The German Theater System Is In Danger
The recent news about the upcoming release of an entire ensemble en-masse in Wuppertal is indicative of German theater system’s fragile stance in the modern era. I have sung in German theaters since 1988 and have enjoyed the incredible benefits that come from being a part of an ensemble and of a town. I’ve seen it go from the days before the iron curtain fell, Bonn was capitol and the entire east was shut off from the west to the evening when they showed people climbing over the wall in Berlin and chipping away at it, even I was able to chip on the wall back in 1990 on re-unification day. With the fall of the iron curtain the entire landscape of German society shifted and so did the theater system. All of the sudden there were singers and musicians from all over the former communist countries bring with them an incredible wealth of talent and determination to succeed in the west.
Germany moved it’s capitol from Bonn to Berlin was expensive, reconstructing the entirety of East Germany which had been all but driven into the ground by communism was expensive and adding an entire nation to the responsibilities of the people living in the West to pay for it, and still are paying for it. In the east the German theater was the home for many singers, actors, dancers and musicians as well as artisans that were also upheld by the re-unification efforts. Having the German capitol in Bonn and not Berlin would be like France having the capitol in Lyon or Great Britain having the capitol in Oxford instead of London. All of the changes were positive and the right idea, but they have had a detrimental effect on the west in some ways and the theater landscape is one of those things that has suffered.
German Theater Is Up Against All Media Available Today
In addition to the watering down of the system due to the new theaters added in the east, and the shift from the Deutsch Mark to the Euro, which was a club in the face of common people, The increase of media competition in the marketplace with the development of the Internet, the junk that Television has become, and of course the vast cinematic scene increase the competition for sales to the German theater.
There are so many factors working against live theater that it is amazing it has been held this long. In spite of all of these factors attendance while being not what you would want it to be, is still pretty good especially when you consider the number of performances a German house puts out on a monthly basis. The people that the responsibility carry for these performances are those who stand on the stage and sit in the pit to play. Without the performers there is no theater, period. It is just like a sports team, it is difficult to have one if you don’t have any players.
The Employees Of German Theater
In considering the plight of ensembles in German theater, it is important to point out that the performers on stage are the only employees which have no job security, just like sports teams where the players are changed out regularly. In the attempt to save theaters the only employees that can even be terminated are the soloists who are not ”unkundbar” or the tenured soloist, which you achieve if you have been at a theater for 15 years, or at least that is the way it used to be.
The theater management can’t get rid of choristers, musicians, stage techies, back stage people or office people because they all work under the contract of the city and are permanent. The only way to reduce these costs is to simply not replace someone who leaves or retires. So, in essence, when theater management is faced with saving money, the only place to go is the soloist contracts. Therefore the new management of a theater can simply fire the whole ensemble and replace it using non-full-time guests to get the cost of wages cut dramatically.
The question is, does it really cut costs? I don’t think it will in the long run. The reason being that guests cost more per performance than a full-time singer, and you can use a full-time singer as many times as you like for the same price. There paperwork for new contracts and everyone having to pay hotel or higher apartment rates and a daily stipend for rehearsing also adds to the complications, not to mention the scheduling nightmare of having to organize the ensembles to work out with the guest’s schedule.
The plight of the economy of towns, cities and states places an extra burden on theaters to become financially bearable, which they cannot be because you can’t get 60,000 into a theater seating less than 1,000 seats. The only way to get numbers is to do a lot of performances with as low a cost as possible.
The German Theater system is a great thing, a national treasure, as well as the orchestras that go along with them. It is a living thing, not like a museum or factory, but something of intrinsic value that no euro sign can justify. It is real people, making art, live art and one of the few places on earth where you can actually have a natural experience without a lot of technical buzz amplifying your nerves and ears into oblivion.
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