Berlin’s dance and theater landscape is the result of a lasting crisis situation in the city.

By Dirk Pilz

Diversity doesn’t say very much. Of course Berlin’s dance and theater landscape is diverse, thank God. On an average weekday, you can easily see thirty completely different performances, not counting the innumerable amateur acts available. Despite all the saving attacks of recent years, and despite the many and often precarious financial situations of individual theaters, groups and projects, all of them situations worth complaining about – nowhere in the German-speaking realm is there a city for dance and theater comparable to artistically rich Berlin. At best, Vienna could compete with Berlin. In Vienna, however, the Burgtheater is the domineering alpha theater. But Berlin has no theater with this kind of outstanding position, luckily.

Nevertheless, there are other reasons why Berlin is the most important and, aesthetically speaking, richest theater city. Consider first the rather sociological reasons.

Berlin is a city of striking opposites without a center. Geographically, it contains Neukölln, Prenzlauer Berg, Charlottenburg and Friedrichshain; but these city districts are worlds apart. It’s hardly necessary to stir up the history of the East-West division to understand that this city is scarred with antagonisms – a ride on the U-Bahn from Berlin-Hermannplatz via Berlin-Alexanderplatz to Berlin-Wittenau is enough. The missing center, the unalike and sometimes even disparate social stratification, and the fortunately growing influence of migrants – all this creates favorable conditions for developing an autonomous and self-confident milieu. From this and for this, theater in Berlin is created. In this respect the city is a solitary jewel. Unlike in Stuttgart, for example, where a large house produces theater for the city, whose charisma reaches beyond the city limits at best, Berlin’s performing artists create theater in a city that refuses to let itself be reduced to a common denominator. Unlike in Zurich or Hamburg, there is no relatively homogenous bourgeoisie or corresponding counter-culture here, but rather many artists and many performing spaces obliged to search for – and find – their respective audience.

At the same time Berlin is a comparatively inexpensive city. One can also say: a poor city, a grindingly poor one at that. In 2011 Berlin’s mountain of debt is expected to rise to 66 billion euros. The general financial state is, in a word, catastrophic. And yet, unintentionally, this also has a positive side. From the rents, bars and late-night stores to the public swimming pools, jazz club and movie tickets – it’s possible to lead a relatively affordable life in Berlin. This ensures even the notoriously underpaid artists a halfway secure existence.

Even so, this Berlin certainly has its negative side too. Despite the hugely beneficial invention of a German Capital Cultural Fund, the Independent scene is in a very difficult situation. How many talented groups and ambitious projects were abandoned due to a lack of money? There’s no keeping track of the number. On the other hand (in Catch-22 dialect!), this is the reason why the dance and theater scene is so dynamic: it forces everyone to find original, experimental, and naturally creative solutions to the overall situation. The trite speech about crisis as chance truly applies here.

Let’s take, for example, the new performing space Radialsystem V. Ten million euros from a private investor were put into reconstructing this former pumping station. Now it offers 3,000 square meters, two theater spaces, three studios, and attractive terraces facing the Spree River. During its 2006 founding, the managing directors Jochen Sandig and Folkert Uhde frequently spoke of flexibility, openness – and risk. They planned to introduce unconventional event formats such as concerts in a lying position. Also, the spaces were meant to offer Sasha Waltz’s dance troupe a new home and remain open to conferences and parties at the same time. Around 700 events and three years later, Radialsystem V boasts a nearly 80 per cent utilization rate and a meanwhile well-adjusted balance. The risk paid off; this is where dissimilar scenes, milieus and artists genuinely come together.

Radialsystem V is the kind of success story that could only be written in Berlin, because only crisis-city Berlin has such dissimilar scenes, milieus and artists to begin with. It’s not a coincidence that Berlin is the dance and theater city in which open performing arts, extraordinary event formats and genre-encompassing stagings feel at home like they do nowhere else: these are likewise attempts to react to the Berlin Situation on the one hand, and reflect it on the other. Neither the Radialsystem V nor the Sophiensaele or Hebbel Am Ufer, all leading venues for the Independent scene, would function as, say, an institution or house left entirely on its own. Were there no large state theaters, no Theater unterm Dach with its decades of committed work headed by Liesel Dechant, who repeatedly supports and discovers new theater artists; were there no Tanzfabrik, no Theaterdiscount, no Dock 11, no Ballhaus Ost and no Theater an der Parkaue – venues forced to regularly reinvent themselves – Berlin’s theater scene would certainly lack its distinguishing liveliness. All these venues work within a deeply competitive situation, where those involved stimulate one another.

Here the most evident feature is that an isolated Off-culture has long ceased to exist. What used to be the ideologically-charged contrariness of the state theater and the Independent scene is passé. While the work and financial situation of the two cannot be compared, the Independent scene no longer feeds on a sense of rebellion targeted at supposedly saturated bourgeoisie theater. Instead, the Independent scene has become a tightly-knit network consisting of actors, directors, producers and performance spaces. In turn, the state theater is aware of the Independent performing spaces as natural competitors and welcome partners – and the fear of each other has vanished on both sides. For that reason, not only do more unemployed, young artists frustrated by encrusted state-theater structures move to Berlin; they increasingly prefer a less binding connection to a given house as well. Between guest performances, many of them change over to larger theaters and temporary projects.

This development softens the recognizable identity of individual stages. But it also leads to a new reckoning with reality: audiences handpick their alliances now, without subscriptions or striking up fan-partnerships with an entire theater. Everything remains in motion before and behind the stage.

Therefore, one doesn’t get very far when trying to assign clearly-defined profiles to each of Berlin’s performing spaces. Naturally, the Volksbühne embraces a theatrical and social concept unlike that of the Berliner Ensemble. And, yes, the Hebbel Am Ufer and the Sophiensaele too, have their own profiles and in-house artists and concepts. Still, they all move in a shared environment: a breathless and crisis-ridden urban climate. Not even the state theaters sufficiently supported by public funding feel certain here – neither of their audience nor being in the politicians’ favor.

This is Berlin: an unpredictable city. The diversity of its dance and theater scene is the result of a lasting crisis economy. No one wants to defend it, but everyone finds their own creative solution to it. Or they disappear again.

Dirk Pilz, theater critic, writes mainly for the newspapers Berliner Zeitung and NZZ; he is cofounder and editor of www.nachtkritik.de.