How do political theater and performance practices encounter the challenges of growing authoritarianism and an increasing number of attacks from right-wing populist organizations? Focusing on the performing arts, the project explores different approaches to strategically and affectively respond to populist shifts in the public sphere. The project pays particular attention to the material and affective resources of performance collectives as well as other constellations of theater and performance-makers. The project aims to examine how the pressure, stemming from populist and/or new-right approaches to cultural policy, affects the styles of collective intervention, on the one hand, and the perception of economic, affective, and temporal infrastructures by those engaged in activist theater practice on the other.

SP 1 analyzes the forms and stylistic transformation of theatrical counter-interventions in Berlin and in the new eastern states of Germany: To what extent can the various institutional forms of theater sustain an activist practice in the sense of counterpublics? Can performative interventions counter populist attempts at delegitimization? The project aims to examine the transformations of political theatre in this context.

SP 2 explores theater groups’ and collectives’ experiences of urgency as they face authoritarian power structures and repressive forms of government in the USA. The project examines which affordances exist in the infrastructures and aesthetics of such collective theater and performance practices as well as to what extent they enable a response to heightened time pressure and an increasing sense of urgency in changing public spheres.

Head of Project

Prof. Dr. Matthias Warstat (SP 1)

Postdoctoral Researcher

Naomi Boyce (SP 2)

Student Assistant

Jannika Hinz