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The “Neo-Muslima” Enters the Scene: Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins (2006) and the Postmigrant Theatre

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Performing New German Realities

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Abstract

In 2006, Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel’s Black Virgins (Schwarze Jungfrauen), a controversial semi-documentary play about Muslim women, became the first play by a Turkish-German playwright to be featured on the front cover of Germany’s influential theatre magazine Theater heute (Theatre Today). This success marked the arrival of a new movement in German theatre: “postmigrant theatre”, a movement which aims to redress the lack of postmigrant representation on German stages. Where initially the “authenticity” of the representation of the postmigrant subject appeared in need of legitimisation, this chapter shows that by 2010 the inclusion of Black Virgins and other “postmigrant” plays in state-funded repertoires had arguably become a source of justification for the continued relevance of German theatre.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Title of festival originally in English.

  2. 2.

    “Schwarze Jungfrauen – der Klassiker”.

  3. 3.

    The dates of premieres of subsequent German productions include: 22 September 2006 at the Westfälisches Landestheater Castrop-Rauxel (dir. Christian Scholze); 10 November 2006 at the Theater Freiburg (dir. Enrico Stolzenburg); 13 September 2007 at the Theaterhaus Stuttgart (dir. Tanja Richter); 30 May 2008 at the Theater Kiel (dir. Kristina Ohmen); Schwarze Jungfrauen II (second set of monologues), 25 April 2009, Westfälisches Landestheater at Theater Duisburg (dir. Christian Scholze); 17 June 2009 at the Junges Theater Bremen (dir. Anja Wedig); 28 August 2009 at the Theater Willy Praml, Frankfurt am Main (dir. Willy Praml); 25 September 2009 at the Theater der Jungen Welt, Leipzig (dir. Kathleen Bredenbeck et al.); 27 March 2010 at the Schauspiel Hannover (dir. Lars-Ole Walburg); 1 April 2010 at the Theater Ingolstadt (dir. Julia Mayr). The play was also produced in Austria by Walburg at the Burgtheater, Vienna in 2007, in the Czech Republic by Dušan David Pařízek in 2010 at the Divadlo Komedie, Prague, and as Malte C Lachmann’s final project for his studies at the Bayerische Theaterakademie August Everding, Munich. The latter production won the 2012 Körber Studios Young Director’s Prize in Hamburg and guested at the Thalia Theater Hamburg in February 2013.

  4. 4.

    For further discussion of the ways in which the “Neo” prefix can be read, see El Hissy (2012, 117–18).

  5. 5.

    “Ich trage kein Mumientuch, ich bin nicht …wie sagt man? … enthaltsam. Gott verzeih’ mir, ich muß es sagen: ich ficke immer noch, weil ich weiß, es schadet nicht meinem Glauben. Ich bete fünf Mal am Tag. Ich faste im Ramadan, und ich bin überzeugte Moslemin.”

  6. 6.

    For a discussion of the title and summary of the play, see also Matthes (2010, 206), Sieg (2010, 152), and El Hissy (2012, 120–21; 131).

  7. 7.

    For a detailed outline of and engagement with the so-called Headscarf debate, see Breger (2008), and (Weber 2012, 2013, 77–136).

  8. 8.

    “eine Minderheit in der Minderheit, in der Minderheit”.

  9. 9.

    Free translation of “wo es kracht”—the literal translation is “where it cracks”, i.e. where trouble happens in an explosive manner.

  10. 10.

    For a detailed discussion of the politics of the DIK, see, for example, Amir-Moazami (2011) and Weber (2013, 19–28; 136–39).

  11. 11.

    “wenn man davon spricht, dass die Teilnehmer des Islamgipfels stellvertretend für andere Muslime und Muslima sprechen sollen, dann bitte ich darum, auch eine junge Neo-Muslima auszuwählen […]. Ich fühlte mich geschmeichelt, als man mich zum Teilnehmer der Islamkonferenz ernannte. Ich fand mich aber in den Zuschreibungen nicht wieder. Ich bin kein säkularer Muslim und natürlich auch kein Orthodoxer. Ich bin ein Schriftsteller.” Zaimoglu’s participation in the Islamkonferenz is also discussed by İ. A. Çelik and the final two sentences of this quotation are also quoted there (2012, 121).

  12. 12.

    El-Tayeb critically addresses the reporting of this event: “Sellar’s reading of the audience (more than of the play) encapsulates dominant notions of the clash between radical art addressing taboo subjects (here, both criticizing the dominant society for stereotyping the Muslim community and said community for failing to address its own shortcomings) and the atavistic ethnic cultures providing the diversity attracting the creative class, including playwrights, to the new metropolises, but who prove incapable of appreciating, or even understanding, the art their exotic presence inspires” (2011, 136–37). Notably, although several of El-Tayeb’s points about overwriting the voices of the Muslim women at the centre of De Gesluierde Monologen via the mediation of the liberal non-Muslim playwright are echoed in İ. A. Çelik (2011) and other’s criticism of Zaimoglu/Senkel, El-Tayeb herself suggests Black Virgins can be read as a response to Roosen’s Veiled Monologues (2011, 256, n. 12).

  13. 13.

    “Das HAU-Konzept erinnerte an das Profil britischer Community Theaters, die es darauf anlegen, die direkte Nachbarschaft und die Summe unterschiedlicher Kulturen ins Theater zu holen. Beim HAU waren das zunächst die Berliner bzw. Kreuzberger mit türkischem oder arabischem Hintergrund.”

  14. 14.

    This loose structure and its benefits in terms of opening doors for artists with a background of migration are also discussed in detail by Peters (2011, 170–71). For a detailed engagement with the HAU under Lilienthal’s leadership, see Garde and Megson (2016). Garde and Megson also provide a detailed account of discourses around authenticity in the German theatrical establishment at this time, but explicitly bracket works such as Zaimoglu’s, which do not put real people on stage as themselves, from their examination (ibid, 16).

  15. 15.

    “Wir haben kein festes Ensemble, sondern arbeiten mit einem Kreis von 40 oder 50 Gruppen. Das gibt uns die Freiheit, jedes Mal das System neu zu erfinden.”

  16. 16.

    See the earlier chapter on “Emine Sevgi Özdamar’s Early Plays (1982–2000)” on her work with Matthias Langhoff.

  17. 17.

    “Migration hoch 2 – Migranten, die die künstlerische Aufarbeitung der Migration schaffen.”

  18. 18.

    An earlier version of the X-Wohnungen project had taken place in Duisburg under the aegis of Theater der Welt in 2002 (cf. Witt 2018, 54).

  19. 19.

    For a discussion of this staging of “Gotteskrieger”, see Garde and Mumford (2016, 100–101; 136–38).

  20. 20.

    Sieg’s intervention is important as earlier articles concerning Black Virgins have tended to take the version of the monologues published in Theater heute as the script used in the world premiere (see, for example, Matthes 2010, 202; Müller 2012, 47–71). In fact, as Sieg highlights, these monologues do not correspond to the version of the script used in the premiere production (2010, 153–54). Theater heute published only five of the ten monologues which make up the dramatic text of the play.

  21. 21.

    “Weil ich die, in ihrer Konstruktionsart und -weise, manipulativ finde. Ich finde, wenn man das sieht und keine Hintergrundsinformation hat, hat man keine Ahnung, ob einem hier dokumentarisches Theater vorgeführt wird, ob das von den Autoren wild zusammen konstruiert ist, und wo sie genau damit hinwollen. […] [E]s erweckt den Eindruck repräsentativ für etwas zu sein, und das glaube ich auch nicht die Bohne.”

  22. 22.

    For a discussion of the form of the dramatic text in relation to both the documentary theatre of the 1960s and its contemporary incarnation, see also Breger (2012, 232) and Hentschel (2007, 159).

  23. 23.

    Ingrid Hentschel therefore includes Black Virgins as one of only two examples of the contemporary documentary tradition in her recent book (2007, 159).

  24. 24.

    “Die Garanten für die Verortung in realer Gegenwart können im semi-dokumentarischen Theater […] auf verschiedenen Ebenen angesiedelt sein, zum einen auf der Ebene der Darsteller, die tatsächlich ihre eigene Biografie verkörpern, und zum anderen auf der Ebene der dokumentarischen Rede. Insbesondere das Verfahren, auf der Grundlage von Interviews mit speziellen Zielgruppen semi-dokumentarische Stücktexte zu entwickeln, ist durch die Texte Kathrin Rögglas wie etwa wir schlafen nicht [2004] bekannt geworden”. Keim discusses Black Virgins as semi-documentary or postdramatic theatre separately elsewhere (2010a).

  25. 25.

    “Sie wussten um mich, sie wussten um meine Publikationen und sie kannten mein Verfahren. Sie wussten, ihre Worte werden transkribiert, dann in meine Kunstsprache übertragen und schließlich als Teil eines Theaterstückes in einen bestimmten Kontext gestellt. […] Das war ihnen natürlich auch ein wenig suspekt. Aber sie haben sich damit einverstanden erklärt, da sie so die Gelegenheit hatten, zu sagen, wer sie sind, was sie denken, wo sie stehen.”

  26. 26.

    “freiwillige Aussagen einer Person zu sich zu verstehen, ohne Hinzunahme administrativ-juristischer Datensammlungen zu eben dieser Person.” This relates to what Charles Taylor has identified as the predominant ethic of our age: being authentic in the sense of being “true to oneself” (1991). For Taylor, authenticity is largely associated with an emancipatory freeing of the self from rules imposed by restrictive power structures, traditions or religions. In this concept of authenticity, self-articulation becomes linked to emancipation and empowerment; the outer move from being spoken for to speaking is perceived to mirror an inner rejection of submission to outside authority (Taylor 1994, 25). In the post-Christian secular context, the “individual” is seen as a product of the modern, that is, of a break with religious tradition as authority. This is Foucault’s position as drawn on by İ. A. Çelik (2012, 123). Islam is structured very differently from Christianity, however, and has always emphasised a direct relationship between worshipper and Allah, in which believers must decide which leaders and teachings to use as models for their own lives, rather than being dependant on a church-like structure mediating this (Langer and Simon 2007, 273). Neco Çelik, as well as academic commentators, highlights the fact that “in Islam the individual is a very important factor” (“[i]m Islam ist das Individuum ein sehr wichtiger Faktor”; quoted in Behrendt and Wille 2006, 44). See also Kermani for a discussion of individualism and Islam (2009, 99–125).

  27. 27.

    “Geopfert wird die Authentizität des künstlerischen Ausdrucks, also das, um was der Künstler traditionell ringt, zugunsten eines Unbearbeiteten, Rohen, das weder durchdrungen, noch formal bewältigt muss.”

  28. 28.

    “künstlerische Freiheit”.

  29. 29.

    “islamischen Fanatismus”.

  30. 30.

    “das Prinzip der künstlerischen Freiheit dient einer anti-multikulturellen Agenda”.

  31. 31.

    The mise-en-scène and staging of the premiere production are also described in detail by Sieg (2010, 153—55; İ. A. Çelik 2012, 119; El Hissy 2012, 126–27). This use of light and sound was also repeated in the production’s closing sequence. Elements of the opening and closing sequences can also be seen on the Gorki Theatre’s promotional video from 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCSsn5YDaNI. Last accessed 26 August 2014.

  32. 32.

    Katrin Sieg, for example, notes: “The repetitive, computer-generated melody emanating from the loudspeakers recalls the soundtrack to Steven Spielberg’s (1977) science fiction movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and heralds, tongue in cheek, the arrival of aliens” (2010, 178). However, she immediately moves on from this observation to her illuminating analysis of the costuming as a critical comment on European discourses which problematically link nudity with emancipation (ibid.). Similarly, Breger also notes Çelik’s references to aliens in this interview and in some responses to the play (2012, 236–37) and suggests in passing that his production “produces an uncomfortably close encounter with the radical voices presented on stage”. Passing references are also made to encounter in Breger (2012, 266) and Hentschel (2007, 155), however, neither piece addresses Spielberg’s film any more explicitly.

  33. 33.

    Erol Boran outlines a situation in which funding for Turkish-German theatre in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s was frequently low, drawn from social funds rather than cultural budgets, and consisted of short-term, project-based subsidies, rather than money for longer running projects (Boran 2004, 79; 158).

  34. 34.

    “[der] erster Schritt auch darin lag, auf dieses Potenzial zurückzugreifen”.

  35. 35.

    Film scholar Randal Halle, for example, mentions the “cinematic quality” of the premiere of Black Virgins in his analysis of Çelik’s cinema (2009, 44). Halle also sees a “transposition […] of a cinematic structure onto the stage” in the frame-like boxes of the mise-en-scène (2009, 44). Similarly, a colleague from film studies, Jane Sillars, found the boxy scenery suggestive of the screen display of digital film-editing programmes.

  36. 36.

    “Ich wusste nicht, was Dokumentartheater ist […], dass es im Theater unterschiedliche Genres gibt, […] das ist eine Verschwendung. Wozu? Wozu diese verschiedenen Genres im Theater? Weil der Raum definiert ist, die Verabredung definiert ist. Ich kann den Raum umstellen usw., aber es bleibt immer Theater.”

  37. 37.

    These include Zaimogu and Senkel’s Nathan Messias (Ballhaus Naunynstraße, 2009). Neco Çelik directed Ludger Vollmer’s operatic adaptation of Fatih Akın’s Gegen die Wand (Head On) at the OperStuttgart in 2010 and an adaptation of Shostakovitch’s Moscow, Cheryomushki (Moskau Tscherjomuschki) at the Staatsoper Berlin in 2012.

  38. 38.

    Halle (2009, 44) and Breger (2012, 233–39) also highlight the staging as challenging in this regard. In the online extract from Nora Haakh’s unpublished Masters dissertation, Haakh stresses the artistic work of the Ballhaus Naunynstraße when she contrasts the “imagined Islam” (“imaginierte Islam”) of the mass media with the “fictional” Islam produced by specific artists at the Ballhaus (Haakh 2011, 9). In the extract, Haakh argues that “in this way Islam and motifs associated with Islamisation are playfully picked up and renegotiated through their incorporation in fantasy-laden and experimental configurations” (“so werden mit Islam und Islamisierung assoziierte Motive spielerisch aufgegriffen und durch die Eingliederung in phantasievolle Versuchsanordnungen umverhandelt”; 2011, 14). The page numbers here refer to the online extract.

  39. 39.

    As Layne (2018) and Watkins (2017) highlight, afrofuturism has since become a key strategy for many Black German theatre practitioners who would come to be associated with the Ballhaus at a later stage in the theatre’s development.

  40. 40.

    While Neco Çelik also mentions “information” in the interview quoted above, the mode in which this information is delivered is clearly important in terms of the power relations inherent in the play.

  41. 41.

    My analysis here provides one possible answer to questions raised by Breger who asks “in which ways and for whom exactly” the women are positioned as “strangers” and “how exactly does a theatricalizing, (post-) Brechtian aesthetics of distanciation work here?” (2012, 236).

  42. 42.

    Using the example of the term “orthodoxy”, Robert Langer and Udo Simon discuss some of the issues created by attempting to understand Islamic theology and practice via Christian terminology: “There [is] no generally accepted religious authority, no hierarchy, or ecclesiastical office that would decide for all Muslims what is the right belief. […] [T]he ‘orthodoxy’ versus ‘heresy’ scheme is denounced as a dichotomy of Eurocentric interpretive categories that fails to grasp the pluralism and complexity characteristic of Muslim religious life. Instead, it is argued, one should let Islamic tradition speak for itself” (2007, 273).

  43. 43.

    “offenherzigen Blick in die unsäglichen Abgründe einer unheimlichen Emanzipation, die das Moderne mit dem Archaischen, das Liberale mit dem fundamentalistischen Religiösen verquickt”.

  44. 44.

    “[w]as sie sagen, hat für alle, die unter dem Kopftuch ein unterdrücktes Duckmäuschen vermuten, die Qualität eines halben Kulturschocks.”

  45. 45.

    Garde and Megson also discuss encounter in their analysis of productions at the HAU, but with regard to theatre as “an aesthetic playground in which both habitual and new avenues of encountering unfamiliar people are put under the spotlight and tested” (2016, 102). They thus focus on encounter via the theatrical performance, rather than direct verbal encounters of post-show discussions which I discuss here. At the same time, again this points to the role of the HAU’s artistic strategies in shaping the new postmigrant theatre.

  46. 46.

    “Die Leute waren so irritiert, dass sie, auch wenn es kein Publikumsgespräch gab, nicht nach Hause gegangen sind. Sie haben im Foyer gewartet und haben ein Gespräch erzwungen. […] Sie waren dann völlig durcheinander und haben eine Hoffnung, eine Art von Lichtblick, gebraucht. […] Der Lichtblick war immer besonders, wenn die Schauspielerinnen in ihren privaten Sachen in das Foyer gekommen sind und sie dann normale Frauen waren. Keine hat Kopftuch getragen und es ging immer so ein Raunen durch den Raum. Dass man diese Frauen nicht mal als Schauspielerinnen wahrgenommen hat, das war für mich [das Verrückte].” Breger highlights the overt theatricality of the premiere production as aiding the positive responses to the world premiere (2012, 236; 266). However, Sieg suggests that the immediacy of the direct address created by the blocking in the world premiere “encourages spectators to view actors as stand-ins for actual women, obscuring the activity of producer, writer and director as cultural mediators” (2010, 172). I would suggest that the sci-fi framing of the play is designed precisely to avoid such a mode of viewing; however, it appears to be over-ridden by the use of so-called “Ready-Mades” or “real people” in other semi-documentary plays which address migration in Germany.

  47. 47.

    “ein sehr starkes Bedürfnis für ein Gespräch”.

  48. 48.

    “dass das Nachgespräch Teil der Inszenierung ist”. Similarly, in our interview, Lars-Ole Walburg recounted that at performances of his production of Black Virgins in Austria, “we had an audience discussion every time and it was also necessary each time […]. The vestibule was always full somehow and people talked till they were blue in the face” (“wir haben jedes Mal ein Publikumsgespräch gemacht, es war auch jedes Mal nötig […] Das Vestibül war immer voll irgendwie und die Leute haben sich heiß geredet”).

  49. 49.

    In, for example, the review of this production published in regional newspaper Der Westen, “Schwarze Jungfrauen im ‘Mumientuch’” (Anon 2009), the centrality of the post-show discussion is reflected in the replacement of a photograph of the production with one of the discussions.

  50. 50.

    Breger raises this issue with respect to the world premiere; however, she also concludes that the visual aesthetics and mode of encounter there force a renegotiation rather than reassertion of identity on the part of the spectator.

  51. 51.

    In fact, Gazelle: Das multikulturelle Frauenmagazin encourages its readers to attend the play for precisely this reason (Anon 2007).

  52. 52.

    “Ich bin mir da auch nicht ganz sicher, ob das gut ist oder nicht, ob man das machen sollte auf dem Theater […]. Ich musste mich so oft dafür rechtfertigen [….] Am Anfang zu den Schauspielerinnen in Wien, durchaus […]. Und ich habe immer gemerkt in der etwas schwammigen Formulierung, alles, was das Nachdenken in anderen befördert, alles, was dann auch zu einem zweiten Schritt in der Kommunikation führt, kann nur gut sein.”

  53. 53.

    “interkulturelles Mainstreaming”.

  54. 54.

    “[d]er künftige Markt und die heutige Wirklichkeit”.

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Stewart, L. (2021). The “Neo-Muslima” Enters the Scene: Zaimoglu/Senkel’s Black Virgins (2006) and the Postmigrant Theatre. In: Performing New German Realities. Contemporary Performance InterActions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69848-5_5

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