Die Kabale der Scheinheiligen (program) - Annotation
This post discusses a print document:
Canelas, Marion, and Castorf, Frank. Die Kabale der Scheinheiligen (program). Festival
d’Avignon, July 2017, Avignon. n.p.
The first page of the English program for Die Kabale der Scheinheiligen, which includes an interview with Frank Castorf conducted by Marion Canelas, gives summary of the play as a production that explores the relationship of political powers and artists’ agencies. Additionally, there are two biographical paragraphs of Frank Castorf and Mikhail Bulgakov and their accomplishments as artists. The second page includes Castorf discussing his conditions of production: historical and political contexts of theatre and how they relate to both the world of the play and 21st century circumstances, adapting original texts from other authors, the importance of the rehearsal process, and the overall building of the show.
This interview is effective because it illustrates a first hand perspective of the experience of creating Die Kabale that is crucial to understanding the building of the performance text in terms of my conditions of reception. It isn’t a simple artist statement; Marion Canelas asks Castorf questions that are focused on the structuring and building of the performance text which illuminates his process of working, so it provides some sense of conditions of production for audiences before watching the actual play itself, allowing the reader to know what work went into creating the show and to inform their conditions of reception. Additionally, Richard Knowles’ approach of materialist semiotics will be useful when engaging with this production and using it in my research. One important aspect of this program is that it is an official version with an English translation; it isn’t coming from an unknown translated source, it is a version the Avignon Festival is promoting as official.
In my research, I argue that Die Kabale is rich in the semiotic language of media technology based on information gathered through performance text and conditions of production, so this interview will provide something to substantiate my analysis. Castorf discusses the importance placed on the dramatic texts of this specific production, which is a key principle that influences the production of meaning and my reception of it. Because I use it as one of my main artistic references, this interview is vital to my analysis of the production because I am receiving information from Castorf at a direct level. He discusses his rehearsal process and specific intentions he had during the creation of the production, which are things that I would not be able to speculate based on my own observations.
