 So, theater center here at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and here was the PhD program in theater, so it's a wonderful evening in New York City, but not only for the city, but I think also for the theater. We have with us Tuna Erika Fischer-Lichter, and here she is from Berlin, and I think Marvin will tell a little bit later the occasion why she's here. She really is, in terms of chess, a grandmaster of the game. She is a great, great scientist, a great writer, a great lover of this theater, and she really has influenced and changed how we think about theater and what we should be writing about or thinking about, so it's a great, great honor to have you with us here, so really thank you. It's been long overdue, and I know you also run a brilliant theater center in Berlin, and also the way they organize it, they do it is really something to look up to and to study, so I all encourage you all to really also look at Erika's Fischer-Lichter Center in Berlin. The Siegel Center bridges academia and professional theater international and American theater, so of course, this is right close to our heart, and we are truly thankful that you took the time in those few days you were here in New York to come and visit us. We think we will be, it will be 45 minutes, more or less, it will be her lecture on Max Reinhardt's mass spectacles and other mass spectacles, and we will have with Marvin, they will have a little dialogue, a discussion, and then we open it up to some questions. Time is a bit limited, she will have to go also to another event after this, but thank you all for coming out, especially all the students and friends of the Siegel Center and also faculty, Jean is here, Peter, Akasal, and many others who also have been visitors, if I remember right, you know, at your wonderful center in Berlin, so thank you all for coming. If you have a cell phone with you, please take it out for one moment, and I'm gonna do the same, even so I think I left it in my office, but just see, it should really, the ringer should be off, just take a moment, please do double check. Thank you so much for coming, there's a place for you. So Marvin, maybe tell us a little bit about Erika and her place in the field. Thank you, thank you very much, Frank. I always enjoy coming to the events at the Siegel Center, which are such a rich and international offering for us. Tonight is a very special pleasure and a very special honor for the center, a pleasure for me because I have a chance to introduce one of my very dearest friends in the theater, it's always a delight to see her. I see her much more often in Berlin than in New York, but I hope she will join us more from time to time in the future. Erika is here to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Piscata Foundation, and so we were fortunate enough to be able to impose on her to join us as part of the occasion of the festivities in her honor, so we're delighted that that opportunity arose. I will say a great deal about her background and her achievements, there's a long paragraph in the program, but just to say very briefly that for the past several decades, really from the 70s on, Erika has been a major pioneer in almost every new theoretical movement that's come into the theater in semiotics and interculturalism, in transcultural studies, and as Frank said, has in recent years been the director of one of the most important international projects in theater in the world today, and this is the Institute Interweaving Performance Cultures in Berlin, which has brought together theater artists from all over the world to exchange ideas, to collaborate on publishing projects, and to inspire each other, to go on to new projects, often intercultural projects. It's a model program and much, much admired everywhere. It's of course a great pleasure, the Erika sort of began her career, or at least first came to my attention as a major theater historian, and that side of her we're going to be seeing, particularly today, with a talk about arguably the most important and influential theater maker of the 20th century, Max Reinhardt. So, Erika? First, Margaret, thank you so much for your kind introduction. When we met in Berlin at each theater triathlon, Marvin said, when will you come to New York? And last year he said, you will never come. I said, Marvin, I shall come. And here I am now, as you can see. And Frank, thank you very much for inviting me to talk here about Max Reinhardt. Yesterday it talked about Piscato, and today Max Reinhardt, so these are the two, for me, two of the major figures in the early German theater history. I mean, I prefer of course to speak without a manuscript, just with notes. But since I cannot use my own language here, I'm more or less bound to read a manuscript which was corrected by a native speaker. And so you have to do with that. Okay, I would talk about the latency of the political in Max Reinhardt's mass spectacles. At the turn of the century, the idea of theater as a festival was widespread among theater reformers. In 1899, the playwright and theater theoretician Georg Fuchs, a disciple of Nietzsche, elaborated it in an article which hailed theater as a celebration of life. He repeated and rephrased the same idea later into very influential books on the revolution of theater that appeared in 1905 and 1909 and were translated into various European languages. In 1900, a book appeared on the subject written by the architect and designer Peter Behrens. And two years later, in a conversation with friends and colleagues which took place at the famous Cafe Monopole in Berlin at a late hour, Max Reinhardt explained his plans regarding the function of classic plays in his theater of the future by referring to this very idea. I quote him, the classics must be performed in a new way. They must be performed as if they had been written by playwrights of today, as if their works were alive today. New life will arise out of the classics on the stage, color and music and greatness and splendor and merriment. The theater will return to being a festive play which was its original meaning. How different their ideas on theater as festive play might be, they all agreed on certain points. First, on the opposition between everyday life or labor on the festive occasion, which they regarded as liminal time. And second, on the communal experience opened up by festival. For in a festival, there is no separation between actors and spectators. Those who arrive as spectators are transformed into participants and together they form a community. That is to say, it is the transformative force of a festival, the communal experience it provides, which these reformers all had in mind when proclaiming that theater should turn into a festival. As regards Reinhard, this was not meant as a political idea. He proceeded from the assumption that theater as festival could only come into being when both parties joined forces, actors and spectators alike. He was convinced that, I quote, the best theater is not only performed on stage. Actually, the most important players are sitting in the audience. One day, the two-way flow, which passes from the stage to auditorium and from auditorium to stage will be scientifically researched. Yes, Marvin, we tried to do that. It's okay. The moment when one who creates receives at the same time and the receiver becomes one who creates in the moment when the precious and incomparable secret of theater is born. I quote, Reinhard desperately yearned for new, more responsive audiences. He complained about bourgeois audiences. I quote, the so-called best audience is actually the worst audience. Insensitive and not naive. Inattentive, self-important, used to be at the center of attention. The best audience is up in the gallery. Reinhard felt challenged to look for new audiences that would be able to join forces with the actors and thus to create the performance at the festive event. These were the births of the idea of a new people's theater. In 1908, the Munich Artist Theater was opened, founded by Georg Fuchs and built by Max Littmann. Fuchs propagated the idea of Volksfestspiele, of a theater festival for the people who because of the exorbitant price of theater tickets were excluded from, he said, the most artistically significant and pioneering performances of the stage. It was to be a theater, I quote, for those workers, craftsmen and employees who are open to art and reaching for the sky as well as for the broad masses of professionals. When Fuchs organized the first Munich Volksfestspiele in 1909, he asked Reinhard to collaborate. Reinhard seized the opportunity to develop and ultimately to realize his idea of a new people's theater, a theater of the 5,000, as he quoted, a theater for the masses. The music festival hall on the Theresienhöhe was rebuilt in such a way to include an arena stage in 1910. Reinhard staged Sophocles Oedipus Rexia and in 1911, Escalos Oristea. Both productions later moved to Berlin into a real circus, the Circus Schumann. After the festival season was over, Reinhard took Oedipus, the king, on tour through Europe to London, Stockholm, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Budapest and Brussels, among other places. At some cities, such as in Budapest, Moscow and London, he restaged it with local actors and amateurs for the chorus. Wherever Reinhard presented the production, it was an overwhelming box office success. It seems that this new theater strongly appealed to pre-war audiences all over Europe and that it found deep resonance. What happened at these performances? Where the spectators were given the opportunity to undergo unusual but obviously eagerly sought for experiences. What was it that attracted the spectators so much? Given the high esteem shown to ancient Greek culture by all Europeans at the time, it seemed significant that Reinhard chose ancient Greek tragedies for his first experiments with the new people's theater, being well aware that the theater in Athens was part of a festival and that it was a people's theater in which all citizens were not only allowed, but also expected to participate. He did not intend to present a particular reading of the tragedies. So it does not come as a surprise that most critics expressed dismay that neither the production of Oedipus the King, nor the Oresteia one year later, could be called a representation of the tragedies' meanings as people saw it in those times. Even though not all went as far as to state that Reinhard proceeded, I quote, from the principle that the director is everything, the poet, nothing, they all questioned the production's truth to the text and complained that the performance worked more on the senses and the nerves. These are the two words that always occurred, the senses and the nerves of the spectators than on their souls. Nonetheless, they all admitted that the impact of the performance was powerful and that this was due to Partichila and they called it modern scenic devices which Reinhard elaborated and applied. From perusing the reviews, the impression arises that most of the devices which the critics mention have to do with a new relationship that seems to have been established between actors and spectators. This is all the more surprising since the audience here, unlike the audience that frequented the Deutsches Theater, you know this was his theater in Berlin, was far from being homogeneous. As most reviews report, the spectators came from all social classes and strata. As most reviews talk about, there were school classes and students attending as well as union workers, ladies and gentlemen from the elegant west of the city, as well as scholars who were not in the habit of visiting theater, members of the parliament and even something every review mentions, members of the imperial family with their entourage. Also members of the workers theater organization, the Volksbühne could purchase their tickets at special rates for 50 Phoenix, so very low. So this was in fact a people's theater as far as the attendance of all social groups, classes and strata is concerned. Bearing in mind that at the beginning of the 20th century it seemed difficult if not impossible to turn a homogeneous audience made up of the bourgeoisie into a community, it is most unlikely that Reinhardt succeeded in transforming the members of such a highly heterogeneous audience into members of a community. However, this is what the reviews suggest. The devices mentioned by most critics refer either to the particular use made of the space or the performer's bodies. In Oedipus the king, the arena at the side of the stables was defined by a huge entrance to a palace building from which a flight of steps projected. The circus ring remained empty. On the particular enclosure which had been added to it, two altars with so-called sacrificial flames were placed. The nearly 5,000 spectators were seated all around the circus ring in a kind of amphitheater arrangement. A cloth of reddish-brownish color was put up under the roof that stretched over the whole huge space of the circus, covering the ring as well as the auditorium. The beginning of the performance was announced by, I quote from a critic, long drawn out fanfares. Blue light falls in the ring that has become the orchestra. Bell-like sounds clang, swell, voices moan, becoming louder, searching, and the people of Thebes swarm in through the central entrance opposite the built-up stage. Running, stamped him with raised arms, calling, wailing. The space is filled with hundreds of them and their bare arms stretch to the sky. Here we should see the first picture. Oh, there it is already. I did not notice. I was in here and there and not there. Yes, there you can see these masses, these masses which formed the colors. Not 15, but as was usually the case in Greek churches, but these masses all over. The opening already reveals the dominant devices characteristic of the performance as a whole. First, the occupation of the space by the masses and second, the way a particular atmosphere functions. I start with the first. Partly confused and irritated, if not disgusted, all critics remark on the fact that the chorus did not conceive of these mere 15 members, but rather of hundreds. The chorus members not only moved and acted in the chorus, that is in the ring, overcrowding it, they also occupied the space otherwise reserved for the spectators. They had entrances which took them right past the spectators. They even acted among them. They were everywhere. They occupied the whole space. In the Orastea, where Reinhard also used this device, the critic, Alfred Klar, felt most uncomfortable because of, I quote from him, the division of the action into the space in front, between, beneath, and behind us, the eternal exertion to change our viewpoint, the actors flooding into the auditorium so that the figures in the glittering costumes, wigs and makeup justle against our bodies, the dialogues held across great distances, the sudden confusing shouts from all corners and direction of the house which startled us, it all helps to distract. It does not help create the illusion, but tears it apart instead. The poor critic, he really suffered. The critic not only felt uncomfortable because as a spectator he had to change the position of his body if he wanted to see and hear what was going on in the space, but also because the performers moved among the spectators, because they even occupied the space of the auditorium and thus justled against the spectators body. That is, they did not respect the boundaries separating one individual body from others. The occupation of the whole space by the performers, on the other hand, canceled the difference between performers and spectators. The performers moved among the spectators, they seemed to be one with them. Thus, they drew the spectators into the action and made it difficult to distinguish between actors and spectators. All together they formed one mass. This point is made by another critic. First he mentions the presence of Prince August Wilhelm and Prince Oscar, then he, the great individuals, then he continues, but the individual has no impact here. In this half light, only the crowd has an impact. One begins to understand what the public means. This is what Reinhard needs. He believes the crowd is everything, subject and object. He rewards 5,000 spectators by presenting a company of almost 10,000, which is exaggerated. He presents the masses to the masses. He shows them themselves in the exaggerated form of passion and costume. Maybe we should go now through the slides just to see this different kind. This is a sketch by Orlik, yes, how he thought. And you can always see, it was planned right in the beginning, as you can see. Always to have this audience as part of the whole thing. Yes, there you see what it is, and he mentioned it. There we come to the Oresteia. This is in the first scene when Augustus and Clutemnestra try to put down the chorus of the Old Man. Yes, here's again the chorus of the Old Man. And here, yes, and this is the final play. There you see Alexander Moisey as Orestes and here is a hymn as the goddess Athene. I think this is in our moralism. So that you get an idea already what it means with these masses. It seems significant that the critics who adhere to bourgeois individualism do not use the term community, but the term crowds of the masses instead, which has a negative connotation. What we can gather from their remarks, however, is the idea that through Reinhardt's special devices, not only was a community of hundreds presented and represented in the orchestra to the spectators, but also a community was brought forth in the course of the performance. A community of thousands, comprising performers and spectators alike. In fact, it was a temporary community only. It may not even have lasted the whole duration of the performance, and it may have been that not every spectator seemed a kind of communal experience. It seems to have been a matter of pride for most of the critics that they resisted it. In any case, whatever kind of community it was, it finally dissolved at the latest when the cheers stopped and the spectators left the circus schumann. Because the community that came into being during the performance was temporary. It was not able to change the relationship between members of the different social groups, classes, and strata on a longer lasting basis. However, from the reviews we can gather that the performance brought forth a kind of community and established a bond of sorts between performers and spectators. One of the devices that made this possible was undoubtedly the particular use made of the space. A device which we will find being applied to different kinds of political mass spectators in the 1920s and 1930s. Second, the opening of the performance in the above quotation lists a number of elements which create a particular atmosphere. The blue light, the sounds of the fanfares, the bell-like sounds, the moaning voices, the particular rhythm of different noises as well as the movements of the performers all contributed to the creation of a particular atmosphere. As we learned from the reviews, some of the recurring elements in the performance which had an effect on the spectators included constant lighting changes. Blue, violet, green, grayish, reddish, brownish, bright, light, sunlight, and so on. The orchestration of music and sounds, the changing rhythm of movements, sound, and music. By the time Reinhardt produced Oedipus the King, he was already famous for the ways in which he created and used atmosphere. The reviews of all his productions mentioned the atmosphere. They talk about the Stimmung, you would today use this word atmosphere. It was not only the use of light, color, music, sounds, and rhythm of movements which contributed to the atmosphere, but often smell too. His famous Mid-Summer Night's Dream in 1904 was regarded as sensational because it used a revolving stage which was covered in fresh moss that emanating a bewitching fragrance in the space, giving the spectators an intense physical sense of the presence of the woods. Reinhardt applied this sophisticated use of atmosphere, something he had developed over the previous 10 years, to Oedipus the King as well as to the Oristea. Whether this created, I quote, a magical effect and wild excitement as in Oedipus or another quote, a barbaric atmosphere which was circus-like in the most wilder sense, another critic, as in the Oristea, when Agamemnon made an entrance to the clash of circus music with, now again, the critic Jakobsson, for snorting, stamping horses. It seemed that in all cases it was a particular atmosphere which succeeded in involving the spectators in making a strong impact on them. As the philosopher Gernot Böhm explains, a particular atmosphere is not bound to space although it does permeate space. Atmosphere belongs neither to the objects or persons who seem to radiate it, nor to those who enter the space and sense it physically. In the theater space, atmosphere is usually the first element to seize the spectator and open him or her to a particular experience of that very space. This experience cannot be explained by referring to single elements in or of space, for it is not single elements that create atmosphere but the interplay of all these elements together. Böhm defines atmosphere as spaces that are, I quote, tinted by the presence of objects, humans or environmental constellations. They are spheres of a presence of something of its reality in space. Böhm goes on to argue that atmosphere, I quote again, is not something that exists by itself in a vacuum but quite the opposite. It is something that emanates and is created by things, by people and the constellations that happen between them. Atmosphere is not conceived as something objective as a quality that belongs to objects and yet atmosphere is object-like because it articulates the spheres of its presence. Nor is atmosphere something wholly subjective, moves experience by someone and yet it is subjective or belongs to the subjective because it can be felt as a physical presence by the spectator and this sensation is at the same time a physical self-discovery of the subject in space. In our context, this description and definition of atmosphere seems particularly interesting in terms of two aspects. On the one hand, Böhm defines atmospheres as spheres of presence. That is to say that objects and humans perceived as part of an atmosphere as objects from which the atmosphere seems to emanate demand the attention of the person perceiving in a very intense way. They cannot be ignored. They make the presence conspicuous. They impose the presence on the perception of others. On the other hand, Böhm allocates atmosphere neither in the objects which seem to radiate it nor in the subjects who sense it physically but rather in the space between and around them as well as both at the same time. That is to say it is the atmosphere which binds performers and spectators together. Atmosphere can be regarded as a kind of environment which results from and at the same time surrounds them into which both are immersed. Thus, there seems to be a certain transformative potential inherent in atmosphere. We learn that the atmosphere created in Oedipus the King but also in the Aristaea was of a very special quality. The elements which contributed to the atmosphere were not only sounds, voices, music, movements, risen smells, light and color. Not only the spot lights but also the flickering flames of the open fire on the two altars as well as the torches held by a group of half-naked young men as they, I quote, raised like savages through the orchestra up and down the steps to the palace. All these elements have two things in common. First, they have a strong physical impact on those who perceive them and second, they are all transitory and ephemeral. These elements work on the senses and the nerves of the spectators. Sounds, voices or music for instance, not only surround the perceiving subject they also in a way invade their bodies. In their bodies the sounds begin to resonate and trigger similar vibrations. Particular sounds are even able to cause physical pain which can be clearly localized. The listener can only protect themselves against sound by blocking their ears. Comparable if not more powerful is the impact of smells. They invade the whole space and affect everybody present. It is impossible to escape them. They intrude into everyone's body. As Georg Simmel stated, when we smell something we draw this or that impression deeply into the center of our being. Assimilate it intimately as it were through the vital process of breathing which is not possible for any other sense to do of an object unless we eat it. That we smell the atmosphere of someone else in the most intimate perception of him it permeates our insight in gas form. So for Simmel, the person who smells will be bodily affected by the subject or by the object which emanates the scent. There is no defense against it. The smell thus can be regarded as a component or ingredient of atmosphere which contributes to the possibility that atmosphere may extend across space between actors and spectators that it surrounds the spectator and even invades him in a decisive manner. The smell not only has the effect that the object from which it emanates seems present in a particularly intense way to the spectator, but also that the spectator feels his own physical presence in an extremely intense way. By using elements which emanate strong smells such as the torches, the fire on the otters or the horses in the orysteia, Reinhardt exploited such possibilities to the full. Lighting is another factor which contributes enormously to the creation of atmosphere. Although Reinhardt did not yet dispose of a computerized lighting board, as Robert Wilson does nowadays, he pushed the technical possibilities of his time to the extreme and changed the color, tone, shadow, et cetera of the spotlights as well as their focus. With each lighting change, the atmosphere changed. The scale went from dreary, cold, depressive, or eerie to cheerful, happy, or joyous with all possibilities and nuances in between. Particularly powerful was the change from colors that are sensed as cold to those we perceive as warm. The warmth in particular was emphasized by the fire on the otters and the torches. Even if only those who set close to the arena could literally sense the warmth of the fire, it also evoked the impression of warmth for others who could only see it. All these elements were related to each other through rhythm. It is rhythm which unites the sounds, voices, music, movements of the bodies, objects, and light. The reviews often mention the rhythmic effects. It was Georg Fuchs, who in a small book on dance from 1906 pointed to the possibilities working on the body of the spectators through rhythm. He emphatically defines the art of acting as, I quote, the rhythmical movement of the human body in space executed out of the creative urge to express an emotion through the means of the own body with the aim of throwing off that inner urge with such a passion that one draws other people into the same or similar ecstasy. Even his rhythm not used in use ecstatic states, it usually works in some way on the person perceiving it for the human body is in fact rhythmically tuned. This is why we are particularly capable of perceiving rhythm and to resonate and vibrate with it. Performances which organize and structure the timing will help us to work on the senses of the spectators. So it was not so much symbolic meanings that could be accorded to the elements in question. It was the atmospheric effect which dominated over any kind of symbolic meaning that might have been attributed to them in terms of a particular tradition, ideology, religion, worldview or political system. It is to be assumed that the associations which individual spectators connected to them differed enormously according to the social group class or strata to which they belong as well as the personal beliefs. Even voice was not only used for the sake of producing shared linguistic meanings. As one critic complains, Reiner did not work with voice, I quote, to create an intellectual effect but rather to create acoustic waves which are a significant part of the modern register of atmosphere. The chorus thus must produce all kinds of sounds imaginable, muttering, gasping, screaming or sobbing. And even when the chorus speaks, it is not the sense of the words which is important, but the sound. The special atmosphere was particularly created by the desimentization of language addressed by the critic, the shift of focus from the meaning of the spoken word to the particular sound and timbre of the voice that emphasize the physical presence of the voice as well as of the speaker. Even with regard to language, it can be concluded that it was not common meanings which came to the fore but the atmospheric value of the individual voice as well as the harmony or disharmony of the different voices ringing out simultaneously. On the other hand, such a desimentization released a multitude of possible meanings which might be attributed to the spoken words by different spectators. This had far-reaching consequences for the kind of community that came into being in the course of the performance of Udipus the King and the Oresteia. Since the sense of community did not arise through a common symbolism which explicitly referred to beliefs, ideologies, et cetera, shared by all spectators or at least by a majority of them but to very special physical effects brought about by the presence of the masses in the space and by the frequently changing atmosphere, it cannot be regarded as a political, national, religious or ideological community. It came into being mainly if not exclusively through performative means developed and refined by Reinhardt in his theater since the turn of the century. Therefore, I shall call it a theatrical community. A theatrical community is not only a temporary community as transitory and ephemeral as any performance. It exists at best throughout the whole course of the performance and dissolves at latest at the very end. Moreover, it is a community which is not based on common beliefs and shared ideologies, not even on shared meanings. It can do without them. Therefore, it comes into being through performative means. As long as the performance lasts, it is capable of establishing a bond of sorts between individuals who come from the most diverse biographical, social, ideological, religious, political backgrounds and remain individuals who have associations of their own and generate quite different meanings. The performance does not force them into a common confession. Instead, it allows for shared experiences. Through such experiences, the self of the people who undergo them does not necessarily dissolve, but it certainly cannot be conceived of as something stable, permanently fixed or rigid. Rather, it is thought of as becoming fluid, undergoing transformations while the experiences are lived out. The community that came into being during the performances of Udipus the King and the Auresteia was not able or not did it aim to establish some kind of collective identity among its members. Since it was primarily based on shared short-lived experiences, emotions or bodily sensations and dissolved the moment after it happened, it was a community in a liminal state, never able to acquire an identity of its own. In some respects, it might appear as an utopian community. As the enormous success of Udipus the King on its tour through Europe indicates, this kind of community brought forth by the performance highlighted and at the same time satisfied certain needs felt by various different European countries. After the war, the social and political conditions in many European countries had changed considerably. They allowed to transform Reinhardt's theatrical communities into specific ideological and political communities with a particular collective identity to be confirmed to be confirmed by these mass spectacles. Under these circumstances, Reinhardt's theater, his mass spectacles, were turned into political theater that served very specific political aims. The political that had been latent in Reinhardt's mass spectacles now came to the fore and became manifest. Before I go to those political performances, I just want to mention a revival which Reinhardt did with his Oristea at the beginning of the Weimar Republic when the circus Schumann was rebuilt into his Grosse Schauspielhaus. There you read in critic about the audience, the image of a community of thousands was wonderful and heart-rending, perhaps all the more heart-rending for the intellectual German citizen because the spatial unity of the masses reawakened his yearning for an inner sense of belonging. Can we be one people? Here sits Herr Scheidermann, these are now names that are very important and prominent within the Weimar Republic. Here sits Herr Scheidermann over their private counselor Herr Röte. There is Hauptmann's Goethe-like hat. Over there Dr. Kohn waves to a comrade. But Scheidermann looks past Röte and Kohn passes Hauptmann with only a shrug of the shoulders. Even outside the work environment, there is no feeling of unity. There is no nation on earth which so lacks a feeling of community and the war has consumed us even more. So we have the greatest people theater but no people. This was the situation at the beginning of the Weimar Republic. But now let's go over it and have a look at the most prominent examples where, in fact, Reinhardt's devices were all used but for political reasons. The first are the Russian mass spectacles after the revolution. In the spring 1918, Reinhardt's Oedipus was restaged in the Chinese celli circus in St. Petersburg, now renamed Petrograd, where it had been performed on Reinhardt's guest tour in 1911. The restaging was initiated by Yuri Yuryev, the leading actor of the Alexandrinsky theater. The original set of the 1911 performance was still intact so that an authentic space was secured. Yuri Yuryev asked Alexander Gronovsky, a Reinhardt disciple, who had just returned from Berlin to direct the revival. Yuri Yuryev played the part of Oedipus and Gronovsky directed the chorus so fundamental to the original production and the mass scenes. The revival proved to be a huge success as huge at the original, attracting and its weak long run spectators of old social class. This was really this Reinhardt performance, marked the beginning of the series of the mass spectacles that were done by the Red Army Studio. It began with the overthrow of the autocracy in March 1919 and ended with the storming of the Winter Palace at the anniversary of the revolution on November 7th, 1920, all in Petrograd. They all employed Reinhardt devices, partly combining them with those from other sources. Looking back at the main sources of inspiration on which the avant-garde is true, they seem to be very far removed from Russian popular culture. However, it cannot be concluded there was no common ground between the intellectuals who put this on and the peasants, soldiers, and laborers that would enable a collective identity to emerge in the course of spectacles directed by the avant-garde as a major contribution to and element of a Bolshevik festival. It is often forgotten that the people, though illiterate, were quite able to occupy a space in an altered formation, to immerse themselves in an atmosphere created by a particular use of light, sound, smell, or images, and to respond to it by establishing an emotional bond between all those present in the space, and thus to bring forth a community, not as an utopian abstraction, but as lived experience, composed of highly heterogeneous individuals. It was, in fact, religion that accomplished such a miracle. People acquired this capacity by participating in the rituals of the orthodox liturgy. Here they were all on common ground with the elite, but in a way, but these were used in a way quite similar as Reinhardt did them, although Reinhardt, of course, had another goal in mind. Thus, it made not come as a surprise that the early revolutionary festivals often aroused experiences and triggered forms of behavior and demands on the participants similar to those created by a great orthodox holiday as some witness accounts show. Now, let me quote an eye witness to the overthrow of the aristocracy. There was radiant joy on all the soldiers' faces. They frequently halted as the people embraced and kissed one another in jubilation. Everybody said, here it is at last. Triumphant Easter has arrived. They were all smartly dressed as if for a big holiday. As in the capital, the Easter tradition of celebration became confused with the revolutionary festival. So this goes both very much together. What is emphasized here is the moment of ultimate transformation at the moment of redemption brought about by the revolution as well as by the revolutionary festival. So my next example, very shortly, is that of the mass spectacles in the Weimar Republic, which were done mostly by workers unions in Leipzig all over the 1920s. They were performed in cycling arenas, in exhibition halls, in fairgrounds, in stadiums, amusement parks, and so on. They used all the special devices that they had learned from Reinhardt. At the performance of war and peace, one critic from the Leipzig of Volkswagen Road, a large community needs in order to be confident of itself repeated demonstrations, communal celebrations, demonstrations of joyful events, of mourning, of commitment, of readiness to attack and defend things which have meaning to each and every member of the community. It is the task of art to cloth these moments of intense community spirit in moving expression. The mass spectacle with speaking chorus is a significant beginning. Perhaps it is already more than just a beginning. Clearly, the festivals of the social democrats proceeded from the assumption that the participants already formed a community because of their common class interests and intentions. It was the purpose of the festival and in particular of the mass spectacles to reaffirm this collective identity. My next example are the Tingspiel movement, the Nazi Tingspiele in the Third Reich. The Tingspiel was meant to combine the people's theater as a mass spectacle with political rallies. Accordingly, it was conceived as the national theater that would be in a position to represent the so-called folk community on stage and bring it forth as a cultic and festive community. In a speech to German theater directors on 8th May, 1933, Goebbels developed and explained this idea of a new people's theater. I quote, the national socialists will reunite people and stage. We will create a theater of 50,000 and 100,000. We will draw even the last folk comrade into the magic of dramatic art and enthuse them again and again for the great substance of our national lives. It is no coincidence that the expression theater of the 50,000 and 100,000 recalls the term Max Reinhardt coin for his new people's theater, the theater of the 5,000. Just as Reinhardt referred to the ancient Greek theater when he staged Oedipus the King and the Orestea in an arena, so the sites for the Tingspiel place in some respects follow the same model. At so-called sacred sites, as for instance, the Lorelei on the Rhine, King arenas were to be erected and built into the landscape. They were intended to hold, if not 50 or 100,000, then at least 20,000 spectators. It is small wonder that Goebbels very much wanted to win Reinhardt over for the Tingspiel movement. Reinhardt left Germany after his last Berlin production, Hugo von Hoffmann's Salzburg-Agrosso's Welttheater, which premiered on 1st March 1933 at the Deutsches Theater. The actor Werner Kraus was sent after him to offer him, now listen to that expression, to offer him honorary Aryan status and to talk him into coming back in order to stage the mass spectacles. He was well aware Goebbels that Reinhardt could do that wonderfully well. When Reinhardt declined this offer, he sent Craig to offer it to Piscata, who also declined. So Goebbels didn't care whether one was Jewish or a communist, he just wanted a person who did his job. The Reichsdamer-Türk Schlesse was convinced that he needed not only special scenic devices, but also, if not foremost, a particular space if he was to activate spectators and create a community of performers and spectators. He defined the architecture of the Tink sites as the expression of the folk community, and its task was to enable its participants to share in, I quote, the experience of the living community. In place, I quote him, in place of one-dimensional perception during a performance on a box set stage with apron, there will be multi-dimensional perception. The great national socialist meetings have triggered this movement. They have given the first example of the experience of a living community out of which the new cult spectacle, cult spectacle, can develop. Only within the framework of this new space can the spectator be transformed into co-actor, and the actor become one of the people, folks can also, that's the quote. Thus it can be concluded that apart from the Tink sites, yet to be erected, most of the elements recommended by Schlösser were elements and devices introduced by Reinhard's mass spectacles. Well, this is why he wanted him over. Now, my last example, these are the American Zionist patterns between 1932 and 1946 here in the USA. The first pageant was performed in 1932 in Chicago at the Hanukkah Festival. It took place on the 25th December, the second day of the Hanukkah Festival Week, which commemorates an important event in Jewish history, the revolt of the Maccabees against the Greek oppressors in 165 BC. The historical event formed the subject of the pageant which bore the title Israel Reborn. Isaac van Grof acted as the master of the pageant. He was the former director of the Chicago Civic Opera, chief manager of the Cincinnati Summer Opera and served as musical director of most of the American Zionist pageants. Van Grof wrote the play, composed the music and conducted the performance. When asked about the model he was following, he did not name the English and American pageants from the 1910s onwards, but he said he had something in mind in the line of McReinhardt's spectacular productions. He quite seriously said that he wanted that to do. 25,000 spectators attended and the performance was an overwhelming success. Never before had the Hanukkah Festival been celebrated in America through such a kind of performance. It was initiated by Maya W. Weisgall, a committed Zionist. After the overwhelming success of the Israel Reborn, Weisgall felt encouraged to continue his work promoting the national cause by producing pageants, pageants as mass spectacles. He initiated and produced the mass spectacle, the romance of a people for the 1933 World Fair in Chicago. That is to say that the context and framing of the new pageant was significantly different from that in Israel Reborn. While the Hanukkah pageant addressed members of the Jewish community only and was meant to instill at least a yearning for national identity, the romance of a people was conceived as a contribution by Chicago's Jewish community to an international exhibition. This opened up the possibility of claiming a Jewish nationhood and to present a particular image of Jewish nation to other nations. The preparations for the pageant started when the Nazis had just seized power in Germany. The performance was scheduled for July 1933. In April, the Aryan paragraph was issued. The persecution of Jews when the Nazis became obvious and public. It forced many German Jews into exile. The new situation had to be taken into account, if not by the pageant itself, at least by its framing program. The romance of a people was performed on 3 July. The Jewish day at the World Fair in an open space, the Socha Field Stadium, where 150,000 spectators were assembled. It was really massive. Many more than Reinhard would ever have dreamt of. On a huge multi-level stage, six episodes of Jewish history unfolded over three hours. From the creation of the world through the rise and fall of the Hebrew kingdom, the expulsion from the Jewish homeland, life in the diaspora, and the return to Zion in modern times. The unfolding of the history was embedded within a framework of a synagogue ritual. Each episode opened with a reading of a portion of the Torah in Hebrew. The voice of an invisible cantor emerged from a giant Torah scroll which was placed on road on an illuminated altar at one end of the vast playing area. The performance thus was realized as a particular fusion of theater and religious ritual. The pageant presented Jewish history as a national history, bound to a particular land, to Zion. Life in the diaspora appeared as but one episode in the southern year-long history of the people, an episode that must now be ended. Jewish national history would continue in Zion. The performance did not elude directly or openly to the persecution of Jews in Germany. It was the task of the speeches by prominent Zionists opening the evening program to address the issue and establish a link between the actual political situation and the pageant to follow. Chaim Weizmann later to become the first president of the newly founded state of Israel made a fervent appeal to Jews in Germany to leave the country without delay and emigrate to Palestine where they could contribute to the great project of rebuilding their ancient homeland. With ether reborn and in particular, the mass spectacle, the romance of a people, it had become obvious that these mass spectacles could work as an effective propaganda instrument. They did Harvard enormous potential for promoting and furthering the Zionist cause. Thus it comes as no surprise that Weizmann decided to continue the series of exceedingly successful patrons. Now he wanted to involve Reinhardt personally. I quote from a letter from Weizmann, while I was working in Chicago on the Romans, I read an item in the paper that marks Reinhardt had to flee Germany. In one of my inspired moments, I sent off a cable to Max Reinhardt Europe. If Hitler doesn't want you, I'll take you. The cable never reached him, but the idea stayed with me. It's purpose to put it simply was to put together a Reinhardt directed spectacle on a theme resembling the Romans as a sort of answer to Hitler. But unlike the Romans, it was to be the project of some of the greatest artists of our time. Reinhardt did not receive the cable, but still when he immigrated to the USA, he did in fact one of the latest Zionist pageants, which was called the Eternal Road. He asked Franz Werfel to write the play and Kurt Weier to compose the music. It was not such a big success as his mass spectacles at home, nor as the pageants that were before, but still it was remarkable. And in a way, everything now came full circle when Reinhardt himself exploited his own devices once more. In all these cases, the devices and means Reinhardt developed in his mass spectacles before the war in order to create theatrical communities by the different political and ideological movements after the war were applied in the mass spectacles in order to confirm a particular collective identity of performers and audiences alike and to further a particular political agenda and cause. The mass spectacles were openly declared to be political theater and worked as such. Thank you very much. So thank you all for coming and staying. Now we just will have a little change of the scene and as I just also was reminded, tonight is the lecture dedicated to Daniel Gerald. It's the official annual Daniel Gerald lecture and this theme I think is very close to his own research was very much spent into the Eastern European and Russian work. So this is of course in his memory. So Jadwiga Gerald is with us here. So thank you for coming, Jadwiga. And I'm sure that Daniel would have been very proud that this lecture in his name would be given by you. So thank you for coming. So we'll have a little discussion or maybe of both of you and you sit down and maybe some thoughts you have. Have you got the other side? Well, thank you, Eric, for introducing such a wide ranging and colorful set of occurrences on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 20th century. It is remarkable how influential throughout the world Reinhardt was, not only in terms of actual borrowings from him but the fact that he toured everywhere. I mean, many, certainly he was among the biggest if not the best known entrepreneur in New York and particularly with the mass spectacles. You didn't mention the miracle but that was a big, huge success in New York and well, I mean London and all around Europe. Probably internationally, Reinhardt was most known for the mass spectacles, although of course he dabbled in every kind of theater and was revolutionary in most of them. I'd like, it is such a huge subject, it goes in so many different directions. I would like to actually start by expanding it further and asking Erika to speculate a little bit about what became of this movement. That is, as she said, we go on up into the 1930s, 1940s. It still is a very powerful international, I'm talking particularly about the mass spectacles. They've been politicized in many places but as we move on past the 1940s, this kind of activity does not entirely disappear but disappears significantly. It's nothing like it was 15 or 20 years before and I guess I have kind of two interlocking questions to just ask Erika's thoughts on. One is where would you trace the continuing influence of Reinhardt on, especially in the mass spectacles, but anywhere you like, on past the Second World War in Germany or in the United States? Where would you look to see a continuing influence and then sort of on the opposite side of the coin? The things that, why don't we have, why do not mass spectacles of some kind or another continue with the kind of popularity and prominence that they have before the Second World War? So any thoughts on either of them? Well, this is very speculating. Yes, it is, but we like to speculate. So let's speculate a little bit. I mean, after the war, of course, people did not want to have anything to do with mass, whatever masses it were, whatever kind of, but I think if we look back in the last years, now we don't use the word masses, we don't use the word community anymore, we use other words, we use the term swarm. That's quite obvious, which is, let's say, something that belongs into our time now. We have lots of movements that work like swarms. That is, you can join them and you can step out. You can include and exclude yourself as you want. It's not a homogeneous mass, it's not something where these political mass spectacles were for, I think in a way it's something Reinhard would have liked very much because the device, how he used the devices was this, this is what I try to emphasize, that each of these spectators who shared experiences still had associations and ideas about that right of their own. So they remained in this respect individuals and not parts of an anonymous mass. And I think that what happens with these swarm movements nowadays, that's something very similar. It is the individual that decides to include or to exclude and they have become very popular in the last decades. And so for, I think that is something that one could put a certain line between Reinhard and these kind of movements. That reminds you of something else that struck me, particularly in the first part of your presentation. As you were talking about the integration of the audience into the acting space and how that was reinforced by rhythms, by atmosphere, by sound and so on. And I think for New York audiences and perhaps for London audience, this really evokes images of the very popular phenomenon since the year 2000 of what we call immersive theater. Exactly then what I would put, when you started, when you started, I just said this is immersive theater. This is immersive theater, right, right. This is why I said to immerse in it. To immerse in it, to immerse in it. You notice that properly. And it is, I think that exactly the dynamic that Erica, that you suggest, that is to say, yes, you're coming into an alien world. You're joining a kind of contemporary community, but not entirely. You still have your own interest, your own, because it seems to me that, I think you laid out that dynamic very precisely. And I do think that same dynamic works now. I have a related question about that. And that is, it really is kind of a historical question or kind of a question about the actual dynamics of the crowds. And this is something I've wondered about in the past, looking at pictures of the Oedipus productions and the circus Schumann or similar things. That is, to what extent is the audience actually participating? That is, when we look there and we see hundreds of people with their hands up, are the people with their hands up for the most part, actors and audiences who are standing among them, watching them? Or are the actors encouraging the audience and does most of the audience, in fact, kind of get into the spirit and try to do what the actors are doing? Or do you have any sense of how that dynamic works? Well, I think it was not that we can measure it with today's participatory theater forms. I think if we were quoted from this review, what was really disconcerting at that time, we always have to see it more than 100 years ago that this took place. That was not the distance there you have the performers and here you are, this really this jostled against our bodies. This is something which you find so often that they felt uncomfortable, the bourgeois critics, that it was not respected anymore, that they were distanced from that. This jostling the body against that meant they just taken in, they became part of the whole thing. So I think this is for that time a really revolutionary device to get the people into the whole thing. Today it would be, of course, something very different. This is why I always insist on that we have to keep in mind what time is it, what is what people are used to, what is for them the normal thing to do and then one can measure how extraordinary that is what Reinhardt did. We measure it by standards what we have today in immersive theater and environmental theater and I do not know what of theater because of course Reinhardt went to all these places. He did the Midsummer Night's Dream, he did it in the woods near Munich, he did it in Oxford in the woods, he did the, now really the Merchant of Venice, he did the Merchant of Venice in Venice on a piazza. He did all these things everywhere so he had also environmentally, he had all these things in his time but we have to see that in that time it was absolute so new. So unheard of and even, I mean, yesterday we talked about Descartes and all his new technical devices. Reinhardt had quite a lot of do we call patente also patterns, yeah patterns for these inventions that he made for his theater which had to do with these lighting equipments and with these things. So that was just in that time I think it was all these was unheard of. I indeed I was struck and I'd never run across this before how the many quotes you have from the upper class citizens and particularly the critics that said, you know this is, you're sort of standing aside. I'm not going to be drawn into that kind of, and there is a kind of superiority and also a kind of a conservatism that is it's sort of like, we'll keep on the old Biedermeyer idea of sitting quietly in the theater and being respectful and so on and here's somebody shaking that up but I was surprised to see how much that was articulated in the criticism. But it is also that he took Greek tragedies. This is, the Greek tragedies were... The micro... The Greek tragedies at that time for the German educated middle classes were a very holy thing. It was the greatest you could ever have and taking this, performing it in circus where the ordinary people went for their entertainment and so he brought together and we talk much about that there is a mixture of popular devices and other devices, he used all that already and this was in fact revolutionary. For a Greek tragedy, you have to stand there with awe, you have to listen to the words of the poet and the rest distracts you from what is important and that he just turned all that around that you partly could not even understand the words but you had to respond to lots of other things. This was really something completely, not to be imagined by the critics and also of the rest of the audience who then liked it and got into it. Right, and I was struck by the enormous importance of the real, real smells, real flowers, a real piazza in the real world. Everything real, yeah. That, and again I would imagine that on the one hand you would have conservative critics who say, oh but this is just cheap entertainment, of course people are going to like seeing rabbits on stage or whatever it is but real art would be more abstract and more, you wouldn't go out to a real piazza with a real gondola, you ought to get something that is more abstract and more elegant on the stage but you can see how, what the popular appeal of that would be. Real horses, this was mentioned, horrible, real horses and you know, this critics says they does not allow us to have an illusion and they wanted to get into an illusion that they are now in ancient Greece and things are happening as in ancient Greece so that it was, I think there was a question from the gentleman. I hope I'm not being blasphemous on some filmmakers just because someone brought my attention here. For example in the mid-1920s Sergei Eisenstein made two things, you know, Patamkin, no, I'm sorry, he made Patamkin and he also made October, all done with crowds and he must have been influenced by Max Reinhardt and subsequently his devices in film, the editing and so on were also used in the Third Reich as you know by Olympia, in Olympia and in Triumph of the Civilians, the Triumph of the Will and later on many people were influenced so I think indirectly many people were influenced by Reinhardt through Eisenstein. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure, I'm absolutely because I mean when he was in St. Petersburg in 1911 it was just a sensation there and everybody in Russia talked about that and it's quite clear that Eisenstein who at that time worked together with Mayer Holt at the theater that he of course knew about that and that this had an impact on his work. Do you also think that the Jeterman, the everyman in Salzburg which is still an ongoing tradition to your question, would you say that's a mass spectacle? Not really, no, I wouldn't say so because I mean he did not only mass spectacles, he did also, why did he want to build the Kamerspiele to have an intimate theater? Reinhardt is a person who did, you can't pinpoint him down to one direction. He did the most intimate theater and he did the most lavish mass spectacles, he tried out whatever he wanted, he used the realistic psychological acting style on the one hand and on the other when he did the Galdoni he used Commedia dell'Alte devices and this was it and it is quite interesting the director of the Piccolo theater when he did his, when Strahler did his servant of two masters he said he had in mind these pictures from Reinhardt's production of that. So there are lots of in different directions, it's not only the mass spectacles, it's almost everything Reinhardt did that had then a huge impact on other theater and it was as Marvin mentioned in the beginning of course there were some like the Duse for instance or Sarah Bernal, there were great actresses touring also going over to America but something what Reinhardt did doing it with whole place, whole productions not only all over Europe but to the US also, this was honored of and I think in fact let's start it again then let's say in the 80s again before that it's rather the exception to the way people did not tour around. So even in that respect he was someone where we can say well yes we still do what Reinhardt started. Yeah probably I think the most really the single most remarkable thing about Reinhardt among all the great theater makers of history is the eclecticism that he did as Erika said an incredible range of work anticipating really almost every kind of theater experiment of the 20th century from the most intimate productions in the commerce field to these mass spectacles and I while I mean to look specifically at the Salzburg Festival not a mass spectacle in the sense that these are there's not a mass on stage but at the famous opening of that play the summoning of every man when death comes out and starts calling for every man Reinhardt arranged for bills all over the city to be rung so that I mean it is a mercy theater of the most spectacular kind. So people sitting in that square the entire city then became as Erika said through sound through lights through vision your world is the whole world becomes theatricalized but that's just one kind of thing he did he just did an enormous range of material. And whenever he started doing something you the critics were first against him when he did this intimate theater and the first production there were Ipsen's ghosts there the critics since it was rather small theater it was more like this here not more than 99 person it could be seated there the critics objected that you could see every muscle in the face of the actors to move and they thought that this is very indiscreet you can't do that. And so that was against where they objected they always objected with everything he did was what was new what the audiences liked it it's such a difference between what the audiences did who liked it very quickly and the critics who always were against what Reinhardt did whatever it was they were against it. Maybe we should go to the audience and have one or two questions maybe also our students who are here if something comes to your mind but maybe we'll start with you. Thank you for such a wonderful talk very inspiring. I wanted to ask you if you could say a little more about Nietzsche because it seems the Dionysian is very present in the way you described the mass spectacle on the one hand and also since you mentioned the book Dettons of Fuchs in 1906 I seem to remember that in the text where he says that acting is basically should become dancing and then we think of the connection of Nietzsche to dance of course in his discourse I'm just wondering whether any further reflections on that and also one other thing is that in Fuchs there's this long discourse against Wagner as a bourgeois phenomenon as you were mentioning and I'm wondering whether this where the question of myth comes up within the mass spectacle as potentially Wagnerian and if that is essentially bourgeois in this context. I think of course Fuchs was a disciple of Nietzsche this is no question about that he's talking about ecstasy and everything you could leave Reinhardt alone with something like ecstasy he would never have talked about that for him I would never say he was a Nietzsche he was not a follower of Nietzsche and you can see that also that he was much more aware of the difference in stylistic hates between elements from the popular and elements from high culture what we think today is so great that there are artists who mix up popular and high high and low cut that was for him nothing he crossed this border but not in the way that he wanted to get his spectators into a kind of ecstasy they should have the possibility to make new experiences experiences which they could not make at other places but that did not mean that they this is what I said he always insisted that there was the possibility for him to remain and feel themselves as individuals although they had shared experiences I think this really takes him away from Nietzsche who would just have loved that out of this shared experiences comes the dissolution of the selves completely whereas I would just say it was a destabilizing of the self also in Reinhardt but not to that extent that it would have been a dissolution thank you very much for this expansive discussion of Max Reinhardt I would just like to mention something Elsie Laska Schülo wrote a play in 19 between 1939 called Ich und ich which Judith Molina and the Living Theater in 1989 produced and in it Max Reinhardt Elsie Laska Schülo invokes Max Reinhardt as the honorary director and the play includes Faust and Mephisto and the Marx Brothers and the Nazis who come to hell for banquet and it was a very Reinhardtian dramaturgy it was done on Avenue C in the very small theater that the Living Theater at that time had but very much immersive because she built a hellish cabaret people sat around and got served by little devils and the play happened around the audience and so in a very small way it was a fantastic evocation of that kind of a spectacle I think it's important that we have yesterday we had Piscator and today we have Reinhardt and both of them were very, very different but both left the imprint on theater makers in different parts of the world that's quite interesting to follow this strand We have one last question over there I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about his sort of political turn because you mentioned in the beginning that he was quite unpolitical or that he didn't mean for it to be a political performance so I didn't know that he did any of these scientist pageants so what made him become political was it the shock of the Nazi regime or was it just a temptation? He did not, this is one of the reasons why the Eternal Road became not such a success because he did not want to do a political spectacle he used it more than, he also, you know he was a deeply believing Jew who went to the synagogue but he did not want also to have that on the theater he distinguished between both of that and so this Eternal Road was eluding to religion but not religious in that sense and it had not much to do with, this is why Weisgall in the end was very desperate about the whole undertaking because this is not what he had hoped Reinhard would do Reinhard did not want to do political theater he was quite, since so far he's just the opposite to Piscata who said what I do is political theater and the other who said what I do is definitely not political theater he didn't want to do that Well again we could go on especially with both of you here you know for a much longer time but we ran out of our 19 minutes so again thank you for coming thank you for sharing your time and experiences thank you all for coming, thank you