Transatlantische Transformationsprozesse im „Black Atlantic“. Hubert Fichte und postkoloniale literarische Konzepte aus Brasilien und Kuba im Diskurs. Von Isabelle Leitloff. Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2021. 445 Seiten. €40.00 gebunden oder eBook.

Abstract

Odermatt’s adaptation frequently misses the point. Precisely through their failure, they highlight these main contours of Tabori’s work. One of the most interesting and theoretically challenging chapters in Open Wounds is by Klaus van den Berg, who interprets Tabori through the lens of Walter Benjamin’s notion of Bildraum. Bildraum literally means image space, but in Benjamin’s theorization, it refers to a mode of cognition born of modernity’s shocks. Van den Berg argues that Benjamin’s concept overlaps with Tabori’s image of himself as a Spielmacher (play maker), a soccer term that suggests he did not so much direct actors as create Spielraum for them—room in which to play. This Spielraum/Bildraum becomes the setting for what van den Berg terms “performance illuminations,” flashes of understanding and revolutionary experience that conjoin “physical, psychological, and historical space” (69). This setting aims to establish “a visual passage between past and present and makes ideas legible on stage” (70). Van den Berg then applies this critical model to Tabori’s two productions of The Merchant of Venice, which he reads as responses to the Holocaust. We learn that, before Munich authorities vetoed the idea, Tabori even wanted his 1978 production of the play to be performed in Dachau in a staging whereby audience members and actors would be bussed together to the camp. These productions demonstrate how Tabori “advanced from modern director in the mimetic theater to a unique playmaker orchestrating the unfolding of memory and experience” (71). Open Wounds has a few of the vices typical of edited scholarly collections, such as repetition of themes and minor inconsistencies. For instance, Tabori’s Kafkainspired 1977 play Hungerkünstler, for which his cast prepared through a medically supervised fast for forty days, is translated in three different ways, as The Fasting Artists, The Hunger Artists, and The Hunger Artist. But these are not worth dwelling on because the book certainly has far more virtues. Foremost among them is its concision and clarity. In just 200 pages, the pieces of this scholarly mosaic construct a vivid picture of George Tabori’s many identities and the theoretical underpinnings of his theater. The introduction and ten essays, all scrupulously footnoted, typically number between 15 and 20 pages. This economy of prose makes them pedagogically useful for Holocaust studies, German studies, and theater courses, where George Tabori might yet receive the credit he is due.