View transcript: Tristan and Isolde’s Clothing

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10 to 11. Ten to Eleven.

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Yohji Yamamato, the famous designer known as “Tailor of Tokyo,” designs the costumes for “Tristan and Isolde” in Bayreuth / Production: Heiner Müller, Stage design: Erich Wonder / A contribution to the dialogue between Europe and the Far East –

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Tristan and Isolde‘s Clothes - -

Alexander Kluge

Mister Yamamato, you are designing the costumes for Tristan and Isolde. What colors are you going to use?

Yohji Yamamato [translated from Japanese, translator switches between first and third person]

No colors.

Kluge

No colors. What does that mean?

Yamamoto

Right now, he only imagines black shadows. He cannot tell what color it is supposed to be. The only thing he sees are shadows. Black shadows.

Kluge

Could you describe your concept for Tristan and Isolde? Are you thinking of the Japanese Middle Ages, or the German Middle Ages, or something else entirely?

Yamamoto

He imagines the Middle Ages in China.

Kluge

What are the Chinese Middle Ages like?

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Translation: Natsue von Stegmann

Yamamoto

The Qing era in China has just come to an end. He does not have a specific timeframe in mind, but some time up to the Qing era, when an Emperor or a monarch used to rule the country. And the monarch, or prince – or let’s just say, the ruler – the ruler always had wives, or a wife, and those could change politics completely, they could influence the era. They made history. They could make history, so to speak. And Tristan and Isolde is happening on an equally large scale. That’s why he is thinking of this era in China, the imperial era in China.

Kluge

Omnipotent monarchy.

Yamamoto

Omnipotent monarchy, but influenced by a woman.

Kluge

Love against the backdrop of omnipotent patriarchal power.

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Yohji Yamamoto, costume designer for Tristan and Isolde

Kluge

In that sense, Isolde is basically a kingdom, a country.

Yamamoto

Yes, that’s how he feels.

Kluge

I would like to hear more about the shadows. The not-color, the shadows you mentioned.

Yamamoto

The image of the shadows is inspired by Mister Müller’s production and Mister Wonder’s stage design. We already discussed it and of course that has influenced me, because I need to take it into account. But once I had spoken with the two of them about the concept and their ideas, I developed an image; after I’d listened to the music and heard their ideas, and of course the storyline as well. And in my mind, I see the image of a woman – everyone has two shadows, that means, a shadow as the king, and a shadow as man. And Isolde also has one shadow as woman, and an additional shadow as the queen. My costume design is double-shadowed.

Kluge

Could you describe that? How should I picture that? How can you create this double shadow?

Yamamoto

Of course, he is still in the process of figuring out how to best solve this problem. But for now … a bad example would be a quick costume change like in Kabuki – one grip and the costume comes off, and there is another costume underneath.

Kluge

But that would be a bad solution.

Yamamoto

That would be a bad solution. He has to combine two costumes in one …

Kluge

… has to combine two personalities, the king and – the two shadows cannot be separated. You cannot be not-queen as woman, and you cannot be a woman without also being queen.

Yamamoto

Yes, everyone trips over their shadow, nobody can escape. That means, they are unable to change. I would like to be king just for a bit, that is not an option. He’ll stumble over his shadow. He cannot put on one shadow now, and then a different one next, it’s always –

Kluge

So they basically get entangled in their gowns?

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Yohji Yamamoto, costume designer for Tristan and Isolde

Yamamoto

Yes, that might be a possibility, but I need to discuss it with Mister Müller, of course, because it also depends on his idea of movement, his production, his character development.

Kluge

In a very early phase of the project, Mister Müller told us that he’d like to imitate Laocoön. Laocoön is a statue, an antique sculpture, that shows a man and his children trying to escape the grasp of the python. You know Laocoön. So Heiner Müller said that the coat is dragging down the duke. That’s a scene in Schiller.

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FIESCO. Why do you pull my cloak? It falls –

VERRINA (with bitter irony). If the purple falls the duke must after it. (He pushes him into the sea.)

FIESCO (calls out of the waves). Help, Genoa!

Friedrich Schiller, Fiesco or, The Genoese ConspiracyKluge

[In English in the original] Do you speak English? At the end of Fiesco by Schiller, the duke, a very powerful man from Renaissance, is torn down by his clothes. He is not defeated by his enemies, he is defeated by his coat, meaning his power. And this is something like the shadow you speak of, and this has been one idea of Heiner Müller, once. Second is Laocoön, and third would be a snail, who always carries a complete house around. [Translated from German] In the 19th century, Wagner also tries something different. People are distinguished not by their gown, but by their will. That is something that could be expressed in shadows, a battle of shadows.

Yamamoto

I think so. I think that’s my job, and why I was chosen for this work – because of questions like these.

Kluge

When did you meet Heiner Müller for the first time?

Yamamoto

A year ago.

Kluge

Could you describe that meeting? Heiner Müller is not a big talker, after all.

Yamamoto

He approached me through a mediator. And he made an entirely different impression than what I’d expected. He was very funny, you really could say that. We sat together and drank and talked all night, it was really fun. And he told me about the three girls working at his office and how much he loves them. He was very funny and not at all complicated like I’d expected, he was completely different.

Kluge

But you are both rather quiet. Silent types.

Yamamoto

We only talked about completely banal things, on a casual level, and you can talk for hours about this and that, just very general topics.

Kluge

Earlier you mentioned the story of Tristan and Isolde. I would like to hear the story of Tristan and Isolde told by someone from a far-away country, like you.

Yamamoto

My impression was: Compared to our experience with our poets and our history, this story focuses very much on the woman. This myth highlights women’s lives. For me, that’s something very unusual. Because Japanese writers …

Kluge

… are not familiar with this way of worshipping women.

Yamamoto

Yes. Or rather, nowadays, Japanese men do experience that, but it’s very rare in Japanese literature.

Kluge

And then there’s a new thread, that of our century. From what I understood, you are saying that there should not be any color right away, no color without reason. Effect without cause is effect, Richard Wagner says. And effect is not allowed. Is that your reason for choosing black?

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“Effect without cause is effect –” Richard Wagner

Yamamoto

First, I don’t want to be influenced by color. I don’t want to be influenced by color. For me, people are monotonous. It doesn’t matter if they have white, black, or yellow skin. They are monotonous, and they are beautiful that way. As a Japanese – I lived through the war, and after the war, everything was black, dead. And then culture was reinvented, and all the colors were mixed together. And that wasn’t beautiful anymore, it seemed dirty to my eyes. I wanted to reorganize things, give them clarity. Because I experienced the war and the post-war era, I want to return to the origins.

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Yohji Yamamoto, costume designer for Tristan and Isolde

Kluge

So we are talking about the hour zero. In the 1990s, we are still in the process of developing an entirely new life that started with 1945.

Yamamoto

Yes. A bit of an exaggeration, but yes.

Kluge

Could you – earlier, you talked about the story of Tristan and Isolde in the context of China during the Qing Dynasty. Could you describe the tableaus, the important moments of the story – the sun, the best friend, the garden at night, those elements …

Yamamoto

The poison … the forced …

Kluge

Love that was forced into being by a love potion.

Yamamoto

In my opinion, Tristan is very intelligent, but he’s got the hots for women, to put it very simply.

Kluge

He is greedy.

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TRISTAN: “A cotton ball hero –”

Yamamoto

He’s made from cotton balls.

Kluge

He’s made from cotton balls. He absorbs everything.

Yamamoto

He’s made from cotton balls, and he absorbs everything.

Kluge

And her?

Yamamoto

For me, she is a golden lion. A glittering golden lion.

Kluge

Does the golden lion have a specific meaning in Japanese?

Yamamoto

No, it doesn‘t. He simply sees her as a golden lion. That means, she might bite me, but she’s still golden – that means power.

Kluge

So she is not a golden lion made from metal. She is a living being. A predator.

Yamamoto

It’s like this: The lion is an actual lion, but bright gold, and perhaps even made from gold, but not like jewelry. But when she sits here and then leaves, a trace of gold remains behind.

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“Costume and Death” / The death of Isodora Duncan

Kluge

The dancer Duncan had a long shawl, and the shawl got tangled in the tires of her car, and she was strangled. That’s a costume. But something like this won’t happen on stage.

Yamamoto

No.

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TRISTAN FROM AFAR – / Portrait of Yohji Yamamato, who designs the costumes for Tristan and Isolde in Bayreuth –

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Tristan and Isolde’s Clothes –