Imagine being born into the ashes of the most horrendous regime the world has ever seen. Growing up, Rainer Werner Fassbinder did not see a Germany that truly reckoned with the atrocities of Nazism but a country all too eager to push forward with it’s economic ‘miracle’ of a recovery as many former Nazis continued to serve in government and consumerism and conformity became the new ideological figureheads of state. For the young playwrights and directors of post-war Germany - who encountered former Nazis even in the upper levels of state theatre management - locating the evil seed that had led their parents’ generation down the path of fascism within their seemingly prosperous country was of upmost importance.

For many the answer was a structural one, which is why so many of the underground German artists - including Fassbinder’s Anti-Theater - had some kind of connection to Marxist terrorist group Baader-Meinhof. And of course an abstracted and politicised approach to this question fit perfectly with the godfather of German avant-garde theatre Bertolt Brecht, who de-emphasised the agency of individual characters in favour of the grand dialectic of history. It’s this context that makes Fassbinder so unique; while avowedly anti-fascist and nominally communist, Fassbinder’s focus on power relations on an individual level was quite unique within German theatre at the time. In Blood On The Cat’s Neck we do not see the selfishness and manipulation at the heart of fascism occur on a grand historical level. Instead it is shrunk down to its most microscopic and banal occurrences, existing in a series of banal exchanges that sees one person vie for power over the other.

We watch these scenes unfold through the eyes of the alien Phoebe Zeitgeist who “knows the words but doesn’t understand human language”. To have these scenes not just stripped of any historical context but any linguistic construction through Phoebe’s gaze we are seeing power emerge at the very instant that communication occurs. In Fassbinder’s eyes our attraction to fascism is built into our language’s desire to dominate and exploit the Other and through Phoebe we see this tendency manifest. Because of the unique opportunity given to us by the Bordello Room, we as an audience can view these people alongside Phoebe, drifting aimlessly through a space where exploitation occurs in every corner; be it the misogyny of men subjugating women, bosses exploiting workers, or relationships falling apart due to the fundamental inequity of desire.

I am almost the same age as Fassbinder was when he wrote Blood On The Cat’s Neck. In my life I have seen fraudulent holy wars, cheap game show dictators, the resurgence of white nationalism in mainstream culture and the prioritisation of short term financial gain over the death of the planet. The evening before we bumped into the theatre we learned that Australia had chosen to reward simple scare campaigns, austerity and security for the country’s wealthy. Like Fassbinder and all the Germans seeking the seeds that could grow into the evils of Nazism we today are searching for the same thing and we’ve returned to this play to find it in its smallest of utterances. This is the banality of evil in all its messiness and pettiness; seen through the eyes of an alien that is learning everything we have to show her…

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of Germany’s most prolific and notorious writers, directors and actors for the stage and screen in post-war Germany.

Born to a middle class Bavarian family in 1945, Fassbinder trained at the Fridl-Leonhard Studio for actors in Munich before joining the Munich Action-Theater in 1967, becoming its leader only two months later. When the Action-Theater disbanded, it immediately reformed as the Anti-Theater in 1968. During his time with his theatre troupe he wrote and directed many plays including Katzelmacher (1968), The American Soldier (1968), Pre-Paradise/Sorry, Now (1969), Blood On The Cat’s Neck (1971) and The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1971).

During his time with the Anti-Theater, Fassbinder turned his company into an impromptu film production company, directing Love Is Colder Than Death (1969), Katzelmacher (1969), Gods of the Plague (1970), The American Soldier (1970) and Beware of a Holy Whore (1971). Eventually Fassbinder’s focus shifted entirely to film, leaving theatre behind but taking many of his acting troupe with him.

Between 1969 and 1982 he directed over 40 projects for film and television including The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971), Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (1974), Fox & His Friends (1975), In A Year of Thirteen Moons (1978), The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979), Lola (1981), Veronika Voss (1982), Querelle (1982) and the thirteen hour epic Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980).

He died at the age of 37 in 1982 from an overdose of cocaine and barbiturates.

Chief, Hutchie and Eva at Bell Shakespeare

Jasmin Simmons

Zaina Ahmed

NIDA

Robin Monkhouse