The Transfiguration of Mister Punch (14 page)

Her mother, Therese—a devout Catholic from a tiny village in Alsace (who had struggled even to learn French, let alone master her husband’s language)—took the news very badly. Although they lived together only a few streets away from the Bauhaus building, in Friedrichstrafie, and Stephanie would visit every weekend (she promised), her mother grieved for weeks as though she was leaving for deepest Siberia. It was hardly surprising really, given that Stephie’s father and two brother’s had been killed in the war, the brothers together in the first shots at Liege and her father in the last days at the battle of the Argonne forest, leaving her and her mother to fend for themselves in a broken country, where neither felt entirely at home.

Stephie was filled with hope for a new life. She wanted to leave her mother’s musty apartment behind; a gloomy place that seemed so much a part of the old Europe, with its wooden furniture and its simple pastimes, food and drink. She yearned for the new spaces of glass, concrete and steel; buildings and designs that tested materials and ushered in new spaces. She wanted the company of young, vibrant people, who read, and danced and experimented with new ways of loving and living.

In part Stephie got what she wanted. Her apartment was bright, with tall windows that opened via levers, a simple single bed, moulded desk and study table were formed from the concrete arcs of the walls. An iconic chair, of metal tubing and canvas, enabled one to relax a little, although nothing like the old frayed leather armchair her father used to sit in, cradling her in his arms as he read her fairy stories. But her brain was alive with theories and ideas and she would have to learn to put sentimentality behind her if she was to take advantage of the opportunity afforded her.

She did her best too to embrace the new social environment. Alternative parties, with outlandish costumes, strange rules and codes of conduct initiated her into a world of free thinking artistic spirits who had, supposedly, left the archaism of monogamy and heterosexuality far behind. Her first sexual experimentation took place in an identical room to her own, with a young architect called Franz, who was as awkward in his skin as she was in hers. But she was not able to erase the image of her mother, by her fireside, reading her bible and the difficult physical encounter ended with both of them sitting side-by-side in the bed, with Stephie looking down at Franz’s sex, thinking how bizarrely primordial it looked—like a mess of compost and animal matter. She yearned for a smooth, pristine form such as her own. A precocious girl by the name of Elise obliged one drunken evening after they had been on a street parade, dressed as automobiles. But that encounter was equally disappointing, her mother’s bent and studious figure looming in her mind as she explored Elise’s body, which so resembled her own that Stephie felt that she was simply masturbating in a mirror. The new world of inhibition and ecstasy was clearly something that she would have to work harder at over the coming years. For now, she was content to contemplate its possibilities theoretically.

There was no limit to her desire for study though. Soon she had filled notebooks with quotations such as ‘... the history of the theatre is the
transfiguration
of the human form...’, ‘... an emblem of our time is
mechanisation
, the inexorable process which now lays claim to every sphere of life and art...’, ‘... from the standpoint of
material
the actor has the advantages of immediacy and independence...’, ‘... the Theatre of Totality with its multifarious complexities must be an
organism
...’, ‘... we are concerned with what makes things typical, with type, with number and measure, with basic law...’, ‘... the audience, that representative of public life, disappears from the auditorium...’, ‘... we will be rendered masks upon dolls, synthesising the most extreme
fantasy
with the most extreme
sobriety
...’. Page after page was filled with these manifesto excerpts that surged through her thoughts like a call to arms. She wrote paragraph upon paragraph of her own ideas about each sentence she had chosen, and would spend long hours rewriting, and reworking them to test their limits, playing with words and phrases as she did with colour and sound upon the stage. She did not understand everything she heard. She could not fathom everything that they did in their workshops. She could not follow all the philosophy in all the books she read. But Stephie knew that somewhere, amongst and between it all, like a golden thread, there was something significant—a flicker, a pulse, some spiritual force, that held it all together. And one day, through diligence and research she would discover its full potential.

In April 1927 their group’s first full-scale theatre project began. Oscar explained that the next few months would see them working on the theories of Alfred Jarry, to be led by a Professor Marceuil, from The Académie Orientale. This was not to say that the workshops were designed within Bauhaus principles, but rather the curriculum committee had felt that some alternative approaches might reveal the metaphysics of form that they were addressing, and it would enhance their open learning modes to work on the radical theatre of Jarry, so ahead of its time and infused with a spirited, rebellious humour that would also enhance the creative practices the school sought to promote. Professor Marceuil was running somewhat late however, but would be with them at some point that morning. They were to work, until his arrival, in small groups, discussing recent reading, and theatre experiments they had conducted in freeform workshop platforms.

Stephie ended up in a group with Elise, Wulf and Ela. She still found it difficult to work with Elise, especially physically, after their night together. Wulf was an arrogant man, in his early thirties, who had twice been brought before the board for his attitude to others during their workshops. He was haughty and proud, and seemed to conduct himself with a school-masterly attitude, as though he were one of the tutors, even though much time, in the early phase of their studies was taken up by instilling in them the non-hierarchical structure of the school, its administrators and educators. Wulf clearly had not grasped the principle. But then, neither had Ela. She sat there, nervous and shy, as ever. Her own practice consisted of incredibly composed formal dance work, and she had spent some time working for a travelling circus in Thuringia, where she had trained with a contortionist. Whilst she may have been quiet and compliant, Oscar clearly prized her for her technique and precision. Wulf commanded the discussion initially with a description of his recent visit to Berlin, where he attended an architecture conference at which Gropius had launched a scathing attack upon Kohl for his ‘nostalgic, obsolescent buildings, more fitted to the museum than the spirit of a new being’. The whole story was simply a means by which to name-drop and show-off. Elise became frustrated and began talking flippantly about a new cake she had enjoyed at the Café Elbe the previous evening, it apparently having been constructed entirely along Bauhaus principles, its cream even conforming to a structural composition that included layers of delicate puff pastry that were supported by a frame of sugar icing, offset by the organic chaos of some cherries. Wulf was silenced.

Just as they were attempting to bring their discussion back on track the auditorium doors flew open. In burst a short, rotund man, although it was difficult to tell quite how short he was as he was perched upon a large bicycle, whose pedals he was only just able to reach. A long blue cape flowed behind him, threatening at any moment to become caught in the spokes. Atop his head was an admiral’s hat, at least three sizes too large for him, which—if it were not for his huge busy eyebrows that formed a natural ledge for it—would almost obscure his great, cat-like eyes.

The bicycle came hurtling into the room and he let out a great “whoop!” of elation as he careered into the space, “Good morning, pedestrians, I am your new tutor!”

Everyone was stunned.

“We are far advanced in the age of mechanised man,” he yelled, as he flung his legs wide and free-wheeled through the rows of metal chairs, hopping off by the stage and propping the bicycle up as he took a great bow—all in one single flourishing gesture.

“I am Professor Marceuil, and I will be dancing you through the magical and manic world of the only true genius, Alfred Jarry,” he said, taking his bicycle clips from his trousers and affixing them to his forearms.

“You Futurist flotsam will immediately appreciate the complexity of ‘that which rolls’” the bizarre professor said, pointing to his bicycle, “‘that which rolls’ has all the aspects that you find value in. Let us consider it firstly as an apparatus perfectly in tune with ‘that which strolls’, transforming the legs and arms into elongated structures of control, direction and power; the thighs are pistons that charge the calves with movement, up or down, propelling the two symbiotic elements forward into a new form of existence, dwelling in the realm of light—a revelation of form and experience, unparalleled in other apparatuses for travel and propulsion.”

“What about a rowing boat?” piped up Wulf.

“Well, Pssshit, sir!” the man said. “What a clown-headed ass you are! We’ll have no more of this scholarly fandango here, my lad! I don’t want to see you parading your tawdry intellectual wares around, I’ve enough of that at home! Put your brains at the door on the way in and do as I say. There’s an academic sausage to stuff down your throat, and no mistake—or stuff it where you like, it’s of no matter to me.”

Thus began four weeks of senseless workshops at which Marceuil was rarely present, leaving them simply with a list of tasks which seemed either entirely useless to their work or utterly degrading.

Finally at the end of that perplexing month Professor Marceuil appeared again one morning and gave them instructions, which although odd made more sense than anything he had said previously.

“We will utilise three sacred elements of the useless, decaying theatre; three stage flats, two costumes and one prop. The flats will depict these scenes; a garden party at Versailles in the reign of Louis XVI, an English music hall, and a backstage properties store. The costumes will consist of a small blue woollen cap that shall be worn upon the penis of one of you chaps, who will otherwise be naked, the other to be a set of bicycle wheels attached to a steel frame in which our other lead character will move about the stage in a frantic and devilish fashion, at high speed. The rest of you will play the attendant chorus to this romance without narrative. The prop will be an antique mechanical bird-box, by the Rochat Brothers (from my personal collection) [
here he bowed obligingly
]. This will be wound once at the end of the performance and allowed to play out to the dimming of the lights which will have otherwise remained static throughout the show.

“Any questions? And let’s not have any of the blockheaded, back-chatting, clever remarks such as in our first meeting.

“No, no questions... good. Get on with it, then. I’m off to town for some refreshment. I shall see you at about five this evening, unless I have taken off with a whore, in which case I will see you the day after tomorrow.”

They did not see him for a week.

None of them were used to using conventional theatre flats, but they constructed the frames and stretched the canvas according to diagrams in a book they got from the library. There was only one amongst them, Stefan Goldstein, who had any skill in representational and figurative painting, having been apprenticed for a couple of years to a painter who specialised in reproducing old masters for middle-class families. He was tasked with reproducing the scene of the Versailles garden party, which he did with long lawns of rich grass, fountains with classical statues, pristine hedges and avenues of trees. In the distance the party could be seen, dancing to a small orchestra, with a horde of attendant servants. Everyone said how wonderful it looked, even though they all agreed, Stefan included, that it symbolised everything they despised about the theatre.

The other two flats were deemed more suitable to a basic rendering and so groups of seven or eight of them set to work to get them finished quickly so they could choreograph what they were to do in the ridiculous performance.

Stephie was working on the ‘Props Room’ flat, and she added in as many theatre clichés as she could, including the skull from Hamlet and the masks of comedy and tragedy, and then littered the canvas with bits of armour, crude wooden weapons, a gun with a ‘bang’ flag protruding from its muzzle, and a host of battered suitcases, mannequin heads and other theatrical rubbish.

Wulf came along and started adding in a full-sized mannequin. But this, he said, was a bit of revenge. It was to be Professor Marceuil rendered in an abstract metal frame. He painted the bulbous torso atop a metal tripod, two legs for his actual legs and one for his bicycle. It was the most amusing thing Wulf had ever done. Even Elise joined in with the joke and said that his bicycle ‘leg’ should be either his little cock or his massive ego, either way the thing would fall over.

On the Friday afternoon they’d come quite far in preparing the performed sequences but were at a loss as to how they might construct the frame with wheels and decided to leave it until the following week.

As they all headed off to their apartments, or into town for a drink, Ela drew Stephie to one side.

“Do you stay much in the theatre, after class... I mean, after the workshops, Stephanie?” she said, leaning in in a hushed, conspiratorial manner.

“Er, no, not really, should I have?” Stephie replied, concerned that she might have been shirking her studies in some fashion. Rumours such as these had been known to get people thrown out.

“Oh, no, not at all. God, you’re the hardest worker here, no doubt at all,” Ela said, looking up and down the entrance hall, and especially towards the cafeteria. “It’s because of that that I asked you. I thought you might have heard and seen things in there too.”

“What things?” Stephie asked.

“Oh, nothing... it’s nothing...” Ela said, flushing bright red. “I’m just being silly.”