Theater: Who Is This Program Meant to Reach?

This may be what an opening looks like when it wants to remain almost invisible. Çağla Ilk, the new artistic director of Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater, is launching her first season not with theater but with an installation by the 88-year-old Turkish-French artist Sarkis. The effect is so discreet that one might think art insiders were meant to keep the occasion among themselves.

The choice makes the theater resemble a satellite venue of Berlin Art Week, which begins this week. The theater’s auditorium has been cleared out. In its place stand several wooden crosses on a huge platform, with colored neon tubes winding beneath them.

Above the installation, a revolving stage covered in mirrors turns slowly beneath 43 bells of different sizes and pitches. The scene combines stark religious imagery, light and sound, while the theater itself becomes a space for visual art rather than performance.

The description of the season opening points to a question at the heart of the program: who is it intended to reach? For now, the answer appears deliberately elusive. Whale songs, wooden crosses and watercolor rituals announce a new direction with an atmosphere closer to an art installation than a conventional theatrical premiere. Holy smoke!