When the poet replaces the judge

The verdict is clear: 84 percent of Swiss are in favor of exonerating the man responsible for the deaths of 164 people. The lawsuit is directed against fighter pilot Lars Koch, who arbitrarily shot down a hijacked passenger plane – the terrorists wanted to crash it in a football stadium with 70,000 spectators. Koch averted this possible hell with his launch.

“Terror is your judgment” is the title of the TV show with the televote of October 17, 2016, based on the play by the German writer and lawyer Ferdinand von Schirach (58). The Terror was the most popular production on German stages in the 2016/17 season and has been shown in 29 countries to date, theater scholar Geraldine Boesch (34) writes in her recently published book. This is her dissertation for which she received her PhD from the University of Bern.

“At the turn of the millennium, productions and performances (…) dealing with democratic procedures, collective bargaining processes or decision-making are increasingly appearing in the German-speaking theatrical landscape,” Besch writes. In her work, she also deals with The Last Days of Ceaucescu (2009), the Moscow Trials (2013) and the Zurich Trials (2013) against the Weltwoche – all this is directed by the Swiss Milo Rau ( 46).

Weltwoche editor-in-chief Roger Keppel (57) has also been the newspaper’s publisher since 2006, and there have been several unsuccessful attempts to sue him for provocative front pages and tendentious reporting. “Rau staged what was forbidden by law at the Neumarkt theater in Zurich,” Besch says. In addition, in 2011, Switzerland carried out a reform of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which means that criminal orders are more often used as a kind of “punishment proposal” rather than due process.

This is where theaters jump into the gap and negotiate long and wide deals on stage, often involving audiences. The goal is not so much judgment as weighing, Boesch writes, quoting the author of The Terror: “Von Schirach declares that for him the results of the vote are of secondary importance, what matters is that they are discussed together.” Someone wants to promote democratic debate What a commendable request, you might think.

But there’s a catch to all of this: productions like The Terror, in which audiences are required to make judgments, have a populist effect and make the judicial system child’s play. Even Milo Rau points out in his play “The Last Days of Ceausescu”: “Honestly, (…) I didn’t know that we forced the audience to take a position on something too controversial to somehow position themselves.” Therefore: in case of doubt with the accused.

Geraldine Besh, “In the Theater – in Court: Public Participation in Theater Court Formats”, Chronos

Source: Blick