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Rethinking the Politics of Theatre : Lessons from the History of Vienna's Burgtheater in the Nineteenth Century

University of British Columbia. Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies; University of British Columbia. Department of Theatre and Film

Since the second half of the twentieth century, the politics of theatre have often been understood to revolve around the extent to which individual productions challenge prevailing structures or normative frameworks. Yet theatres typically offer many different productions and whatever a theatre achieves must have to do not only with its individual productions, but also with the effect of the multitude of works to which it exposes its audience. Taking this plurality of productions seriously, I propose to look at the internal differentiation of the repertoire (or repertoire polyphony) as an alternative indicator of political relevance. Through the differences between the various plays on stage, alternatives become visible, and it becomes clear that there is room for debate – and, potentially, change. In my lecture, I further develop the idea of repertoire polyphony through a historical case study of the most prominent German-language stage of the nineteenth century, Vienna’s Burgtheater.

eng

2023-12-08

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/86854

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/