171

Florian Malsacher | No Outside. Nowhere.

heatre critics struggle for criteria, distance. And, of course, money.

Finally, criticism only exists in relation to something other than itself: it is an instrument, a
means to a future, or to a truth, which it neither knows nor will become, it is a glimpse of an
area that it would like to police, but cant enforce its law.
Foucault
A black chambermaid in the large, marble, box-like set mops the loor, mops and mops, her movement becoming
slower, becoming slow motion. hen, after a blackout with loud booming white noise: absolute silence. As if all
sound were turned of. And in the silence, in the harsh, bare marble room sits a baby alone, only a few months
old, sits and looks incredulous. Hesitatingly, without lifting its gaze from the audience, it reaches out for a
black cup, knocks it over, and three dice roll over the white loor. A surreal dream, a ilm scene perhaps, but
with an electric physical presence. And the audience barely dares to breathe, so as not to disturb the child, so
as not to disturb the image. So as not to be saddled with the responsibility.
How does one capture presence with language? With what criteria does one judge the performance
of a baby? Are they allowed to do that? What ethical principles are valid for art? What is one describing when
there is no plot, no acting, and no dialogue to describe? How true is memory?
he job of the critic isnt exactly made easier by the fact that theatre is increasingly unwilling to
take a text and more or less cautiously or violently heave it onto a stage, interpret it, illustrate it, or embody it.
Criteria for good or bad have always been a construction in art and life, a diicult-to-separate mix of relative
agreement about the latest discourse and ones own private opinion. However, as long as it is clear that it is
about more or less successfully staging a drama, as long as the text always comes irst and everything else
follows it, as long as the actor (regardless of whether psychological or artiicial, whether very physical or

173

very ethereal, whether over-aestheticised or humble) plays a reasonably clear and deined role, as long as the
actor plays a role at all, then you at least have something to hold onto while writing the review. And if you
nevertheless are still clueless, you can always praise or complain about the diction of the main actor.
Text, movement, space, sound, lighting, whatever
hose were the days. Nowadays you can be happy when an actor is involved at all, and if the critic has to evaluate
or at least describe the performative ability (and presence) of completely paralysed people with motor neuron
disease (in a work of the German theatre- and ilmmaker Christoph Schlingensief at the Volksbhne, Berlin)
or of computer-playing youths, old ladies, unemployed air traic controllers and Indian call centre workers
(all in the work of Rimini Protokoll), of eagerly performing professional dilettantes (e.g. Baktruppen or their
successors Showcase Beat le Mot), or evenas in the above described opening scene of the fourth part of Romeo
Castelluccis Tragedia Endogondiaof a nine-month-old child.
he critical relection about the actors work and his role is one of the most obvious aesthetic
indications of contemporary experimental theatre. Among other reasons it results from a mistrust of
traditional acting skills with their often predictable tricks, but its roots are deeper; the as if of the conventional
theatrical pact is not, for many theatre-makers, a feasible starting point anymore. he critique of representation,
above all the psychoanalytically inluenced French post-structuralism and its variants, has necessarily also
called into question the theatrical machinery of representation. Such theatre often does not want to show any
other kind of reality, but rather create a situation that is in itself real. In this way, the borders between acting
and performance, representation and presentation dissolve, as do many of the customary criteria for analysis
and assessment. Where the text does not necessarily have the irst word, any system of signs can come to the
fore in order to demand attention and be the starting point also of a critique. Movement, space, sound, light,
whatever. Perhaps even presence.
What does that mean for criticism? For example, that it is now more than ever necessary to generate
the criteria from each performance itself. What are the rules of play being asserted and used? How are they
fulilled? And, of course, do we believe these rules of play to be meaningful, useful or interesting? After all,
a performance, an evening of dance, a theatre piece, is not a self-fulilling prophecy. It exists in contexts,

175

which one must be able to read. hey are as they always have beenparts of discourses, related to other works,
theories, arguments, friends and enemies. Without context a black square is just a black square, a urinal a
urinal and bad acting bad acting.
Additions to a critical language have slowly been developing, which are useful for contemporary
theatrical forms. he widely discussed and translated Post-Dramatic heatre by the academic Hans-hies Lehmann
has a surprisingly large distribution for being a specialists book, and has contributed a lot to the development
of language and become known to a somewhat wider audience. Recent dance criticism, which for a long time
had got on without needing action, text and psychology, has also made a considerable contribution to this
debate.
But still, it is not easy to write an incisive review, when it must be written quickly and is often given
little space, that can reasonably recognise, evaluate or describe the diferent systems of signs and make them
halfway understandable to the general public, while also following its own rules; that is, to be a well written
text, which, at its best, might give some sense of the qualities of the artistic object that are diicult to name
explicitly (atmosphere, rhythm, sympathy, presence). General models of analysis, superordinate concepts and
opinions have a short half-lifeand only exist in the awareness of their contingency.
Perhaps the numerous individual artistic positions will become more clearly sorted out in
retrospect, and turn out to be more similar than one thought. At present they arise and often disappear again
so rapidly that one is not always able to see traces of their existence. Which, by the way, is actually still a
critics responsibility: to grasp something, if only for a short time, that often (especially in the case of many
independent theatre productions) disappears in the next moment; to leave behind in the general discourse a
trace of something that often times (especially in the case of many independent theatre productions) hardly
anyone has seen. he countless reviews posted on the internet by independent theatre companies show that
a review is often all that remains of a production. he critic, or rather, hopefully, the critique in its entirety,
becomes the chronicler.
Perhaps, in a paradoxical way, the critique can sometimes counteract the low of a trend that it all
too often (albeit together with the programmers, audience members and also the theatre-makers) enforces itself.
Against the tempo with which new turns old, against the breathless search for fresh blood, new discoveries,

177

the big coup. hat it is often diicult for the critic to recognise or even to appreciate an artistic work is also due
to this often times absurd speed. Unlike in literature, art and music, there is no possibility for a posthumous
rediscovery.
Wars, fashion, charts and Agamben
he spectators situation is made more diicult by the fact that the contexts for an evening in the theatre are
not just artistic. As all available media can be widely accessed, all possible reference systems are seemingly
indeinitely extended. Gene research can be just as much a topic as war, fashion, the latest pop charts or an
essay by Agamben.
So, no one can know everything. And art that tests ones knowledge (as pop-cultural as it might
be) quickly becomes boring and usually hides much less behind its mysteries than it purports to do. hus the
(mostly unconsciously) formulated call for a new civic canon of education is just as silly as an art, a theatre, a
music piece, that is exclusively self-explanatory and can be understood by anyone who makes the efort. One
cantas a critic eitherignore it; one has to engage with the discourse, read, write, think it over. And now
and again talk to each other about it. Perhaps even with an artist.
However, this last point is traditionally proscribed for a theatre critic (in contrast, for example, to
visual art or music). here is still the supposed, idealised image of the critic who silently enters the theatre,
then, leaving just as silently, passes his sentence in the lonely hours of the night and by the light of the
lickering monitor. One who never speaks to the theatre-makers. And who therefore has not understood for a
long time, cannot understand, what is actually going on in theatre.
However, the communicative critic treads a fine line, of course. The cultural journalist who
hobnobs with dramaturges at the premire parties at regional theatres, who is on the books (for example as a
contributor to an anniversary publication) of a theatre, he makes himself vulnerableeven when his criticism
perhaps actually remains unafected by it. Even in the context of the supposedly more tolerant international
performance and dance scene; friendships irst have to be able to last, when in the newspaper the next day
ones eforts are pointedly lambasted by the other. he diiculty in drawing a line here is one of the basic
challenges of the changing job of the critic. It is at the same time a mundane symptom of a fundamental shift;

179

that there is no outside any more, no point from which the world if not unhinged could at least be observed, a
point from which one could criticise undisturbed.
But art and criticism approach each other in another way too; the more discursive the art, the
further away it is from romantic ideas of genius and hermeneutics, the more it relects its own methods and
lays things out in the open, the nearer it is to theory and the critic. It is not only in the context of so-called
conceptual dance that this has been shown. he border between a theory that understands itself performatively
and a performative practice that understands itself in terms of theory is in no way easy to deine.
A critic (as well as a theatre-maker) should be conscious of all of this and, nevertheless, naturally,
have a unique take on it, at least with one foot inside and, even if only temporarily, one allegedly outside. In
this respect, the critics task has not changed since Gotthold Ephraim Lessings time: to criticise, to oppose,
but also to love. he necessity to explain patiently again and again and to advocate is also not new, but in recent
times has become increasingly important, because there is no understanding without context.
he gesture of the absolute has been lost to us. Each review is an argument in a discussionwith the
heartfelt conviction necessary for even the more or less entertaining canteen discussion. In order to have the
right to exist, says Baudelaire, criticism must be partisan, passionate and political. Yes, says todays critic,
and no. Because he knows that new arguments will follow that in turn require further new arguments. (Even
whenin contradiction to the presumed end of the great narrativessome lines of discourse prove themselves
longer lived than one perhaps would like to believe).
Where so many reference points exist, where the knowledge of certain music, of a certain attitude
towards life (and with it also the belonging to a certain generation) can be relevant for classiication and
evaluation, it is indispensable for the critic to lay open his own criteria. And thereby make himself vulnerable
to criticism.
Every form of criticism, whether it is of society or art work, has become, in the absence of
comprehensive utopias, a provisional one. Nevertheless, Foucaults declaration, paradoxical and solemn, is
still relevant: there is a commonality in the modern west between the illustrious entertainment of Kant
and that small polemical-professional activity that bears the name criticism: a certain way of thinking, of
speaking, of action too, a certain relationship to that which exists, to that which one knows, to that which

181

one does, a relationship to society, to culture, as well as a relationship to the othersomething one could call
the attitude of the critic.
A dying profession
It is not so much through theory or through art that the model of the independent critic is under such pressure,
as through the simple, pragmatic, commercial conditions of the critics work. here is hardly any newspaper
(including the national ones) that is willing to pay for a writers travel; visiting performances outside of the
small regional patch has become a luxury that one can enjoy only now and again. Where then should the ability
to compare, to contextualise, to put into order, where should the criteria come from? How should a critic know
what is possible elsewhere and what the state of the art is?
At the same time, the features pages are markedly shrinking and in those newspapers where there
are still cultural sections to speak of, reviews are giving way to debate in which the great questions of the
world are dealt with directly without any recourse to art at all. Newer genres like ilm and pop music have long
contested this limited space as well. In addition to the fact that the review as journalistic product is more a
product of the market than we like to think, and that service is increasingly important. Service means passing
judgement instead of making a critique, point systems instead of diferentiated opinion. he disappearance
and neglect of the often derided regional cultural supplements is perhaps even worseabove all, for many
independent theatre companies. Because while the larger regional theatres are still visited by some national
press, independent theatres, as well as important independent groups and festivals of newer theatre forms,
count themselves lucky when just one professional spectator visits them. he professional theatre critic is not
disappearing because he is now worse than before (why should he be?), but because art and with it its critics
are sinking in the kudos of even the critics own editorial staf. he inancial pressure grows in parallel to this
as the theatre critic writes restaurant reviews or travel reports as well, which wouldnt be such a bad thing if
he were allowed to retain an overview of his own speciality.
It is not exactly unlikely that the theatre critic is a dying profession. Even if some theatre
practitioners might unthinkingly celebrate that prospect at irst, something quite fundamental would be
missing if the luxury of a professional spectator (who, of course, is not always good or fair or clever) who bothers

to attend a performance, think about it and inally bring his thoughts to paper, were to disappear. Criticism
and art may like to sit on opposite sides, but they are in the same boat. Together with children, old women,
motor neurone disease suferers, professional performer dilettantes, miserable and magniicent actors.