Democracy. Michael Frayn. Teachers Resource Pack Researched & written by Laura Ward Nokes

Transcription

1 Democracy Michael Frayn Teachers Resource Pack Researched & written by Laura Ward Nokes 1

2 Democracy Contents Castlist 3 Life of the Play 4 Life in the Play 4 Writer s Life 5 Writer s Thoughts 6 Public Politics Neil Ascherson on German Democracy 7 Private Politics Anna Funder on the Stasi 8 Democracy Character Breakdown 9 Democracy Act Breakdown 12 Onstage Talking to Richard Hope 14 Offstage Talking to Assistant Director, Alex Thorpe 15 Themes 16 Glossary 17 Bibliography 18 2

3 democracy michael frayn Andrew Bridgmont REINHARD WILKE David Cann GÜNTHER NOLLAU Patrick Drury WILLY BRANDT Richard Hope HORST EHMKE William Hoyland HERBERT WEHNER Ed Hughes ARNO KRETSCHMANN David Mallinson HELMUT SCHMIDT Aidan McArdle GÜNTER GUILLAUME James Quinn ULRICH BAUHAUS Rupert VansiCart HANS- DIETRICH GENSCHER 3

4 Life of the Play Michael Frayn spent some time in Germany during the early 1970s, which is when Democracy is set. He has a keen interest in that period of history and the politics of that era. He was fascinated by the political scandal generated by Günter Guillaume s exposure as a Stasi spy within Chancellor Willy Brandt s own office. Frayn eventually wrote the play once the real life protagonists had died and Democracy premiered at the National Theatre on 9 September It was directed by Michael Blakemore, who has directed eight premieres of Michael Frayn s plays. The original production won the Evening Standard and Critics Circle award for Best Play. It transferred to Broadway in November 2004 and was nominated for a Tony and a Drama Desk award for Best Play. The play has also been professionally staged in Oslo, Norway; Copenhagen, Denmark; Stockholm, Sweden; Wellington, New Zealand; Vancouver and Toronto, Canada. Democracy s latest revival, directed by Paul Miller, was performed at the Sheffield Theatres, which ran a Michael Frayn season in 2012 to celebrate Michael Frayn s 80th year. The play has been met with excellent reviews. The Old Vic has invited the cast and crew of Democracy to stage the play here for a limited run. Life in the play Democracy takes us into a world of political intrigue, espionage and betrayal. The play follows the extraordinary true story of the Stasi spy, Günter Guillaume, working his way up to being one of the West German Chancellor s closest aides. We find ourselves in a Germany divided by the Cold War between the Soviet and Western power blocs. Brandt s main aim and legacy as Chancellor is to improve relations between the two sides. Yet despite his idealism, suspicion is everywhere not just between East and West Germany, but within the government itself. Political treachery, dishonesty and corruption dog the political rise and fall of Brandt, as well as the spy set to gather personal information on him. Eventually, both Guillaume and Brandt suffer a fall from grace as Guillaume is exposed and Brandt resigns as a result. Ironically, Guillaume s objective is in fact to keep Brandt in power as a leader friendly to the East; yet he is the very person who triggers his downfall. 4

5 Writer s Life Michael Frayn was born in Mill Hill, London on 8 September His father, Tom Frayn, was a travelling salesman and His mother Violet was a shop assistant and amateur violinist who died of a heart attack when Frayn was 12 years old. For a short time, they lived above an off-licence in Mill Hill before moving to Ewell in Surrey, where Frayn and his younger sister Jill spent the majority of their childhood. He attended the private school Sutton High for Boys, before transferring to Kingston Grammar School after his mother s death. After leaving school, he completed two years of compulsory National Service, during which time he studied Russian and worked as a Russian interpreter. It was during this period that he met and befriended the young Alan Bennett and they began writing revues together. He then went on to study at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, initially taking French and Russian but later transferring to Moral Sciences, a subject now more commonly referred to as Philosophy. I liked the name moral sciences, Frayn says, No-one knew what it meant but it sounded very impressive. Whilst at university, he joined the Cambridge Footlights, the celebrated student comedy and theatre collective. He wrote many sketches for the group, although unfortunately his final year show Zounds, for which he wrote the majority of material, was the first in the group s recent history not to transfer to London. The experience turned Frayn away from the theatre and he focused on other forms of writing. Upon graduating, Frayn embarked on a career as a journalist, writing columns and travel features for publications including the Guardian and Observer. He often travelled as a journalist and spent some time in Germany, where he became fascinated by its recent history, politics and how it had changed since World War II. This is where he first got the idea for Democracy. In 1960 He married psychotherapist Gillian Palmer. They had three daughters together before divorcing in In 1993 Frayn married Claire Thomalin, a biographer and critic. In 1965 he wrote his first novel, The Tin Men, a philosophical satire about computers, which won the Somerset Maugham Award the following year. He continued to write a series of well-received novels throughout the late 1960s, before returning to the theatre in 1970 with a set of four one-act plays entitled The Two of Us, directed by Michael Codron and starring Richard Briers and Lynn Redgrave. Although The Two of Us did not receive good reviews, it ran in the West End for six months and gave Frayn the idea for what was to become his biggest success to date. Whilst watching the show from backstage, he saw the potential for a play that showed the goings on of backstage. He says that he realized that, the play was much funnier from the back than the front and I resolved one day to write a play seen from behind. During the 1970s, Frayn continued to write novels and plays, including his first full-length farce Alphabetical Order and new translations of works by Chekhov and Tolstoy. In 1977 he wrote the one-act farce Exits for a charity event, which in 1982 he developed into the full-length farce-within-a-farce Noises Off which ran successfully at the Lyric Hammersmith and then at the Savoy Theatre for five years. Throughout the 80s and 90s Frayn wrote a string of hits including translations, farces and dramas. His greatest successes were Benefactors, about the housing projects of the 1960s and the World War II drama Copenhagen, which premiered at the National Theatre, before transferring to the West End and Broadway. In 2003, after a great deal of thorough research, he finished Democracy. Directed by Michael Blakemore, this premiered at the National Theatre on 9 September, Frayn continues to write novels, newspaper features and plays. His most recent play Afterlife was staged at the National Theatre in 2008 and several of his other plays have enjoyed some major revivals, including Sheffield Theatres 2012 trilogy of Copenhagen, Democracy and Benefactors and The Old Vic s recent production of Noises Off. [Edited extract by Simon Pollard, from the Noises Off Educational Resources Pack] 5

6 Writer s Thoughts On Journalism I discovered that it is very difficult to describe the world it s a very odd shape. It is not the shape you think it is when you imagine it before you actually confront it; it is a terrible mess, a terrible confusion, nothing fits together, nothing seems to work, any kind of hold on it is ferociously difficult. After I wrote that unsuccessful revue at Cambridge, I reacted in a sour-grapes way against the theatre. A lot of those early columns were mockeries of the theatre, about how embarrassing it is to wait for actors to drop their props or forget their lines. I hated the theatre. Then very slowly I went back to it. I was a terrible critic, very sarcastic and impatient. On theatre The restraints on telling a story in the theatre are very intriguing. Because as soon as someone says you can t do something, you immediately start thinking of ways around it. Whereas in a novel it s natural for an author to know what the characters are thinking and feeling, in the theatre you can t do that. Those restrictions are very stimulating to the imagination. Theatre is what we all do all the time in life - we re both performing and being the audience. [The Two of Us] had universally bad reviews. The gallery claque who came to first nights in those days booed the play. They also booed me personally in the street afterwards, which I thought was pushing criticism a bit far. You can classify plays in any number of ways as comedies or tragedies; as verse or prose, as high comedies, low comedies, black comedies, tragic-comedies; as art or entertainment. But however you do it they all fall into two even more fundamental categories they are all hits or flops. On Germany What catches my imagination about Germany is the post-war period: how Germany has recovered from the total physical and moral destruction of I always find it moving, when I go to Germany, to think that out of that sea of rubble, Germans have built not only one of the most prosperous but one of the most stable and decent societies in Europe. Federal politics happened in Bonn and Germany for me that summer [1972] was Berlin, the once-great city I had come to write about, now only notionally the capital, left marvelous but functionless deep inside East Germany, like a luxury liner that had somehow become beached in the sandy wastes of the Mark Brandenburg. The city compelled the imagination in all kinds of ways. Its greatest fascination, though, was undoubtedly its greatest monstrosity the Wall. On Democracy Complexity is what the play is about: the complexity of human arrangements and of human beings themselves. I think human beings are kind of democracies within themselves. Each of us has all kinds of different possibilities within himself or herself, and getting those possibilities together, getting some practical behavior to emerge from all the possible selves one has inside oneself, is as difficult as public democracy. It s impossible not to have politics; politics is our attempt to reconcile all the different forces in society. Everybody in society has a different viewpoint and interest, and the task of politics is to find the least bad way of reconciling them all, of coexisting without killing each other. I think spying is a good metaphor for what all of us do all the time. All the time we are looking at each other and trying to judge each other s feelings and motives. We have to; it s the only way we can survive with each other. All three of the productions that Sheffield Theatres did of my plays earlier this year were terrific. I m so pleased that at any rate one of them, Paul Miller s Democracy, has found a London home if only because I so much want to see it again myself. And a particular pleasure to have it at The Old Vic, still warm from their Noises Off. [Quotes taken from various interviews with Michael Frayn. See Bibliography] 6

7 Public Politics Divided Germany When the Second World War ended, the idea of constructing a new German democracy seemed absurd. Germany s cities and industries had been bombed to rubble. The eastern provinces had been annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union. Millions of Germans had been killed or taken captive; millions more were wandering the roads as refugees. As 1945 closed, hunger, cold and homelessness descended on the Germans. Most people in the rest of the world thought they deserved it. All political activity was forbidden. The country was divided into four zones of Allied military occupation American, British, French, and Soviet which were expected to last for some years before a solution was reached. However, none of these powers could agree on how to rule Germany and each side became increasingly suspicious of the other. Germany was now splitting apart, along the zone boundary that became the Iron Curtain. West Germany became the Federal Republic of Germany (FDR) and East Germany became the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The East refused to recognise the West and vice versa. Even more complicated was the situation in Berlin, which was in the heart of Eastern Germany but still divided into an Eastern and Western zone. In 1961, to stop the massive migration of East Germans to the West, the Soviet Union put up the Berlin Wall. Anyone caught trying to cross the wall from East to West was shot on site, and over the course of its existence over 260 people died trying to cross the Berlin Wall. Brandt watches the Berlin Wall being built West Germany refused to have diplomatic relations with any state that recognised the German Democratic Republic always referred to as the Soviet Occupation Zone or just the Zone. Meanwhile, the new Deutschmark currency (that took over from the collapsed Nazi currency) helped West Germany to reconstruct and then enter a sustained boom, helped by significant American investments. The mood was materialistic; even the building of the Berlin Wall did not rouse the public from wealthy disinterest. Willy Brandt had been governing mayor of West Berlin since He became Foreign Minister in 1966 and made a start on the Ostpolitik (Eastern Policy), his policy of seeking reconciliation with Germany s eastern neighbours. In spite of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, relations were established with Romania and Yugoslavia. But gestures towards East Germany came to nothing. However, in the 1969 elections Brandt came out on top as head of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Heading a coalition this time with the Free Democrats, Brandt became Chancellor, and at once returned to the Ostpolitik. By this time, politics had woken up in Germany and young Germans in particular had been registering their discontent with previous conservative governments. Brandt s coalition was the first leftist government of West Germany and marked a departure from the cautious conservatism of the past. So what did Brandt s Ostpolitik achieve? Its critics say it merely hardened the status quo, offering Communist regimes legitimacy and security. But that is less than half the story. In the short term, it enriched countless lives by making contact and travel between the two European camps easier. In abandoning unreal German claims, it prepared for the end of the Cold War. Above all, Brandt s treaties and travels persuaded ordinary people all over the world that they could trust this new and democratic Germany. Brandt hands over to Schmidt as the new Chancellor [Edited extract from The Road to Democracy, by Neal Ascherson] 7

8 Private Politics The Life of the Stasi The Stasi was the State Security Service of the East Germany. They were the massive internal army by which the East German government kept control over its population and spied on West Germany. Within East Germany, the Stasi spied on, imprisoned and ruined the lives of anyone it chose. In the early days there were deaths or liquidations of opponents. In the 1970s and 80s the regime preferred to psychologically destroy opponents or to exile them by selling them to West Germany for money (as Horst Ehmke puts it in the play, the GDR s one successful industry was the manufacture of political prisoners for export). The Stasi ran its own universities, hospitals and elite sports centres in which children were doped. It masterminded terroristtraining programmes. It pockmarked the countryside with secret bunkers for its members in the event of a third world war. And it had plans, well into the 1980s, for the invasion of West Berlin. The GDR was a nation at the front line of the Cold War, and at the same time it was obsessed with a paranoid, pathological war on its own citizens. At the end, in 1989, the Stasi had some 97,000 employees and 173,000 informers in a population of 17 million people. One of the problems for a dictatorship is that after it has eliminated the free press and free speech, it has no means by which to gauge the mood of the people. So, the Stasi also functioned as an information channel. It spread informers throughout East German society: overt or covert, there was someone reporting to the Stasi on their fellows and friends in every school, every factory, every apartment block, every pub. The official estimate is one Stasi agent or informer for every 50 people; the CIA estimate is one for every seven. Laid upright and end-to-end, the files the Stasi kept on their countrymen and women would form a line 180 kilometres long. Not only did the Stasi spy on East Germany, it also had numerous agents across the wall in the West. Sometimes East Germans were sent, like the Guillaumes, to the West, but the more common method was to recruit West German informers. Over its 40-year existence, East Germany had some 12,000 unofficial collaborators in the Federal Republic. In 1988, there were 1,929 West German citizens serving as informers; 149 in Bonn, the former capital, and 542 in West Berlin. Many were recruited in industrial areas to relay trade secrets and technical expertise to East Berlin. There were informers in churches, the police, the army, the BND, the internal security organisation, unions, universities, publishing houses and businesses. There were 78, in Frayn s words, weevils in the Social Democratic Party, including 13 in its executive committee. Often they were recruited long before as talented, left-leaning students who held Communist ideals. Democracy deftly shows the own goal shot by the GDR (East Germany) in the Guillaume affair: by having Guillaume in the chancellery the Stasi brought down the very man it wanted to keep in power. Then, 15 years later, despite its extensive overseas networks and ruthless internal surveillance, the Stasi entirely failed to predict the end of Communism, the end of the state and their own. [Edited extract from Under Surveillance, by Anna Funder] 8

9 Democracy Character Breakdown Fiction Behind Fact I: Characters in Democracy Günter Guillaume A Stasi agent from East Berlin who has been planted in West Germany for 12 years before getting a job in Brandt s office. In order to obtain more information he builds a reputation for himself as helpful, friendly and a very hard worker. Known for being very ordinary, a self-proclaimed hatstand that no one notices. Despite himself, he is charmed by Willy as well as being unswervingly loyal to the head of the Stasi, Mischa Wolf. Willy Brandt Leader of the SDP and elected Chancellor at the beginning of the play. Unlike his advisors, he was never a part of Nazi Germany, having fled to Norway to avoid arrest in 1933 and only returning to Germany after World War II. In public he is charming, entrancing, open, warm and friendly. In private, he often sinks into severe depressions, is indecisive and can fail to take action when needed. Although not keen on Guillaume at the start of the play, he warms to him and begins to rely on him more, deepening his sense of betrayal when Guillaume s status as a spy is exposed. Arno Kretschmann Guillaume s Stasi Controller. It is his job to pass on all the information gathered by Guillaume to head of the Stasi, Mischa Wolf. Kretschmann poses as Guillaume s friend and they often meet in Bonn for meals in plain sight to avoid looking suspicious. Throughout the play, Kretschmann is an onlooker as Guillaume describes the action. Although he is the only person that Guillaume can be open with, Kretschmann is rarely open with Guillaume, avoiding any questions that show up East Germany in a negative light. Helmut Schmidt Deputy Chairman of the SPD and Defence Minister in the coalition. Second in command to Brandt. He is ambitious and highly competent. This makes him extremely frustrated and impatient with Willy s indecisiveness. Schmidt and Wehner spend much of their time privately sniping about Brandt s lack of leadership. At the end of the play Schmidt takes over as Chancellor, although when he does he suddenly develops cold feet at the idea of having to follow in the footsteps of one of Germany s most popular politicians. Fact Behind Fiction I: Historical Figures in Democracy Günter Guillaume ( ) In 1956 Guillaume and his wife Christel were ordered by the Stasi to move to West Germany and infiltrate the West German political system. Rising through the ranks of the SDP, he eventually became a close aide of Brand. He had a reputation for being matey and easygoing as well as extremely hard working. One journalist described him as, not a person but a part of the place. You d find him there just as you d find a chair in the room. Willy Brandt ( ) Fled Germany in 1933 as a young Socialist Worker, during which time he changed his name from Herbert Frahm to Willy Brandt. Brandt returned to Berlin in 1946 and started his political career. He first came to international recognition as mayor of West Berlin in 1957 and by the 1960s he was a leading party figure. Although his time as Chancellor was short ( ) he remained chairman until When he resigned in 1974 it was not entirely due to the Guillaume Affair, but also as a result of rising social problems in Germany and in Brandt s own personal life (depression, drinking, womanizing). He later blamed his wife and Wehner for not persuading him out of resignation. Arno Kretschmann In Democracy Kretschmann is an amalgamation of Guillaume s various Stasi controllers. In fact he was only Guillaume s point of contact with the Stasi from He and Brandt had a close relationship and on their first meeting they enjoyed a conversation about God and the world as completely unconstrained as any two men who wanted to spend a stimulating afternoon with beer foam under their noses. Helmut Schmidt (b ) Frayn has admitted that his portrait of the hostile, ambitious Schmidt is slightly sharp. Although he was extremely impatient with Brandt s dithering, he nevertheless had a great deal of respect for him. 9

10 Herbert Wehner Also nicknamed Uncle behind his back. A former Communist who joined the SDP after World War II. As head of the parliamentary faction of Brandt s government, he is responsible for keeping the coalition going. However, he is in fact against Brandt s move to set up a coalition with the FDP as he wants a more stable coalition with the Christian Democrats. He keeps files on all the SDP members in the Bundestag so he can watch their political movements closely. He even persuades Nollau to keep him informed on Genscher, whom he suspects of political treachery. Günter Nollau Head of West German Security. Originally from East Germany, he fled to the West when the East German authorities try to arrest him for murder. He has a close relationship with Wehner and upon his request spies on Genscher to see if he has plans to usurp Brandt. It is Nollau who first brings up the possibility of a spy in the party and who is the primary investigator into the affair. Hans-Dietrich Genscher Member of the FDP (the other party in the coalition) and Interior Minister. Part of his job is to deal with the demonstrations and terrorism of the New Left. There are some reactionary supporters in his party who would like to see him made Chancellor in a coalition with the Christian Democrats. He is suspected of trying to sabotage Brandt s career. Herbert Wehner ( ) Wehner never thought Brandt was up to the job of Chancellor and in Brandt s second term made a consistent effort to undermine and criticise his leadership. He was eager to put Schmidt in place as Brandt s successor. Brandt was highly suspicious of Wehner convinced that he was passing information on to his contacts in East Germany. It is thought that Wehner knew about the suspicions surrounding Guillaume for some time, but was eager to leave him in place in order to further discredit Brandt s office. Günter Nollau ( ) Although officially responsible to Genscher, Nollau is accused of passing all the information regarding Guillaume on to Wehner before it reached Genscher. He is known for handling the whole affair with remarkable ineptitude... if nothing worse. Hans-Dietrich Genscher (b. 1927) A member of the Free Democratic Party. In the coalition, he helped shape Brandt s Ostpolitik, and after Brandt s resignation continued the policy as Foreign Minister from He disliked Nollau and accused him for lying about the amount of information Nollau passed on (or didn t pass on appropriately) about Guillaume. 10

11 Horst Ehmke Willy s chief of staff and closest confidante. He is loyal to Willy and supportive when he is depressed. Ehmke is eager to protect Willy from potential political sabotage. He is disliked by Wehner and Schmidt, who are jealous of his influence. It is he who hires Guillaume on short notice at the beginning of the play. Although he gives Guillaume an initial security grilling on Guillaume s time spent in East Germany, he seems to trust him. In Act II he is sacked and made head of the post office service, mainly as a result of Schmidt and Wehner s backstabbing. However, he continues to support and advise Brandt until the end. Reinhard Wilke Another of Brandt s close advisors and Ehmke s departmental leader. He accompanies Brandt to East Germany, is loyal and slightly in awe of him. He is very keen to keep Guillaume away from Brandt at all times. Ehmke (b. 1927) & Wilke It was daunting to write Reinhard Wilke and Horst Ehmke, who both worked in Brandt s office, Horst Ehmke running the Chancellory, Wilke as his immediate departmental leader. They re still alive and they came to see the play in London. The cast were absolutely enchanted by their visit because there s a lot in the play about how everyone in the SPD at the time had drunk far too much red wine. And Horst Ehmke and Reinhard Wilke had arrived with large supplies of red wine, which they took around back stage afterwards and sat talking to the cast and drinking far into the night and telling them indiscreet stories about life in Brandt s government. When I met them they were extremely generous about the play and they said that one of the things they thought I hadn t got right was that in the play they call each other Horst and Reinhard. They both said they would have never done that: We would have called each other Herr Dr Wilke and Herr Dr Ehmke. Wilke and Ehmke also said that I made Guillaume too interesting, that he was a very dull man. [Edited extract from Dramatizing German History: Michael Frayn on Democracy] Ulrich Bauhaus Officially Brandt s security guard. However, he is more often used as a barman and therapist when Brandt is drinking or fighting one of his depressions. He works closely with Guillaume as they personally staff Brandt. In particular he controls the queue (his words) of women having affairs with Brandt. Devoted and loyal. Ulrich Bauhaus (b. 1922) One of the points of historical dispute in the play is whether Bauhaus in fact remained loyal to Brandt throughout the Guillaume scandal. Brandt claimed that Bauhaus confessed with tears in his eyes that he had collapsed only under the pressure of interrogation and given information about Brandt s women. However, other sources claim that family man Bauhaus was genuinely shocked at the Chancellor s behaviour so voluntarily went to the authorities when the Guillaume scandal erupted. 11

12 Democracy Act Breakdown Fiction Behind Fact II: The Plot of Democracy Throughout the play the action flows between past and present as Guillaume describes to Kretschmann the events taking place. There are no separate scenes as such, but a continuous switching between narration and action. Act I The play opens with the election of Willy Brandt as Chancellor of the FDR (Federal Republic of Germany). Willy s chief of staff, Horst Ehmke, hires Günter Guillaume for a junior position in the party. Guillaume has a good reputation from his work in the party in Frankfurt. Guillaume tries to ingratiate himself with his political colleagues but they are suspicious and snobbish. Brandt is not keen on his ordinariness and asks Ehmke to find him someone else. By making himself useful and being extremely helpful, Guillaume slowly works his way into favour. Meanwhile, he and his Stasi controller Arno Kretschmann agree to meet up in public on a regular basis to avoid looking secretive. Guillaume s main task is to gather gossip and copy documents. He gives these to his wife Christel (also a spy) so that she can pass them onto Stasi in East Germany. Brandt gets to work on his Ostpolitik. He signs treaties with Russia, Poland, and East Germany. He is the first West German leader to visit East Germany. Fact behind Fiction II: Historical Context in Democracy By the start of the play Germany had been divided into East and West, Communist and Capitalist, rich and poor. Left wing groups in Germany had become unhappy with the right-wing coalition in power and had sparked off violence and protest not just in Germany but around the world. Oct 1969 Brandt, leader of the SPD, was losing in the elections to the Christian Democrats (CDU). He unexpectedly made an announcement on television (infuriating some of his staff who are against the decision) stating his willingness to have a coalition with the Free Democrats (FDP). Guillaume s career began around the same time as Brandt s. Doubts were raised about his background but were dismissed fairly quickly. Brandt was not enamoured with him, finding him too ordinary and eager to please. Guillaume reported to many different people, but in the play we see only Arno Kretschmann. He and Guillaume got on well together; Kretschmann must have been the only person in Guillaume s life approaching a friend. At first they were going to meet in a secluded boat-house, but Guillaume felt that taking up sailing would not fit with his character. Brandt had tried to implement Ostpolitik as Foreign Minister but without success (due to a conservative majority in the Bundestag). Once in power, he began to pursue it once more. 12

13 The Security Services suspect a sleeper in the department, planted over a decade ago. Wehner & Nollau start to investigate. Guillaume is aware, and Kretschmann warns him to be careful, but he is unconcerned. Brandt s supporters are more concerned with political treachery within the party. Genscher in particular comes under suspicion as someone who may try to topple Brandt as leader. Ostpolitik enrages the right. Reactionaries in the Bundestag put him up for a vote of no confidence. Brandt s supporters gather silently in the streets. The parliament hangs in the balance. Brandt survives the vote, but only because Schmidt and Wehner bribe several members of the Christian Democrats. Despite scraping through the vote of no confidence, Brandt sinks into depression (which is publically referred to as one of his feverish colds ) and considers resigning. Similarly, Guillaume is under a lot of personal strain. His marriage is suffering, partly as a result of the stresses of being a spy, and partly due to Guillaume s womanising. Nevertheless, Guillaume continues to rise up the ranks and is eventually promoted to Brandt s Personal Assistant. Brandt, Bauhaus (Brandt s bodyguard) and Guillaume travel around Germany on Brandt s private train in the campaign for Brandt s reelection. Despite Brandt s personal misgivings about Guillaume, the two become closer. Act II Despite winning the election, Brandt s government sinks into confusion, misdirection and lack of political success. Brandt s staff become resentful at his ineffective leadership as he is frozen with indecision. By this time Guillaume is sick of leading a double life and begs Kretschmann to let him return to the East. Meanwhile Genscher eventually warns Brandt about the possibility of Guillaume being the spy in the party. Brandt is surprised but nevertheless invites Guillaume on holiday. They go to Norway together with their wives and sons. The political situation in Germany continues to deteriorate, with strikes and a low public opinion. Wehner is sacked for criticizing Brandt s lack of leadership. Brandt is increasingly depressed and even public appearances do not lift his spirits as they used to. Guillaume tells Kretschmann that Christel is being followed and that suspicion is closing in on him. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle falls into place for those who have suspected Brandt of being a spy. Guillaume is arrested and confesses immediately. Kretschmann disappears, Brandt resigns and Schmidt takes over as the elected Chancellor of the FDR. After six years in prison, Guillaume is allowed home to East Germany at last. He has lost contact with his son Pierre and contracted cancer. The play closes at the fall of the Berlin Wall Brandt travelled to Erfurt, East Germany, to meet Willi Stoph, the East German Prime Minister. He was the first West German leader to do so. Brandt also signed a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and West Germany. Dec 1970 Under the Warsaw Treaty, Brandt accepted Poland s new western frontier as inviolable. It is on this trip that Brandt dropped to his knees at the Jewish memorial in Warsaw. He goes down in history for this image, and is depicted in the play as an example of Brandt s unpredictable brilliance. The following year, Brandt received the Nobel Peace Prize for his foreign policies Brandt survived Bundestag no-confidence motion by two votes. The following year, a Christian Democrat confessed to having received 50,000 marks for abstaining from voting against Brandt. Brandt s depression is well-documented. His drinking and womanising was common knowledge, as was his fondness for jokes. Frayn got almost all the jokes made in the play from a collection that Brandt assembled. When Guillaume was promoted to Brandt s Personal Assistant, he had access to all of his files and was in charge of organising the Chancellor s train. On the train journeys, he acted as Brandt s valet, and all communication between Brandt and the outside world went through Guillaume. Brandt s Second Term 1972 SPD won the elections and Brand is re-elected Chancellor. A Basic Treaty was signed covering relations between the two German states, recognising each other s frontiers. Because Reinhard Wilke & his deputy had holiday plans of their own, Brandt was encouraged to take Guillaume to Norway as his only assistant, despite the growing suspicion against him. He was allowed to deal with all communications between Norway and Bonn unsupervised during this time. During his second term, Brandt s indecisiveness and inaction alienated him from the liberals who had put him in power Brandt resigned as Chancellor following the Günter Guillaume affair. Kretschmann and his wife disappeared, immediately and no Stasi records have uncovered their whereabouts. Helmut Schmidt followed Guillaume as his successor, but Brandt remained the Chairman of the SDP until With little warning and in one of the most memorable nights in history, the Berlin Wall opens and is dismantled by thousands of East and West Berliners. After this the Cold War began to wind down rapidly as Communism collapsed throughout Eastern Europe. By 1990, East and West Germany were formally reunified and an all-german parliament met in Berlin for the first time since

14 Onstage Talking to Richard Hope Richard Hope plays Horst Ehmke. He trained with the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain ( ) and is a member of the National Youth Theatre Association. He is also an Associate Member of Complicité and has worked with many other theatre companies, including the National Theatre, RSC and Shared Experience. When you read Democracy for the first time what immediately leapt out at you? I found it very hard to read because it is so dense on the page, there s so much information. I felt quite inadequate! Having done some other Frayn shows I knew that they need to go at quite a lick for it to work. As soon as you ponder then they don t work. Normally the narrator is a set character but suddenly you re in a situation where you have to switch between the two. So when we were staging it we had to work out, who am I talking to? Who hears what I m saying? And then you realise that the one element that s not on the page which you suddenly realise when you ve done some Frayn is the audience. You have to put them in the equation so they will be ahead of everything. Democracy, like most of Frayn s writing, looks very simple on the page but is in fact very hard to play. But it s very rewarding when you are up to speed. It is deceptively simple, as any spy would say. Something about Michael s style that is very interesting: If you were to ask him whether he s a playwright or a journalist, he d say journalist because he s obsessed with detail I think that comes over in the way information is handled in the play. It s interesting that you mention the journalistic aspect of Frayn s writing. You re playing a character that actually existed in the living memory of a lot of the audience members. How did you approach that? I did a lot of research; there s a lot you can find out. The only problem is that a lot of it is in German! If you can read German it s very detailed stuff. If you read Michael s postscript, it s a very thorough weighing up the possibilities of what actually happened. And since Democracy was first staged at the National everything all the suppositions Michael made have actually all been true. He was extremely well informed. That, I think, is his journalist instinct. And did that inform the way you worked out your character? Yes it did a lot, and also partly in performance. We researched a lot of photos for mannerisms like Brandt when he knelt in front of the memorial in Poland; those really significant moments of history and especially European History. And in this country we didn t really have any idea about coalition governments before this one, whereas on the continent that s what they deal with all the time. That s why it s now quite a relevant play for this country. Having done the show at the Crucible and had a two month break is it hard to keep up momentum? No, it s a good show. I ve repeated shows a lot. I ve worked with Complicité and Shared Experience and every time you revive a show you bring something fresh to it. You realise that you re not doing the same show, you re always adding something extra. We re in a different space, a slightly different setting but with the same cast, and although we ve had some time off people haven t forgotten it. So in a way we are able to come to it fresh. Finally: do you have any pearls of wisdom for the young aspiring actor? If you really, really, really want to do it: do it. Give it five years and if you haven t had any luck by then, give up and do something else. There are so many people doing it now, it s very, very competitive. It s an up-and-down life so you either have nothing or you suddenly get a great wad of money. Join any youth theatre that you can. I was a member of the National Youth Theatre and it gives you some really great experience. Get involved with local projects like The Old Vic s OVNV and their recent community project Epidemic. It ll give you an idea of where your strengths lie. Lastly, I ll always remember the advice which Laurence Olivier gave to me: Turn up on time and with your lines learnt. 14

15 Offstage Talking to Assistant Director Alex Thorpe Alex Thorpe is the Resident Assistant Director at Sheffield Theatres and is about to graduate from the MFA Theatre Directing Programme at Birkbeck. When you first sat down and read Democracy, what did you find most immediately striking about it? I had to read it three times to really grasp what the play was about. But when on the third read what really hit me was how Michael Frayn writes about very big, heavy subjects in such a way that make the play flow. His playing with time in the play is really interesting. We ll be in the present, and then all of a sudden Guillaume will step out of that and be commentating. German politics doesn t seem the most attractive subject to read or write about. But the way Frayn makes it so accessible was one of the first things that struck me. Democracy been described as unashamedly high-brow and, an essay on legs. How do you go about making the performance of such a play accessible without watering down the content? Paul Miller s staging of this particular production has a lot to do with making the play accessible without it losing its weightiness. It s beautifully choreographed. People are in and out, events are flowing and overlapping. It s a dance. It works well with Simon Daw s set, which is one main area with mini islands around it. Paul s freedom in that keeps the play light. He s also captured and honoured Frayn s way of writing such a rich text. Between the Paul s direction and Michael s writing, they keep the play accessible and free and fluid, rather than a lecture on German politics. Aidan s take on Guillaume has very much been part of that as well. There s almost a clownic element to his performance, which keeps the whole thing bouncy and buoyant. What are the challenges of transferring a play that s already had a successful run at another theatre? I think the Crucible Theatre was a great starting point for the Democracy. You have the audience on three sides; it s a threesided space, so you re forced to keep the play moving. The Old Vic will benefit from that because the Crucible has forced us not to be static, to keep it more of a dance. Of course that does mean that there have been some challenges of going from a three-sided space to the proscenium arch space of The Old Vic. But they ve let us take out the first five rows of the stalls, so rather than having to shove all of the action back or adapt how the actors move too much, we ve actually kept the same kind of ground. How do you keep the momentum of the play itself after a transfer? How do you keep the company light on its feet? We did the play two months ago, and I ve been really pleasantly surprised at how well the actors come back into to it. They are straight back into the text without needing a script, as well as remembering the choreography. They still have a really strong idea of what they re doing. How does the Director/Assistant Director relationship normally work? There is no rule. I ve assisted six shows and every single time my role and my relationship with the director have been completely different. Paul invited me into casting and his design meetings, which is quite rare. For me, still at the beginning of my directing career, it was fantastic working with someone as experienced as Paul. He s got a brilliant sense of intonation with text. But every director has a very different style of working, so you have to know how to adapt to them. What s the most valuable lesson you ve learnt from working on Democracy? When I was working on another show (Company) at the Sheffield Theatres a lighting designer told me Alex, you should always know exactly where the actors need to be on stage. So for Democracy, even though it s usually the Deputy Stage Manager who does this, I made a note of all of the staging in my own script. Our transfer was very unexpected. I didn t find out until the final matinee at Sheffield. And when I did I was so relieved I d made the effort to write everything down. Having that detail to come back to has been so helpful when returning to the script for the show at The Old Vic. 15

16 Themes As Frayn says, the play is about complexity. There are a wealth of themes and motifs running under the surface throughout, and this section only highlights a few of them. Division A common term used in the play is sixty million Germanys. It is not just that there is East and West, or Left and Right; but in fact it is almost impossible to do anything as a single unit. Everyone has their own agenda, their own allegiances and ideals. This causes many internal divisions within Germany that are vividly depicted by the different characters in the play. Corruption Kretschmann calls Guillaume a weevil in the woodwork of the Chancellery. Brandt s advisors use bribery and exhortation to keep Brandt in power; whilst simultaneously trying to lever themselves into prominent positions. Brandt s advisors resent his ability to wash his hands clean of any responsibility for the actions of the Nazis during the Second World War. However, Brandt himself is a heavy drinker and serial womaniser, showing that he is not quite as wholesome as he would like to think. Loyalty Apart from the steadfast Bauhaus, it is ironically the most obviously disloyal character in the play who comes across as the most loyal. Although given the option to flee to the East, Guillaume stays in the West knowing that he will be arrested. This is partly out of love for his son Pierre and a sense of duty to his wife Christel. However, he seems to be most concerned for Brandt, the very person he has been sent to betray the confidence of. In the final line of the play Guillaume says of Brandt: wherever he goes, my shadow goes with him. Together still. This seems an almost fraternal, loving statement of loyalty that surprises after the actions that have gone before it. Role-Playing Many of the characters assume different public and private personas. For example, Brandt is engaging, charming and warm in public. But behind closed doors there is a stark contrast: he is often depressed, indecisive and lacks authority. Guillaume, as the spy, is the most obvious role-player. Which one of me s going to answer?, he asks himself in a revealing comment on the internal struggle of having to constantly keep up an act. Storytelling The play is one long narrative from Guillaume to Kretschmann. This can make it confusing for the audience as we jump from narrative to action, but can be seen as an exploration of storytelling through theatre. Kretschmann asks Guillaume What s it like? I m blind, I m deaf. You re my eyes, you re my ears. This shows us that, in a sense, Kretschmann too is an audience member. He relies on Guillaume just as we do to act out the story and make it real onstage. 16

17 Glossary aide An assistant to an important person, usually a political leader. Baader-Meinhof Gang Also known as the Red Army Faction. Germany s most prominent leftwing militant group. It described itself as a communist and anti-imperialist urban guerilla group against what they perceived to be a fascist state. Founded in 1970, dissolved in Basic Treaty A treaty signed in 1972 which normalised relations between the two German states. Both sides agreed to respect one another s independence and boundaries. This was the first time West Germany recognised East Germany as a state. Bundestag The Lower House of Parliament in Germany. BND Abbreviation of Bundesnachrichtendienst, or Federal Intelligence Service. The foreign intelligence agency of the FDR. Controller A superior member of the Stasi who supervises and gathers information from individual informers and agents. Christian Democratic Union The CDU dominated West German politics from 1949 to This right of centre party is the second largest in Germany today. The first Chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer ( ) and Brandt s immediate predecessor, Kurt Kiesinger ( ), were both members of the CDU. Free Democratic Party (FDP) Also known as The Liberals. A moderately left-wing party with which the Social Democratic Party formed a coalition under Willy Brandt. Federal German Republic The official title of West Germany, which existed from May 1949 October Democracy is set here. German Democratic Republic The official title of East Germany. A socialist state established by the USSR in the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany. Until the Basic Treaty, the GDR was officially known in the West as The Soviet Zone, due to their refusal to recognise it as a legitimate state. Kaiser Any of the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire ( ), of Austria ( ), or of Germany ( ). The Left A general term for any of leftwing German parties. In the play, they are portrayed as fractured, disparate and in a constant state of internal conflict. The New Left A term associated with the radically left-wing movements that took place spread through the USA, UK, France and West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. Ostpolitik or Eastern Policy West German foreign policy started in the late 1960s by Brandt s Government. The strategy was to improve relations between West and East German governments, as well as with other Soviet-bloc countries. sleeper A spy (in this case a Stasi agent) who is placed in a target country without an immediate mission but with a long-term goal of infiltrating an organisation in order to gather information on it over a matter of years or even decades. Vote of no confidence Allows a parliament to remove support from its head of government, but only if they can agree on a successor. 17

18 Bibliography Works by the Playwright Michael Frayn (Methuen), Democracy, 2003 Michael Frayn (German Historical Institute Bulletin, No 36), Dramatizing German History: Michael Frayn on Democracy, (Spring 2005) Study Guides Tarragon Theatre, Democracy: Study Guide Reviews & Articles Broadway World, Michael Frayn s Democracy transfers to Old Vic from June, 16 April ##ixzz1wLkB0IgD Interviews BBC Three, The John Tusa Interviews British Library Theatre Archive Project, Interview with Michael Frayn, 27 February The Guardian, Write the same thing over and over. Michael Frayn tells Claire Armistead the secret of literary success, 31 January The Guardian, On Writing: authors reveal the secrets of their craft The Guardian, Michael Frayn: the snowball effect, 6 March National Theatre Platform Papers, Michael Frayn on Democracy, 19 September The New Yorker, Me and My Shadow: Michael Frayn on the betrayal of Willy Brandt, 29 September The Observer, The Interview: Michael Frayn, 16 August The Paris Review, Michael Frayn, The Art of Theater No 15, Winter 2003 No German History & Politics Frayn s postscript to Democracy is an excellent source of historical and political context. However, the following resources have also been extremely useful: Neil Ascherson, The Road to Democracy, written for the Democracy programme at The Old Vic Anna Funder, Under Surveillance, written for the Democracy programme at The Old Vic Other resources German History in Documents and Images 18