Anja Hartl | University of Innsbruck (original) (raw)

Book by Anja Hartl

The Threepenny Opera, 2022

One of Bertolt Brecht's best-loved and most performed plays, The Threepenny Opera was first stage... more One of Bertolt Brecht's best-loved and most performed plays, The Threepenny Opera was first staged in 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin (now the home of the Berliner Ensemble).

Based on the eighteenth-century The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, the play is a satire on the bourgeois society of the Weimar Republic, but set in a mock-Victorian Soho.

With Kurt Weill's music, which was one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce the jazz idiom into the theatre, it became a popular hit throughout the western world.

This new edition is published here in John Willett and Ralph Manhein's classic translation with commentary and notes by Anja Hartl.

Can theatre change the world? If so, how can it productively connect with social reality and fost... more Can theatre change the world? If so, how can it productively connect with social reality and foster spectatorial critique and engagement?

This book examines the forms and functions of political drama in what has been described as a post-Marxist, post-ideological, even post-political moment. It argues that Bertolt Brecht's concept of dialectical theatre represents a privileged theoretical and dramaturgical method on the contemporary British stage as well as a valuable lens for understanding 21st-century theatre in Britain.

Establishing a creative philosophical dialogue between Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno and Jacques Rancière, the study analyses seminal works by five influential contemporary playwrights, ranging from Mark Ravenhill's 'in-yer-face' plays to Caryl Churchill's 21st century theatrical experiments. Engaging critically with Brecht's theatrical legacy, these plays create a politically progressive form of drama which emphasises notions of negativity, ambivalence and conflict as a prerequisite for spectatorial engagement and emancipation.

This book adopts an interdisciplinary and intercultural theoretical approach, reuniting English and German perspectives and innovatively weaving together a variety of theoretical strands to offer fresh insights on Brecht's legacy, on British theatre history and on the selected plays.

Book Chapters and Journal Articles by Anja Hartl

Rethinking Infrastructure across the Humanities, 2023

Drawing on recent research in both infrastructure and queer studies, this article proposes to ret... more Drawing on recent research in both infrastructure and queer studies, this article proposes to rethink romantic love as a mental, social, and cultural infrastructure that has been built and rebuilt over centuries and that continues to shape the ways in which we conceptualise love, relate to each other romantically, and assess our own lives and those of others. This infrastructure of romance consists of abstract concepts and archetypal narratives which frame and determine how we intellectually conceptualise and emotionally experience love, and which shape the principles according to which we lead our lives. It has both material and immaterial aspects, as it is formed by and in turn forms conceptions and dramaturgies of love as distributed in various discourses, genres, and media. This sociocultural and mental infrastructure of romance works in conjunction with established infrastructures in film production, TV networks, literary publishing, and digital communication. The infrastructure of romance has been under construction for as long as it has existed, and is currently being updated for a number of reasons, including the trend of mathematical, algorithmic matchmaking 1 and forms of 'posthuman romance' between humans and machines as well as attention to the "logistical aesthetics" of desire in late capitalism. 2 This article will focus on a different ongoing

The Routledge Companion to Theatre-Fiction, 2023

Building on an intermedial understanding of theatre-fiction, this chapter explores the interface ... more Building on an intermedial understanding of theatre-fiction, this chapter explores the interface between theatre and the novel as an affectively charged encounter. Drawing on Wilkie Collins's theatre-novel No Name (1862), I show how the genre's medial hybridity enhances the circulation of affective energies both within the fictional world of the novel and in readers' experience of the text. Instrumentalizing Victorian discourses on (anti-)theatricality, Collins connects the protagonist's shameful illegitimacy to the shame attached to theatre as an embodied and affectively contagious artistic practice and thereby mobilizes shame as a critical affective tool. Simulating the effects of theatre in the medium of the novel, No Name turns reading into a performative practice that affectively implicates readers in the story. As a “drama narrated,” it demonstrates the potential of theatre-fiction as a means of performing, experiencing, and enacting the novel's critique of Victorian norms and laws.

Anglistik, 2023

Great books are adaptable; they alter with us as we alter in life, they renew themselves as we ch... more Great books are adaptable; they alter with us as we alter in life, they renew themselves as we change and re-read them at different times in our lives. You can't step into the same story twice-or maybe it's that stories, books, art can't step into the same person twice, maybe it's that they allow for our mutability, are ready for us at all times, and maybe it's this adaptability, regardless of time, that makes them art.

Shakespeare Bulletin, 2023

What' s the point of another Macbeth movie?" This question was raised by film critic Peter Bradsh... more What' s the point of another Macbeth movie?" This question was raised by film critic Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian in response to the premiere of Joel Coen's much-acclaimed new cinematic version of Macbeth at the 2021 New York Film Festival. Coen's film is, however, only one among an abundance of new adaptations of Shakespeare's Scottish play across different media in recent years. The popularity of Macbeth is often connected to the ostensible universality of its subject matter. For example, Christine Dössel, theater correspondent for the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, explains the omnipresence of Macbeth in the repertoire of many German theaters by arguing that the play's exploration of "the nature and mechanism of evil" ("die Natur und de[r] Mechanismus des Bösen") seems to fit into "any context" ("in jede Zeit;" my translations). To illustrate her point, Dössel goes so far as to compare the tragic hero to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, thereby underscoring the urgency with which many theaters have (re)turned to Macbeth in 2022. 1 A similar tendency towards emphasizing the universal significance of the play is also evident in recent stage productions in Britain, including Rufus Norris's 2018 Macbeth at London's National Theatre and Yaël Farber's 2021 version at the Almeida Theatre, which both opted for abstract and unspecific settings to create a "timeless and nationless" ("The Tragedy of Macbeth") atmosphere that arguably reflects the topicality ascribed to the play. While I do not want to contest the ongoing significance of Macbeth's key themes, it is, I believe, worth taking a closer look at the question of

Journal for the Study of British Cultures , 2022

Adaptation Before Cinema: Literary and Visual Convergence from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century, 2023

Positing an understanding of history as an adaptational practice, this article reconsiders the fo... more Positing an understanding of history as an adaptational practice, this article reconsiders the forms and functions of historical writings in the pre-cinematic period. Drawing on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606), which is conventionally categorised as tragedy rather than history play, it examines the drama’s adaptational approach to history and biography. Inspired by Douglas Lanier’s concept of rhizomatic adaptation, the article investigates the complex network of stories at the heart of Shakespeare’s play. Shakespeare’s idiosyncratic version of the story of MacBeth, which collapses distinctions between fact and fiction and history and reality to critically comment on the events of Shakespeare’s time, and the play’s reception over the centuries show how intricately history and adaptation are intertwined in this drama. Macbeth offers a compelling example of pre-cinematic adaptation that prefigures significant contemporary trends in the field of adaptation studies and that testifies to the power of adaptation to shift our understanding of the past as well as our relation to history.

European Journal of English Studies, 2022

This article introduces texture as a key category of material analysis in Victorian literature an... more This article introduces texture as a key category of material analysis in Victorian literature and culture. Challenging distinctions between inside and outside structures, texture offers not only a complex, multi-layered understanding of material surfaces but also provides aesthetic and interpretive tools for rendering and analysing matter in literary and cultural representations. Drawing on Wilkie Collins's No Name, this article argues that the novel presents the protagonist's illegitimacy as a material condition by foregrounding the textural qualities of her bodily surface. Textural principles serve as a central technique of characterisation in No Name and are a crucial device through which the characters shape themselves and assess each other. As a means of interrogating Victorian laws and norms, the novel uses textures to show how normative conceptions of (il)legitimacy inform the characters' and the narrator's perception of (bodily) matter. The article shows how the novel's textural construction of bodily materiality undermines comfortable distinctions between inside and outside, subject and object, as well as legitimate and illegitimate.

Shakespeare Seminar Online, 2019

Scottish playwright David Greig's Dunsinane (2010) emerged in a moment of radical transition. The... more Scottish playwright David Greig's Dunsinane (2010) emerged in a moment of radical transition. The play's premiere in 2010 coincided with profound shifts not only globally, especially with regard to Britain's increasing military involvement in conflict zones around the world, but also within the United Kingdom itself, as Anglo-Scottish relations had become increasingly contested since devolution in 1997 and in the run-up to the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014. Preoccupied with these internal conflicts between England and Scotland as well as with broader questions of international warfare, invasion and occupation, Dunsinane has remained a prescient and acutely relevant play, in particular in the wake of Britain's decision to leave the European Union in 2016. Reimagining the reign of Macbeth and his wife Gruoch in Scotland in the 11 th century, Greig envisions the violent struggle for the Scottish throne in the aftermath of the murder of the king and stages the English army's attempts to re-establish order by restoring the supposedly legitimate heir Malcolm to the throne. The play thus refracts contemporary developments through this historical lens by bringing the deep transformations of the past into conversation with the present. Crucially, Dunsinane responds to these events by drawing on William Shakespeare's dramatisation of the story in Macbeth (1606). Through this appropriation, Dunsinane establishes a complex dialogue between different texts and contexts, bridging the gap from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance to the new millennium. What these disparate historical moments share is that they all mark instances of substantial political and social change in the formation of the English, Scottish and British nations. Critically engaging with Shakespeare's legacy, Dunsinane offers urgent reflections not only on pressing national and global concerns, but also on the crucial role of the literary and cultural imaginary for constructing and renegotiating concepts of history, identity and nationhood in times of transformation.

After In-Yer-Face Theatre: Remnants of a Theatrical Revolution, ed. Bill Boles, 2020

Bertolt Brecht – zwischen Tradition und Moderne: Studien zu seinem Werk und dessen Rezeption. Ed. Jürgen Hillesheim. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann., 2018

The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht Jahrbuch 42, 2018

This article explores Brecht’s legacy in twenty-first century British drama in the light of the p... more This article explores Brecht’s legacy in twenty-first century British drama in the light of the profound political, philosophical and economic transformations which have challenged the foundations of political theater in general and of Brechtian Epic Theater in particular over the past decades. Based on David Barnett’s understanding of “post-Brechtian aesthetics,” the essay foregrounds the question of how contemporary British playwrights critically engage with Brecht’s theory and practice against the background of postmodernism, globalization and neoliberalism to make it fruitful for their own approach to political theater. Characteristically, post-Brechtian theater replaces the optimism inherent in Brecht’s dialectical model with a radical ambivalence. This is especially reflected in a revaluing of the emotional as opposed to the rational and analytical dimension of spectatorial reception, resulting in a tension between identification and immersion on the one hand and critical distance on the other, as the analysis of David Greig’s The Events exemplifies. As a post-Brechtian Lehrstück, The Events employs central mechanisms of the Lehrstücke, above all regarding the participation of the audience, as a means of creating a dynamic tension between emotion and reason on the part of the spectators, which invites critical reflection on complex political and ethical issues.

Book Reviews by Anja Hartl

Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2019

Studies in Theatre and Performance, 2018

Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2018

In her compelling study, Lara Stevens combines two key strands of discussion in contemporary dram... more In her compelling study, Lara Stevens combines two key strands of discussion in contemporary drama which have received increasing attention in theatre criticism lately: the question of how theatre and performance engage with and protest against the 'War on Terror' on the one hand and the relevance of Brechtian epic theatre for twenty-first-century political theatre on the other. Interested in particular in "how contemporary anti-war plays work to influence spectator responses to the violence of war after the terrorist attacks of 9/11" (1) and with a considerable personal investment in the topic, aiming "to understand how deeply I [as a Western subject from an allied nation] was implicated in these conflicts" (1), Stevens examines the role of theatre as a locus of resistance where alternative spaces and perspectives can be created "outside the normative and highly controlled frames of the mainstream media" (2). Integral to the book's investigations and to its understanding of political theatre is Bertolt Brecht, whose model of epic theatre is fruitfully brought into dialogue with the political and philosophical conditions of a post-Marxist, globalised and postmodern world in order to shed light on theas Stevens convincingly arguessignificant value of Brecht's ideas for the contemporary stage.

Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2016

Ever since Judith Butler's seminal writings, Queer Studies have heavily relied on theatrical lang... more Ever since Judith Butler's seminal writings, Queer Studies have heavily relied on theatrical language in their description of gender and sex to reveal the performative, and therefore contingent, character of these seemingly dichotomous categories. It is precisely this affinity between the deconstructive project of Queer Studies and the characteristics of the theatre that is explored in Franziska Bergmann's insightful study Die Möglichkeit, dass alles auch ganz anders sein könnte (The Possibility That Everything Could Be Entirely Different). Indeed, with reference to Michel Foucault's notion of heterotopia and in line with Christina Wald's reassertion of "theatrical performance's particular capacity to stage and negotiate questions of (gender) performativity" (17), the book seeks to apply the Brechtian concept of alienation in order to show how contemporary theatrical texts challenge conventional patterns of gender, sex and desire. While the significance of Brecht's alienation, which aims to encourage "an attitude of inquiry and criticism" (Brecht 184) in the audience by de-familiarising ordinary incidents, has long been acknowledged by feminist theatre practice (see for example Elin Diamond's call for a gestic feminist criticism in her influential essay "Brechtian Theory / Feminist Theory: Toward a Gestic Feminist Criticism"), Bergmann extends the category to include so-called queer alienation effects. As Chapter 1 examines, this concept of queer alienation reflects the inherent critical potential of queerness as such.

Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2017

Investigating the burgeoning field of contemporary theatre and performance, both Andy Lavender's ... more Investigating the burgeoning field of contemporary theatre and performance, both Andy Lavender's monograph Performance in the Twenty-First Century: Theatres of Engagement and Florian Malzacher's anthology Not Just a Mirror: Looking for the Political Theatre of Today examine the role theatre and performance play in the social, cultural, philosophical, economic, and political context of the twenty-first century, positing, with different emphases, an intricate relationship between the arts and society. Going beyond postmodernist assumptions of relativism and detachment, both contributions represent timely interventions as they explicitly re-engage with questions of meaning, politics, and commitment in the context of recent developments in theatre and performance studies. While Malzacher's contribution focusses specifically on political theatre, Lavender chooses a more expansive approach that also takes into account the relevance of performance theory for an analysis of contemporary culture. Thus, Lavender is interested in performance as a wider cultural phenomenon, asserting that "[t]he society of the spectacle became a multi-theatred communications zone" (195). Central to his argument, as the introduction and chapter 1 in part I, "Scenes of Engagement," cogently argue, is the assertion that society and performance have, in a new social commitment, taken a step beyond postmodernism into a new "age of engagement" (21). This turn towards engagement, which Lavender understands as both an investment in political processesan aspect which, however, remains largely unexplored in the bookand as an emphasis on personal experience and individual involvement, has been facilitated by the increasing availability of digital technologies, which have "extended the relativizing work of postmodernism, but also helped us to rediscover our voices and values, and our singular selves" (17). In this considerably transformed social and cultural context, theatre "has become more than itself, a compound of media" and has developed into "something other than an encounter between actors, or JCDE 2017; 5(2): 385-391

Performance Reviews by Anja Hartl

ecibs: Communications of the International Brecht Society, 2020

The Threepenny Opera, 2022

One of Bertolt Brecht's best-loved and most performed plays, The Threepenny Opera was first stage... more One of Bertolt Brecht's best-loved and most performed plays, The Threepenny Opera was first staged in 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin (now the home of the Berliner Ensemble).

Based on the eighteenth-century The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, the play is a satire on the bourgeois society of the Weimar Republic, but set in a mock-Victorian Soho.

With Kurt Weill's music, which was one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce the jazz idiom into the theatre, it became a popular hit throughout the western world.

This new edition is published here in John Willett and Ralph Manhein's classic translation with commentary and notes by Anja Hartl.

Can theatre change the world? If so, how can it productively connect with social reality and fost... more Can theatre change the world? If so, how can it productively connect with social reality and foster spectatorial critique and engagement?

This book examines the forms and functions of political drama in what has been described as a post-Marxist, post-ideological, even post-political moment. It argues that Bertolt Brecht's concept of dialectical theatre represents a privileged theoretical and dramaturgical method on the contemporary British stage as well as a valuable lens for understanding 21st-century theatre in Britain.

Establishing a creative philosophical dialogue between Brecht, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno and Jacques Rancière, the study analyses seminal works by five influential contemporary playwrights, ranging from Mark Ravenhill's 'in-yer-face' plays to Caryl Churchill's 21st century theatrical experiments. Engaging critically with Brecht's theatrical legacy, these plays create a politically progressive form of drama which emphasises notions of negativity, ambivalence and conflict as a prerequisite for spectatorial engagement and emancipation.

This book adopts an interdisciplinary and intercultural theoretical approach, reuniting English and German perspectives and innovatively weaving together a variety of theoretical strands to offer fresh insights on Brecht's legacy, on British theatre history and on the selected plays.

Rethinking Infrastructure across the Humanities, 2023

Drawing on recent research in both infrastructure and queer studies, this article proposes to ret... more Drawing on recent research in both infrastructure and queer studies, this article proposes to rethink romantic love as a mental, social, and cultural infrastructure that has been built and rebuilt over centuries and that continues to shape the ways in which we conceptualise love, relate to each other romantically, and assess our own lives and those of others. This infrastructure of romance consists of abstract concepts and archetypal narratives which frame and determine how we intellectually conceptualise and emotionally experience love, and which shape the principles according to which we lead our lives. It has both material and immaterial aspects, as it is formed by and in turn forms conceptions and dramaturgies of love as distributed in various discourses, genres, and media. This sociocultural and mental infrastructure of romance works in conjunction with established infrastructures in film production, TV networks, literary publishing, and digital communication. The infrastructure of romance has been under construction for as long as it has existed, and is currently being updated for a number of reasons, including the trend of mathematical, algorithmic matchmaking 1 and forms of 'posthuman romance' between humans and machines as well as attention to the "logistical aesthetics" of desire in late capitalism. 2 This article will focus on a different ongoing

The Routledge Companion to Theatre-Fiction, 2023

Building on an intermedial understanding of theatre-fiction, this chapter explores the interface ... more Building on an intermedial understanding of theatre-fiction, this chapter explores the interface between theatre and the novel as an affectively charged encounter. Drawing on Wilkie Collins's theatre-novel No Name (1862), I show how the genre's medial hybridity enhances the circulation of affective energies both within the fictional world of the novel and in readers' experience of the text. Instrumentalizing Victorian discourses on (anti-)theatricality, Collins connects the protagonist's shameful illegitimacy to the shame attached to theatre as an embodied and affectively contagious artistic practice and thereby mobilizes shame as a critical affective tool. Simulating the effects of theatre in the medium of the novel, No Name turns reading into a performative practice that affectively implicates readers in the story. As a “drama narrated,” it demonstrates the potential of theatre-fiction as a means of performing, experiencing, and enacting the novel's critique of Victorian norms and laws.

Anglistik, 2023

Great books are adaptable; they alter with us as we alter in life, they renew themselves as we ch... more Great books are adaptable; they alter with us as we alter in life, they renew themselves as we change and re-read them at different times in our lives. You can't step into the same story twice-or maybe it's that stories, books, art can't step into the same person twice, maybe it's that they allow for our mutability, are ready for us at all times, and maybe it's this adaptability, regardless of time, that makes them art.

Shakespeare Bulletin, 2023

What' s the point of another Macbeth movie?" This question was raised by film critic Peter Bradsh... more What' s the point of another Macbeth movie?" This question was raised by film critic Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian in response to the premiere of Joel Coen's much-acclaimed new cinematic version of Macbeth at the 2021 New York Film Festival. Coen's film is, however, only one among an abundance of new adaptations of Shakespeare's Scottish play across different media in recent years. The popularity of Macbeth is often connected to the ostensible universality of its subject matter. For example, Christine Dössel, theater correspondent for the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, explains the omnipresence of Macbeth in the repertoire of many German theaters by arguing that the play's exploration of "the nature and mechanism of evil" ("die Natur und de[r] Mechanismus des Bösen") seems to fit into "any context" ("in jede Zeit;" my translations). To illustrate her point, Dössel goes so far as to compare the tragic hero to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, thereby underscoring the urgency with which many theaters have (re)turned to Macbeth in 2022. 1 A similar tendency towards emphasizing the universal significance of the play is also evident in recent stage productions in Britain, including Rufus Norris's 2018 Macbeth at London's National Theatre and Yaël Farber's 2021 version at the Almeida Theatre, which both opted for abstract and unspecific settings to create a "timeless and nationless" ("The Tragedy of Macbeth") atmosphere that arguably reflects the topicality ascribed to the play. While I do not want to contest the ongoing significance of Macbeth's key themes, it is, I believe, worth taking a closer look at the question of

Journal for the Study of British Cultures , 2022

Adaptation Before Cinema: Literary and Visual Convergence from Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century, 2023

Positing an understanding of history as an adaptational practice, this article reconsiders the fo... more Positing an understanding of history as an adaptational practice, this article reconsiders the forms and functions of historical writings in the pre-cinematic period. Drawing on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606), which is conventionally categorised as tragedy rather than history play, it examines the drama’s adaptational approach to history and biography. Inspired by Douglas Lanier’s concept of rhizomatic adaptation, the article investigates the complex network of stories at the heart of Shakespeare’s play. Shakespeare’s idiosyncratic version of the story of MacBeth, which collapses distinctions between fact and fiction and history and reality to critically comment on the events of Shakespeare’s time, and the play’s reception over the centuries show how intricately history and adaptation are intertwined in this drama. Macbeth offers a compelling example of pre-cinematic adaptation that prefigures significant contemporary trends in the field of adaptation studies and that testifies to the power of adaptation to shift our understanding of the past as well as our relation to history.

European Journal of English Studies, 2022

This article introduces texture as a key category of material analysis in Victorian literature an... more This article introduces texture as a key category of material analysis in Victorian literature and culture. Challenging distinctions between inside and outside structures, texture offers not only a complex, multi-layered understanding of material surfaces but also provides aesthetic and interpretive tools for rendering and analysing matter in literary and cultural representations. Drawing on Wilkie Collins's No Name, this article argues that the novel presents the protagonist's illegitimacy as a material condition by foregrounding the textural qualities of her bodily surface. Textural principles serve as a central technique of characterisation in No Name and are a crucial device through which the characters shape themselves and assess each other. As a means of interrogating Victorian laws and norms, the novel uses textures to show how normative conceptions of (il)legitimacy inform the characters' and the narrator's perception of (bodily) matter. The article shows how the novel's textural construction of bodily materiality undermines comfortable distinctions between inside and outside, subject and object, as well as legitimate and illegitimate.

Shakespeare Seminar Online, 2019

Scottish playwright David Greig's Dunsinane (2010) emerged in a moment of radical transition. The... more Scottish playwright David Greig's Dunsinane (2010) emerged in a moment of radical transition. The play's premiere in 2010 coincided with profound shifts not only globally, especially with regard to Britain's increasing military involvement in conflict zones around the world, but also within the United Kingdom itself, as Anglo-Scottish relations had become increasingly contested since devolution in 1997 and in the run-up to the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014. Preoccupied with these internal conflicts between England and Scotland as well as with broader questions of international warfare, invasion and occupation, Dunsinane has remained a prescient and acutely relevant play, in particular in the wake of Britain's decision to leave the European Union in 2016. Reimagining the reign of Macbeth and his wife Gruoch in Scotland in the 11 th century, Greig envisions the violent struggle for the Scottish throne in the aftermath of the murder of the king and stages the English army's attempts to re-establish order by restoring the supposedly legitimate heir Malcolm to the throne. The play thus refracts contemporary developments through this historical lens by bringing the deep transformations of the past into conversation with the present. Crucially, Dunsinane responds to these events by drawing on William Shakespeare's dramatisation of the story in Macbeth (1606). Through this appropriation, Dunsinane establishes a complex dialogue between different texts and contexts, bridging the gap from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance to the new millennium. What these disparate historical moments share is that they all mark instances of substantial political and social change in the formation of the English, Scottish and British nations. Critically engaging with Shakespeare's legacy, Dunsinane offers urgent reflections not only on pressing national and global concerns, but also on the crucial role of the literary and cultural imaginary for constructing and renegotiating concepts of history, identity and nationhood in times of transformation.

After In-Yer-Face Theatre: Remnants of a Theatrical Revolution, ed. Bill Boles, 2020

Bertolt Brecht – zwischen Tradition und Moderne: Studien zu seinem Werk und dessen Rezeption. Ed. Jürgen Hillesheim. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann., 2018

The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht Jahrbuch 42, 2018

This article explores Brecht’s legacy in twenty-first century British drama in the light of the p... more This article explores Brecht’s legacy in twenty-first century British drama in the light of the profound political, philosophical and economic transformations which have challenged the foundations of political theater in general and of Brechtian Epic Theater in particular over the past decades. Based on David Barnett’s understanding of “post-Brechtian aesthetics,” the essay foregrounds the question of how contemporary British playwrights critically engage with Brecht’s theory and practice against the background of postmodernism, globalization and neoliberalism to make it fruitful for their own approach to political theater. Characteristically, post-Brechtian theater replaces the optimism inherent in Brecht’s dialectical model with a radical ambivalence. This is especially reflected in a revaluing of the emotional as opposed to the rational and analytical dimension of spectatorial reception, resulting in a tension between identification and immersion on the one hand and critical distance on the other, as the analysis of David Greig’s The Events exemplifies. As a post-Brechtian Lehrstück, The Events employs central mechanisms of the Lehrstücke, above all regarding the participation of the audience, as a means of creating a dynamic tension between emotion and reason on the part of the spectators, which invites critical reflection on complex political and ethical issues.

Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2019

Studies in Theatre and Performance, 2018

Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2018

In her compelling study, Lara Stevens combines two key strands of discussion in contemporary dram... more In her compelling study, Lara Stevens combines two key strands of discussion in contemporary drama which have received increasing attention in theatre criticism lately: the question of how theatre and performance engage with and protest against the 'War on Terror' on the one hand and the relevance of Brechtian epic theatre for twenty-first-century political theatre on the other. Interested in particular in "how contemporary anti-war plays work to influence spectator responses to the violence of war after the terrorist attacks of 9/11" (1) and with a considerable personal investment in the topic, aiming "to understand how deeply I [as a Western subject from an allied nation] was implicated in these conflicts" (1), Stevens examines the role of theatre as a locus of resistance where alternative spaces and perspectives can be created "outside the normative and highly controlled frames of the mainstream media" (2). Integral to the book's investigations and to its understanding of political theatre is Bertolt Brecht, whose model of epic theatre is fruitfully brought into dialogue with the political and philosophical conditions of a post-Marxist, globalised and postmodern world in order to shed light on theas Stevens convincingly arguessignificant value of Brecht's ideas for the contemporary stage.

Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2016

Ever since Judith Butler's seminal writings, Queer Studies have heavily relied on theatrical lang... more Ever since Judith Butler's seminal writings, Queer Studies have heavily relied on theatrical language in their description of gender and sex to reveal the performative, and therefore contingent, character of these seemingly dichotomous categories. It is precisely this affinity between the deconstructive project of Queer Studies and the characteristics of the theatre that is explored in Franziska Bergmann's insightful study Die Möglichkeit, dass alles auch ganz anders sein könnte (The Possibility That Everything Could Be Entirely Different). Indeed, with reference to Michel Foucault's notion of heterotopia and in line with Christina Wald's reassertion of "theatrical performance's particular capacity to stage and negotiate questions of (gender) performativity" (17), the book seeks to apply the Brechtian concept of alienation in order to show how contemporary theatrical texts challenge conventional patterns of gender, sex and desire. While the significance of Brecht's alienation, which aims to encourage "an attitude of inquiry and criticism" (Brecht 184) in the audience by de-familiarising ordinary incidents, has long been acknowledged by feminist theatre practice (see for example Elin Diamond's call for a gestic feminist criticism in her influential essay "Brechtian Theory / Feminist Theory: Toward a Gestic Feminist Criticism"), Bergmann extends the category to include so-called queer alienation effects. As Chapter 1 examines, this concept of queer alienation reflects the inherent critical potential of queerness as such.

Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 2017

Investigating the burgeoning field of contemporary theatre and performance, both Andy Lavender's ... more Investigating the burgeoning field of contemporary theatre and performance, both Andy Lavender's monograph Performance in the Twenty-First Century: Theatres of Engagement and Florian Malzacher's anthology Not Just a Mirror: Looking for the Political Theatre of Today examine the role theatre and performance play in the social, cultural, philosophical, economic, and political context of the twenty-first century, positing, with different emphases, an intricate relationship between the arts and society. Going beyond postmodernist assumptions of relativism and detachment, both contributions represent timely interventions as they explicitly re-engage with questions of meaning, politics, and commitment in the context of recent developments in theatre and performance studies. While Malzacher's contribution focusses specifically on political theatre, Lavender chooses a more expansive approach that also takes into account the relevance of performance theory for an analysis of contemporary culture. Thus, Lavender is interested in performance as a wider cultural phenomenon, asserting that "[t]he society of the spectacle became a multi-theatred communications zone" (195). Central to his argument, as the introduction and chapter 1 in part I, "Scenes of Engagement," cogently argue, is the assertion that society and performance have, in a new social commitment, taken a step beyond postmodernism into a new "age of engagement" (21). This turn towards engagement, which Lavender understands as both an investment in political processesan aspect which, however, remains largely unexplored in the bookand as an emphasis on personal experience and individual involvement, has been facilitated by the increasing availability of digital technologies, which have "extended the relativizing work of postmodernism, but also helped us to rediscover our voices and values, and our singular selves" (17). In this considerably transformed social and cultural context, theatre "has become more than itself, a compound of media" and has developed into "something other than an encounter between actors, or JCDE 2017; 5(2): 385-391

Charles University, Prague, 7 November 2019

Brecht: Contradiction as a Method, Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU), 8-10 November 2019

Shakespeare-Seminar, Frühjahrstagung der Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, Weimar, 2019

Baustelle Brecht / Working with Brecht, Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus in Zusammenarbeit mit der International Brecht Society, Berlin, 2017

Postgraduate Colloquium, University of Reading, 2017

Postgraduate Symposium, University of Birmingham, 2017

Recycling Brecht: 15th Symposium of the International Brecht Society, University of Oxford, 2016