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Gracie Hadland: What is New Theater Hollywood?
Max Pitegov: New Theater Hollywood is a delusion.
Carla Henkel: It started as a joke.
Pitegov: We lived in Berlin. A few years ago, we started commuting to Los Angeles. And we always had a joke about New Theater Hollywood. After we ran this space at New Theater Berlin several years ago,
Henkel: Ten years ago.
Pitegov: –We thought it would be interesting to release it in Hollywood. We kept repeating this joke. We started telling people about it without any idea that it was going to be an actual black box theater.
Henkel: The New Theater we operated in Berlin 10 years ago was a theater that we opened after running a bar. It was called The Times and felt like an artist's dive bar. We made a rule of not taking photos inside the bar and instead wrote down everyone coming and going. It became a kind of script and we had the feeling that we were running a theater. Artists were professionalizing in Berlin at the time, and the DIY punk scene turned into something like a post-neocon internet art scene.
Pitegov: We were interested in bringing all these people and their works together and having them perform in this space and have this incomplete exhibition in a world of high-gloss, post-internet images.
Henkel: At the Times Bar, we used to display each piece above the bar, but because we placed the pieces where the bar was open, they always got damaged. So, at New Theater, we had the idea of having all the artists we work with contribute pieces that could serve as props or as backdrops or sets. And the script we wrote became the text that tied all the pieces together. So it started as an idea to integrate completely different kinds of work in a live and fast way that wasn't completely streamlined.
Pitegov: Well, theater is very easy, well, I shouldn't say easy. Theater is very difficult, but it's a structured form of collaboration, and that's what interested us.
Henkel: The hierarchy was really clear and I was very relieved. And we fell in love with German theater and the Volksbühne and the highly political theatrical tradition that came out of that town.
Pitegov: At first I approached it from a punk perspective, but after three years I ended up doing actual theater work at the Volksbühne.
Henkel: At the end of the day, we were theater kids.
Hadland: It's interesting to think about theater in LA. Although it's a lesser performing art in LA compared to film, television, and acting, it has a history here.
Pitegov: Yes. L.A.'s underground theater has a great history that isn't often seen.
Henkel: No, theater is for losers. It's what you do when you're not doing what you want to do. I'm in the middle of doing something else, like a TV show or a movie. It's very rock-bottom and for those of us who come from Berlin, where the art is very advanced, it's great and we're like, “How can you bring in really good art and have it exist in a kind of unformed state?'' I'm thinking, “Can I do it?” ? ”
Pitegoff: There are so many poetry readings and stand-ups in LA that revolve around the idea of theater.
Hadland: But having this space brings people together from different countries.
Background: Artist, writer, comedian, fashion person. It's different from starting a gallery where there are already many galleries.
Henkel: One of the reasons we wanted to open a theater in Berlin is because when you perform in a gallery, you feel terrible. No one knows how to behave. The theater has a hierarchy, and when you enter and sit in the red seats, you know exactly what the deal is. There's something really reassuring about that. In many ways, New Theater Hollywood acts as a magnet because all of this work exists but has no place. Also, galleries have to sell their work. They make really weird and boring decisions because it's so tiring. There's no need to do that.
Pitegov: We are dealing with the democracy of ticket sales.
Henkel: Yes. This is a completely different economy. And there are many people who feel that a place like this is needed. So many people are already working on performance in these different, very siled fields, whether it's television or acting or this kind of performative poetry world, but all of these never touch each other. But in theater you can do that.
Hadland: A lot of your projects seem to start with this grand idea or fantasy, but then it becomes really logistics-based. It's like turning on the lights, hiring an electrician, or cleaning the bar.
Pitegov: Yes. We have to learn a lot every time we do this. I became a full-fledged German corporate tax geek a few years ago when he was running the TV Bar in Berlin.
Henkel: Max knows everything about business taxes in Germany.
Pitegov: I'm really happy that I'm in Los Angeles and the sunlight has put that thought out of my head.
Henkel: But we love the focus on form. The bar is kind of a formality, and we were taking it to such extremes that we had to impose such a hectic schedule with his 14 employees. I don't mean to belittle it in any way, but I think humor can help you do as much as you can. It's like they don't even run the facility. In a sense, it's like we're running the facility. That's why we can't run these spaces forever. Because space takes away all of our energy and being. And we want to give everything we have to the people we work with.
Pitegov: I also think that the time has come for theater.
Henkel: And the media is really boring right now. I feel like everyone in Hollywood is well aware of how bad the stuff being made is after the strike. So I feel like it's a time of theater and recalibration and thinking about things like, “How can I get back to the parts that make sense?”
Hadland: And you were talking about theater coming out of bars. There always seems to be other materials and projects that come out of running the space.
Pitegov: In a sense, each space has a story. It really came into play when I was running TV Bar and making this movie, paradise, I've been running that space for three years. While the bar was open, we were developing this kind of parallel fiction.
Henkel: Paradise was a movie shot on 16mm when the bar was closed, so it became a kind of television studio and set that we used. And, like New Theater Hollywood, we are producing a film that loosely connects all the plays. Documentation issues become a huge problem for the artists who run these spaces. Our filmmaking practice now is about incorporating documentation and inviting false narratives into the space itself. Therefore, space works in two ways. One is a set and the other is this very public space and you don't need to know about the other to buy a ticket and come. But at the same time keep the processes separate.
Pitegov: Yes. It is also important to us that people visiting these spaces are not overly confronted with our work.
Henkel: At TV Bar, we never showed the entire movie we made until the bar closed, and now it's the only one left.
Pitegov: And in this case, we started by making a movie about someone opening a theater in Los Angeles, and we were planning it before we even saw this space or knew we wanted to open it right away. Ta.
Henkel: Maybe it starts out as a joke, but it starts out as fiction. It begins as a story we tell each other. And it started out as a story that we created about this character who gets hit by a bus, gets a lot of money, and decides to open a theater in Hollywood. As we were filming it, we saw a sign that said something like “Theater for Rent.” We decided to call, looked at it, and thought, “Oh, we actually have to do this.” In other words, it actually begins with fiction.
Pitegov: It ends with fiction.
Henkel: Yes. And along the way, you and I have to learn her 1,000 jobs.
Hadland: That's amazing. Can you tell us a little bit about your funding model?
Henkel: It was interesting. Theater is really serious in Germany.
Hadland: It's funded by state funds.
Henkel: I call this a state-funded discotheque. Because it's ridiculous how much tax money was being spent on it.
Pitegov: We didn't get anything like that at the New Theater in Berlin. It was fully self-financed.
Henkel: Whenever a work sold or an exhibition fee was generated, it was immediately sent to the theater. There was a separate storage space, but it also had a bathroom and kitchen, so we renovated it and turned it into an Airbnb. But then I did more of that aspect and had a major mental breakdown. I have to say, “Hello, well, there's a really cute cafe in this neighborhood…lots of bars…” and I have to say, “All these words are fake. This is also a script I have to write. ” Fundraising is never healthy. .
Pitegov: The TV bar was sustainable because it was actually a functional business, but the theater was a money pit. –
Henkel: We opened it by selling some pieces and putting in our own money. And now they're able to get by through ticket and T-shirt sales and donations. We are currently applying to become a nonprofit organization.
Hadland: Oh, really?
Henkel: And our friends donating artwork is one of the big ways we've been able to stay open. It is truly beautiful that a collective project remains collective in this way.
Pitegov: I also think that Gullah culture is very interesting in America.
Henkel: Oh, yeah. We haven't figured it out yet.
Pitegov: But our first event was “The Night of Speeches,” and we wanted it to have the feel of a deconstructed, fucked-up celebration.
Henkel: It's a place where you don't make any money. Yes, fundraising in the US is a new beast for us.
Pitegoff: We're also in this area on Santa Monica Boulevard called Theater Row.
Henkel: Historic theater district.
Pitegov: It's a theater ghost town. He is one of only two other theaters currently operating. There used to be 20. A lot of people who come here say, “Oh, I've performed at this theater before,'' or they've performed at the theater across the street or whatever. But it's a haunting memory of what was always here.
Henkel: Ghostly, but in a very positive way.
Hadland: Can you talk about your move from Berlin to Los Angeles? Much of your work seems to rely on exploring a city's culture. Why LA and what was it like leaving Berlin?
Henkel: I don't think anyone does storytelling the way America or Hollywood does. And what I have in mind about creating a theater here is something so perverted and provocative that I can't imagine opening a theater anywhere else in the world. For me, that's why Los Angeles, but we grew up in Berlin. I came there when I was 19 years old. It's strange to come back.
Pitegov: I loved the gray winters and dark bars.
Henkel: I love the seriousness of German culture, like they wanted nothing more than to destroy German culture. Because German culture is well-funded, even though it shouldn't exist for a variety of reasons. It was a really fun place to challenge and rebel. And the idea of coming here and really trying to build a culture is, in a way, a very good whiplash.
Pitegov: It's exactly the opposite.