Of all the arts, theatre has an especially intense power to move us to a new perception of society. This summer, I spent three-and-a-half weeks in Germany after winning a merit trip prize from the American Association of Teachers of German. It was a study trip with two weeks in Nuremberg and one week in Berlin, during which we saw the sights of both cities and got familiarized with their cultures. I saw a few theatre performances during my stay in Germany, but the most memorable by far was Roots, a circus-theatre show in Berlin that told stories through acrobatics, dance, puppetry, and drama.
All of the performers were well-rounded in circus arts but specialized in certain areas—for example, some performers specialized in contortion, pair acrobatics, or trapeze. However, the show was exceptionally theatrical, with each dance and routine telling a unique story through movement and visuals. At the beginning of the show, a man wearing a top hat appeared mysteriously out of the darkness and introduced us to a cast of lavishly costumed characters. The first half of the performance was in the style of an old-fashioned circus, full of over-the-top clowning (complete with a slapstick fight, Three-Stooges-style, over a woman), expert puppetry, impressive dancing, and amazing acrobatics—at one point, one woman who had just been “killed” in a theatrical dance was carried up the trapeze by another woman, and they did tricks and flips together 30 feet in the air on the trapeze, one woman limply pretending to be dead the whole time.
Visuals were sometimes projected onto the back wall, and at one point we were shown a video of many identical white mannequin heads next to a single mannequin head painted with brightly colored makeup and adorned with a wig and flowers. The made-up head was then painted over with white paint, presumably to make it look like the other heads, but the shape gave it away as different, as the wig and flowers were still underneath the white paint. After the paint had dried, someone came at the head with a hammer and broke off the white paint to reveal the original colorful head underneath. But the head was changed; its makeup was smeared, with remnants of the white paint still stuck in the mannequin’s wig and on its fake eyelashes. This video seemed to be a commentary on society’s power to promote uniformity and whitewash uniqueness.
In keeping with this theme, the next dance of the show featured every cast member wearing identical khaki-colored trench coats. The dancers held on to each other, binding themselves in a small clump, and every so often one or two dancers would try desperately to escape the group, only to be pulled back in by the others. Eventually this dance dissolved and transitioned into a new dance, sans trenchcoats, with graffiti projected onto the back wall. Trapdoors in the floor were opened to reveal trampolines, onto which the performers jumped and used to run up the back wall and do flips and tricks. As the performers were running up the graffiti-covered wall, trying to reach the top, it became clear that it was supposed to represent the Berlin Wall, which divided the Soviet-controlled East Berlin from the city’s west side for 28 years during the Cold War. Having just seen some of the remaining pieces of the wall in the city that afternoon and learned about the oppression that took place on the East side, I found it very poignant when the cast members finally jumped high enough and were able to stand on the ledge at the top of the wall. The curtain closed, and Act One was over.
The rest of the show was performed in simpler, more modern costumes and less makeup, without clowning, miming, or over-the-top scenes. It felt more honest, with performers talking directly to the audience. Videos from rehearsals were projected onto the back wall, showing the cast members attempting acrobatic tricks in sweatpants inside a warehouse where the unpainted, unfinished set resided. The whole second half of the show felt bare and genuine, like the white paint had been cracked and brushed off the head.
The women who had done a routine on the trapeze in the first act did another trapeze routine together which they kept interrupting to argue, accusing one another of doing it wrong. Although this felt more real than the pretending-to-be-dead shtick of the first act, it was, in reality, just as staged and rehearsed, so the genuineness was ultimately an illusion. However, illusion or not, this style makes the audience feel closer to the performers (a feeling that was intensified when one of the women carried an audience volunteer up in the air with her!).
Cirk La Putyka, the company that put on this show, is from Prague, Czech Republic. The company says this performance chronicles the development of the circus arts from their beginnings in the early twentieth century through the present day, breaking at intermission at the pivotal year 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. They designed this performance with the intent of putting it on in the Chamaeleon Cabaret, a famous Berlin theater—an undertaking that makes sense given Berlin’s rich history in the areas of artistic expression and repression. Just the fact that this Czech company is able to perform in Germany is a performance of its own; seemingly simple things like this would be impossible in a world in which the Berlin Wall still divided the city. This kind of artful reminder of the delicate freedoms we enjoy makes me all the more grateful that we don’t have any walls on this continent.