How Did Theory Come to Theater and What is it Doing There?
How Did Theory Come to Theater and What is it Doing There?
Half-read books from the Merve publishing company have been lying around dramaturgy office in Germany since the 1970s.. With the so-called “long summer of theory” and the rise of discourse theater and parts of so-called writer-driven theater, popular theories have again and again becomes lenses through which existing dramas are read and interpreted and, in turn, theater brings these theories to an audience that does not always participate in discourse. Some theories are more formative than others: the works of Deleuze/Guattari, Butler, Foucault or Haraway have been present in the performing arts for decades. How has this changed the presence of the ways and methods through which stories are told on stage? And how do artists sort theory and practice in their funding applications? How do the makers of discourse theater change not only themselves, but the production conditions as well? How does the universal and transdisciplinary theory approach work with institutionalized artistic production?
Participants:
Dr. Patrick Eiden-Offe
Jule Flierl
Aenne Quiñones (HAU Hebbel am Ufer)
Prof. Dr. Sandra Umathum (HfS Berlin)