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This trip has been a challenge so far because I don't speak an ounce of German. All of the plays we watch are in German, except for one play that was in Czech. There were a couple of plays where they display surtitles or switch on and off between Geman and English. Watching plays at a foreign language is difficult because you can no longer rely on the text, so you have to rely on other things that are not related to words. At first, I felt lost because I knew that I would not understand all of the pieces of each play I saw, and for some odd reason, not knowing each part of the play bothered me. Then, I reminded myself that I have seen plays in English back in the states, but I still did not understand them.

When I realized, I could not rely on the dialect, I relied on sight. I examined the character's behavior, little actions that I picked up on their point of view another character. From that, I could understand the relationship between the characters. I could decipher the hierarchy between characters, who leads and who follows. I was focused on the lighting, costumes, set, colors, all of which could inform my understanding of the play as a whole.

 Cry Baby von René Pollesch at Deutsches Theater

Without language, I relied on sound. The music that they use, sound, the way the actors speak and use their voice. I even used my sense of smell - the smell gunpowder when Hamlet fired his gun. I also had the opportunity to experience theater with my sense of touch when I felt the gust of wind in Der Letzte Gast, which was absolutely beautiful. In essence, I learned to adapt to the lack of knowledge of German by using my other senses. When my mind was not wrapped up on the text, I focused on other aspects of the production to understand the play in its entirety.

I tried to apply all of these tools to comprehend Cry Baby. However, I had such a difficult time to understand Cry Baby. My mind drifting in and out of scenes and I had a difficult time engaging in the play. I did not understand the relationships between the characters, especially the four main characters. The intentions between the characters were wishy-washy and I really did not understand what the characters wanted from each other. From that, it didn't inform their behavior, an action, a visual response to I heavily rely on.

Cry Baby von René Pollesch at Deutsches Theater

What made it more frustrating was that the other audience members were laughing, and I felt like I wasn't competent enough to pick up on the joke. I felt left out that I did not understand the "inside joke". I found it, even more, excluding when Erin told me that some of the jokes that were made were puns, and she did not understand them either. I don't think that this play was intended for me to watch. I just don't think that I was their target audience.

I know that sounds awful. I am one to believe that art is for everyone to engage with, and I do not mean to be pretentious. I know that just because I do not understand this masterpiece, it does not mean that it is not a good production. Perhaps this is a sign that I need to be accustomed to seeing different shows that peripheral from my familiar taste and challenges my perception of what makes a "good" production, "good" acting, "good" directing, etc; to broaden mind and discover what I like or dislike, find the qualities that I find important or of worth in a theater production.

Cry Baby von René Pollesch at Deutsches Theater

Although I did not really understand the play in its entirety, I must admit that I did enjoy the visual aesthetics (the PJs, set, the canopy, and the robotic bed, the "tears"!) and music (the Spanish flamenco!) pleasing. What I got from, as a whole, was that this entire play was a spectacle and it is not meant to be pedantic. It was a game of cat and mouse, a game of tag on the playground. Maybe I am trying too hard to understand the nuanced bits and pieces of the play when in actuality it is to entertain the audience. Perhaps its intention was to be overdone and that it is not necessary to find the underlying message.

I think that this play is one of those plays where you go in see an avant-garde and abstract spectacle and you leave the theater being confused, sleep on it at night and forget that it even happened. And when someone asks of your opinion of the play, you can only describe it on a surface level. Maybe years from now, a vision of the sword fight, or the flowery pajamas, or the moving bed will pop up in my mind and experience an epiphany and find that this actually means something, or maybe it does not mean anything at all. Who knows.