Performance in Else Lasker-Schüler
Session Coordinator: Inca M. Rumold
Dept of Modern Languages, DePaul University
802 W Belden, Chicago, Il. 60614
irumold@depaul.edu
Figurative Language, Figures of Thought, and Performative Figurations in Else Lasker-Schüler
The roots of Lasker-Schüler’s theatre lie in the Berlin avant-garde movements and especially in her idea of language as choreography. This paper wants to demonstrate how an understanding of Lasker-Schüler's texts as cultural performances can help to uncover the highly metaphorical and often hermetic style of her writings. Her plays – from the Varieté project "Der Fakir" (1910) to the posthumous published “IchundIch” – visualize language through a unique technique. Figurative language is used to visualize figures of thought, thus creating a performance space in which the characters are not set as figures but dynamically constructed as figurations. In “Der Fakir,” Lasker-Schüler deconstructs the performativity of cultural rituals by doubling the 'Orientalism' of her time as performative technique. In “IchundIch,” the 'double' as figure of language, thought, and performance, affects the exiled poet, as well as the historical characters of the play, including Nazi politicians. Through a postmodern form of theatre that preconfigured Heiner Müller’s technique of dramatizing history as mythic ritual, Lasker-Schüler created an open cultural space where events in history and literary intertexts such as Goethe’s "Faust” are connected as similar performative figurations.
Markus Hallensleben
University of British Columbia
mhallen@interchange.ubc.ca
Performing Her/Self: Else Lasker-Schüler on Stage in "Ichundich"
This presentation will examine how Else Lasker-Schüler wants us to view her on stage via her last play, written during her exile in Jerusalem. In his play, "Exile in Jerusalem," the Israeli playwright Motti Lerner characterized Lasker-Schüler as a crazed old woman during her years in the British Mandate of Palestine. However, the character of the author in "Ichundich," Else Lasker-Schüler's self-portrayal, proves her to be an interesting commenter about her world and the political affairs of her time. The publication of the script for the play "Ichundich" was prevented after the author's death, because her literary guardians thought the play did not portray Lasker-Schüler in the best light and thought it to be of inferior quality. This paper will discuss the representation of the author herself as a character on the stage and how this may differ or overlap with how she has been remembered and continues to be presented to readers today. Was she si mply a tired old woman given over to irrational notions, especially late in life, or is that what others have made of her?
Sonja Hedgepeth
Middle Tennessee State University
shedgepeth@mtsu.edu
Representation of the Stranger in Lasker-Schüler’s Dramatic Work
My presentation will explore representations of the Other in Lasker-Schüler’s dramatic work. In Die Wupper (1909) the writer deconstructs the notion of a basic morality thought to be inherent in the family unit on which the German class system was built. In this play, the outsiders are a trio of odd marginalized homeless men who are homosexuals and transvestites. They turn the idea of morality topsy-turvy. Through them, as the Other, German society is exposed in its hypocrisy, its own weakness, and its fear of any challenge from without.
In IchundIch (1940/41) the stranger is part of the feminine Ich who is divided within herself, since she has been socialized through German culture that has become an intricate part of herself. Her Jewish identity allows her to painfully become aware of the stranger within herself but she is helpless in challenging effectively its violent aspect. Lasker-Schüler’s third play, Arthur Aronymus und seine Väter (1932), explores the possibility of reconciliation between a sub-society: disciples of the Jewish religion who are perceived as strangers and German Christians. She presents an atmosphere of good-will and tolerance that ironically counters the situation in Germany when she wrote the play, as Hitler was on the rise.
Helga W. Kraft
University of Illinois at Chicago
kraft@uic.edu
http://www.german.uic.edu
Performance, Defamiliarization, Reconciliation” in Else Lasker-Schüler’sArthur Aronymus and his Ancestors
My paper on Else Lasker-Schüler’s play from 1932, Arthur Aronymus and his Ancestors, will analyze how the performance of the cnetral “play in the play,” i.e. the children’s pogrom play simulating the burning of the (Jewish) witch, functions as the playwright’s strategy of defamiliarizing the familiar, and how it signals cognition.
Little Arthur plays the part of his (epileptic) sister Dora who the villagers accuse of being a witch. The children’s play in the play shows to both the audience in front of the stage and the Bishop on stage how “difference” is a social construct. Differences of ethnicity, religion, and gender, are being deconstructed by the children, for example, when Arthur – who is wearing his sister’s skirts – jettisons them provocatively upon his exit. By donning his sister’s skirts that keep slipping down, little Arthur, the “witch,” demonstrates how social (gender) roles are such a construction. On the other hand, the Bishop’s laughter upon Arthur’s jumping over the stakes to escape his predicament, is a moment of recognition. An epiphany in which he recognizes that the children’s sadism is but an imitation of the roles people play. These are constructs by social institutions like the Church, which insist on “difference” and bring about victim and victimizer with its concomitant sadism.
Because this powerful and determining performance within the play of 15 secenes occurs at the end of the 14 th scene, it fulfills the function of uncovering and unmasking for the whole play in its individual scenes. Through this defamiliarization effect, the final reconciliation (as it has generally been seen) obliterates “difference” by acknowledging the equality of the two religions.
Inca M . Rumold
DePaul University
irumold@depaul.edu