In round numbers, 60 million people presently live in the Federal Republic of Germany, including West Berlin. Theatre lights are regularly turned on in approximately 340 cities of this relatively small country (comparable in size to the state of Oregon). Seventy-five of these 340 cities have their own theatrical troupes; 10 even have several. In the Federal Republic altogether, there are at present 83 tax-supported theatres for drama, opera and operetta in 223 separate houses. Eighteen of these are subsidized as so-called state theatres from funds of the separate states. An additional 16 theatres financed by various organizations and counties give regular guest performances while on tour. The majority comprise the 52 so-called city theatres, which are usually supported by the local municipality. Among the publicly-supported theatres, the most frequent is the triadic operation, often uniting drama, opera/operetta/music, and ballet under one general manager, frequently under one roof.

Despite various differences in their internal organization, the majority of German theatres share a common profile. They are usually large-scale, publicly-controlled cultural institutions, with more than 80 percent of their budgets covered by public subsidies. Within these complexes, which can include opera and dance facilities, a relatively stable theatre company (artist contracts normally run from one to three years) strives to satisfy the demands of a predominantly subscription audience by mounting as many as fourteen productions a season in full repertory.

Such theatres confront their artistic staffs with a number of problems. The pressures created by the subscription system are the worst, but not the only ones. The manifold details concerned with administering such huge physical plants and executing the paperwork that comes with governmental subsidy are handled by a large, expensive bureaucracy with a vested interest in making sure the stamping-out of productions runs smoothly.

West German theatre, says critic Günther Rühle, is currently fraught with insecurity about where it is going and what its function is. That may be, but there's no question that the theatre has changed considerably over the past two decades and entered an as yet ill-defined post-Brechtian age. Gone are the productions of coolly staged parables, instructing the audience in how the world might be changed through rational, social action. Gone are the bright, evenly lit settings, sparsely furnished and purged of destructive atmosphere. And gone, too, is whatever bond once existed between the performers and the audience. That relationship, says Brecht Schüler Peter Palitzsch, is now “deeply disturbed.”

The German director has become the great interpreter, probing texts, usually the classics, searching for something that matters to contemporary man. The results of his dramaturgical investigations are subjective, fragmentary, and generally bewildering to an audience who hasn't accompanied him on his month- or year-long journey of discovery. His insights are not always theirs. Rich material imagery fills the stages, and it is personal, often violent, and tinged with expressionism. The Prince of Homburg stands naked in a field of potatoes as he is pardoned. The chorus in Antigone, consisting of a single contemporary woman, smears animal organs on her face as she speaks of Haemon's impending death. The actors in Shakespeare's Winter's Tale slip and slide around a stage decked with Mattel “Slime.” Vernunft (reason) has given way to Sinnlichkeit (sensuousness).

Peter Zadek grew up in the English theatre, using the English language and applied himself to the plays of Shakespeare with intensity. After preparation in Ulm and Hannover, Zadek made his first great experiments with Shakespeare on the German stage in Bremen. Measure For Measure presented a radical reformulation of the play's characters and their potential through the acting of the performers, thus furiously destroying the narrative structure of the play. This was based on the self-investigation and self-discovery of a group of theatre people—the articulation of their situation with theatrical means was the primary impulse motivating the performance.

Two jokes; a dream. “A man came to the circus manager and asked him if he needed a bird imitator. ‘No,’ answered the circus manager. Then the man flew away through the window.” This and a second joke are told twice—in the first and in the last part—in Pina Bausch's Arien (Aries). “Berlin. A man asks a cabdriver: ‘Can you tell me how I can get to the Philharmonic?’ The cabdriver answers. ‘Sure, man, that's very easy: practice, practice, practice.’” “They practiced and could fly for two hours,” someone noted after an Arien performance. In Pina Bausch's Macbeth paraphrase there is the same dream. “How will you live?” Lady Macduff asks her son. “As the birds do.” It is cited twice.

Sumurun, a wordless play in nine scenes directed by Max Reinhardt, was conceived as an experiment. It opened at Reinhardt's 300-seat Kammerspiele Theatre on April 22, 1910. Because of its opening night success it was moved to the 1000-seat house next door, the Deutsches Theatre, where it entered the repertory in May 1910. In 1911 the pantomime was presented in Vienna and twice in London. On January 16, 1912, it opened in New York. After 62 performances at the Casino Theatre it toured Chicago in March and Boston in April, again in Shubert houses, and left for a Paris engagement. In 1913 Sumurun returned to the London Coliseum for another short run, less enthusiastically received, and was presented, not to Reinhardt's satisfaction, on the relief stage of the Munich Art Theatre.

By the time the word Expressionism became widely used in Germany in the years 1910-1911, it had already acquired magical properties. It denoted a kind of primitive, anti-rational, anti-classical, non-French creation; various graphic artists, writers, philosophers and dancers from Central Europe began to label their work “Expressionist.” Without a center or an adjudicating leader, without any authoritative pronouncements or clearly stated manifestos, a trend, rather than a movement, was growing up around this term. In one Berlin art gallery, Sturm, founded by Herwarth Walden and promoted in its influential periodical, Der Sturm, pieces from nearly every contemporary European avant-garde movement—French Cubism, Italian Futurism, and others—were gathered together under the single heading of Expressionism.

The Thingspiel movement developed as a result of the “new world epoch” begun by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist Party when they came to power in 1933. During the first years of the Third Reich, the party leaders effected a reorganization of German life, a reorganization that was to be consistent with the philosophy and the world view, the Weltanschauung, of National Socialism. The theatre, the drama, and all the arts were not exempt from this program. Significant changes were demanded on two fronts: The “outmoded” and “inferior” genres in existence prior to 1933 were discouraged or prohibited and in their place, a new order of German art was to be founded. In the dramatic arts, the Thingspiel was the example of this new artistic order, receiving major state support and encouragement. The Thingspiel was to become the National Drama of Nazi Germany.

On March 4, 1953, Brecht noted in his journal: “Our performances in Berlin achieve hardly any response anymore. In the pre1ss, reviews appear months after opening night and they contain nothing except a few meager sociological analyses….The efforts won't be quite meaningless only if the mode of acting can be revived at some later time, i.e. if its teaching potential will once be realized.” Brecht's Berliner Ensemble had been working for four years and had mounted ten productions, among them Mother Courage; Puntila; The Motherand The Tutor, but Brecht voiced his deep disappointment about the lack of impact he sensed. Many of us who were active in the Berlin theatre in those days wouldn't have been in complete agreement with his pessimistic statement.