Rainald Goetz wrote plays full of fury, melancholy and hate, and commented mercilessly on public speaking. Recently, however, he has been downright mild.
As early as the early 1990s, Rainald Goetz sat at the premieres of his plays and was thrilled, laughed, and spoke along to passages of the text. That was in Hamburg, at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus, where Frank Baumbauer began his directorship not only with Christoph Marthaler and Jossi Wieler, Goethe and Elfriede Jelinek, but also with a huge Goetz project. Three pieces, three forms, three directors and, surprisingly, none of them are inherently pop. Anselm Weber staged the first night of the new management in October 1993 with “Kritik in Festung” for spectators on the stage behind the Iron Curtain. The one about family, violence and shame was an intoxicating piece of chatter, or as the text said: “Long time, narrowness, terror, ART”.