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Actress Irene Christ and actor director Thomas Schendel first met in a Brecht production and have now joined forces to bring back the spirit of Marlene Dietrich. Both Thomas and Irene have acted in some of the most well-known theatres in Germany. Thomas specialises in cabaret-style evenings and together with Irene they have prepared an evening about screen legend, also featuring Paul Portelli. Marlene Moves premieres at the St James Cavalier Music Room Friday 1 April with performances on the 2, 3, 8, 9 and 10.
How did your career as an actor start?
Thomas: When I was born the doctor took me to my mother and I weighed 8 pounds and the doctor said I had broad shoulders like Heinrich George – a famous large actor in the 30s. That’s how my career started.
Irene: I used to rehearse stories I had invented and perform them in front of my parents and grandparents. My career came to a sudden halt when one Saturday afternoon during one of my songs my parents started laughing out loud. The song included the line ‘I am extremely diligent’ and they seemed to find that a little contradictory in their daughter... Anyway, nothing could stop me to continue later on in school theatre, amateur theatre, and finally training and professional acting.
What have been your most memorable roles/directions and why?
Thomas: My most interesting roles were when I played losers and gave them character and meaning. I played a Riccaut in Minna von Barnhelm by Lessing. He was an 18 century writer. Riccaut was a French soldier in Berlin in the seven-year war and he is usually played as a comic character, actors play his part in a slapstick style and he is not taken seriously. It was a great experience to give him back his value and dignity.
I once directed an evening about the 20s up until 1933 in Dusseldorf. The event took place in a lounge of a ruin of a forgotten hotel where 10 very different people meet each other like ghosts from that time. They painted the twenties and early thirties with songs and texts from the poems that were burned by the Nazis. The people had different backgrounds and came from different social classes. It was a cabaret and you could understand that the golden twenties were only golden in name – most people were not aware that for a simple song with a little criticism one could have been killed by the Nazis.
In Dresden I once directed an evening of songs in a laundry with nine people who met there and each had their own stories to tell through music from Haydn to Gloria Gaynor.
Irene: Do you know... sometimes it happens that people ask me which roles I have played and I blank completely and don't even remember one...
One memorable role was certainly the role of Frau Fessel in a play called ‘Vatermord’ (‘Patricide’) by Arnold Bronnen. It was written in the 30s, rather expressionistic and the language stylised. I played the wife of a tyrannical husband. She has an affair with her stepson… who in the end kills his father, her husband. Sounds rather dark and morbid, doesn’t it? It was a very intense experience. I played under the same rather crazy director in Anderson’s ‘Snowqueen’ and loved it.
In Malta I liked to play Ibsen’s ‘The Lady from the Sea’… I think in some ways I felt rather close to that character.
Some other plays I remember for quite attractive stage partners; directors throwing bottles against actors – bottles emptied from the wine they had drunk before, of course; and audiences in conservative towns walking out of plays – we started the evening with 500 and ended the show with 20. Revolution!!
Directing… just go tonight to St. James Cavalier Theatre in the Round, my students from the Drama Centre perform scenes from famous Ibsen and Strindberg plays - and Ruben Zahra’s students show a very interesting piece using Maltese poetry. 7.30pm. Lm 2.
How did you meet each other and how did you develop the idea for Marlene Moves?
Thomas: We met in Dusseldorf in 1998. We were both to act in Galileo Gallilei by Bertolt Brecht. I played the Cardinal Inquisitor and Irene was Gallilei’s daughter Virginia.
Irene contacted me to do a musical evening about Marlene Dietrich – and that’s how it started. I am trained as a singer myself and often direct musical spectacles, which I often write myself.
Irene: Well, Thomas told you how we met... at the city theatre in Duesseldorf. We played 50 performances of Galieo Galilei... enough time to get to know each other in good and in bad times!!
Marlene interested me (see answer further down) and especially Maria Riva’s book ‘My Mother Marlene’ was a great inspiration. I thought Thomas would be the perfect director for this kind of thing… and he agreed to come over.
What makes good theatre?
Thomas: That what does not bore.
Irene: Shall I give you a real German answer? Discipline. Precision. Skills. And, of course, good stories. Courage to try out new things. Adrenalin. Tension. Heart and Brain. Aesthetics. A team that matches. And, last but not least, humour - even in the darkest story.
Marlene Dietrich is a legend, what strikes you most about her?
Thomas: She is very contradictory. It seems she was an awful mother and at the same time she was like a child on her own. I don’t think she was likeable, even though she was undoubtedly very charming. She was lonely because she decided it was much more important to be a legend than to be herself, and that makes one lonely.
Irene: Marlene always interested me – even when I was very young. She had this image of being the femme fatale and rather glamorous... but on the other hand she was very practical, down to earth and feeding everyone in Hollywood with her stuffed cabbage. She was a dominating lady and surely not easy to work with. She had a lot of courage and wasn’t afraid of anything or anyone - except her mother. She also stands for the historical events of the last century... she was strongly opposed to Hitler and although she loved Germany and her language rather chose to become an American citizen and to support the allies with her shows. Some very stupid Germans gave her a hard time when she visited Germany after the war. She then preferred to stay in Paris.
What can people expect from Marlene Moves?
Thomas: It will be a pleasurable experience – like a cocktail with a good shot of homour and melancholy and great songs.
Irene: Paul Portelli singing, playing the piano and acting the man for the furniture and the heart. Jasmina Reljic’s costumes. And myself trying to tell stories and to Fall in Love Again with Lilli Marlene. Hopefully a good atmosphere in the beautiful St James Cavalier Music Room.
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