Institutions, Stages, Festivals

There is hardly a theatrical profession that has recently been so fostered, celebrated, loaded with prizes and grants as young dramatists. The whispers down the lane from writing academies to play markets (Stückemärkte) and dramaturges are now so effective that no even halfway promising talent need seriously fear remaining undiscovered.

Yet along the path from writing desk to stage still lurk many a cliff that an author should not encounter without backing. This is the sphere of the theater publishers, of which there are about two dozen specializing in spoken theater in the German-speaking world. The spectrum ranges from Felix Bloch Erben, founded in 1849, and the equally tradition-rich Drei Masken Verlag to the theater literature departments of the big publishing houses such as S. Fischer, Rowohlt and Suhrkamp, and to newcomers such as schaefersphilippen, which expressly represents more than only literary projects.

Still successful are the Verlag der Autoren with its author-as-partner model, the Kiepenheuer Bühnenvertrieb, the merger Pegasus and the Verlag Autoren Agentur with its focus on Anglophone and Scandinavian drama, the former East German and newly reorganized in 1990 henschel SCHAUSPIEL, and a string of smaller enterprises such as the Theaterstückverlag and the litag Theaterverlag, which specializes in Anglophone works. In the name of their authors, these publishers look after contracts, rights, royalties and a sensible marketing of their protégées.

“Small corner shop instead of supermarket”

One chief problem is still that premiers are coveted because of their supra-regional resonance in the press, but that many plays are then re-performed only seldom or not at all. It is therefore decisive, says Corinna Brocher, head of Rowohlt Theater Publishing, “to arrange things so that the premier meets a standard that motivates other theaters to say: We want that too”. Pre-requisite for this is, of course, the careful selection of authors. “We’ve never looked on ourselves as a supermarket, but rather as a small corner shop”, explains Brocher, whose program comprises many British authors such as Sarah Kane, Marc Ravenhill and Simon Stephens as well as René Pollesch, Händl Klaus and Elfriede Jelinek.

Maker of relationships

The main goal of the efforts of all theater publishers is sustained success, and the most important foundation for this is a long-term and resilient working relationship between authors and theater-makers. “Before, that used to mean the general directors and dramaturges; today it’s the good stage directors”, notes Uwe B. Castensen, head of the Theater Department of S. Fischer Publishers. The special responsibility of a theater publisher lies, for him, in the precise sounding out of the terrain – “how do the theaters work, which directors are there, how do they look after their authors?” For it is still true that, “if the premier of a new author flops, he’s sunk”.

Scarcely an uncommissioned play

Theater commissions have come to play here an ever greater role. There is scarcely a halfway successful author today who still sits down and writes away haphazardly, without a definite project in view. This is due not least to the higher commission fees in comparison with the normal copyright charge pro sold ticket. Moreover, in this way the author can integrate production conditions and possible casting into his writing.

Nevertheless, “the love of the theater for young dramatists is sometimes very short and depends on how the author fits into a theater’s marketing concept”, observes Guido Huller of Drei Masken Publishers. Content-related aspects sometimes play only a subordinate role here. The fact is that publishers cannot live from the time-consuming attention they give to younger authors and are financially dependent on other capital such as a well-stocked backlist of classics, entertainment literature and (though not primarily) media rights on novels and film adaptations.

Lobbying for independent groups

The two most innovative figures in publishing, Tobias Philippen and Marc Schäfers, are banking on the new trend to in part collectively developed projects, which has now become nearly the mainstream in German-speaking publicly funded theater. Under their label schaefersphilippen, founded in autumn 2008, they represent, along with traditional playwrights, hard-to-classify artists such as the musician-writer PeterLicht and independent theater groups such as andcompany&Co., Hofmann & Lindholm and Rimini Protokoll, who were the surprising winners of the Mülheimer Dramatist Prize in 2007. As publishers, schaefersphilippen is striking out in new directions, for “in this area, naturally, re-performance is either not possible or not desired by the authors”, explains the Marc Schäfers. “It is rather a matter of an all-round representation. What can be done with a text, an idea or a concept instead of a re-performance? In what medium can something take place?”

Creating trust

Practically speaking, this means intense lobbying for material that is often not even in a tangible form during negotiations. Even if the theater has recently opened itself to process-oriented works and is ready to receive new stimuli from independent artists, there are still fears of contact and feelings of resentment. “That’s exactly where we come into play”, says Schäfers, “by seeking, with increasingly expertise, to mediate between the two sides and asking each to be patient and show understanding”. And the concept works, as the last eighteen months have shown, not so much as a counter model as a further development of the existing publishing system that is responsive to changing times.