Der Jasager - Der Neinsage
Der Jasager - Der Neinsage (He who said Yes, He who has said No) by Bertolt Brecht
was directed by George Tabori for the Staats Theater Kassel, 1980/81.
was directed by George Tabori for the Staats Theater Kassel, 1980/81.
Experiment and variations
For the real matter is not consumed in its purpose, but rather in its realisation; neither is the result in and of itself the true whole, but rather result combined with the process that led to it.
Hegel – Purpose, Results and the Philosophical Essence
Der Jasager (He who said Yes)
First Version,
A school opera with music by Kurt Weill
A boy goes on a research trip to the mountains with his teacher and students to get medicine for his sick mother from the doctors on the other side of the mountains.
When he falls ill during the trip, he agrees in accordance with the custom of being thrown into the valley resulting in death. The students throw the boy into the valley … No-one is more guilty than his neighbour.
Second Version
There is disease in the city so the teacher and the students trek over the mountains to get medicine and instruction from experienced doctors. The kid also joins the expedition to get medicine for his mother. On the way the kid gets sick and the other kids try to carry him over the narrow ridge.
The attempt fails. Since an entire city is waiting for medicine, they decide to leave the kid alone in the mountains according to the great custom. After a brief consideration, the boy agrees to this ..: in accordance with necessity. Since he is afraid to die alone, he asks his companions to throw him into the valley. The students throw the boy into the valley:
No-one is more guilty than his neighbour.
Der Neinsager (The naysayer or he who said No)
A boy joins his teacher's research trip to get medicine for his sick mother from the doctors over the mountains. He affirms the teacher's question of whether he agrees with everything that could happen to him on the journey. The students want to throw the boy who fell ill during the trip into the valley according to custom. The custom also stipulates that the sick person is first asked whether he agrees with his fate, but the boy's declaration of consent is also required. However, the boy doesn't agree. … Your learning can certainly wait. If there is something to learn over there that I hope, it could only be that we have to turn back in our situation.
And as far as the old big custom is concerned, I see no reason for him.
Rather, I need a new custom that we must introduce immediately, namely the custom of rethinking in every new situation." The students do not want to be deterred from doing what is reasonable by laughter or insult, and no old custom should
Prevent "to accept a real thought." They "founded a new custom and a new law and brought the boy back.
(...) No one cowardly than his neighbor"
Variations on a topic? Who is "right", the jasager or the no-sayer? Doesn't leaving both possibilities open contradict the view of the lesson as a strictly didactic genre that wants to convey a "pure" teaching? Or isn't it rather the case that both pieces (Jasager 2 and Neinsager) complement each other? Is the boy's no a refutation of his yes in the other piece or rather a justification?
The two pieces are about variations. Brecht, the great experimentator, designed an experimental arrangement with different starting positions that determine the behavior of the figures. Unfortunately, however, the experiment does not withstand scientific criteria. If the fight against a general disease would also have been necessary in the "no-sayer", shouldn't the solution have been to leave one boy behind in order to bring medicine to the many? Isn't the "nosayer" version an evasion from the actual problem raised in the first version? But how can the problem be solved if it is set as in the "Jasager*? Two types of behavior seem possible and legitimate: the passive-receiving and the dynamic-revolutionary.
Are both ways really legitimate? Is it always them?
What do you think of the boy's consent? Should the victim agree, although he has no choice? A real decision is probably only possible in freedom. Responsible, ethically justified action is only conceivable through them.
The form of the teaching pieces is strict, but only so that parts of their own invention and current nature can be inserted the more easily.
*, writes
Brecht in his teaching theory. Strict form and free improvisation are not only comparable, as with jazz, which Brecht uses for comparison, but also reinforce each other's effect. For us, the lessons in the sense of Brecht's learning pieces are a template in which we wanted and could contribute our experiences. Because they are not agitation pieces in the conventional sense, but game templates for those directly affected, ideally: class-conscious proletarians. The pieces only fulfill their purpose when their abstract content, the dialectic, is concretized by the concrete experience of the participants.
Questions are more important in our work than practical answers. What
"Means" the understanding, what does the journey, the narrow line and the great custom "stand" for? We ask about what is hidden under the surface of what has been said. The special way of speaking that arose in the early thirties during the discussion about party discipline, we call it double-talk, must be made concrete for today's viewer.
"Work loyalty* means further development, especially when staging works by the dialectic Brecht. The "new custom" requires "rethinking in every new situation"
Bernd Leifeld
Experiment and variations
For the real matter is not consumed in its purpose, but rather in its realisation; neither is the result in and of itself the true whole, but rather result combined with the process that led to it.
Hegel – Purpose, Results and the Philosophical Essence
Der Jasager (He who said Yes)
First Version,
A school opera with music by Kurt Weill
A boy goes on a research trip to the mountains with his teacher and students to get medicine for his sick mother from the doctors on the other side of the mountains.
When he falls ill during the trip, he agrees in accordance with the custom of being thrown into the valley resulting in death. The students throw the boy into the valley … No-one is more guilty than his neighbour.
Second Version
There is disease in the city so the teacher and the students trek over the mountains to get medicine and instruction from experienced doctors. The kid also joins the expedition to get medicine for his mother. On the way the kid gets sick and the other kids try to carry him over the narrow ridge.
The attempt fails. Since an entire city is waiting for medicine, they decide to leave the kid alone in the mountains according to the great custom. After a brief consideration, the boy agrees to this ..: in accordance with necessity. Since he is afraid to die alone, he asks his companions to throw him into the valley. The students throw the boy into the valley:
No-one is more guilty than his neighbour.
Der Neinsager (The naysayer or he who said No)
A boy joins his teacher's research trip to get medicine for his sick mother from the doctors over the mountains. He affirms the teacher's question of whether he agrees with everything that could happen to him on the journey. The students want to throw the boy who fell ill during the trip into the valley according to custom. The custom also stipulates that the sick person is first asked whether he agrees with his fate, but the boy's declaration of consent is also required. However, the boy doesn't agree. … Your learning can certainly wait. If there is something to learn over there that I hope, it could only be that we have to turn back in our situation.
And as far as the old big custom is concerned, I see no reason for him.
Rather, I need a new custom that we must introduce immediately, namely the custom of rethinking in every new situation." The students do not want to be deterred from doing what is reasonable by laughter or insult, and no old custom should
Prevent "to accept a real thought." They "founded a new custom and a new law and brought the boy back.
(...) No one cowardly than his neighbor"
Variations on a topic? Who is "right", the jasager or the no-sayer? Doesn't leaving both possibilities open contradict the view of the lesson as a strictly didactic genre that wants to convey a "pure" teaching? Or isn't it rather the case that both pieces (Jasager 2 and Neinsager) complement each other? Is the boy's no a refutation of his yes in the other piece or rather a justification?
The two pieces are about variations. Brecht, the great experimentator, designed an experimental arrangement with different starting positions that determine the behavior of the figures. Unfortunately, however, the experiment does not withstand scientific criteria. If the fight against a general disease would also have been necessary in the "no-sayer", shouldn't the solution have been to leave one boy behind in order to bring medicine to the many? Isn't the "nosayer" version an evasion from the actual problem raised in the first version? But how can the problem be solved if it is set as in the "Jasager*? Two types of behavior seem possible and legitimate: the passive-receiving and the dynamic-revolutionary.
Are both ways really legitimate? Is it always them?
What do you think of the boy's consent? Should the victim agree, although he has no choice? A real decision is probably only possible in freedom. Responsible, ethically justified action is only conceivable through them.
The form of the teaching pieces is strict, but only so that parts of their own invention and current nature can be inserted the more easily.
*, writes
Brecht in his teaching theory. Strict form and free improvisation are not only comparable, as with jazz, which Brecht uses for comparison, but also reinforce each other's effect. For us, the lessons in the sense of Brecht's learning pieces are a template in which we wanted and could contribute our experiences. Because they are not agitation pieces in the conventional sense, but game templates for those directly affected, ideally: class-conscious proletarians. The pieces only fulfill their purpose when their abstract content, the dialectic, is concretized by the concrete experience of the participants.
Questions are more important in our work than practical answers. What
"Means" the understanding, what does the journey, the narrow line and the great custom "stand" for? We ask about what is hidden under the surface of what has been said. The special way of speaking that arose in the early thirties during the discussion about party discipline, we call it double-talk, must be made concrete for today's viewer.
"Work loyalty* means further development, especially when staging works by the dialectic Brecht. The "new custom" requires "rethinking in every new situation"
Bernd Leifeld
Death in the afternoon
George Tabori's take on theatre direction and the need for 'death defying' theatre performance.
George Tabori taken in Berlin 2003 photo Oliver Mark
1. (Dangerous Theatre)
When I was three years old, I was taken to the circus … as the drum roll begins, a girl climbs 15 m high onto a platform, and I shit in my pants. Then she fires up an impetus from the Salto mortale, (is a 1953 West German drama film ~ Wiki) misses the trapeze and crashes through the net.
For many years I thought this was part of every performance: someone will climb up into the golden light, spread his arms smiling, drum swirls, the spectators shit into their pants, she swings and falls, with every night to lie down there in a puddle of blood and sand.
Even today, when I go to the theatre, I expect something of this kind and go away disappointed if it doesn't happen. But sometimes it happens, and that's why I'm still a stage worker. At a performance of Les Iks (The Mountain People of Uganda) a little black boy who plays the part, swallows a stone to satisfy his hunger and vomits.
2. (Both)
The revolution is over, after 133 days, my father gives a photo lecture, I sit in the front row (on the balcony, a place of honour), next to a cardinal who is purple in robe and face.
First, a film is shown, the first in my life, a fluctuation in a shoe store, starring Puffi Huszár, the fattest actor in the world. None of the shoes fit, the spectators roar with laughter.
My father enters the stage, I shout: "This is my dad!", the spectators roar with laughter, the cardinal says, not unfriendly: "Shut up, little one!" I reply: "I don't shut up!" and he pinches me in the nose. My father tells the fairy tale of the limping Satan, a Mythical figure flying over the cities and lifting the roofs off the houses so that you can see what misery is. Then he shows slides of slums, of dead workers, of refugees living in cattle wagons, terrible faces stare at me. The spectators are very quiet, the last slide shows a boy who was bitten dead by rats.
When it gets light, the cardinal gets up. "The stupid thing about your father is," he says, "that he doesn't know if he wants to make us laugh or cry."
3. (In anticipation of the disaster)
I am six. Sailor suit, and for the first time in the theatre. The piece, in verse, is called "L'Aiglon" by Rostand, about Napoleon's son. The leading role, it seems at least, played by a grandmother, in long trousers. That was the good old theatre, undoubtedly thanks to Sarah Bernhardt and her wooden leg.
It's slowly getting dark in the auditorium, the curtain slowly rises and reminds me of my crazy aunt Agatha, who flashes her belly by raising her red plush skirt, an association that still haunts me. In the good old theater, the best effects were all associated with the magical sound of the huge red plush skirt that rose or fell. The curtain hardly exists today, at most as reinsurance for the fire brigade, as if we were tired of waiting for this magical moment of darkness, which has become the balding genital part of a crazy old woman.
"It's terrible," says my father, "but hold on, my son, maybe the scenery will collapse after all”. He defined, as I believe today, the expectation of disaster as the essence of the performing arts; the tacit assumption that despite all our best intentions, plans will go wrong; that e.g. B. Othello really strangles his lady. This seems to me the one true, albeit unconscious reason why people still go to the theatre, in hope and horror, to find the principle of indeterminacy, a freedom that blows up what is necessary, a theatre that does not copy the theatre, but creates life. In other arts, this freedom will not be found.
A book, even from Raymond Chandler, will not explode in the reader's hands, and none of the Renoir nudes will drip out of their frame. My father's recommendation has entered my Dangerous Theater, which is not mine at all, agit without a prop, a stage where there will be incidents, by chance, in hope and horror that reflect life, in which - as the caption of the silent films says - The Disaster takes its course.
When I go across the empty stage after a performance, I can still, sometimes, smell a bit of the blood and sand.
4. (Death in the afternoon)
For the first time, I visit a bullfight in strange company, not far from the Escorial. Far below me, as in the keyword, Hemingway, for the first time since the civil war back in the country and talking to the great Ordonez. On my right, a seventy-year-old Torero, who is supposed to explain the subtleties of the fight.
He is worried because a wind has risen, which, as he explains to me, can be a matter of life and death, because it will be difficult to lead the Muleta. I feel unpleasantly neutral in this controversy between the Animal Welfare Association and the Spanish mysticism of morbidity and honor; the arena is small but perfect and confirms once again that the circle or oval is the most democratic form of communication; I like crowds, good theater, I find; the stage design is certainly better than in the Old Vic or in the The spectacle begins, the performances, the costumes, the choreography, the music, everything at its best.
I watch Hemingway, he also looks worried three, of course, I say to myself, Premierennervosity, and even Ordoñez looks worried, he is a classic, explains the Torero, no tricks, no charging, no bidding to the audience, "he is pure as Bach".
Then the bull is let out into silence, it is pitch black, demonic, very beautiful, the strongest living animal, the Torero tells me, takes on lions, tigers, rhinoceroses, the wind has become stronger, swirls up sand, the bull goes to the middle of the stage and stares at us.
Even before I can smell blood and sand again, the certainty invades me so much that I will forget to breathe that something will go wrong this afternoon, a catastrophe like in the circus when I was three; someone will die, die properly, not just play a death scene, and in this perfect combination of ritual and reality will be born the same terrible beauty Oval playing and being inseparable, a theatre as dangerous as our streets.
George Tabori born 1914, Budapest
(Father: Journalist Cornelius Tabori, murdered in Auschwitz)
When I was three years old, I was taken to the circus … as the drum roll begins, a girl climbs 15 m high onto a platform, and I shit in my pants. Then she fires up an impetus from the Salto mortale, (is a 1953 West German drama film ~ Wiki) misses the trapeze and crashes through the net.
For many years I thought this was part of every performance: someone will climb up into the golden light, spread his arms smiling, drum swirls, the spectators shit into their pants, she swings and falls, with every night to lie down there in a puddle of blood and sand.
Even today, when I go to the theatre, I expect something of this kind and go away disappointed if it doesn't happen. But sometimes it happens, and that's why I'm still a stage worker. At a performance of Les Iks (The Mountain People of Uganda) a little black boy who plays the part, swallows a stone to satisfy his hunger and vomits.
2. (Both)
The revolution is over, after 133 days, my father gives a photo lecture, I sit in the front row (on the balcony, a place of honour), next to a cardinal who is purple in robe and face.
First, a film is shown, the first in my life, a fluctuation in a shoe store, starring Puffi Huszár, the fattest actor in the world. None of the shoes fit, the spectators roar with laughter.
My father enters the stage, I shout: "This is my dad!", the spectators roar with laughter, the cardinal says, not unfriendly: "Shut up, little one!" I reply: "I don't shut up!" and he pinches me in the nose. My father tells the fairy tale of the limping Satan, a Mythical figure flying over the cities and lifting the roofs off the houses so that you can see what misery is. Then he shows slides of slums, of dead workers, of refugees living in cattle wagons, terrible faces stare at me. The spectators are very quiet, the last slide shows a boy who was bitten dead by rats.
When it gets light, the cardinal gets up. "The stupid thing about your father is," he says, "that he doesn't know if he wants to make us laugh or cry."
3. (In anticipation of the disaster)
I am six. Sailor suit, and for the first time in the theatre. The piece, in verse, is called "L'Aiglon" by Rostand, about Napoleon's son. The leading role, it seems at least, played by a grandmother, in long trousers. That was the good old theatre, undoubtedly thanks to Sarah Bernhardt and her wooden leg.
It's slowly getting dark in the auditorium, the curtain slowly rises and reminds me of my crazy aunt Agatha, who flashes her belly by raising her red plush skirt, an association that still haunts me. In the good old theater, the best effects were all associated with the magical sound of the huge red plush skirt that rose or fell. The curtain hardly exists today, at most as reinsurance for the fire brigade, as if we were tired of waiting for this magical moment of darkness, which has become the balding genital part of a crazy old woman.
"It's terrible," says my father, "but hold on, my son, maybe the scenery will collapse after all”. He defined, as I believe today, the expectation of disaster as the essence of the performing arts; the tacit assumption that despite all our best intentions, plans will go wrong; that e.g. B. Othello really strangles his lady. This seems to me the one true, albeit unconscious reason why people still go to the theatre, in hope and horror, to find the principle of indeterminacy, a freedom that blows up what is necessary, a theatre that does not copy the theatre, but creates life. In other arts, this freedom will not be found.
A book, even from Raymond Chandler, will not explode in the reader's hands, and none of the Renoir nudes will drip out of their frame. My father's recommendation has entered my Dangerous Theater, which is not mine at all, agit without a prop, a stage where there will be incidents, by chance, in hope and horror that reflect life, in which - as the caption of the silent films says - The Disaster takes its course.
When I go across the empty stage after a performance, I can still, sometimes, smell a bit of the blood and sand.
4. (Death in the afternoon)
For the first time, I visit a bullfight in strange company, not far from the Escorial. Far below me, as in the keyword, Hemingway, for the first time since the civil war back in the country and talking to the great Ordonez. On my right, a seventy-year-old Torero, who is supposed to explain the subtleties of the fight.
He is worried because a wind has risen, which, as he explains to me, can be a matter of life and death, because it will be difficult to lead the Muleta. I feel unpleasantly neutral in this controversy between the Animal Welfare Association and the Spanish mysticism of morbidity and honor; the arena is small but perfect and confirms once again that the circle or oval is the most democratic form of communication; I like crowds, good theater, I find; the stage design is certainly better than in the Old Vic or in the The spectacle begins, the performances, the costumes, the choreography, the music, everything at its best.
I watch Hemingway, he also looks worried three, of course, I say to myself, Premierennervosity, and even Ordoñez looks worried, he is a classic, explains the Torero, no tricks, no charging, no bidding to the audience, "he is pure as Bach".
Then the bull is let out into silence, it is pitch black, demonic, very beautiful, the strongest living animal, the Torero tells me, takes on lions, tigers, rhinoceroses, the wind has become stronger, swirls up sand, the bull goes to the middle of the stage and stares at us.
Even before I can smell blood and sand again, the certainty invades me so much that I will forget to breathe that something will go wrong this afternoon, a catastrophe like in the circus when I was three; someone will die, die properly, not just play a death scene, and in this perfect combination of ritual and reality will be born the same terrible beauty Oval playing and being inseparable, a theatre as dangerous as our streets.
George Tabori born 1914, Budapest
(Father: Journalist Cornelius Tabori, murdered in Auschwitz)
David Aitken Sketch for outdoor setting
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David Aitken bridge crossing
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