was just nobody there any longer. I always sought protection with women, who in many things were also superior to me. Above all women let me work in peace. I was always able to work near women. I could never produce anything near men.

prompt When The Histrionic first appeared on the stage in 1984 would the audience have reacted to the misogyny of Bruscon in the same way that a modern Australian audience reacts?

Thomas Bernhard

prompt How many aspects of The Histrionic could be informed by this autobiographical detail?

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ON HISTORY “Der Theatermacher is a play about the way history becomes a pageant, a stage setting for the contemporary world to play out its anxieties. The play that the Bruscon family have come to Utzbach to perform, The Wheel of History, is on one level set up by Bernhard as a risible set of impossibilities (like Churchill and Napoleon in the same room). And on occasions, with the hammy sort of declamatory acting Bruscon seems to be describing, the piece is made to feel a bit absurd, old-fashioned. So the idea of pompous declamatory plays presuming to comment on history is set up as a theme… but Bernhard’s joke in a way is that, in the end, Der Theatermacher is just such a play. But it’s not about the global stage, a big theatre of history full of massive historical costumes, his little wheel of history demonstrates the way the past becomes a succession of provincial memories and weak vacillations played out at the end of the line”.

Tom Wright

ON MEMORY “Bruscon though is a bit like the theatre itself; because it is ephemeral, fly-by-night, it relies upon anecdote, memory to give it a past…but it’s a fake past, not the real thing. Theatre by definition just exists in the moment. And it can easily be misremembered, or worse forgotten. So Bruscon talks and talks and talks because he doesn’t want to slide into the void, into nothingness, into being forgotten.

He’s keeping himself (culture) alive.”

Tom Wright

prompt Why does Ferruccio not recognize the image of Hitler?

How do personal and collective memory function in The Histrionic?

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PROMPTS FOR DISCUSSION ——How is the production on the stage different to the script on the page?

——Which image has left the strongest impression on you?

——What is the connection between butchery and theatremaking?

ACTIVITY Take one of these famous figures that gets mentioned by Bruscon, research them and present your findings to the class: Busconi Caesar

——What does the play say about our relationship to art?

Churchill (Lady and Winston)

——What is the correlation between the theatre and history?

Curie

——How is character communicated within The Histrionic?

Sometimes the actors are themselves, sometimes they are in character and sometimes they are in character playing a character. Is this the same for Bruscon?

Einstein Goethe Hitler Kant King of Saxony Kirkegaard Metternich Napoleon Nero Pirandello Roosevelt Schubert Shakespeare Shopenhauer Spinoza Stalin Tsar Nicholas Verdi Voltaire

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FURTHER READING Daniel Schlusser discussing his approach to The Histrionic http://blog.sydneytheatre.com.au/season-2012-directordaniel-schlusser-on-tack Tom Wright (translator) on The Histrionic http://blog.sydneytheatre.com.au/season-2012-a-notefrom-tom-wright-on-the-his A very thorough website on Bernhard’s life and works: http://www.thomasbernhard.org/ An interview in which he is marvelously insolent http://www.signandsight.com/features/1090.html A New York Times article which discusses the genre of Bernhard’s work http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/books/review/ Peck-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

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THEATRE STUDIES: NOTES SHEET

Please use the following headings as a basis for responding to the key ideas, themes and theatrical styles within The Histrionic.

THEMES:

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THEATRICAL CONVENTIONS:

DRAMATIC ELEMENTS:

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STAGECRAFT:

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Characterisation Note Sheet Character Bruscon

Agatha

Ferruccio

Sarah

Landlord

Landlady

Erna

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Actor

Physicalisation

Costume

Needs/Wants

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reviews Review by Lee Bemrose http://www.australianstage.com.au/201204115328/ reviews/melbourne/the-histrionic-%7C-malthousetheatre.html I often like to go into plays blind. I don’t read reviews in great detail, I guess with the aim of keeping an open mind. Often I just go on who’s in it/behind it and a rough synopsis. What appealed with The Histrionic was Bille Brown and Barry Otto on stage together in a play about an egotistic and histrionic actor.

However I feel to really get the most out of this absurdist comedy/drama, pre-show reading is definitely required, because rather than go in with an open mind I realised I had formed preconceptions; The Histrionic was not quite what I was expecting.

In the program (which I didn’t read until after the show) is a story about the Austrian novelist and playwright staging his play The Ignoramus And The Madman at the Salzburg Festival in 1982. A complete two minute blackout was required including the emergency exit signs. The blackout was permitted for the preview, but on opening night the fire brigade prohibited it. The opening night went ahead without the blackout and was a huge hit, but Bernhard was outraged and cancelled the rest of the season. “A society that can’t deal with two minutes of darkness,” he announced in a letter to the festival’s president, “can do without my play.”

It seems arrogant and petty but it caused a storm of controversy and two years later Bernhard was back at the Salzburg Festival, at the very same theatre with The Histrionic, a play he used to tear shreds off the theatre, the theatre going audiences and Austrian society generally. The gall... the grand scale of the joke... hilarious, really.

Bille Brown as the central character, Bruscon, gives a dazzling performance. Bruscon is an actor with a towering ego and a lacerating attitude of tireless condescension. His arrogance knows no bounds, and for most of the hour and three quarters of the play he barely shuts up. He is preparing to open a show that is as comically ambitious as his drawn out enunciation, and that he is staging it in a crumbling little theatre is probably a statement of what the playwright thought of the Salzburg Festival and Austria generally. Naturally, the matter of the emergency exit lights being switched of is flogged throughout the play.

Thomas Bernhard had been branded a “nestbeschmutzer” (someone who dirties his own nest), and it’s not hard to see why; he hated his home country, possibly all of Europe... probably all of humankind.

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Not knowing the background, it was confusing to know just who was being lampooned here. Even knowing the background story it can be difficult knowing just what is going on. Bernhard once said something like, “Everything in life is ridiculous when you think of death,” so it is probably fair to assume that absolutely everything is being made a mockery of here. Bruscon would appear to be the playwright’s alter ego, yet he has made him insufferable and quite ridiculous.

The other great man of the Australian stage, Barry Otto, plays the theatre owner, and it’s a strange sidekick of a character. Timid, weird, riddled with ticks and with a tiny fraction of the lines Bruscon delivers, yet he pulls it of with a kind of quirky, hypnotic effect. He seems to be enjoying himself immensely.

All the actors, Brucson’s family with their assortment of impairments and injuries, are also wonderfully weird to watch as the great actor harrangues them one moment, whispers softly the next and occasionally physically brutalises them into confessing their admiration for him.

Mostly, he is just unrelentingly brutal.

The stage and surrounds is a chaotic playpen of props, giving the impression that you have wandered into a mental asylum, an impression that doesn’t quite go away as the chaos and destruction unfold.

In the end, this is a strange and unsettling work. It’s wordy, has a lot to say. It’s funny, dramatic, somehow an important work that’s ultimately a bit of a joke at the same time.

If you do go and see it, do read the program the nice people at The Malthouse have kindly provided before you go into the theatre. Maybe even read a bit about Bernhard himself. If I had done this I might have gotten more out of it and enjoyed it even more than I did – and although on more than one occasion I wanted to jump up shout at Bruscon to just STFU – I did enjoy it. It’s that kind of theatre.

Review by Coral Drouyn http://www.stagewhispers.com.au/reviews/histrionic Though it may all be relative, it’s a truism to say there is good theatre and bad theatre; and most theatre falls somewhere in between. Then there are the nights of magic; theatre which is so special and exhilarating that you scarcely dare talk about them for fear of discovering how the magic was done, and destroying the illusion.

These nights are few and far between and, like a child allowed to stay up late, you don’t want the night to end.

Opening night of Bernhard’s play The Histrionic falls into that last category. The play itself, seldom performed, owes as much to Kafka, and even Gogol, as it does to Beckett and Ionesco. It’s a dark and empty place within that the main character comes from, even though the play is achingly and hilariously funny throughout.

Slapstick plays with a sub-text of tragedy, and they’re a comfortable fit. And, whilst Bernhard’s biting yet absurd quasi soliloquy rails against the subjugated fascism and banal mediocrity of his homeland, (Austria) Tom Wright’s brilliant new translation dazzles us with shards of absolute clarity throwing light on the twisted soul of Bruscon, an actor reduced to playing in pubs in little more than villages, whose giant ego is largely a prop to shield from his withering soul the fact that his play may be rubbish, and he is a mediocre actor after all.

He’s a “National Treasure” at the mercy of “projectile provincialism.”

We may not all be actors, but we’ve all spat the dummy, thrown tantrums, and gone on the attack when we are most defensive. We have all indulged in grandiose grandstanding when we know we are inadequate. We are most lethal when we are most vulnerable, and most blind when we are afraid to see the truth. Bruscon tells us we are monsters in order to be human. It’s a mirror for us all. I come from a long line of Histrionics – and so I related entirely to Bruscon. My heart broke for him even as he monstered his children, raged tyrannically, and obsessed on whether the fire exit light would go out to give him a total blackout at the end of his play – a “comedy” (complete with Greek masks) entitled “The Wheel of History”.

Apart from the text, this production gives us three stars symbiotically entwined in the theatrical firmament. Their combined light brings brilliance back to the theatre, which seems to have been languishing in the shadow of an eclipse for several years.

Bille Brown gives the performance of his illustrious career in the part of a lifetime. The sheer marathon proportions of what are largely monologues for one hour and forty minutes are staggering. He postures, he pouts, he rails, he rants. He terrorises and obsesses and can cut his own children to shreds with a look, a gesture. He is both effete and overpoweringly masculine; flamboyant and fragile; a Drama Queen and King Lear. He walks the tightrope of over-the-top hysteria and only rarely crosses the line to dip his big toe into the waters of burlesque. But even that seems intentional and part of Bruscon’s “how much will people put up with?” mentality. My grandmother used to say of such an actor, in her smoke-laden voice “He’s just TheatAH, Daahling.” We may not recognise the type now, but his kind trod the boards, just as surely as dinosaurs walked the earth. In Melodrama, the leading man never turned his back to the audience and asides were made after a move requiring three steps downstage. That’s the world of Bruscon. Tragic and tyrannical, he is hateful and pitiful in equal measure. It’s a performance to be treasured and acclaimed, and though Brown has given us masterful performances in the past, it seems that all of them were preparation for this visceral yet totally artificial Bruscon. He is not to be missed.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Barry Otto is one of our finest actors in any medium. He has no more than a handful of lines in the entire play, and yet he is omnipresent. His face is elastic, his jerky movements and the “pecking” mechanism of his neck reminded me (in the nicest possible way) of an animated chicken.

Otto is that rarest of creatures, a RE-actor. No standing quietly waiting until it’s his turn to speak, (why do so many actors do that?), he is internally busy throughout, knowingly out of his depth with Bruscon, yet trying valiantly to understand the torrent of verbiage he is subjected to, to process and absorb it, and reply in a manner which makes him seem more intelligent that he actually is. It’s a performance that’s as energising in its own way as Brown’s. You can virtually climb into Otto’s skin and see the wheels turning, the thought processes at work. Simply stunning!

And then there’s Daniel Schlusser, who surely now has cemented his position as our most visionary and bold director. His blocking is near perfect on a thrust stage that could prove problematical with an audience at right angles. The scene with the curtain is perfection and his skilful use of the rest of the space to create a larger world is breathtaking. His understanding of the text and of his actors is illuminating and brave. Though this play may be crueller than any of Beckett’s offerings (and funnier) Schuller finds the humanity in the sub text of his characters. He uses the audience. He confronts us, alarms us, and then retreats, drawing us into a theatrical world that repels and moves us simultaneously. He is an artful master of his craft.

The ensemble cast are well balanced, and lend great support, but ultimately they are fodder for Bruscon’s verbose appetite.

Bruscon says at one point “Critics! Empty skulls staring at empty images - No-one listens to the words anymore.”

We do when the words are worth listening to, and when theatre reminds us of why we loved it in the first place.

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Review by Cameron Woodhead http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/theatre/thehistrionic-20120411-1ws3p.html AN ACTOR walks into the tiny Austrian village of Utzbach to perform his masterwork, ‘’The History of the World’’, dragging his resigned family behind him.

No obstacle can stand in the way of Bruscon’s selfconfessed genius - not a pesky emergency exit light problem, not the misfortune of arriving on Blood Sausage Day, and not the fact that, in his darker moments, he tends to think of the theatre as ‘’one monumental idiotic lie’’. No obstacle, that is, save Bruscon’s appetite for invective.

Thomas Bernhard’s The Histrionic is appallingly funny, not least because, as with much of his short fiction, it’s such a remorseless whinge. Whatever else you might say about Bruscon, only a man who loves the theatre could hate it so thoroughly.

This being Bernhard, the role burgeons into a 90-minute monologue. It’s a comic marathon, one of the most demanding performances of Bille Brown’s career, and he brings it home with intensity, stamina, and histrionic charm.

I’ve always believed Bernhard’s brand of comedy, rooted as it is in failure and complaint, would find fertile soil in Australia. We’re certainly at home with Bruscon’s grotesque caricature of the artistic temperament: narcissistic, imperious, prone to every artistic pretension, batty idea and vainglorious impulse. Brown’s performance will have everyone in the industry wincing in recognition at its mistakes, and it’s hard to be sorry we don’t get to see Bruscon’s play - a dictator-strewn grand narrative history with Marie Curie in blackface - actually performed.

Theatre and audiences have a symbiotic relationship, though, and the flare of Bruscon’s despair doesn’t spare the latter. His scathing social observations are uncomfortably pertinent: ‘’Wherever we tour/ Jealousy/ Tiny little minds/ Xenophobia/ White-hot hatred of art/ Deep suspicion of abstraction/ Violent loathing of the intellect/ Where else in the world / Could be like this/ Hmm.’’

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The action is framed by unobtrusively absurd theatre business: gigantic hands are dragged across stage, curtains shambolically open and close. The other characters (including Barry Otto’s memorably decrepit country yokel) barely graze Bruscon’s self-absorption - save to be abused, commanded, or in one disturbing moment, tortured - and the decision to play them uninflected, almost zombified, works well. It pervades the theatre with a reality-TV level of humiliation, and the vast dilapidation and moistness of the space (Marg Horwell’s stage design runs to a leaking roof) devours presence, forcing Brown to act at a pitch of desperate, manic futility.

Any creditable performance of Bruscon really is a striking theatrical achievement. Brown gives a fiercely fruity portrayal of a drama queen. He isn’t interested in being liked, and maintains an alarming claim on your attention. Perhaps more vocal modulation, and a more likeable boundary to his character would deepen the performance, which has room to grow, but anyone who cares about acting should see it.

Daniel Schlusser’s production of The Histrionic is directed with an invisible hand, with great attention to the demands of its serious clowning. It’s a pleasure to watch Bernhard’s black comedy performed with such scintillation and skill.

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