Among Animals
Unter Tieren
Elfriede Jelinek
Elfriede Jelinek’s Kontrakte des Kaufmanns, her legendary “comedy of commerce“, was written between 2006 and 2009. Seventeen years later, her latest work, Unter Tieren (Among Animals), is a sequel of sorts. Once again, Nicolas Stemann directs the world premiere.
So Jelinek has done it again. She has waded once again into the “matter of capitalism” – of which they say it is far too abstract. Capitalism is impenetrable! It cannot be treated as a plotline and veritable drama – and thus as a concrete, man-made system of rules which can be questioned, its alternatives considered. How does Jelinek view us, the people, today, 17 years later, in the age where capitalism is still at it, and keeps at it?
Die Kontrakte des Kaufmanns were inspired by the BAWAG financial affair of 2006. The BAWAG, an Austrian bank affiliated with the unions, had engaged in high-risk speculation, using the savings of “the little people”. In 2008, the Lehman Brothers crash in the USA followed … and suddenly, there it was again: the song about the end of capitalism. To some, it was a horror scenario – to others, a sliver of hope. The Occupy movement was born, citizens around the world were discussing – indeed: alternatives. This is the context of Jelinek’s Kontrakte. It shone a prophetic light. It helped find language for issues and create platforms for sensuous discourse, being the art event of the moment.
Once again, there have been impulses for writing Unter Tieren. Once again, it’s an Austrian financial scandal that takes centre stage. Once again, the reverberations are global, the loss of trust in the financial elites has been colossal – but this time, the outrage has poured into the society columns of the yellow press, where it flourishes. René Benko is the central figure here. In 2023, the former prodigy of the real estate business, with the backing of renowned investors, banks, politicians, created the biggest bankruptcy since World War II to enter the Austrian annals of history. Billions were lost, millions quickly shifted elsewhere …
… and Jelinek turns all of this (and far more) into true drama! In Unter Tieren, she looks behind and into these contemporary events, and onward too, interweaving philosophical discourse with trivial concerns and high culture. Ultimately, her struggles establish an eye-level view. The goal being to show what this is truly about. To this end, she employs a compelling theatrical device: human beings don’t even figure in Unter Tieren! Mankind has lost its voice, forfeited it. Instead, the protagonists are animals. Animals speak – for example, the sheep or the pig, the wolf, the “Für und Widder” (think “pro and con[dor]”), two ducks. Only occasionally do they enter into dialogue; instead, each animal stands for itself here. And stands alone. In a world that no longer belongs to the animals. That they no longer understand. A world in which the only postulate is to heap up more debt for more growth. To become more and more efficient, to produce, to use, to exploit resources, to expand, to swallow – until everything that is of this world has been overgrown by this world.
17 years ago, in and because of Kontrakte, there was a hint of another future. In Unter Tieren, there is no hope left: this is last stand of everyone against everyone on the battleground of capitalism, there’s no future …
… or could the future yet be ahead of us? In a theatre where humans – the elephants in the room – lend their voices to animals, and to all those bearing the suffering they have inflicted? By making them shine, and truly appear? By helping them regenerate? By listening to them?
Benjamin von Blomberg
First published in the Festival insert of Salzburger Nachrichten
