The Piscatorbühne Century: Politics and Aesthetics in the Modern Theater After 1927 (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)

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. This study of the Piscatorbühne season of 1927–1928 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 theater. But only the Piscatorbühne of 1927–1928 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 theater. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theater, performance, art, and literature. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of figures and tables 10 Acknowledgments 12 Preface 14 Introduction 18 Survey of existing literature 22 Scope of this study 23 1 The founding and principles of the Piscatorbühne 28 The height of Weimar ambition 28 Piscator, 1893–1919: the roots of the Piscatorbühne 30 Piscatorbühne 1927–1928: the finances, the shows, the critics 32 Introduction to Piscator’s conception of the stage 34 The dramaturgical collective and Piscator’s conception of ensemble 41 Bourgeois or Proletarian? 45 2 Piscator in context 52 Piscator and the classics 53 Piscator, Regietheater and Totaltheater: Wagner, Reinhardt, Jessner 61 Piscator and modernism: Naturalism, Expressionism 73 Piscator and Berlin Dada 80 Piscator and agitprop: The Proletarian Theater 86 Piscator and popular aesthetics: the Weimar revue 89 Piscator and the Volksbühne 92 3 Piscatorbühne 1927–1928 108 Hoppla, We’re Alive! 111 Introduction 111 Piscator’s development of the play 113 The Piscatorbühne staging 116 Conclusion 120 Rasputin, the Romanovs, the War, and the People Who Rose Up Against Them 124 Introduction 124 Piscator’s development of the play 126 The Piscatorbühne staging 128 Conclusion 131 The Adventures of the Good Soldier Schwejk 136 Introduction 136 Hašek’s book 139 The Piscatorbühne script 141 The Piscatorbühne staging 146 Conclusion 148 Boom/Bust 153 Introduction 153 Piscator’s development of the script 155 The Piscatorbühne staging 158 Conclusion 159 4 Brecht and Piscator: dialectical affinities 172 1928–1931: A certain gap opens up 174 1931–1938: Responses to Soviet and American realism 181 1939–1951: The dramatic workshop and the Schwejk affair 189 1949–1966: The Berliner Ensemble and the Freie Volksbühne 198 5 The Piscator lines of the modern theater 231 Epilogue I: the American avant-garde 233 The Living Theatre 233 The Open Theatre, the presence of the actor, and the international style 243 The Wooster Group 245 Epilogue II: German theater after unification 254 Frank Castorf and the radical tradition 254 Piscator and the postdramatic: post-millennial intermedial strategies 269 Index 290 "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"-- Provided by publisher This study of the Piscatorbühne season of 1927–1928 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 1927–1928 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. This study of the Piscatorbuhne 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.