Your collective stands for unconventional and wild theatre that blurs the lines between opera, theatre and performance. Now you are working on NIXON IN CHINA – an opera that presents a very specific event from modern history. How does Hauen und Stechen work with this type of material?

Julia Lwowski We’re trying to respond to this story of two titans and their brutal power plays with the topic of community. One of the main goals we have at Hauen und Stechen is to form a community and reach the audience. This is palpable in our production of NIXON, in which the stage stretches out over the orchestra pit into the seating area like a red tongue; the costumes also have a playful, erotic nature about them. As directors, we’re always looking for that epic moment – which this piece does have – to create a dialectic, specifically one between the egomaniacal-patriarchal conduct of the main characters and the simultaneous formation of a community that the viewers experience during the performance.

Christina Schmitt At first, the theme of the opera – this meeting between two superpowers – involved a lot of research for us. We spent months reading and compiling information so that we could take an artistic approach to the story and find our own voice in it. Over time we found a playfulness in the characters and discovered how we could meet the complexity of high politics with our own imagination, thereby letting the story become grander and more universal than the specific moment in history as it happened.

Martin Mallon We started to see that you can use the absurdity that the piece already contains as a foothold, which is better than depicting the characters as historical figures or narrating the story like a documentary. We break up the story into many different fragments, creating a distorted image that may even be more precise than a good, factual narration.

NIXON IN CHINA came out in 1987, nearly fifteen years after the event itself. Even though the work has since become a part of opera canon, it is still topical both in terms of time and subject matter. How do you examine this story from a modern perspective, and how do you achieve a productive, critical distance?

Martin Mallon The opera can lead you up the garden path in a way. On the one hand, the text is highly critical and attempts to present a studied, knowledgeable image of China while cautiously addressing the mystique of the unknown. It’s worth noting that the libretto and the music make fun of the American delegation, but not of Mao or the Chinese side. This expresses a democratic liberalness that leaves room for criticism, but it is still a work created by Americans that is only told from their perspective. It was important to us that we consider this critical approach to the authorship in our work. We also examine the subject matter from our own perspective, with our own history.

Yassu Yabara When we were starting out with this project we spoke a lot about propaganda, and discussed whether the documentation of the state visit, and even the opera itself, are included in that. It thematises the creation of the images and shows that the trip was a propaganda tour, but does that make the work itself any less propagandistic? We use that as a reference point, milking the means of propaganda for utmost exaggeration. It also reveals the superficiality of this tool, the emptiness behind the façade and the absence of truth. NIXON IN WONDERLAND: It’s all just claims, nothing more.

Franziska Kronfoth At the same time, this magical, surreal level can turn into a painful contradiction to history and its figures, in my opinion. As a director you can feel worn down by the task of creating this fantastical, communal, ideally collective theatre while discussing issues for which you cannot find the words or imagery. You also have to come to grips with the music and its constant repetitions – it’s like this massive machinery of power. We are always faced with the question of whether that which we’re presenting is sharp and clear enough while doing justice to the topic at hand.

Does this opera require the direction team to take a political stance on the topics being addressed?

Martin Mallon Interestingly, it’s easier for us to make political productions of non-political works. There’s often enough room for reinterpretations or to brush against the grain. This piece, on the other hand, is so rife with political meaning that we first had to create this leeway for ourselves and then apply a sort of opposite strategy: We depoliticised the story in some areas so that we could find a different type of political meaning within them.

Christina Schmitt We certainly all have a specific view of Kissinger’s or Nixon’s policies, or Mao’s dictatorship. But our aim isn’t to postulate on opinions and attitudes, but rather to ask questions. We zoom in on certain statements by these figures and images of Nixon’s visit to China so that we can view the broader context. Our questions are generally directed towards systems and practises that exist between people: How do these systems of maintaining power come to be, and what role does propaganda play in the big picture?

John Adams and Alice Goodman always emphasise that they wanted to translate the documental into the archetypical to create a “heroic opera” based on the opera traditions of the 19^th century.

Franziska Kronfoth This also relieves us somewhat of the need to reenact the story. Even the singing alienates you and places you in an absurd position, in the best way. You don’t fall for the temptation that actors may indulge in to make a biopic and create the illusion of playing a real person. The alienation permeates this work. All the figures are given new characteristics in their musical character, and the lines between the documental and the fictional become fractured.

Julia Lwowski In our production of Paul Dessau’s and Bertolt Brecht’s DIE VERURTEILUNG DES LUKULLUS at the Staatsoper Stuttgart, we addressed the character of the ancient despot. NIXON IN CHINA focuses on modern archetypes: Dictators and murderous tyrants of the 20^th century who continue to appear in various forms, even now. At one point, Nixon says to Mao, “My feet are planted firmly on the ground. Like yours. We can talk.” But nobody’s feet are on the ground – normal conversation isn’t possible. Everyone awkwardly tries to uphold this image.

Yassu Yabara Unlike Mao and Nixon, Lucullus is judged for his acts at the end of the opera; Brecht injects his own opinion of the character directly into the work. It is much less clear in NIXON IN CHINA: Does the piece acknowledge the characters’ responsibility for their actions? To get past their abject claims of which ideology is the better one, we have to look at the big picture, and positioned the men who always speak of “history” in relation to world history, solar history, the history of the universe.

In the third act in particular, when the temporal dimensions are relativised and lawfulness prevails, and human supremacy seems less stable.

Franziska Kronfoth It was very important to dig in and not relieve the characters of their responsibility, because in the work this is when they enter a sort of timeless state in which they reflect on their memories and thoughts. Mao and Jiang Qing experience the new formation of communist China. Richard and Pat Nixon remember when he was a soldier stationed in the South Pacific. This private, apolitical moment is problematic because it absolves these characters of their responsibility and the work gets lost in a poetry of the personal, of reflection and memory. We want to counteract this in our own way.

The state visit was a media spectacle of the highest order. In his opening aria, Nixon reflects on the media fervour surrounding the event, comparing it with the Moon landing. The opera keeps this media aspect in mind. Does this counteract your use of live camera and video?

Martin Mallon For us, the live camera is an integral artistic tool and it touches on the core of what interested Adams in the state visit to begin with: We’re replicating the character of the media event. It also gives the performers more intimacy and detail to work with, as they don’t always have to gesticulate wildly for the sake of the audience. The performers’ own characteristics and the sophistication of their performance are made more clear. The camera serves to zoom in on their thoughts and emotions.

Franziska Kronfoth Using the camera to embiggen the minute details creates a productive confusion. This intimacy isn’t in the pursuit of documentarian interest, but rather of creating a new reality. It’s a creative blurriness that serves to eke out new truths.

This moment of confusion stands in for a key theme of the piece, namely the question of what is real and what is fake, the search for the grey areas between authentic and counterfeit, much like with the AI-generated images that are part of the performance.

Julia Lwowski This is another advantage of filming equipment: We can give our imagination free rein. You can do almost anything with a green screen and samples from quotes from film history. And, of course, we show what media is capable of: Creating images that have never existed before.

Franziska Kronfoth The performance launches a continuous dialogue between historical fact and the depiction or performance thereof. For example, the names of Mao’s former victims have been integrated into the costumes. These are historical anchor points much like the scenes in the opera that actually happened: Pat’s sightseeing tour or the grand banquet. At the same time, it is in these real moments when the work is at its most free.

In the second act, the Nixons attend a performance by the Cultural Revolution propaganda opera The Red Detachment of Women – an actual work that is still shown in China today. You opted not to reenact the scene as a ballet, but instead to bring performers and actors from your collective out onto the stage. What are the consequences of you being present for the entire performance?

Julia Lwowski The performers and actors have been with our collective for years and played a major role in shaping our theatre vocabulary. They inspire our ideas much more than direction, set design, and costumes alone ever could. It’s wonderful being a collective both behind and on the stage. This suspension of an otherwise typical boundary is a huge gift and a type of theatre that we appreciate. On top of that, we work with an unbelievably talented ensemble of singers who are very open to our ideas and are fully dedicated. The performance is so special because our performers mingle with the singers of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, forming something new and beautiful – a fusion of Deutsche Oper and Hauen und Stechen.

Franziska Kronfoth We kept wondering how we would handle the historical heavyweights in this work and how much room and voice can and want to give them. Their presence is relativised by the presence of our performers because they add other important, strong roles and methods to the stage. They form a sort of subversive counterweight so that the titans being shown might not appear so large anymore. Ultimately, this might be the foundation for a utopia.