Feygele: Tobias Herzberg preaches perversion under all circumstances for a second sexual liberation
13. Feb 2019.

by Drew Rowsome -

"I want people to feel liberated," says Tobias Herzberg of his solo piece Feygele being presented as part of Buddies' Rhubarb Festival. "To feel provoked and then wonder how that happened. To revel in their own relationships and their own sexualities. To enjoy my chutzpah of jumbled symbols. And that the young, and especially the older, perverts in the audience can see an advocate in me. Perversion under all circumstances! I hope to bring about a real change of mind, a second sexual liberation by talking about our practices. Just not wanting to belong to the 'normals.'"

Herzberg's day job is at Berlin's Maxim Gorki Theatre. "I run Studio Я, Gorki’s incubator-like 100-seat venue in which we expand borders substantially and formally – with theatre, music and debate," he says describing what could be Rhubarb's German sister. "In Studio Я we program intersectionally, in search of the relationships between race, class, and gender. Telling stories from the perspective of the social margins. Precisely because we believe that these margins do not exist. Gorki sees itself as a theatre for the whole city of Berlin. For all who live in it. And that's why we find that people and topics that are otherwise classified as minorities or special interest belong on the stage. Feygele is such a story."

And the story is a complex one. "It is self-questioning," says Herzberg. "A confrontation with my life as a gay man with a Jewish background in a mostly non-Jewish, non-gay society. The performance was created for a festival that dealt with Jewish positions 70 years after the Shoa and almost 30 years after the Berlin wall came down. I found that my everyday life, and my political consciousness are at least as strongly influenced by being gay, as by having a Jewish family history. So I brought both together. Not as a problem according to the motto: 'I am a Jew and I am gay, which do not fit together.' On the contrary, as queer positions that are transversal to the majority, being Jewish and being gay have a lot in common."

Even the title has Jewish roots. "'Feygele' is a Yiddish term, meaning "little bird,'" explains Herzberg. "At some point, a second meaning has been added, and so one says today 'feygele' also to a gay man. So yes, it does mean gay, but not in a pejorative sense like faggot. It sounds more loving – an almost tender expression. I liked that so much that I just claimed feygele to be the origin of faggot, although not many etymologists will seem to agree."

Herzberg says that he, and the Gorki Theatre, see identities, "as changeable entities, not as firmly established ones. After all, we are theatre people and love to play with who we are and how we are perceived. When I joined this company in 2016, it inspired me tremendously that the ensemble was composed of Turkish, Armenian, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, Bulgarian, Iranian, Black and White artists from both parts of the former West and East divided country. And most of us are actually Germans, even if not all are counted as such by some in our country, as racism and xenophobia are on the rise. In my day-to-day life in this city of diversity, of course, it matters that I am gay."

He is inspired by that diversity. "Berlin is more than ever full of subcultures. Imagine the unimaginable," he says. "And I do not just mean fetish clubs and sex parties. Berlin serves as a refuge for many queers. This has an impact on everyone who lives there. Alternative lifestyles can be realized more easily in Berlin than elsewhere. I want to preserve, promote and strengthen this openness. It's great to say, 'I enjoy getting screwed to the wall every weekend in a club, living a hardcore promiscuous life.' And such a model of life should receive no less respect and no less esteem than living in a romantic monogamous relationship."

Berlin is historically, mythologically, a place of sexual freedom and creativity. So is Buddies. "Rhubarb and Buddies have an excellent ambassador in Ted Witzel," says Herzberg. "Whenever Ted is in Berlin he always visits Gorki. So we met one evening in Studio Я. Until then, I had no idea what Rhubarb was. This shows how important international networking is for our art form. We may live thousands of miles apart but still aim at the same goals: to create queer platforms, to celebrate diversity, and to set the stage for vivid exchange. I am looking forward to contributing to this exchange myself."

Unfortunately, "I will join the festival only for the second week and I am mostly curious about the atmosphere and how the audience will react to the different presentations. Since I am preparing a festival on 50 years of queer liberation – taking Stonewall as a starting point – I am especially excited to see Pioneers Go East Collective’s CowboysCowgirls."

And Rhubarb audiences will be curious to see Feygele, billed as "Tobias Herzberg digs beneath the labels he’s been assigned – gay, Jewish, German, romantic, nymphomaniac, and uncircumcised – to create a militant hymn for the perverted and marginalized of this world." Perhaps that is the ultimate in contradictory intersectionality, even more than mixing leather with a tallit, an uncircumcised Jew. "After religious friends of mine saw the show, we sure had discussions," says Herzberg, "But believe me, if someone really wants to get upset about my play, my uncircumcised dick is probably the least problem."