Wed, 08 Feb 2006

Sarah Kane resigns as artistic director of Goetheanum Stage

By Christian von Arnim and Wolfgang G. Voegele

DORNACH, Switzerland (NNA) – Slightly more than one year after having been appointed, Sarah Kane has resigned from her position as one of the artistic directors of the Goetheanum Stage.

The director, who has had successful productions in theatres in Europe and America, including at the Stanislavsky Theatre Studio in Washington, said she was driven to resign by unreasonable expectations, lack of support and inadequate resources.

In a brief statement in the journal “Goetheanum”, Paul Mackay, the member of the executive council of the General Anthroposophical Society with responsibility for the Stage, gave the reason for Ms Kane’s resignation as a lack of confidence in her way of working among the ensemble and the Stage management. Her decision had been preceded by discussion about a “change of course”.

On further enquiry from NNA as to what this implied, Wolfgang Held, Goetheanum press spokesman, told the news agency that neither Sarah Kane’s production of “Cymbeline” nor her preliminary work on Rudolf Steiner’s “Mystery Dramas” had produced the expected result and that both her colleagues and the Stage management had expressed a lack of confidence in her directing abilities for all her skills as a workshop leader and acting teacher.

The change of course referred to the decision to shelve the planned production of Ibsen’s work “Emperor and Galilean”. It was being replaced by Plato’s “Symposium” under the direction of Jobst Langhans in preparation for work on the new production of the Mystery Dramas, the key project for this year..

Secondly it had become clear in discussions that the collaboration between Sarah Kane and Torsten Blanke as joint artistic directors had not worked out and the Stage management needed to be restructured to provide the most productive basis for the “Mystery Drama” project.

Sarah Kane, however, argues that there was no adequate chance to establish herself. There had been “difficulties” with her first production, Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline”, partly because colleagues, with a few exceptions, had failed to support her.

In contrast to the normal practice in professional theatres, where incoming directors would have at least a year’s notice to familiarise themselves with the audience and “get a feel of what you are coming to,” Kane got ten weeks’ notice. “I was coming out of the English speaking world, particularly out of working in professional theatre in America, and within a month or three weeks I was being asked what’s your first production going to be.” Within four days of finishing “Cymbeline” she had been expected to start on the Mystery Dramas.

There had been enormous pressure. All the actors had been dismissed before her arrival which meant that apart from simply settling into the new job she had to find new actors with two, three, four weeks notice: “The time pressure was just extraordinary.” As a consequence, a lot of work was needed to bring the actors together. Couple this with colleagues who were unwilling to support her, a failure to understand her artistic perspective, the huge expectations that the new team and the revamped management structure would solve all the previous problems, and it is not surprising that she was perceived as having failed with her first project, Kane argues. Her appeals for more time simply went unheeded.

As result people suddenly questioned her competence: “I would say some of them were justified because of the circumstances and I would also say some of them were not justified.” Furthermore, Kane says she was given to understand that she would have at least three years to start developing an ensemble: “I know that is something I can do, that is one of my working strengths,” she says, pointing to her successful track record, with one of her US shows still running three years later.

Advised by some not to take the criticism personally, but that it was a result of the situation at the Goetheanum, Kane responds: “Of course it has to do with me personally – I did not come in and do a brilliant Peter Brooke or Peter Stein production, we don’t have those people in the anthroposophical world, we don’t have actors in the anthroposophical world who are making headlines out there. We are trying to do something else and it’s modest and simple.”

The issue here was also a lack of clarity about the direction which the Stage should take, given that resources were scarce. The opening of the Goetheanum to a wider public through the successful Faust production in 2004 had been suspended with the concentration on the Mystery Dramas, of restricted interest to anyone outside the anthroposophical world. The attempt to build a reputation as a quality stage contrasted with the production of Schiller’s “Wilhelm Tell” using local people without any acting training.

All these factors, Kane feels, contributed to a situation in which it became impossible for her to fulfil her tasks: “I would sum up the situation by saying that the prerequisites at the start of the job were not professional, and that can be all right, if everyone is aware of that, and makes concessions. But generally there were no concessions made as to the expectations within a short space of time.”

Sarah Kane hopes that her resignation will lead to a positive outcome in the end. Perhaps the manner of her departure has created another level of awareness of the problems and there will reportedly be very open discussions of the concrete problems before any further changes are made. She stresses that she hopes that such a debate will take place and that this will lead to a constructive outcome.

“I can only hope that all the difficulties I have been through serve to bring about something good. There is a waking up process going on. One can enter into processes, which is what art needs to do.”

END/nna/cva

Item: 060208-01EN 8 February 2006

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