CASTORF STAGING LIMONOV: TRANSGRESSION AND NEO-TOTALITARIANISM AT THE BERLINER VOLKSBÜHNE

Abstract

In 2008, German director Frank Castorf staged an adaptation of Eduard Limonov’s 1979 novel Fuck Off, Amerika. Limonov’s novel scandalized audiences with its description of capitalist excess and nihilism by detailing the exploits of a Soviet dissident in New York City. Castorf’s adaptation aligns itself with Limonov’s critique of both the socialist and capitalist projects, and reinforces the political line of his own theatre, the Berliner Volksbühne. The production centralizes the novel’s protagonist Eddie (Eduard Limonov’s alter-ego), maximizing on Limonov’s real-life biography as leader of the extremist National Bolshevik Party in Russia. Both Castorf and Limonov delineate the ideological fantasies of former socialist regimes as a postsocialist performance of politics. As this depiction is reliant on Limonov’s political involvement in real zones of war and conflict, both artists use questionable means to mark geo-political terrains where ‘Americanization’ and neo-liberalism have not firmly taken root. As such, the production represents the attempt to perpetuate a struggle against the Western ‘colonization’ of the former East, which was most vibrant in the immediate years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.