Weir's DAS LIEBSVERBOT to play Brussels

More weighed upon than a criminal in hiding sat the auteur Nikolas Weir, at the farthest corner of the Café Reggio wearing sunglasses, looking glumly at his coffee. His thin wire frame was evident even under a barrel sized coat and various scarves. It wasn't until I said his name out loud that he looked up and nodded, “Sit down, sit down.”

For the past three years Mr. Weir has been on a string of creative exploits that range from bewildering to repulsive, depending on who you ask and what night you happen to be in the theatre. His work has rarely been met with praise, his only New York production to date; an adaptation of Genet’s The Balcony, was poorly attended and slaughtered by critics. However it can hardly be argued there are few people in the field moving so boldly (albeit, often blindly) forward without any concern to audiences, market and taste.

When asked about his audiences Mr. Weir is known for shrugging the question off with, “What do they know?” But in his more heated moments his articulate responses are colored with insight to a theatre culture that not only ignores convention, but behaves is if were being born for the first time. At a time when most artists seem fit to bask in ironic glory, Nikolas Weir is keeping it honest.

“You cannot repeat anything,” he says, “Isn’t this the nature of the form? So we can and must do everything. I happen to think the nose is the gateway to deeper rooted experience. I don’t want an intellectual theatre or a generous theatre, with heart. I want a sensory theatre. Like, with curry.”


From his small studio apartment in the East Village Weir conducts all of his business which includes his production company, Theatre for/of the Blind, and his various freelance projects. He is currently attempting to transfer Das Liebsverbot (The Ban on Love) from Munich’s Figuren vom Dunklen, where it played last spring, to the U.S. but has failed to find a venue that suits the production. On top of which, Weir is struggling to find backers. The aggressive beat-over-the-head tone, a customary trademark of Hermann Doucher, artistic director of the Figuren vom Dunklen and co-director of the opera, has turned off many producers and stateside theatre companies.

“Increasingly difficult it is to find philanthropists who believe in spirited ideas,” Weir says. “There is this need of validation. What I would love to see is everything untested all of the time. But this is not the culture of attending an event. We have coordinators and staff. This is not a spontaneous thing, this is not a spontaneous thing – this is what we are constantly reminding our audiences.”

The New York Times reviewed his take on Genet as “…the work of a lone individual who cannot tell the difference between high and low culture." As harsh this may seem, Mr. Weir’s new book on the state of modern theatre, due next summer, is expected to change all of this, potentially catapulting him into a new arena and validating his wild pursuits for a New Theatre.

What are you writing on?

NW: What?

What is your prompt – what is the book going to be about?

Two things: What we expect to see, hear, smell, feel. And what really happens when we sit down and experience an event.

What happens?

Nothing.

(At this point Mr. Weir stopped the interview and left. We met the next weekend, again at the Café Reggio and he was in much better spirits, the hulking coat was gone, but the sunglasses remained.)

If you could describe your theatre to someone who has never seen it, what would you say?

I wouldn’t say anything. I cannot possibly impart anything to anyone about something I don’t even understand. I would rather not talk about it at all. I would like to give a gift to someone. But I’m not going to tell them what the gift is just so they'll open it. They just have to open it. This expectation is the rudest gesture in our culture.

That’s very limiting though, if you can’t talk about your work.

You say that. I don’t associate myself with that comment.

Alright. You’ve done mostly adaptations up to this point – Genet, Wagner, Shakespeare, Lorca – are you at all interested in original work?

I don’t see any difference. I could sit down and compose a drama for the stage and I could write the dialogue and the movement, but it all seems a bit contrived and boring to me. It’s a matter of priorities. I don’t write because it’s not a priority to me. However, I am writing currently, but certainly not for the stage.

Are you still using the smell machine in productions? Last time we talked you were insistent on it.

No. We had planned to use it in the Wagner piece but it is, in many ways, a failure. I am currently working with an architect to imagine a building with an exhaust system where you would constantly be assaulted with scents. We found an old green house in Pittsburg we thought we could restore, build piping throughout so that each individual audience member would receive a mask and breathe - individually together. But, it all seemed a little antiseptic. My idea is that we must build a new theatre from the ground up.

What smells are you into recently?

Don’t ask me a question like that.

Are you still looking to do this in Pittsburg?

I would like to keep it this idea in Pittsburg.

Why Pittsburg?

I came up with the idea when I was in Pittsburg. That’s a loyalty I don’t expect you to understand.


At this point Weir got up and left again. Later that week he called me and admitted to feeling frustrated recently and apologized for the brevity of our meetings. I caught him with one more question - I asked Mr. Weir what the biggest challenge for him is and he sighed, “Making impossible things happen while people try to talk to me about them.” Then he hung up.


Figuren Vom Dunklem’s Das Liebsverbot (The Ban on Love) will play Le Petit Cheval Théâtre in Brussels November 13-15.