(This post will be shorter than my previous two, I promise.)

I'm not entirely sure why I've liked the shows we've seen at Gorki. I really enjoyed the music of Angst Essen Seele Auf, the suitcase full of oranges broke my heart, and while I genuinely enjoyed it, I recognized the sentimentality of it. Some of my classmates made comments about the story being trite, or overdone, or even not particularly innovative (though I'm not sure I would agree with that particular claim). Admittedly, part of the reason I enjoyed it was because I understood so much of what was being said, even without subtitles. But I'm not sure that's all of it.

Kinder der Sonne, particularly with subtitles, had moments of (contrived) poetry. I think much of the poetry is lost in its translation, given we can only understand the words as they are written on the screen (and these were vastly different from what was being said on stage, just based on what spoken dialogue was missing from the supertitles). Yet the philosophical nature of it rang true, or wishfully true at any rate. The grandiosity could be interpreted as trite, but then you could suggest the same of a large part of the Western canon, or even beyond that. The characters of Kinder der Sonne were literally discussing what the point of human existence is.

With both, sometimes I found the acting to be... acting. At other times (particularly with the female lead in Angst Essen Seele Auf) I believed that these were just people who had wandered onto the stage, and were completely true to life rather than artificially articulated. Neither could claim the title that Ostermeier's Hamlet has of being mind-blowing, completely innovative, and real. But I don't think that a "sentimental" story loses all value simply by being sentimental, or by lacking a distinctly new perspective (which I'm not sure whether either did, but at least one classmate criticized Gorki for this). There's a reason that subject matter labeled "sentimental" does make us feel a certain way. I wouldn't say I walked out of either show at Gorki feeling warm and fuzzy and as though everything were resolved- but I left feeling lighter, with some sense of confidence in humanity, rather than a drastic change in my life and work as an artist.

I don't think it's valid to completely dismiss something because it's not innovative enough. My father's love of Dutch and Flemish painting from the 17th century (and the countless hours I've spent following him through museums- there's a reason I have to read every sign in a museum, and he's worse than I am) has taught me that art doesn't always have to be new to still be art. We still value a well executed painting that has some effect on us whether its subject matter is new or not- there's a reason portraits and landscapes and still lives are repeated over and over and over again. And my visit to Hamburger Bahnhof proves, at least to me, that "avant-garde" doesn't necessarily mean good. "New" and "different" don't necessarily mean good or valuable. And once again, another understanding has developed in my consciousness- I'm not sure I can dismiss some of the theater I once did (primarily because of my experience in my hometown in which it seemed to me most people thought theater consisted entirely of Broadway musicals, preferably happy and shiny ones, and nothing else). Art doesn't have to be dark, or completely scramble your brain to accomplish something. Sometimes it's enough to simply affirm (or re-affirm) humanity, and remind us of something within ourselves and life, and maybe of our hopes and dreams and aspirations. Or even just give us a place to lose ourselves in someone else's story for an hour or two.