This Friday I had the occasion to see a recent play called "
The Handke Project: Or, Justice for Peter’s Stupidities". I had stumbled on it a couple of years back combing over the theatrical offer here in Florence; it seems it is some how connected to Teatro della Pergola, though I saw it it in Teatro Rifredi. Anyway, the title and premise were certainly enticing...
ABOUT THE SHOW
For an artist, where does the freedom of speech end, and the need to be politically conscious begin? Can we create art without being insensitive? Can we separate the art from the artist? These are among the important questions asked in a new production from Kosovan theatre company Qendra Multimedia. The Handke Project follows Qendra’s recent successful tour of Balkan Bordello, which played across South Eastern Europe and at New York’s legendary La MaMa theatre.
The Handke Project takes as its central theme the controversial decision to convey the honour of Nobel Laureate for Literature on Austrian writer Peter Handke, in spite of his well-documented support for Slobodan Milosevic – who died while on trial for war crimes at The Hague – a support which extended to speaking at Milosevic’s graveside. In The Handke Project, Qendra takes this controversy as a jumping off point to explore how art is appreciated and promoted when it crosses the boundaries of basic decency, humanism or ethics.
To create the production, Qendra have assembled a pan-European ensemble of writers, performers and creatives from Kosovo, Italy, Germany, Croatia, Serbia and others, each bringing their own unique perspective to the work. They include the celebrated Serbian playwright Biljana Srbljanovic who will act as dramaturg, and Germany-based Croatian writer Alida Bremer who has written extensively on Handke for the German press.
Handke Project is a theatrical performance about the writer who with his books and opinions has fabricated and overturned facts of the wars in former Yugoslavia; has incited and supported ‘the scorched earth’ ideology; as well as managed to sing praises to militant poets and filmmakers converted into ‘engineers of genocidal projects.’ During the funeral of the war criminal Milosevic, Handke said to the blood-thirsty mass of people that he “does not know the truth” and that is why he is, “there close to Milosevic, close to Serbia.” Handke compared the suffering of Serbs to the suffering of Jewish people during Nazism!
Artists and scholars from Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, North Macedonia, France, Montenegro, and Germany will discuss and address “Peter’s stupidities,” in light of the war in Ukraine and in a time when many cultural institutions in Europe demand from Russian artists to publicly declare their political stance towards the war in Ukraine. A red line is being drawn over all those Russian artists who in one way or another support Putin and the war.
Meanwhile, Handke and the European handkists continue to roam freely, even on top of the eight thousand graves of the Srebrenica victims. Thus, as Eric Gordy beautifully put it: Handke is kitsch! But a Nobel Prize for him is also kitsch. Handke’s supporters, too, are kitsch. Finally, the European hypocrisy is itself kitsch.
A pan-European troupe of artists, from Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, North Macedonia, France, Montenegro, and Germany, taking on Handke and calling him out theatrically. I had high hopes!
It has
some reviews and
explainers. At its core, it is a non-linear exploration of what a troupe of such artists could present as a play satirising Handke (and not get sued by Suhrkamp!).
A beginning with a solemn injunction to leave the room immeadiately if one is a fascist, racist, homophobe, etc, fake-interrupted by a woman in the audience who agrees with the sentiment but won't take injunction and expects a serious dive into Handke (and joins the troupe of course; not their best trick).
Increasingly manic saynettes, with some actual deep Handke cuts; memorable ones are:
- Childhood Story - him as child taking instruction on how to be the best writer from uncle fascism in a black hoop skirt ("Use your beautiful question marks!"). Recalled also later in a surreal sequence with a devil and angel (chiming with The Sky over Berlin/Wings of Desire as well)
- Essay on the Mushroom-Mad Man - him waiting in a garden grilling (poisonous) mushrooms pointedly not waiting for the call from the SA (I can't find it with a cursory search, but I think he had some salty things to say about the prize before he got it)
- The Cuckoos of Velika Hoca - the sequence on Handke donating prize money to a specific tiny serb village in Kosovo to build, of all things, a pool. Next to an annihilated kosovar village. Which never gets built in the end because no one agrees where to put it. Based on a true story.
- A Sorrow Beyond Dreams - maybe not exactly a deep cut, since it is one of his best-known works (and rightfully so); but a deep cut in the sense that they mock his mother's suicide — as he mocked the mothers of Srebrenica... I did gasp when they went there.
Brutal transitions; a comedic thread of repeated interruption by the Serb member exclaiming "Guys, guys! Isn't this too sensitive material?" (to, say, the SA driving themselves into an orgy of self-adoration for their purely literary taste, with a disrobed Jean-Claude Arnault humping an helium-inflated sheep).
Saynettes bleeding out of the fourth wall; the Serb member storms off so the remaining members improvise a casting call, recalling that the actor/ess must be prepared "to not be able to work in Serbia again for at least five years" and that "insurance unfortunately cannot be provided for the inevitable bomb that wil hurtle through their family's window". Followed by ironically erotic dancing to shrill titles in the Serb rag
press lamenting the attacks on Handke "Handke, Friend of the Serbian People, Unfairly Slandered and Maligned!" "Handke, Our Saintly Defender, Unjustly Attacked!". Etc.
Less well done were the (unfortunately key) scenes of a little boy skiing in the mountains. A Bosnian boy called by his father in the forest as the Serbian militias close in — innocence over the 8000 graves of Srebrenica. The image recurs three times but is too vague and slow at first to evoke much, and a bit ham-handedly explained finally.
Ham-handed, a bit unfortunately, is what I retain for quite a few parts. It's fun, but feels a bit... college-avant-guard-y? Breaking the wheel and thinking you're doing it in a cleverer fashion than those who broke the wheel before you. There is a genuine, at times deep and effective engagement with Handke's texts. Though less his actual theatre I believe; of course they reference
Insulting the Public (how could they not!), but eg the satire of Handke's
Dugout play and prelapsarian vision of intra-Balkan relations was which too brief and superficial for such a rich material.
All in all though, it is all the more enjoyable the more one has read Handke — critically, I suppose. Not like the fainting aesthete of the quite funny scene who will literally die if she cannot find her Handke book, you understand, all that war stuff is so complicated, those people over there killing each other (and are they really killing each like they say they are?) in that beautiful unspoiled land, spoiled now because of the world, because of base thigs erupting in the green of the tree and the brown of the mountain and the bark, you don't understand please I need Handke's book, his beauty is what allows me to live (—meanwhile bodies on the ground with plastic bags over their heads sporadically writhe and gasp for breath).
Very niche, and execution left something to be desired, a bit half-baked/recooked postmodern theatre. Still, if one is in the niche, very fun.