Watching a play about isolation in a time of Isolation: Botho Strauss’s Big and Small

"How puzzling all these changes are! I’m never sure what I’m going to be, from one minute to another! However, I’ve got back to my right size"  

- Alice, Alice's adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

(Photomontage mash up edited by me from images by Sydney Theatre Company and John Tenniel) 

This blog is kind of an essay but kind of isn’t. This is a piece I’ve wanted to write since I read this play last year. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it on this blog, but I am an aspiring playwright aiming to write surreal/experimental plays. Because this is an underappreciated style in theatre whenever I read something in this genre I tend to instantly love it. This has been the case with Big and Small.

(2002 Wuppertaler Bühnen Poster, via MartinLejeume) 

So um… yesterday, April 4^th, Schaubühne in Berlin streamed Botho Stauss’s Big and Small (Groß und klein) on their site for 24 hours. This was the original 1979 production as broadcast in 1980 and was in German (leaving me to scramble around reading the Anne Cattaneo English translation if the script)

The play has subsequently had various revivals in various languages including French, English, and most recently Spanish. There have been 4 notable English language productions so far, the last in 2012.

Any video recording of this play is a rarity. As is seeing an actual performance. My main experience with this play comes from an English translation of the script. This is a real shame as honestly, this play is fascinating, and bizarre, and yes, Carrollian.

(2008 Berliner Deutsche Theater production, Image via Der Spiegel) 

"Where next in this everywhere?"

Big and Small is essentially about a woman, Lotte’s, bizarre experiences as she becomes more and more cut off and isolated from family, friends, and society as a whole. After she is rejected by her husband Paul she goes on a wirlwind journey around East and West Germany (we’ll get to the significance of that later) Also, its kind of Alice in Wonderland for adults (which is why I’m writing this here)

As a character Lotte is eternally optimistic, even as she is rejected again and again by society and people who simply do not want her there. Her attempts at integration become more desperate as the play goes on. 

Towards the beginning she looks in on a couple, and tries to befriend the wife, a socialite, by convincing her that she is a fan of her. They play a game of dress up, until the woman gets bored and insists Lotte leave. Later on Lotte desperately calls an acquaintance she remembers from school 20+ years ago on her intercom, who insists she can’t stay for the night.

(2012 production, image via Queencate) 

Lotte as an absurdist and Alice figure 

There are also many carrollian interjections. In the intercom scene Lotte is too small for anyone in the house to really hear her. In an earlier scene, which depicts Lotte moving into a surreal apartment, she has to jump to reach a gigantic key which will open the door to her new flat.

Lotte is a postmodern protagonist, echoing protagonists in absurdism and surrealism who are ineffectual, ordinary, and are thrown in against often horrifyingly strange situations. She is also an adult variant on Lewis Carroll’s Alice as Lotte carries a sense of innocence and naivety which other protagonists in this genre lack.

(2016 production, via schauspiel koeln)

Germany, politics and Isolation

The play is also about Germany. And its also about deep isolation. At the time of Stauss’s writing, the Berlin wall was still up and as a result this work is often critiqued as a political/social commentary on East and West Germans, their different cultures, and their isolations. This critique however tends to forget Lotte’s place as a central character and also the fragmented, deliberately surrealistic nature of the story.




























(1988 production, via Sydney Theatre Company)

Although the places that Lotte travels to, a flat, a house, a street, a garden, a waiting room are all familiar, they are warped by her and others perceptions. This warping of everyday things also helps create a sense of alienation. Nearly all the characters in this play are either unhappy or are related to someone unhappy. They live in their own worlds and rarely connect.

(Original 1979 production, via Schaubühne Berlin)

"....And in the end Paul left too."

An unreal world

Lotte’s main experiences occur after she is rejected by her husband, Paul, and as well as the historical background and surreal scenes there is also a sense in Big and Small that Lotte is not just travelling through Germany but arguably also her own psyche. This is shown through the downright weird encounters that she has, from the 17 year old girl in her apartment who is too afraid to face the world outside of a tent, to her snappish and bizarre extended family who argue about finance, act oddly and generally ignore her.

(2012 production, image via Geraint Lewis Photoshelter Archive) 

"Don't you recognize me, Albert?"

In fact upon re reading the segment about the family barbecue, I was struck by how much the barbecue scene evokes Carroll’s mad tea party, right down to the participants irritating the protagonist as much as they can. Lotte, like Alice, leaves in disgust.

The centrepiece of the play is a scene in a phone booth where Lotte attempts to contact Paul, then write a letter, trying to convince herself that she is fine with his new relationship with Inge, “the woman in the zipped up dress” who Lotte only glimpses part way through the play. Its notable that after this scene Lotte’s attempts to integrate with people become more delirious and frantic. At one point she appears before a man waiting at a bus stop to crazily tell him that she is “one of the righteous”. She also lapses into arguments with an unseen person.

(2012 production, image via ohnotheydidn't)

Conclusion

This play seems ripe for revival sometime soon. After all, the last few years politically have been polarized, with countries, friends, family, split into opposing fractions. Big and Small reflects societal unhappiness back at us.

Watching Big and Small now in the current climate is an even stranger experience, making an already weird play a thousand times more so.

You can sense the stillness.

NOTES AND RESOURCES:

• Production educational notes for the 2012 production, including a synopsis and historical context.

• The only English translation of the script, translated by Anne Cattaneo, available in the anthology Contemporary German Plays II: T. Bernhard, P. Handke, F.X. Kroetz, B. Strauss.

• Behind the scenes stills, 1980 German Televised version, Berlin Museum Archive.

• Second set of behind the scenes stills, 1980 German Televised version, Berlin Museum Archive

• Geraint Lewis, Photoshelter, 2012 production

• Donald Cooper, Photostage, 1983 UK production

• An insightful New York Times, 1983 New york production review

• Costume designs, Voytek, 1983 London production costume designs, V and A archive

• 2005 French production poster design Eric Vigner