The Piscatorbühne Century: Politics and Aesthetics in the Modern Theater After 1927

The Piscatorbühne Century: Politics and Aesthetics in the Modern Theater After 1927
ISBN-10
1000479757
ISBN-13
9781000479751
Category
Performing Arts
Pages
296
Language
English
Published
2021-11-22
Publisher
Routledge
Author
Drew Lichtenberg

Description

This study of the Piscatorbühne season of 1927-8 uncovers a vital, previously neglected current of radical experiment in modern theater, a ghost in the machine of contemporary performance practices. A handful of theater seasons changed the course of 20th and 21st century theatre. But only the Piscatorbühne of 1927-8 went bankrupt in less than a year. This exploration tells the story of that collapse, how it predicted the wider collapse of the late Weimar Republic, and how it relates to our own era of political polarization and economic instability. As a wider examination of Piscator’s contributions to dramaturgical and aesthetic form, ‘The Piscatorbühne Century’ makes a powerful and timely case for the renewed significance of the broader epic theater tradition. Drawing on a rich archive of interwar materials, Drew Lichtenberg reconstructs this germinal nexus of theory and praxis for the modern theatre. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre, performance, art, and literature.

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