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HYPERLINKS (not in program):
Review: polyglot.lss.wisc.edu
Review: www.arts.uci.edu
Text: What Is National Socialism?
Program Cover
“This is a unique historic opportunity - unique because it marks the ending of the extraordinary career of Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble. Brecht wrote ARTURO UI in Los Angeles and it’s fitting, that it returns to L.A. for its final performance by the ensemble that Brecht founded and led. It’s an honor to be involved with the Goethe-Institut in this presentation”
Gordon Davidson
Center Theatre Group, Artistic Director
| BERLINER ENSEMBLE | |
| July 7, 9, 10, 1999 | 8:00 pm |
| July 11, 1999 | 4:00 pm |
| UCLA Freud Playhouse | |
“Arturo Ui”
by
BERTOLT BRECHT
directed by Heiner Müller
Martin Wuttke as Arturo Ui
| Hans Joachim Schlieker | Set and Costume Design |
| Stephan Suschke | Co-Director |
Tonight’s performance is 2 hours and 30 minutes plus one intermission
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| CAST | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Arturo Ui (gangster boss) | Martin Wuttke | ||
| Roma (Ui’s sidekick) | Thomas Anzenhofer | ||
| Girl (gangster) | Volker Spengler | ||
| Givola (gangster „The Florest”) | Viktor Deiß | ||
| Dogsborough | Stefan Lisewski | ||
| Actor | Michael Gwisdek | ||
| Dockdaisy (a moll) | Margarita Broich | ||
| Dullfeet (newspaper editor) | Jaecki Schwarz | ||
| Mrs. Dullfeet (his wife) | Traute Höß | ||
| Sheet (a shipping tycoon) | Michael Gerber | ||
| Clark (business leader of the Trust) | Veit Schubert | ||
| Butcher (business leader of the Trust) | Hans Fleischmann | ||
| Flake (business leader of the Trust) | Götz Schulte | ||
| Bowl (Sheet’s treasurer | Achmed Bürger | ||
| Ragg (Reporter) | Michael Gerber | ||
| O’Casey (chairman, investigating committee | Axel Werner | ||
| Gaffles (gentleman from City Hall) | Klaus Hecke | ||
| Goodwill (gentleman from City Hall) | Thomas Wendrich | ||
| Merchant | Heinrich Guttchereit | ||
| Merchant | Paul Plamper | ||
| Merchant | Stephan Suschke | ||
| Fish | Achmed Bürger | ||
| Dogsborough Junior | Michael Gerber | ||
| Inna (Roma’s friend) | Thomas Wendrich | ||
| Bloody Woman (a wounded woman) | Ruth Glöss | ||
| Bodyguards (Arturo Ui’s bodyguards) | Uwe Preuß | ||
| Christoph Müller | |||
| Mabel Sheet (wife of shipping tycoon) | Susanne Sachße | ||
| Announcer | Michael Gerber | ||
| Balcony Speaker(Hitler) | John Prosky | ||
| Director | Heiner Müller | ||
| Set & Costume Designer | Hans Joachim Schlieker | ||
| Co-Director | Stephan Suschke |
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BACKGROUND
Written in 1941, “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” is a political satire about the making of a fascist as it re-tells the story of Hitler and the Nazi era. Set in 1920 Chicago, Brecht modeled the plot and characters on Al Capone’s mafia rule in order to demonstrate the dangers of National Socialism and fascism. It is political theater at its very best and most powerful.
The unemployed Ui, son of simple people from the Bronx, comes to Chicago with seven thugs to bring peace to the vegetable market. While posing as a law-abiding citizen and a family man, he is a ruthless hoodlum intent on establishing a monopoly racket, The Cauliflower Trust. Selling protection to legitimate businessmen against burglaries and robberies, Ui’s gang uses violence and murder when they refuse to cooperate. Political bribery, corrupt police, gang violence, and manipulation of a timid mass press are all techniques Brecht designs for Ui in order to illustrate the relationship between fascism, crime, and capitalism. The comic confluence of a gangster story and German history produce a bravura role in the figure of Ui and seems more topical today than ever in showing the proximity of showmanship to demagogues and modern mass politics.
SYNOPSIS
A sales crisis has brought the cauliflower trade in Chicago completely down. Gangster boss Arturo Ui offers to help the leaders of the Cauliflower Trust: Together with his people he will force the small dealers to buy their vegetables. But the gentlemen of the Trust don’t even listen to him. They are hoping for honorable Dogsborough’s help. He shall help the Trust to get a loan from the City - supposedly for the construction of new docks - to put the cauliflower business back in the clear. To ensure Dogsborough cooperation the Trust offers him Sheet’s shipping business at a cut-rate price. Dogsborough buys the shipping business and succeeds in getting the loan for the Trust.
The Trust’s negative attitude towards Ui causes him problems. His private army is demoralized by all this inaction, his lieutenant Roma demands action „from below”, but Ui does not want to act without the protection from the people in power. When the gangsters find out about the manipulation of the city loan, Ui realizes his chance has come: Dogsborough pushed for the loan out of his own interests and no docks at all have been built. Ui implores Dogsborough’s cooperation. He promises him protection from any investigation of the whereabouts of the loan and demands protection from the police for his raids. Dogsborough, though, throws Ui out of the house. He believes he can take care of this possible scandal himself.
Dogsborough cannot prevent an investigation of this affair as too much information has been leaked already to the public and the small tax payers are demanding an explanation. Now he is forced to cooperate with Ui.
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Ui sets an end to the investigation by having the testimonies killed. To further his goals Ui has an actor prepare him for his new part as “leader of the people”.
Ui takes over the protection of the cauliflower business. But the small business people insist on the fact that until now nothing bad has happened to their shops and see no reason whatsoever to pay for Ui’s protection. Even Ui’s “friends” - the old Dogsborough and Clark, the leader of the Cauliflower Trust - cannot help Ui to more popularity. To convince the merchants how much they need his protection he has Giri set a warehouse on fire. The merchants finally unify under Ui’s leadership.
In a show trial the unemployed Fish, who has been so drugged he is in no condition to be interrogated, is found guilty of arson. Ui’s victory is perfect, from now on the merchants pay.
After having settled its inner affairs the Cauliflower Trust is planning to expand to other cities. First Clark leads peaceful negotiations with the smaller city Cicero, which is serving as a guinea pig. But the newspaper editor Dullfeet does not want to have anything to do with the trust’s gunmen. Roma implores Ui to get rid of Givola and Giri, who are collaborating with the Trust, through a surprise raid and then to take over Cicero without any regard for the Trust, as it seems that the Trust wants to use Dogsborough’s remorseful testament to compromise Ui and get rid of him. Ui agrees, but then changes his mind: he prefers to come to an understanding with the Trust and to have Roma with his followers shot instead.
Parting from Roma and his rowdies has made Ui more acceptable to society. In Givola’s flower shop Ui makes a first contract with Dullfeet and his wife. Mrs. Dullfeet, a wholesale vegetable dealer, is inclined to collaborate with the Trust. Her husband, though, has certain reservations about this. Ui eliminates these reservations by eliminating him. At the funeral Ui offers the widow to protect Cicero from now on. Completely revolted she rejects this offer. Ui, at home sleeping, is terrorized by a nightmare. The barker sums the play up for the audience.
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| Order of Scenes |
1. 1929-1932
The Great Depression hits Germany especially hard. When the crisis starts to escalate Prussian Junkers try to get hold of government loans, at first without success. Rhenish heavy industrialists dream of expansion 2. To raise Prime Minister Hindenburg’s interest in the problems of the gentlemen farmers, the Junkers give him a farm as a present. 3. 1932, Autumn Adolf Hitler’s party and private army are almost bankrupt and on the point of falling apart. Hitler desperately tries to come to power, yet for a long time does not manage to be received by Hindenburg. 4. 1933, January Hindenburg appoints Hitler Chancellor of the Reich in return for covering up the Eastern loan scandal in which the Prime Minister himself was involved. 5. Hitler, having come legally into power, surprises his highly placed patrons with extremely violent measures, but he keeps his promises. 6. The gang leader rapidly transforms into a politician. According to reports he is taking lessons in declamation and noble performance with Basil, a provincial actor. 7. 1933, February The Reichstag is burnt down. Hitler accuses his enemies of arson and gives |
the signal for the „Nacht der langen
Messer”, the Night of the Long Knives 8. In a huge trial the Reichs-Court in Leipzig sentences an unemployed man to death for arson. Nothing happens to the real arsonists. From now on the German justice system works for Hitler. 9. and 10. The imminent death of old Hindenburg causes bitter fights among the Nazis. Junkers and industrialists insist on the removal of Ernst Röhm. Austria is about to be invaded. 11. 1934, night of June 30th Hitler assaults his friend Röhm in a tavern where he is expecting Hitler to strike together at Hindenburg and Göring. 12. Under duress the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss agrees to stop the attacks by the Austrian press against Hitler. 13. Hitler has Dollfuss murdered but continues his negotiations with the Austrian right wing. 14. The conquest of Austria leads to further conquests throughout Europe. Czecho- slovakia, Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Rumania, are invaded. 15. 1938, March 11 Hitler invades Austria. An election dominated by Nazi-terror results in 98% of the votes in favor of Hitler. |
| The Parallels |
Dogsborough Arturo Ui Giri Roma Dollfuss Cauliflower Trust Vegetable Merchants Gangsters Dock Scandal Warehouse Fire-Trial Chicago Cicero |
Hindenburg, Prime Minister Hitler Göring, Reichs Minister Röhm, Reichs Minister Dullfeet Junkers and Industrialists Petty Bourgeois Fascists Eastern Loan Scandal Reichstag Fire-Trial Germany Austria |
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| BERTOLT BRECHT
(1898 - 1956) Playwright |
German playwright and poet who was a militant opponent of Nazism. Born February 10, 1898 in Augsburg, Germany. In the 1930’s Brecht’s books and plays were banned in Germany. He went into exile, first to Denmark after the rise of Hitler in 1933, where he lived until 1939, and then to Finland. From Finland he continued with his family through Russia to the United States. In 1941 he settled in Santa Monica and began writing screenplays for Hollywood. He worked with Charles Chaplin, Fritz Lang and Charles Laughton among others. In 1947 Brecht was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The following day he flew to Switzerland. After 15 years of exile Brecht returned to East Berlin, Germany in 1948. In 1949 he founded the Berliner Ensemble. He is perhaps best known for his collaborative work The Three Penny Opera with composer Kurt Weill. Others plays of note include The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Mother Courage, Good Woman of Sezuan, and Life of Galileo. | |
| HEINER MÜLLER
(1929 - 1995) Director |
Heiner Müller’s main achievement lies in the field of drama. Indebted to Brecht’s Lehrstücke (teaching plays), he aimed at stimulating constructive critical debate as the theater’s contribution to the German Democratic Republic (DDR) during his formative years. Müller became the most radical and effective representative of experimental theater and its reliance on audience participation. From 1992 until his death, Müller belonged to the five-headed management of the Berliner Ensemble. He also directed in 1993 the opera Tristan und Isolde for Bayreuth. Müller wrote various plays like Mauser (first performed in Texas, 1975) and the famous 8 hour theater marathon Hamletmaschine. Müller’s 1995 production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui with Martin Wuttke in the title role was one of the biggest successes in the history of the Berliner Ensemble. | |
|
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||
| MARTIN WUTTKE
(1962 - ) Actor |
After engagements in Frankfurt, Berlin, Manburg, Stuttgart and Salzburg, Martin Wuttke in 1996 became the artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble. Internationally recognized, his acting credits include lead roles in plays by Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller and Beckett. His performance in Arturo Ui was internationally acclaimed and in 1995 Wuttke won the honor of best actor of the year in Germany. | |
| STEPHAN SUSCHKE
(1958 - ) Co-director |
Born in 1958 in Weimar, former East Germany, Stephan Suschke studied theatre arts and in 1987 had the opportunity to work as Heiner Müller’s assistant director at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. He has been a member of the Berliner Ensemble since 1992, co-directing all the Heiner Müller productions and also directing his own. Together with Heiner Müller he worked on the sensational production of Arturo Ui in 1995. In 1996 he assumed administrative responsibilities at the Berliner Ensemble by becoming vice-director. His latest productions in 1998 are Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Berliner Ensemble and a workshop production of Antigone/Die Schlacht (Antigone/The Battle) (Brecht/Müller) in Cordoba, Argentina. | |
| Claudia Volkmar Clark | DIRECTORY GOETHE-INSTITUT / PROJECT MANAGER | |
| Darlene Neel | PROJECT PRODUCER / MANAGER | |
| Kerry Farmer | PRODUCTION MANAGER | |
| Vera Calabria | SUPER TITLES / TRANSLATION MANAGER | |
|
BERLINER ENSEMBLE
Production Staff |
Gabriela Arnold
Uwe Arsand Stefan Besson Axel Bramann Peter Bruchmann Joerg Eggert Ulrich Eh Matthias Franzke Angelika Handel Steffen Heinke Heino Hilger Britta Klein Heike Kropf Ingrid Leipold Katrin Nikel Ulrike Petzold Hans Pinnow Jens Richter Gerhard Ringhand Christa Roloff Werner Roloff Jochen Schubert Doriana Wolstein Andreas Zahn |
DRESSER
TECHNICAL DIRECTORY MASTER CARPENTER SOUND TECHNICIAN CARPENTER / RAIL CARPENTER LIGHTING DESIGNER PROPERTY-MASTER (Small Props) ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT LIGHT BOARD OPERATOR MAKE-UP / WIGS DRESSER MAKE-UP / WIGS PROMPTER COMPANY ADMINISTRATOR MAKE-UP / WIGS CARPENTER LIGHT BOARD OPERATOR PROPS (Large Props) MAKE-UP / WIGS STAGE MANAGER SOUND TECHNICIAN DRESSER DRESSER |
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| NOTES TO HEINER MÜLLER’S PRODUCTION OF BERTOLT BRECHT’S | ||
| The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui | ||
| ARCHEOLOGY | Heiner Müller’s production of Arturo Ui stages an archeology of German history. Müller descends into the cellar of our beautiful new Germany, examines the repressed and unsettled things that can be found down there, and brings onto the stage the history of the German fascination with Adolf Hitler. |
| UNDERWORLD | The rise of the gangster Arturo Ui, the story, still relevant today, about the hand-in-hand of politics and Mafia, takes place in the underworld — and not just metaphorically. The stage represents the cellar of Germany’s history. It reminds us of a shut-down factory, a cathedral of industry. The altar of this temple of progress is a motor that has come to a standstill and needs to be started up again; it serves as the pedestal for the icon of the German Reich: Dogsborough, alias Hindenburg. During the course of the performance, the space atop this pedestal will become the Hall of Fame for the ghosts of German history, ghosts who cast their shadows over Germany even today. |
| LANDSCAPES OF THE GERMAN SOUL | Müller’s Arturo Ui makes use of two paintings to illustrate the nineteenth-century German spiritual landscapes that became fertile soil for Hitler’s rise: the cultic fascination with death in Arnold Bröcklin’s The Isle of the Dead (1888) that doomed the German people to embrace death as fate; the repulsive image in Franz von Stück’s Medusa (1892) of a death-bringing femininity, deadly because seductive and at the same time impossible to domesticate. Fear of this femininity united the militaristic men’s societies of the Reich. |
| SIEGFRIED | The red circle on Ui’s back refers to the Siegfried myth. After his bath in the dragon’s blood, the skin of the German youth protected him like armor, rendering him invulnerable, except for a spot on his back. The Germans, the undead, returned with body armor like this from the blood bath of World War I, from the slaughter at Verdun. After the defeat in World War I, Siegfried’s vulnerable spot became the mythological image for the Dolchstoßlegende, the legend of the stab in the back, promulgated by the right. The revolutionaries of November 1918 fell into the back of the German army, which despite being surrounded by enemies, was invincible in the field; the revolutionaries drove their knife into the army’s back and stole its honor. This deed cried out for retribution, the lost war had to be won back — so men marched eastward in World War II. |
| TRAINS | Again and again, like a leitmoif, the sound of a moving train pierces The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. A century is being placed onto the tracks here, and these tracks lead inevitably to war, to Auschwitz. |
| THE POWER OF SEDUCTION | The production begins with the ballad of the Erl-King (1782) by Johann Wolfgan von Goethe, set to music by Franz Schubert. In this ballad, Goethe tells of an eerie fairy king who seduces a child and gets him into his deadly power. The father is deaf to the Erl-King’s voice, nor does he take seriously his son’s screams for help — and in the end, the child dies dead in his arms. The techniques of this power of seduction can be studies. Everyone can be won over, it’s just a question of how well one masters the art of acting, the art Ui learns so magnificently well from the old actor. |
| THE ECSTASY OF ELOCUTION |
“When Hitler spoke, he lived. Hitler always created
himself. The interesting thing about his speeches is, too,
that Hitler developed real power only after working
himself up into a frenzy. At a certain point, you begin to
hyperventilate; you really get dizzy. Hitler needed this
state of transport. He was only alive when he was acting
like this.”
— Martin Wuttke in a conversation, 1995 |
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| SELF-MADE MAN | This is what was so fascinating about Hitler, and what still fascinates today: the hidden sympathy with the underdog, the “humble son of the Bronx,” who comes from the bottom and murders his way up to the top — the story of a career, of a self-made man. |
| GANGSTER |
“The gangster is most definitely a manifestation of
the bourgeois era. He is not fundamentally opposed to the
bourgeois era. He is not fundamentally opposed to the
bourgeois-capitalist social order; he just feels
discriminated against within its framework and is
determined to secure by force the happiness that otherwise
escapes him. He knows a man is only respectable insofar as
he possesses property, and he is not against the principle
of private ownership, but only wants to correct to his
advantage the existing division of property, which has
left him empty-handed. He is a strong individual who
fights for his right to life; and since wealth is power
and creates power, he cannot bear not being rich. Since
the road to success that the “diligent” ones
are allowed to take is not usually open to him, he forces
his way onto it by breaking all the rules. He lines his
own pockets, just like the normal citizen, and like him
makes the most of every deal that results in a profit.
To be sure, the gangster uses different methods. Bourgeois society is always one robbery after the other; someone has to bleed, when the citizen earns. The consumer is fleeced whenever he satisfies his needs, and the worker is cheated out of the full value of his labor so long as he produces. — Ernst Niekisch, The Realm of the Lower Demons |
| THE FASCINATION WITH EVIL | When Grivola, alias Joseph Goebbels, says to Roma alias Ernst Röhm “You say my leg is short. I say your brain is small. / Now let your pretty legs convey you to the wall” — that is Brecht, at his best. |
| THE GERMAN SHEPHERD | The street dog Ui makes a career for himself as a German shepherd. Big industry lets him loose on a very long leash so he can drive away communists. In this sense, according to Klaus Freund and Klaus Theweleit, the West Germans in particular were the psychological victors of World War II: The Jews gone, the communists gone, the workers’ movement destroyed, the sexual revolution of the twenties put on hold, and it’s off with “Strength through Joy” into the Adenauer period. The psychic energy, needed for West Germany’s reconstruction, was so plentifully available and the economic miracle could pretend to be so untouched by all the murders because the bloody sacrifice in World War II had been successful. |
| THE ART OF ACTING | At the end of the production, Arturo Ui hints at making the Hitler salute and waits to see if anyone in the audience will salute, but in each of the over 200 performances there has been thunderous applause for Arturo Ui in the form of Martin Wuttke, that too is the response to the actor Martin Wuttke’s fascinating Ui, as noted, he’s won over (almost) every spectator. Asked about the reason for this production’s success, Heiner Müller once said. “All Berlin wants to see the Führer”. |
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THE SPEECHES OF ADOLF HITLER
selected by Heiner Müller
The pre- and post-show speeches, read by actor Andy Prosky, are part of this performance of THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI by THE BERLINER ENSEMBLE.
These are actual speeches by Adolf Hitler, taken from the following sources
| GERMAN | GOETHE | |||
| CULTURAL | ||||
| CENTER | INSTITUT | LOS ANGELES | ||
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| e-mail: gila@artnet.net | ||||
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program insert