The theatre monologue performance The appointment based on Herta Müller’s ‘Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet’ came to me on a cancellation from another actress – and it has been groundbreaking for me, has in a way freed me from the shackles of a pressing lawsuit by the Danish Tax ministry, and because I finally got a part that suited me in age and manner, and at exactly the right time, on top of the summer’s battle with the legal system. I was otherwise against doing anymore theatre monologues, being quite tired of it, but this text and the joy of being able to dive into Herta Müller’s writing, sharp words and poetic sentences, getting to know these so conscious words in my body, manifested themselves so physically and sensuously, that it made me stronger day by day. Herta healed me, more than I thought theatre, acting and literature could. And I have become addicted to Herta, and want more of her texts, words, and way of experiencing the world, concentrated, condensed! It’s been hard to read too many pages at a time, I must stop, think, digest, feel – and now I prefer reading her aloud, as to physically absorb her sharpness, irony, anger and humour.
When I was 16, my mother made sure that I got the first books by Herta Müller translated into Danish, she put them in my pile and said ‘Here, you have to have these Herta Müller books, one day you will be very happy to read them‘, and until the performance now 30 years later I had not yet read them. Obviously now they have been ‘read through’ almost falling apart and I can’t get my hands down from how fabulous Herta’s books and texts are.
Fate also wanted my sister-in-law from Romania/Italy had a visit from her friends from Romania in Copenhagen while I was rehearsing the play. They were young women under the Ceaușescu dictatorship, they talked about everyday life under the regime and the stories, and their narratives were like reading Herta’s stories and ‘everyday events’, here too strong women break forth with power and bravado.
Emotions and memories rise that have escaped me like slippery eels, when I read her, even beheaded eels, even eels without skin, yet, still moving, still crawling up my arm from a fisherman’s plastic bag. How is that? How does Herta write in that way, that I almost want to throw up when reading her texts, because they hit me in the guts, they ring so true and real, taste, shiver, exhaust. I am exhausted, I sleep, have bizarre nightmare dreams, drink as spiked, pass out and the memoires twist and turn in a whirlwind of glimpses of something, happened, something thought, invented, lonely, something new, old, like a marriage of pop-up memorabilia forgotten, also why they were saved and kept in the first place.
I had lost my passion for acting, Herta Müller returned it, and too the courage to fight back, again!
A Letter:
LIEBE HERTA MÜLLER
DANKE, DANKE, DANKE.
Ich bin Mira, und Ich wollen sehr gerne erzählen in meiner nicht so gutes Deutch, Volkschule Deutch: danke, danke, danke! Eine Schauspielerin die Kopenhagen, Ich habe macht deine Text ‘I dag…’ mit Theaterregisseur Ulla Koppel. Zu erzähle deine Texte einmal und einmal wieder, ist eine Komposition die Poesie und Angst. Ins Jedes Wort und Linien hast du die Körper mit und wen ich sagt deiner Wörter die Körper reagiert, mit deinem Worte sind Explosionen, Energie und Schmerz, und die Text hast meiner Körper und Sinn heben, auch die publicum erzählst ‘Du hast das Text in den Realitäten erlebt? Man Felt das so!‘ Angst, liebe, greife resoniert zu viele. Deiner Wörter, deine Bücher, danke! Du hast mich helfen in mein Leben mit diesen Monologen, und deiner Wörter erzählst welcher Sensation die Körper muss Gefühlen wen Gespräch, welcher Körperlichkeit, das immer intensiv emotionelle Sensation bombardiert mich.
