George Orwell completed his final novel, which was to make bring him world-wide fame, in 1948. Two years later, the controversial author and socialist died in London at the age of 46 from a lung haemorrhage. He was both watched suspiciously by the British secret service because of his alleged treasonable intentions and communist activities, and rejected by pro-Soviet forces for his open criticism of any form of totalitarian rule.
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Berliner Ensemble
The novel 1984 deals with the quasi-religious will to achieve total power that conceals the urge of individuals to attain god-like immortality – an urge of nearly unsurpassable hubris.
In the name of “Big Brother”, an intangible, omniscient authority, self-appointed “priests of love” construct a world where people are forced to completely relinquish their individual will, their love and desire, their own interests, their personal curiosity and creativity.
As one of the first modernist authors, Orwell described the fundamental methods that serve to construct and, even more importantly, maintain totalitarian rule. Far more than subjection through punishment, it is about controlling people’s thoughts, consciousness and desire. It is not enough to meekly accept the repression of any kind of individual freedom, the repressed must actually learn to love their circumstances.
In his adaptation, Belgian director LUK PERCEVAL focusses on the resistive, erotic power of two lovers, Julia and Winston, who defy this system. Perceval is considered to be one of the great story-tellers, searching for atmospheric concentration and emotional intensity. Following Exil by Lion Feuchtwanger, this is his second production at Berliner Ensemble.
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"The truly frightening thing about totalitarianism," Orwell wrote in 1944, "is not that it commits atrocities, but that it attacks the concept of objective truth: it claims to determine both the past and the future." According to O'Brien, the chief ideologist of the fictional totalitarian regime of "Big Brother" in 1984, reality exists only in human consciousness. And as we know, not only since the advent of the internet and fake news, that is infinitely malleable. So whoever controls people's thinking controls the world and shapes it. Like God. That's the idea, at least.The atheist George Orwell thus emphasizes the religious dimension of totalitarian power struggles. And as a humanist, he questions the susceptibility to the promises of totalitarian thinking based on the basic human need for salvation from suffering and pain. The merging of the individual into an idea, the escape from the private, mortal self, promises unclouded happiness and immortality. For an idea cannot be killed. Even Winston and Julia, who insist on self-determined thinking, feeling, and desire in the novel, are not immune to corresponding doctrines of salvation and their all-encompassing claims. They, too, would be willing to commit atrocities to enforce them when they join Emmanuel Goldstein's resistance movement, which turns out to be a trap invented by O'Brien. Despite all the inhumanity in human history, Orwell always believed in the potential humanity in people. And in a shared history and present based on facts rather than wishful thinking or paranoid enemy stereotypes. Winston and Julia also hold fast to this belief, thereby committing the fundamental crime that encompasses all others: "thoughtcrime." Wrong thinking. Because looking at what is real is not desirable. Broken and re-educated through torture, Winston is shot in the end. Margaret Atwood explains in the Guardian in 2003 that this does not mean the victory of totalitarianism, with an appendix to the novel in which the world of 1984 is described as a thing of the past: "That is why I believe that Orwell had much more faith in the resilience of the human spirit than is commonly attributed to him." In this sense, director Luk Perceval seeks the silver lining in the otherwise hopeless story of the novel. Not against, but with Orwell. By Sibylle Baschung
Participating artists
Von George Orwell (Autor/in)
Pauline Knof
Paul Herwig
Gerrit Jansen
Oliver Kraushaar
Veit Schubert
Luk Perceval
Philip Bußmann
Ilse Vandenbussche
Rainer Süßmilch
Annunziata Matteucci
Rainer Casper
Ted Stoffer
Sibylle Baschung
