First a check at the central large bookseller “Dussmann” on Friedrichstrasse. Stacks of freshly printed issues of “Still awake?”, ideally placed on a “Buy Me” table in the entrance area. Some people take two of the foil-wrapped copies. But overall there is no trace of fan hysteria. Life goes on. And just wait and see what’s really going on with all the hype of the last week. 25 euros is also money.
Just in time for the “Tagesschau” at 8 p.m., the gong rang for the reading show by Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre in the “Theater am Schiffbauerdamm”, which had long been sold out. A celebratory stage construction, home of “Berliner Ensenble”. Outside the door, a bronze Berthold Brecht greets the guests hurrying by through ugly rain showers. His audience has grown with him. More adults than Erasmus students. And hardly anyone thought it necessary to dress up. Come as you are!
After a short music mix of classic meow and disco beats, the author jumps onto the stage in the well-known Action Jackson manner. Striped shirt, light trousers, designer sneakers. He “disguised himself as Stucki,” he says later. That’s why he didn’t wear the usual tight-fitting matchstick leg suit. BvSB is still slim and slender like his publishing colleague Nick Cave.
“I’m so excited,” he exclaims about the intro. He wants to start reading right away, but it’s just a trick. He jokes that he’s not quite comfortable with his own reading material. “BUT it’ll be really good in Ingolstadt!” “Ingolstadt” and later “Augsburg” become dramaturgically cleverly sprinkled running gags.
On this evening, Stuckrad-Barre often provides its own reception. He repeatedly churns out feuilleton lingo like “game of deception” or “figure entanglements” in order to pre-portion explanatory models for his material to the numerous critics present. He drinks water and smokes like a chimney. He says that the “director” allowed him to smoke on stage for “dramaturgical reasons”. He asks nicotine victims in the audience to do the same and blow a quartz next to him. But, as he quips, “don’t talk to the driver while driving.” His “favorite sign”. Everybody is laughing. Nobody dares to be in the limelight.
Stuckrad-Barre is aware that he has to bring his capital city material to the surface; despite the “Spiegel” story and constant excitement on the media planet. Augsburg and Ingolstadt are crucial to turning a vain Berlin Babylon 2023 material into a bestseller. Since the actual editions in the current fiction charts are not really high this spring, it can be assumed that BvSB will find itself in at least one top five position in the next week. And then there’s the tour through the medium-sized halls, where the Donots or Fischer-Z usually play.
He can. Like no other. He has proven that countless times. “I’ve been doing this for 25 years now.” With all the baggage of meaning that accompanied the release of “Noch Wach?” for weeks, Stuckrad-Barre comes across as remarkably poised and cheerful. Make “stop & go” passages between the reading and spontaneous comments, like at the “Cologne Comedy Festival”, as is well known, the “Wacken” of the professional comedians.
The opening reading by Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre blew off the heavy roof that weighed on this social novel
His reading is a tour de force through the new opus. Through “contextualization” the listener (m/f/d) can imagine his montage between the Chateau Marmont on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles (here: as an escape from the five-month long November in Berlin) and a Berlin private TV station LIVE . In the gray German capital, his protagonist Sarah comes into contact with “the editor-in-chief”.
The opening reading by Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre blew off the heavy roof that weighed on this social novel. At the time, “Stucki” with director Helmut Dietl failed because of the Prussian new edition of “Kir Royal”. His “Still awake?” subject screams for a film adaptation. Hoping nobody messes this up. Maybe BvSB should knock on Frauke Finsterwalder’s door. Possibly already happened. A stage version has already been announced in Hamburg.
In a dialogue with itself, BvSB also addresses the possible legal and immediate dangers of its “disclosure material”.
He stops reading and asks the crowded rows if there is a “Lisa” in the house. A clear and unequivocal “YES” comes straight back out of the darkness. The voice belongs to the actress Lisa-Maria Potthoff (“Sarah Kohr” or Eberhofer films like “Leberkäsjunkie”), who has mastered the Israeli military extreme martial art Krav Maga.
Just a spontaneous mini-interjection by BvSB, but at the same time a highly amusing insider joke with a Twelve character, which in turn lets the pressure of meaning collapse into the realm of the grotesque. Colleague writer Rainald Goetz also wrote a “manager novel” in the early 1900s. The third edition of the Suhrkamp hardcover version of “Johann Holtrop” reads in the foretext:
“Of course this novel is based on the reality of real people’s lives. But it is novel, fiction, fictional in every character; everything told here also: work of literature.”
For most guests, the ride in the “BE” is still a blind flight through a complex tableau of people
Even if the Goetz opus, which is based on ex-Bertelsmann boss Thomas Middelhoff, is much darker and more dystopian; Even at Stuckrad-Barre, even the “main building” in a super funny construction site inspection scene is just a code for the madness of the modern working world. BvSB cheerfully confuses “NEW WORK” with “NEW YORK” and buzzwords from the digital future, such as “performative”, he often puts through the meat grinder. “What does the OLD WORK actually do?” and describes a construction worker break with mega boulettes and coke from the 1.5 liter bottle. In modern football, one would call this “switching game at the highest level”.
The BvSB show runs without a break and nobody has to applaud the “encore”. The thunderous applause comes at the very end. If it is then actually on the boards there in “Ingolstadt” and “Augsburg”, the “Still awake?” content should have been read through many times. And the fans then know the appropriate places. For most guests, the ride in the “BE” is still a blind flight through a complex tableau of people. That the Berlin bash (where even the VIP appearance while standing around after the show with a white wine spritzer was pleasantly unspectacular and deliberately NOT “excited”) released (almost) exclusively “shiny happy people” into the dark middle of the night right away , is already a mega blatant super duper initial performance. Then an endless queue at the autograph table. Selfies galore, of course.
“Ingolstadt” can come!