Anthology of plays by leading German women writers for the first time in English

Uncovers the central role of Brecht reception in Turkish theater and Turkish-German literature, examining interactions between Turkish and German writers, texts, and contexts.

Contemporary Scenography investigates scenographic concepts, practices and aesthetics in Germany from 1989 to the present. Facing the end of the political divide, the advent of the digital age and the challenges of globalization, German-based designers and scenographers have reacted in a variety of ways to these shifts in the cultural landscape. The edited volume, a compilation of 12 original chapters written in collaboration with acclaimed scenographers, stage designers and distinguished scholars, offers fresh insights and in-depth analyses of current artistic concepts, discourse and innovation in this multifaceted, dynamic field. The book covers a broad spectrum of scenography, including theatre works by Katrin Brack, Bert Neumann, Aleksandar Denic, Klaus Grünberg, Vinge/Müller and Rimini Protokoll, in addition to scenography in museums, exhibitions, social spaces and in various urban contexts. Presenting a range of perspectives, the volume explores the interdisciplinarity of contemporary scenography and its ongoing diversification, raising questions relating to cultural heritage, genre and media specificity, knowledge transfer, local versus global practices, internationalization and cultural exchange. Combined with a set of stimulating examples of scenographic design in action – presented through interviews, artists' statements and case studies – the contributors develop a theoretical framework for understanding scenography as an art practice and discourse.

Three Kingdoms is a blackly entertaining and unsettling detective story cum parable about the devil in us all, international human trafficking and the changing state of Europe. As the severed human head of an Estonian woman is found in a river in Hammersmith, two British detectives set off in search of her origins in Europe and how she came to be found dead. Accompanied by a mephistophelian German detective acting as their guide, they gradually sink deeper and deeper into the world of prostitution and international human trafficking. Fighting to cross international borders and language barriers, they enter a nightmarish world that will change one of them forever. Three Kingdoms tells the stories of trafficked women, the gangs and the police forces across Europe that attempt to control them. This dark new thriller by Simon Stephens, set across three countries, explores an international business where the goods are not products, but people. Questioning and undermining not just tenets about the nature of Europe with its old and new borders, Three Kingdoms also explodes moral certainties. With good and evil presented not as polarised forces but as disturbingly shifting, overlapping and contradictory, the play provocatively unbalances convictions of truth, ethical codes, violence and justice. This edition also includes a preface with contributions from playwright Simon Stephens, German director Sebastian Nuebling and Estonian dramaturg Eero Epner, discussing this uniquely collaborative and tri-lingual project.

'One in four people in Germany today have a so-called migration background, however, the relationship between theatre and migration there has only recently begun to take centre stage. Indeed, fifty years after large-scale Turkish labour migration to the Federal Republic of Germany began, theatre by Turkish-German artists is only now becoming a consistent feature of Germany’s influential state-funded theatrical landscape. Drawing on extensive archival and field work, this book asks where, when, why, and how plays engaging with the new realities of “postmigrant” Germany have been performed over the past 30 years. Focusing on plays by renowned artists Emine Sevgi Özdamar, and Feridun Zaimoglu/Günter Senkel, it asks which new realities have been scripted in the theatrical sphere in the process – in the imaginations of playwrights, readers, audience members; in the enactment and direction of scripts on stage; and in the performance of new institutional approaches and cultural policies. Highlighting the role this theatre has played in a larger, ongoing re-scripting of the German stage, this study presents a critical perspective on contemporary European theatre and opens innovative developments in the conceptualization of theatre and post/migration from the German context to English language readers.

Since the moment after the fall of the Berlin Wall, important German theater artists have created plays and productions about unification. Some have challenged how German history is written, while others opposed the very act of storytelling. Performing Unification examines how directors, playwrights, and theater groups including Heiner Müller, Frank Castorf, and Rimini Protokoll have represented and misrepresented the past, confronting their nation’s history and collective identity. Matt Cornish surveys German-language history plays from the Baroque period through the documentary theater movement of the 1960s to show how German identity has always been contested, then turns to performances of unification after 1989. Cornish argues that theater, in its structures and its live gestures, on pages, stages, and streets, helps us to understand the past and its effect on us, our relationships with others in our communities, and our futures. Engaging with theater theory from Aristotle through Bertolt Brecht and Hans-Thies Lehmann’s “postdramatic” theater, and with theories of history from Hegel to Walter Benjamin and Hayden White, Performing Unification demonstrates that historiography and dramaturgy are intertwined.

Covering German-language theatre from the Middle Ages to the present day, this study demonstrates how and why theatre became so important in German-speaking countries. Written by leading international scholars of German theatre, chapters cover all aspects of theatrical performance, including acting, directing, play-writing, scenic design and theatre architecture. The book argues that theatre is more central to the artistic life of German-speaking countries than anywhere else in the world. Relating German-language theatre to its social and intellectual context, the History demonstrates how theatre has often been used as a political tool. It challenges the idea that German theatre was undeveloped in contrast to other European countries in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, provides a thematic survey of the crucial period of growth in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and discusses modern and contemporary German theatre by focusing in turn on the directors, playwrights, designers and theatre architecture.

Thomas Ostermeier is the most internationally recognised German theatre director of the present. With this book, he presents his directorial method for the first time. The Theatre of Thomas Ostermeier provides a toolkit for understanding and enacting the strategies of his advanced contemporary approach to staging dramatic texts. In addition, the book includes: Ostermeier’s seminal essays, lectures and manifestos translated into English for the first time. Over 140 photos from the archive of Arno Declair, who has documented Ostermeier’s work at the Schaubühne Berlin for many years, and by others. In-depth ‘casebook’ studies of two of his productions: Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (2012) and Shakespeare’s Richard III (2015) Contributions from Ostermeier’s actors and his closest collaborators to show how his principles are put into practice. An extraordinary, richly illustrated insight into Ostermeier’s working methods, this volume will be of interest to practitioners and scholars of contemporary European theatre alike.

This contemporary ethnographic study of German theatre brings anthropology into renewed dialogue with theatre and performance studies.