I am a Philistine

Tonight (Monday, June 14) we celebrated my tenure by going out to dinner at Francucci´s on the Ku´damm (http://www.francucci.com/ ). Annie surprised me by ordering a bottle of prosecco and then insisting on picking up my share of the bill. The food was excellent and we strolled down the block afterwards to walk a little of our dinner off before the performance.

According to the official printed schedule, tonight´s performance of "Trust" at the Schaubühne (http://www.schaubuehne.de/en_EN/home). was to have English surtitles. Unfortunately, they never appeared. Over an hour into the performance, I began to wonder if it was simply a very subtle parody of post-modern theater. I told Annie and Cherie that knowing German wouldn´t help them understand what we were seeing; in fact, it made it worse. Some of the monologues were simply too fast to be understood. Even the ones in English were incomprehensible and, in my opinion, pretentious. Six characters sitting on a couch, along with a man wearing only red briefs and a gorilla mask. One man: you left me when I was 14. One woman: who are you? Man: mamma. Woman (jumping back in shock): I´m not your mother; don´t call me that.

The dance numbers, some of which were interesting, were interspersed with long post-modern stream of consciousness monologues. The only thing missing was spraying the audience with blood (ala the Wien Aktionismuß). I kept thinking of the old SNL comedy routine Sprockets, with Michael Myers, only here on steroids: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHZR9SA5pOg

We paid up our bill and are now packing for tomorrow´s trip to Dresden. We´re going to arrive too late to catch the 1:30 boat to Bad Schandau, but I´m hoping to meet the ship at Heidenau at 3:15 pm. That would still give us 3.5 hours on board before the boat reached Bad Schandau.