Berlin has a new theatre scandal – manufactured, right on schedule, by the man who benefits from it: Volksbühne’s newly appointed manager and artistic director, Matthias Lilienthal.
Just in time for silly season, the 66-year-old announced a special “left wing project” for the summer: turning the Volksbühne into a Volksbad, complete with a 25-metre swimming pool in front of the monumental neoclassical building on Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.
The message behind the People’s Pool fits the house’s identity: splish-splashing for free as an act of defiance against the “systematic dismantling of urban infrastructure” and the “commercialisation and control of public spaces”.
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Speaking of “free”: the pop-up-pool has cost €300,000 (around £256,000) out of the theatre’s annual budget. Which, despite the cultural scene’s constant moaning, is on a scale that London theatres can only envy: it has a permanent ensemble on permanent salaries and all.
Last year, the Volksbühne sold €4.4m worth of tickets.
It spent €28m.
The little matter of €23.6m – that’s over £20m – was covered by the state of Berlin. That is: Berlin’s taxpayers. Such as myself.
I haven’t set foot in the Volksbühne for about a decade, not since they lured me in with the promise of Molière. I should have known, duh, that I’d get Regietheater – where a text, however brilliant, is merely a starting point to whatever directorial concept.
At best, it gets fractured and reassembled. My Molière was deconstructed beyond recognition. And, naturally, the director gets to bill extra for the new script.
There have been spectacular experimental productions, of course. Too often, though, it’s scandal for scandal’s sake, dressed up as artistic rebellion. And even the shock value of nudity, blood and urine has a shelf-life. Which has passed.
So when I first heard of the Volksbad idea, I was intrigued. Finally, theatre subsidies would be used to benefit the many taxpayers who never seek enlightenment at the Volksbühne.
The People’s Pool is also walking distance from my flat, twice the size of the Soho House rooftop puddle, and the press release even mentioned a Pommesbude (chippy). Free chips too, I hoped.
But, as ever in socialism, the ideal met reality. There are 3.5 million Berliners, but only 46 of them can occupy the pool at once. The timed-entry tickets are free, but their release – 2pm, three days before the swimming day – has turned into an eBay-style refresh war online. Which, so far, I have lost.
But the criticism from conservative pundits and the taxpayers’ association was nothing compared with the outcry when Lilienthal announced at short notice that the pool would be reserved “exclusively for Black communities” for one afternoon.
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“Apartheid,” wailed Alice Weidel, co-chair of the right wing AfD, “racism against white people,” raged the alt-right media, and when it was clarified that Volksbühne had, in fact, invited a small anti-racism organisation to bring black children and teens up to 14, the culture war had already hit the water.
Immediately, without really discussing other options, the plan was cancelled, citing “security risks”. Had there been threats? Not physically, Lilienthal said, but he considered verbal abuse violence, too. He shut down the pool “in solidarity” and the staff hung up a large banner reading “Fickt euch!” (“you get that”) directed at the right.
Somehow one suspects that this oh-so-predictable incident was less about safe spaces and raising awareness of the racist abuse black kids face at public pools than about raising the alt-left impresario’s profile. A public relations stunt as shallow as his pool itself, which is only 1.30 metres deep.
