Symposium
Performing Community in the Digital Age
In the German speaking countries today, theater and performance continue to challenge theatrical conventions which valorize the spectator’s passive attitude toward the stage. While the so-called postdramatic genre emphasizes the co-production of meaning by its audience, the popularity of collaborations of acclaimed theater groups with lay actors, street improvisations, and productions in which the audience intervenes in the performance further contribute to a highly interactive theatrical landscape.
The goal of our symposium is to examine how we can assess the current interest in audience participation, focusing in particular on the role different performance genres play as tools for building communities. In the face of a widespread critique of contemporary theater's inability to make a meaningful intervention in life, participatory performances invite us to rethink the parameters for critical engagement. At the center of our investigation lie questions about the conditions under which such an engagement intersects with or evolves into social and political commitment and how this commitment shapes the (self-) understanding of local, national and international communities.
David Barnett, Head of Drama, University of Sussex, UK
Nurkan Erpulat, Director, Ballhaus Naunynstraße / Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus
Sonja Kuftinec, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, University of Minnesota
Katrin Sieg, Professor of German, Georgetown University
In the German speaking countries today, theater and performance continue to challenge theatrical conventions which valorize the spectator’s passive attitude toward the stage. While the so-called postdramatic genre emphasizes the co-production of meaning by its audience, the popularity of collaborations of acclaimed theater groups with lay actors, street improvisations, and productions in which the audience intervenes in the performance further contribute to a highly interactive theatrical landscape.
The goal of our symposium is to examine how we can assess the current interest in audience participation, focusing in particular on the role different performance genres play as tools for building communities. In the face of a widespread critique of contemporary theater's inability to make a meaningful intervention in life, participatory performances invite us to rethink the parameters for critical engagement. At the center of our investigation lie questions about the conditions under which such an engagement intersects with or evolves into social and political commitment and how this commitment shapes the (self-) understanding of local, national and international communities.
10:30 Welcome
10:45 Sonja Kuftinec
Between-the-Lines: Staging "the Balkans" via Berlin
11:45 David Barnett
Sampling the Stasi with a GPS Device: Rimini Protokoll's 50 Aktenkilometer
12:45 Lunch
2:30 Nurkan Erpulat
Theater als Aufklärung: Eine alte Idee
3:30 Katrin Sieg
Digitizing Race at the Eurovision Song Contest
4:30 Reception
This conference is organized by Brechtje Beuker, UCLA Department of Germanic Languages, and cosponsored by the UCLA Center for Performance Studies, with support from the Division of the Humanities
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