Erika Fischer-Lichte

The Show and the Gaze of Theatre a European Perspective

Theatre, in some respects, resembles a market. Stories, rituals, ideas, perceptive modes, conversations, rules, techniques, behavior patterns, actions, language, and objects constantly circulate back and forth between theatre and the other cultural institutions that make up everyday life in the twentieth century. These exchanges, which challenge the established concept of theatre in a way that demands to be understood, form the core of Erika Fischer-Lichtes dynamic book.Each eclectic essay investigates the boundaries that separate theatre from other cultural domains. Every encounter between theatre and other art forms and institutions renegotiates and redefines these boundaries as part of an ongoing process. Drawing on a wealth of fascinating examples, both historical and contemporary, Fischer-Lichte reveals new perspectives in theatre research from quite a number of different approaches. Energetically and excitingly, she theorizes history, theorizes and historicizes performance analysis, and historicizes theory.

Inszenierung und Theatralität

Der Begriff der Inszenierung scheint gegenwartig Hochkonjunktur zu haben. Seit den letzten funf bis zehn Jahren uberflutet eine Fulle von Publikationen den deutschen Buchmarkt, die den Terminus “Inszenierung” bzw. “Inszenieren” im Titel fuhren: Die Inszenierung der Alltagswelt (1977), Die inszenierte Volksgemeinschaft (1985), Inszenierte Ereignisse (1988), Inszenierung von Welt (1989), Inszenierungen des Ich (1990), Die Inszenierung des Sonnenkonigs (1992), Die Inszenierung des Scheins (1992), Kultur-Inszenierungen (1995), Inszenierung der Schrift (1996), Inszenierung von Geschichte (1996), Korper-Inszenierungen (1996). Auch der XXIV. Deutsche Kunsthistorikertag, der im Marz 1997 unter dem Titel “Die Inszenierung des Kunstwerks” stattfand, ist hier anzufuhren. Die Liste last sich noch erheblich erweitern.

Interweaving cultures in performance: theatre in a globalizing world

One of the most urgent issues facing theatre research today is the question of how theatre is affected by the rapid processes of globalization.

Sense and Sensation: Exploring the Interplay Between the Semiotic and Performative Dimensions of Theatre

The Semiotic and the Performative In the 1970s, when the so-called linguistic, or semiotic, turn took place in the humanities, it opened up new possibilities for theatre research. Up to then, its main self-understanding had been that of a historical discipline analogous to art history and the history of literature. But whereas these disciplines regarded the analysis and interpretation of works of art from past epochs as their main task, a comparable approach was not open to theatre studies. Performances of the past are no longer accessible; they are gone and lost forever. The ephemeral and transitory nature of performance, which the German playwright and theoretician Gotthold Ephraim Lessing referred to as early as the 18th century as theatre’s unique peculiarity, does not allow the analysis or interpretation of a past performance. It is possible to examine documents on a performance as well as the material traces left behind, such as the theatre building, stage sets, costumes, props, the text of a play, a score, reports or reviews on the performance, etc., but not the performance itself. On the other hand, a performance, which was accessible, i.e. contemporary theatre, was not considered a suitable object of research. For while the literary scholar or the art historian is able to take recourse to the object of his study whenever it is needed and become absorbed in its details, contemplating it as long as he feels necessary, the performance is not at the theatre scholar’s disposal in a comparable way. Because of its fleeting nature, any attempt to analyze it seems doomed to failure. Therefore, dealing with contemporary performances was left to theatre critics, while the scholar’s object of interest was taken from theatre history. By the 1970s, when theatre scholars began to question this distribution of labor and tried to develop methods of analyzing a performance despite its ephemeral nature, semiotics provided them with a set of tools. Semiotically speaking, a performance can be defined as a structured coherence of theatrical signs such as

The Transformative Aesthetics of the Gesamtkunstwerk/Total Work of Art as the Specter Haunting Modernism

In recent years, the concept of postmodernism and its related theories seem to have lost explanatory strength and value. Do we really live in a postmodern age? Or have we merely entered a new stage in the still ongoing process of modernization? Just as there is no agreement as to whether modernity began in Europe around 1500, with the emergence of secularism, rationalism, and capitalism, or whether its beginnings are to be dated much later, coinciding with processes of industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth century, there is also no consensus regarding its end. The situation becomes even more complicated when we shift our attention from Europe and the Western world to cultures in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where “multiple modernities” (Eisenstadt) coexist. Even if opinions still vary on the definition of modernity, there seems to be a shared view on

Reversing the hierarchy between text and performance

This paper deals with the reversal of the hierarchy between text and performance, which can be traced back to the turn of the 20th century. In particular, two possibilities of how to redefine the relationship between text and performance are explored and discussed. Both these possibilities have played a prominent role in German theatre since the 1970s and are modelled after distinct cultural paradigms, namely the paradigm of sacrificial ritual and the paradigm of play/game. The leading questions of the investigation are: what purpose does it serve to take recourse to these paradigms and how has it affected the performance as well as writing for the theatre?

Notes on the Contributors

The commentary will be written with Times New Roman font, and the examples will be written with 00ZRCola (with the appropriate font size). Indented (1 Tab) paragraphs format will be used, unless otherwise stated. Times New Roman, 11, 1 line spacing. Page setup: margins: top 2.5 cm, bottom 2.5 cm, left 2.5 cm, right 3 cm. Foot notes: Times New Roman, 9. References: TNR, 10. Address (work place): at the beginning of the article.

The Theatre Journal Auto / Archive: Erike Fischer-Lichte

As was the custom among the German educated middle classes, my first theatre experience was a performance of a so-called Christmas fairy tale in my hometown of Hamburg—a production, mounted especially for children and running from late November until the beginning of January, of one of the well-known fairy tales like Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, or Sleeping Beauty. This was a must for each and every municipal theatre. Thus it seems that there was nothing extraordinary about my first visit to a theatre performance. What was, indeed, quite extraordinary about it, however, was the fact that it took place in a city all in ruins, in one of those horribly severe postwar winters when people were starving and freezing—quite a few of them literally to death. And still, there were theatre, opera, ballet, and music hall performances. By the end of the war, most theatre buildings were destroyed and the companies dispersed. However, only shortly afterwards, in all the four sectors of occupied Germany—American, British, French, and Soviet—in the big cities, small towns, and even rural regions, everywhere actors, directors, and audiences would assemble in whatever places were available in order to let theatre happen. For, as the theatre critic Friedrich Luft stated in February 1946 in his Sunday radio column, “[t]heatre is necessary, most of all in times of misery.” In order to initiate the youngest into the German tradition of valuing theatre as one of the most important cultural factors, even Christmas shows for children were staged again.