Erika Fischer-Lichte

"This innovative study of 20th century performative culture boldly examines the complexities of political theatre, propaganda and manipulation of the masses, and offers a revolutionary approach to the study of theatre and performance history. In offering both a performative and a semiotic analysis of such performances, Fischer-Lichte expertly demonstrates how theatre and ritual are fused in order to tackle the problem of community-building in societies characterized by loss of solidarity and disintegration, and exposes the provocative connection between the utopian visions of community they suggest, and the notion of sacrifice."--Jacket.

This major study reconstructs the vast history of European Drama from Greek tragedy through to 20th century theatre, focusing on the subject of identity. Throughout history, drama has performed and represented political, religious, national, ethnic, class-related, gendered, and individual concepts of identity. Erika Fischer-Lichte's topics include: ancient Greek theatre Shakespeare and Elizabethan theatre the classicaal age of French theatre, Corneille, Racine and Moliere the Italian commedia dell'arte and its transformations into 18th century drama the German Enlightenment - Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, and Lenz Romanticism by Kleist, Byron, Shelley, Hugo, de Vigny, Musset, Buchner, and Nestroy the turn of the century - Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Stanislavski the 20th century - Craig, Meyerhold, Artaud, O'Neill, Pirandello, Brecht, Beckett, Muller.

This volume sets out a novel approach to theatre historiography, presenting the history of performances of Greek tragedies in Germany since 1800 as the history of the evolving cultural identity of the educated middle class throughout that period. Philhellenism and theatromania took hold in this milieu amidst attempts to banish the heavily French-influenced German court culture of the mid-eighteenth century, and by 1800 their fusion in performances of Greek tragedies served as the German answer to the French Revolution.

"From its very beginnings, theatre has been both an art and a public space, shared by actors and spectators. As a result, its entity and history is intimately tied to politics: a politics of inclusion and exclusion, of distributions and placements, of spatial appropriation and utopian concepts. This collection examines what is at stake when a theatrical space is created and when a performance takes place; it asks under what circumstances the topology of theatre becomes political. The book approaches this issue from various angles, taking theatre as a cultural paradigm for political dimensions of space in its respective historical context. Visiting the political dimensions of theatrical space in both theatre history and contemporary performance, the volume responds to the so-called spatial turn in cultural and historical studies, and questions a politics of aesthetics that is discussed in continental philosophy. The book visits different levels and linkages between aesthetic theory and geography, art and sociology, architecture and political theory, and geometry and history, shedding new light on theatre, politics, and space, thereby transforming this historically intertwined triad into a transdisciplinary theme"--

With an introduction by Marvin Carlson, this translation addresses the key issues in performance art, experimental theatre and cultural performances to lay the ground for a new appreciation of the artistic event.