Chapter 12

Musical Conquest and Settlement: On Ruedi Häusermann’s Theatre Work(s)

Judith Gerstenberg

At first, a heap of randomly dumped objects. In the dim light one recognises the odd instrument within the pile. Four figures fawn over a white surface, leaving strange forward-pointing tracks. They plan and calculate, we know not what. They issue brief commands, something seems to motivate them to put helmet-like constructions with sound pickups onto their heads, long strings are being put up across the room, forming bottlenecks. A knot is disentangled, two new ones develop, recordings are made, a thunder sheet painted, slippers prepared for optimal suction. Amid all that, there are sections in which the characters retire to their original places, bury themselves in their instruments; sections of abstract sound worlds, of improvised music (for the four performers, including Ruedi Häusermann himself, are exceptionally gifted multi-instrumentalists). At the end of the evening, but really only at the very end, one realises that one has witnessed a musical exploration and sounding: the four men of the type: ‘elderly Swiss’ – in love with their home country, a song on their lips, with a dash of awe and a lot of seriousness, hard-working and well aware of their important task and hard working – take a break, sitting within the result of their day’s work, namely the painfully erected parlour, puff a pipe and listen to the self-produced sounds of a village idyll. They are very pleased with themselves – until they begin to hammer and saw again. This production at the theatre at the Schauspielhaus Zurich was called – not without affectionate irony – Väter unser [Our fathers] and was created in 2000, the first year of artistic director Christoph Marthaler’s tenure there. It was a theatrical event of a then-elusive category.

For when Väter unser was invited to be the Swiss entry to the Bonn Biennale, a festival of contemporary European theatre, there was bewilderment – at least for those audience members and critics not yet persuaded by recent changes in the notion of authorship: after all, the dramatic text of the performers was limited to a repeated ‘good’ and ‘continue’ with an occasional ‘Achtung für…’ [look out for…1 ]. ‘Look out for big birds’, for example, or ‘Look out for: Catholic Church’. The four performers spent the rest of the evening enacting the above-mentioned meticulous surveys of the stage space for which they used very strange implements and devices. The sounds, which were apparently created unintentionally, joined together – on reflection over time – to become a sophisticated composition. And in the end we had heard a concert, a whole world had been created, a life depicted and a mentality and attitude portrayed.

As early as 1998, when Ruedi Häusermann received the most distinguished German theatre award, the Bavarian Theatre Prize, for one of his earlier works, Das Beste aus: Meschliches Versagen (Folge I) [The Best of: Human error (Episode I)], a certain helplessness prevailed, since this production would simply not fit any category or genre: it was neither a play, nor an opera, nor dance. The prize was finally awarded under the newly established rubric ‘other theatre events’. In fact, there still is uncertainty among newspaper editors about whether to send a theatre critic or a music critic to a Häusermann production. While the theatre critic often lacks the vocabulary to describe the abstract music, the colleague responsible for opera or concerts is confused by the theatrical playfulness of the work.

Its own category

Quite obviously, the theatre work of Swiss Ruedi Häusermann constitutes its own category or genre. He is a musician – by training; a musician, however, who since childhood has developed an eye for the stagings and the mise en scène of everyday life, using his sensitivity to joyfully set the occasional trap for others with the help of subtle manipulations. Both, the music and this attention to the theatrical potential of his environment determine his world view; a view that one cannot put on and take off like a pair of glasses but which instead constitutes an understanding. Both have been formative for Häusermann as a person, which is why he has continued exploring how musical and theatrical awareness can open spaces for each other since those first performances. His interest is always in the process as well, which remains visible in the result, negotiating the manufacturing of the theatre event in performance. Häusermann is driven by the question: what ingredients transform a casual, unassuming moment into a poetic one? It is a question about perception and revaluation, about what we see and hear. In an existential sense, for Häusermann – both as an artist and as a human being – all his productions are stations of a music-theatrical exploration of the world.

Figure 1: Ruedi Häusermann. Photograph by Sebastian Hoppe.

Resisting categorisation, Häusermann’s works are labeled ‘projects’, a term he avoids. Ultimately, all artistic work is a ‘project’. Each is an enterprise, a design, a plan, or – as business jargon would have it –a time-limited development project. This includes those of his works which feel their way into an already established literary or musical world and appropriate it or – on the contrary – make their difference from this world apparent. One distinction, however, that the term ‘project’ marks in theatre is that at the end of such a period of work nothing remains which has any continuance outside the actual performance, nothing that could be handed down. Therefore, projects are particularly indebted to the mediality of the live performance, its unique features emphasising that theatre is only at one’s disposal in the instance of experiencing it. Häusermann stagings are marked by this awareness. They confront the task of shaping this very melancholic and ecstatic privilege, this ephemerality, this non-consolidating volatile nature. It is this space of uncertainties and transitions that Häusermann continues to explore.

Music-theatrical self-assurance

Ruedi Häusermann’s motor is a fascination with the spiritual, not the material world. This fascination has biographical origins. He comes from a family of artisans. His father was a stove-fitter, whom Häusermann accompanied to construction sites. There, ‘Kunst’ (‘art’) was the term for the stove bench through which the firing chamber was laid. The kind of thinking Häusermann learnt there was guided by objective criteria: was something bent or straight, will it fulfil its function or does it need correction? If the firing chamber ended up short, the Kunst (art) had to be torn down. There was no room for other concepts of quality, and certainly none that related to a mere idea. This other, artistic, non purpose-oriented world had yet to be conquered by Häusermann as a part of his life. This is what makes it so precious to him. He knows its fragility and also that it comes apart when its legitimacy is denied.

Initially he had to push aside all standards known to him. The resulting relief, which he continues looking for today time and time again, is the prerequisite of creativity. Exploring this creative impulse (with all its recurring doubts, but understood as possibilities and potential) was and is a key interest. Häusermann does not model himself on other artists, but tries to maintain a productive naivety as a kind of shelter. The danger of inventing something and claiming it as one’s own just to be different, rather than searching for it in oneself, the danger in other words of a quest for mere novelty that overshadows true originality would then be too great. For each sequence of notes has been played before, every thought has been thought before. Häusermann tills only those fields that he can later plant himself. He would not skip any step. Thus each production is to be read as a further step in a large-scale project of life. The individual productions refer to each other, continue their narrative and remain solely committed to the subjective interests of their author. Consequently, it isn’t possible to suggest new sujets or ideas for productions to Häusermann. He remains searching his own identity, which still wants to be defended against the very concrete and solid world from which he originates.

He started late. Only after finishing his economics degree did he decide to study classical flute. As a clarinettist and saxophonist, he had already played in the compulsory Swiss cadet corps and worked his way through the entire history of jazz. During his music degree he turned to free improvisation, liberating himself from harmony structures, fixed-time structures and predetermined forms. He had to eradicate the boundaries for himself in order to be able to draw new ones, or perhaps to rediscover old boundaries as non-binding. During the concerts in which he plays today – most often with cellist Martin Schütz, percussionist Martin Hägler and sound specialist Philippe Läng – they bounce ideas off each other without any specific expectations. Being able to understand these ideas as such, to accept them from each other or – what is sometimes most difficult – to let them go by, is the art of this concerted playing. These four very unique musician-personalities thus roam musical worlds together, places whose existence they didn’t even know before. It is always this kind of music, constantly and inherently renewing itself, that Häusermann places within theatrical contexts.

Drawing from complexity

The original cell of Häusermann’s theatre work can be found in his solo programme Der Schritt ins Jenseits [The step into the next world] (Tuchlaube Aarau, 1992, see Figure 2). He himself was on stage in two roles; he was both sound manager (director) and employed artist (actor) in a small recording studio. The artist produces sounds on cue and records music tracks on various instruments, while the voice of the sound manager keeps interrupting him, humiliating him, demanding new takes, until finally commissioned artist Häusermann, who is doing his best, hisses under his breath: ‘S schiist mi aa’ [Swiss dialect for: ‘It pisses me off.’, note from the translator]. We can just hear the voice of the director/sound manager –a God that overhears everything: ‘Du muesch ned säge, s schiist mi aa, Ruedi’ [‘Don’t say, it pisses you off, Ruedi’, note from the translator] – when the frustrated musician sinks the loudspeaker from which this warning emanates in a bucket of water. Finally freed of the admonitions and instruction on how to do things, a miracle happens. All the interrupted trials and truncated noises (including deliberately provoked audience reactions) that were entirely devoid of any aura suddenly produce a great concert. The live recorded takes from the first part are now intertwined into a surprising story, to which Häusermann improvises brilliantly on his instruments. Out of the previous chaos a biography grows, a whole world. In fact, as a listening audience we have witnessed an act of creation. To confirm this experience and, above all, to capture it and counteract any pathos, Häusermann has a Punch doll (Kasperlipuppe) give an encore as God, who releases the audience with a rendition of the song ‘Oh, wie wohl ist mir am Abend …’ [German traditional canon, ‘Oh, how content I am in the evening …’, note from the translator].

Figure 2: Ruedi Häusermann in Schritt ins Jenseits. Photograph by Judith Schlosser.

The charm of Häusermann’s productions is in their humour and their refusal to take themselves too seriously. He avoids the crowing gesture. That’s why he often interrupts his music with naive scenes, with what could also be understood in the oldest theatre in the world, the kind of theatre where people began to tell stories, as children with few resources, a theatre in the attic or in the barn.

In fact, a principle is established in Schritt ins Jenseits that can be re-encountered in many of Häusermann’s later works: something suddenly emerges as if from nowhere, out of a random complexity, from seemingly insignificant aspects, and we later discover and realise that every detail was premeditated and according to a mysterious plan.

Figures 3 and 4: Scenes from Trübe Quellenlage. Photographs by Sebastian Hoppe.

‘Blue-skies’ compositions / Sound research

Since his first solo programme, Häusermann’s name can be found more often in a theatre context than on the concert stage. Nevertheless, he thinks of himself first and foremost as a composer. To justify this understanding, he takes time off before each new theatre work; time to retire in order to develop new music. ‘Blue-skies’ compositions are the result. The only criterion guiding Häusermann in this is a quest for personal new territories. He sits down and starts at random – he may for example improvise with different instruments on several recording tracks2 (he only fixes a certain time signature and tempo and later assembles and composes the tracks into a ‘piece’ in retrospect in order to avoid a surreptitious flirting with certain reactions), or he may make some notations. He simply begins, unencumbered by an idea, a concrete project. Once something has gained some form, it can be considered described, can be discarded or further developed. The familiar, which initially occurs in this process, shows Häusermann at least where its boundaries lie, towards which he wants to advance. When he arrives at these margins, the yet unbroken ground becomes gradually visible, which he then can start to till. Over time, an inner necessity evolves for the composition. Once this is recognised as such, it turns out to become an incorruptible measure.

The music precedes the beginning of any theatrical work. When a composition is sufficiently developed for a start, it relieves Häusermann of a lot, as he can then develop a unique non-musical narrative from it (or from one of its musical side-lines or marginal notes), a narrative that grows out of the music. This often only becomes recognisable during the creative process of the theatre rehearsals.

For Randolphs Erben [Randolph’s heirs] (Staatsoper Stuttgart 2009), for example, in which the stage is transformed into a music shop, including an instrument workshop, he had written compositions for a brass and a string quartet that weren’t aimed for any specific theatrical use. He brings this finished piece of work into the rehearsal process the way that others might bring a text. It is an open question, what images it may create, or vice versa:

how images – still to be found – may interlink with the musical events in order allow this composition to unfold in sound.

Now, while on the lower part of the stage, there is hammering, beating out, lacquering, constructing and repairing of instruments, a customer enters the shop; a customer who wants to buy a trumpet. The shop has few visitors these days and so the staff gets into a frenzy: it brings one trumpet after the other (each running up and down stairs sounds, as we realise, like an introduction to a piece of music and provides a rhythm). Even every closet door that is opened makes a sound – in the right pitch of course – which the violin mimics, continues and transforms shortly after. The customer tries out the various instruments, plays something barely recognisable as a melody, which nonetheless later proves to be a central motif of one of the previously composed string quartets. The tones that sound like arbitrary try-outs of the instruments are being picked up more and more by the string quartet – at first the violin shadows the sounds, while the other instruments gradually tune in and the sound is condensed, almost incidentally into that earlier composition. All of a sudden the customer drops a mouthpiece. This is the sign for the drill, which with its shrill noise blocks out and destroys the sounds that had just emancipated into music. This difference in the materiality of tones and sounds is something that Häusermann continues to investigate, since it is through their difference that these sounds unearth each other’s value. The compositions which he develops before the theatre rehearsals give him an indication of the direction in which he then proceeds, force him to inventions that in retrospect expose how they came about. Since the musicians are present throughout the rehearsal process, Häusermann is free to continue composing pieces such as the previously mentioned introduction on the stairs, in which the theatre gives something back to the music.

Figure 5: Score of Ad Wölfli. Photograph by Sebastian Hoppe.

Figure 6: Detail of the score of Randolphs Erben. Photograph by Ruedi Häusermann.

At the beginning of such theatre work, we literally have the proverbial blank page. Three sheets of A2 paper, taped together. They match exactly the dimensions of the table that is available in Häusermann’s studio on the Goffersberg, that place near the railway line between Basel and Zurich where all his works originate. The sheet of paper is prepared to collect all the ideas (or better: finds) which accumulate in the course of weeks, months, sometimes years, and which are put on small post-it notes of different colours that are constantly being resorted and repositioned (see Figures 5 and 6). Finding things is more important to Häusermann than searching, since searching is generally already guided by an expectation, tempting one to judge and dismiss what is encountered too early. Häusermann takes his time. Necessarily. There is no other way of arriving at his aim. His dream always remains the same: to create onstage a world that becomes a home. But this world is not generated by a collection of beautiful ideas. The biggest and most time-consuming task is to find out what questions to ask, how to develop criteria so that decisions can be made. Before rehearsals start, Häusermann merely determines an approximate sense of direction, rather than settling for a fixed definition of an idea.

Developing this sense of direction, he invites guests from the mostly familiar and long established pool of people of the production team to the Goffersberg. These are not ordinary work meetings to which one is summoned, but small productions, presented as gifts, small scenic arrangements with puns, which are personal and recognisable only to their addressee, heartfelt presents that create the right temperature, prerequisite for a possible free flow of ideas. Even the scores he has written, he wants to be read merely as a rough map. Together with the musicians involved in the project he will investigate which of the branching paths are actually accessible by exploring the possible worlds of sound with them over a long period of time during monthly rehearsal weekends. Together with the string quartet assembled for his production of Gewähltes Profil: Lautlos [Silent mode: on3 ] (Staatstheater Hannover / Staatsoper Stuttgart / Munich Opera Festival 2006), for example, Häusermann was searching for sounds that he described by an image of a slightly waving curtain at an open window, which reveals that the wind carries barely audible music into the room. The very fine stroking of the strings, the extreme flautando, produces sounds that disappear almost immediately after ringing out. There is not the familiar string sound; the music opens up to a theatrical process that is enhanced by sound worlds, which sometimes drowned it out before it then re-emerges.

Another search word for this sound laboratory was ‘beetle music’. This refers to the creaking and rasping of beetle shells, which become audible when listening to beetles up close. These are sounds one has to listen to intently in order to distinguish their diversity.

Häusermann regards this joint research activity as a vital second step in his composition. It is also within this collaboration that the set of rules is found, which determines the theatrical process. Incidentally, Häusermann considers his task to be creating a kind of territory in which certain natural laws apply. The longer one looks at the initially unfamiliar, the more clearly one begins to see, hear, and recognise, slowly becoming acquainted and at home with something that eventually can be called a world. In the end, it is up to viewers and listeners to realise how each detail joins and becomes an overall composition.

Enduring uncertainty

Ultimately, Häusermann asks of his collaborators (and later the audience) to endure a sustained period of uncertainty, during which it is permissible to think and try out without strain or the need to focus on a result. Enduring this uncertainty is a real challenge. Häusermann knows how hard it is, because it prohibits the individual (whether musician, actor, set designers, etc.) from sorting out his or her own area too early. Only after the language and the sound for the project are found – and that is always a delicate process – can the individual fine- tune his or her own personal profile. This point in time sometimes occurs only just before the premiere. It is possible then to look back and realise what has already been created. As a result, Häusermann is especially indebted to and dependent on his performers – professional musicians who become actors, actors who support the music and also people of essential warmth and cordiality, in whose world Häusermann is more interested theatrically than in their education or training. Their manner and attitude is part of what he finds in them. And just in what he finds, in what is already there, he discovers his stories, the theatrical material.

Häusermann devotes his whole attention to the details of his environment and thus gives them an earnestness that often unearths their philosophical dimension. Sometimes one has to wait long until the various ideas, the exploratory processes, develop a necessity that only then needs pursuit. At all levels – music, design, text – certain moments emerge from the rehearsal process with which one falls in love. However, to shape and organise these moments into a form that unites all these individual movements proves to be the real and always new challenge. A single element that remains with no context interferes with this coherence and has to dropped. Recognising this necessitates the perspective of all parties off stage. Describing to each other what we see on stage gradually creates the narrative context and makes decisions possible. It is not uncommon for Häusermann to see himself confronted with a situation where the original idea of the project has taken itself offstage in the end. It remains of crucial importance nevertheless because it is essential as a starting point where one can begin to unload one’s thoughts.

Composed coincidences

And so Häusermann collects all chances and coincidences in order to ultimately leave nothing to chance. Every detail has been arrived at conceptually; each moment corresponds with all others in the production. Häusermann has a central dramaturgic device in his pre- composed music. The music is not just an ingredient or mere addition to the theatrical work, but determines its design. It is the music which enables him to meticulously arrange the seemingly random, to zoom in and out of events, to overlap, fade and cut, and thus to steer the viewer’s perception.

This virtuoso play with the perceptual mechanisms of the audience marks the particular quality of Häusermann. It facilitates the experience of the immediate presence of a performance, since hearing and seeing is subjected to continuous fluctuation. This presents a challenge to continually reorient oneself, not least because Häusermann juxtaposes very different worlds in almost all his works. Their essence and characteristics are particularly evident at their edges and boundaries, where one merges into the other, overlaps the other and takes its place. It is Häusermann’s desire that the impressions, the colour and shape of his productions remain in constant flux, just like the weather or the sea.

In reality, his works remain fragile. In the end, as a spectator one leaves the theatre with an idea, a hunch; one supposes oneself to have seen something, remembers having heard something. The author Peter Bichsel once likened Häusermann’s pieces to landscapes seen only from afar, yet heard.

There is, however, one thing remaining at the end of a Häusermann production: the blank page has been transformed into a score (see Figure 5) on which many small coloured pieces of paper have found their places in an evidently strict order. These are notes with peculiar abbreviations and references such as ‘image pushing’, ‘chair music’, ‘text vehicle’, notes on which the complex texture of music, scene, foreground and background events was mapped during rehearsals. It can only be deciphered by those who were part of its emergence.

(Translation: David Roesner)

Note

1. The German/Swiss ‘Achtung’ has a double meaning: it can signify both a call for attention as well as respect (note from the translator).

2. In the case of Trübe Quellenlage. Opera Conserva [Murky Sources. Opera Conserva (Theater Basel, 2002)] this created a particular challenge for the staging process, as the composition couldn’t be reproduced live. In the centre of this production there was then necessarily a multi-track recorder. The performer literally acted as ‘Tonträger’ [the German word for sound storage medium means ‘sound carrier’ in literal translation; note from the translator] and realized a live ‘hearing’ in which they visualised multiple layers of the recorded tracks, without simply illustrating them. With their live interferences, the performers subverted and transgressed the score of the recorded music. Solo performances alternated with choral arrangements. At times the performers resembled devotedly grazing farm animals when crossing the stage with their gigantic speakers on their heads (see Figures 3 and 4). One performer opened his coat like an exhibitionist and bared his sound device; long-time collaborator Annalisa Derossi created cable spaghetti when swinging her hips and hip- and wire-leads as she entered as a lascivious lasso cowgirl with her loudspeaker tucked away in her behind.

3. The title refers to the silent mode option in mobile phone settings (note from the translator).