Political theatre

This article develops an analysis of the play Los Millonarios
2015 by Chilean company La María. Written by Alexis Moreno
and premiered in 2015 in Santiago, the play tells the story of a
group of lawyers, wealthy, racists and partners of a very important
and powerful law firm, who decided to defend a Mapuche
citizen accused of killing a couple of agricultural entrepreneurs
in the Wallmapu zone. The analysis focuses mainly on the dramatic
material, with particular interest in exploring the dramaturgical
operations used by Alexis Moreno to endow the oligarch
characters of an abject nature and the use of archive material as
a mechanism to historicize the fiction. Throughout the citizenry’s
demands for deep reforms to the neoliberal model and the current
constituent process derived from them, Chilean elite (understood
as a minority group with a high economic, political and
cultural capital) has been targeted and questioned regarding its
role as author and gatekeeper of this model. Within this context,
this article places Los millonarios as a case study of the last decade’s
theatre repertoire which, aligned with the social mobilization
processes, aims to shed a light and disarticulate the different
dimensions in which these elites operate, with the ultimate goal
of provoking in the audience a discussion about the elitist nature
of the foundations on which national identity is built on.

Naomi Wallace’s One Flea Spare (1995) was inspired by Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year and the LA riots that followed the acquittal of four policemen after they had beaten Rodney King. To her, these events became linked, because spatial barriers broke down, obliging the rich and poor to share a common space. The play is set in 17th-century London at a time when the city is ravaged by the plague. Four characters are quarantined together against their will, which leads to extraordinary situations. Several critics have noted that the plague can be seen as a leveller but I would actually like to qualify this idea, in that the disease mainly kills the poor in the play and the power shift it portrays seems to be temporary at best. At the same time, I want to explore the text’s hidden layers of radicalism, which it could be argued are a by-product of catastrophe.

There were numerous factors that gave rise to the emergence of western theatre in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century. Among these, the contribution of non-Muslim minorities, especially that of the Armenians, is particularly noteworthy as they were the ones who publicly performed western plays both in Armenian and Ottoman
Turkish. Though the theatre critics of the early Republican era acknowledged their contribution, they also showed nationalistic sensitivity in evaluating issues related to the history of western theatre. Accordingly, this article aims to provide a detailed account of
the contributions of the Armenians and offers a broader perspective of how theatre was shaped right before multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire transformed into a Republic.

Resumo: Analisando o espetáculo teatral Depois dos últimos dias, criado pelo encenador suíço Christoph Marthaler para a Trienal de Ruhr em 2019, almejamos apresentar uma possível abordagem do tempo cênico para além do presente dramático, da história como narrativa épica ou da memória individual: um tempo assombrado por fantasmas vindos do passado, mas também, talvez surpreendentemente, do presente e do futuro.
Palavras-chave: Teatro contemporâneo. Estética e política. Teatro e História.
Ghosts of a living future: memory and history in Christoph Marthaler’s After the last days
Abstract: Our analysis of After the last days, a theatre play created by Swiss director Christoph Marthaler for the Ruhr Triennale in 2019, aims to present a possible approach to scenic time beyond dramatic present, history as epic narrative or individual memory: a time haunted by ghosts coming from the past, but also, perhaps surprisingly, from the present and the future.
Keywords: Contemporary theatre. Aesthetics and politics. Theatre and History.

The Jatra of Bengal, India is embedded in religious celebrations and communal and cultural quests. Jatra is known for its distinctive presentational styles comprising song-dance sequences, larger than life physicalization, enthralling dialogues, and the anthropomorphizing of the “conscience,” commonly known as the bibek. This article focuses
on an interview with Shekh Madhusudan, the 87-year old Jatra artist who reminiscences about his relationship with this form of theatre. This interview exposes how religion and his journey as a bibek in relation to the dramatic and theatrical theories of postcolonialism and hybridity inform the nature of contemporary Jatra in West Bengal.

The article discusses the background of Eleonora Kalkowska’s best-known play, Sprawa Jakubowskiego [The Case of Jakubowski], 1929. It is also a reconstruction of the work’s reception in Poland and Germany. The diplomatic materials uncovered in the archives, which shed a new light on the trial of a Polish farm labourer sentenced to death in the Weimar Republic, draw out a broader context and the political tensions surrounding the writer’s stage debut. The author of the article also analyzes the diametrically different modes of reading the drama at Berlin’s Volksbühne and Warsaw’s Ateneum, which led to its becoming the subject of national appropriations, particularly in the case of the play’s Polish reception.

Cet article s’attache à présenter la théorie du théâtre musical élaborée par Luigi Nono et mise en œuvre dans Al gran sole carico d’amore (1975). Il s’agit aussi de saisir la relation essentielle entre la réforme esthétique proposée par le compositeur italien et son engagement politique.

Presses Universitaires de Franche-Comté, coll. « Annales littéraires ».
p. 103-118.

Alessandra Vannucci investiga a trajetória do Living Theatre com ênfase no período em que a companhia se estabeleceu no Brasil, nos anos 70. Neste artigo, a autora procura traçar as rotas poéticas que a companhia construiu nos seus processos laboratoriais de criação para materializar a sua utopia revolucionária não-violenta: táticas de resistência ao poder e ao Estado.

This thesis examines the “post-truth” political environment through a retroactive exploration of issues surrounding the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and how these were depicted on the British stage. By presenting “post-truth” politics as an extension of Giorgio Agamben's theories on the “State of Exception”, this thesis aims to analyse how political theatremakers have attempted to depict and critique political exceptionalism on stage. A second field of enquiry is to examine how these theatremakers differentiate their representation and how they disseminate “truth” from the ‘exceptional’ institutions that they intend to critique. The plays specifically covered in this survey include David Hare’s Stuff Happens, Richard Norton-Taylor’s Justifying War and Caryl Churchill's Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?

Can “political theatre” exist in today’s political climate? In the last few decades, our understanding of politics and theatre has undermined the basis on which prior generations of artists conceived of both politics and theatre. Caryl Churchill’s Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? sits at the intersection of critiques of dramatic theatre and new forms of post-dramatic, non-representational performance. The play tells the story of a man, Guy, who falls in love with a country, Sam, and critics have largely seen the play as an allegory for the “special relationship” between Britain and the United States. But while the play riffs on that metaphor, it also includes aspects that work against a political reading. Churchill’s depiction of the relationship as a sincere gay love affair raises questions about what it means to say that politicians are “in bed together.” As the play develops, the political critique and the personal relationships seem to work against each other, and the play becomes an elliptical invitation to think political theatre anew.

Bien loin de l’image mythifiée et parcellaire du Théâtre de l’opprimé, cette étude historique entend mettre au jour les processus à l’œuvre dans le développement de cette praxis élaborée par le metteur en scène brésilien Augusto Boal. Toujours envisagé tout à la fois comme théorie (la poétique de l’opprimé) et pratique, le Théâtre de l’opprimé est ici saisi dans toute son historicité. En s’appuyant autant sur un corpus théorique que sur des archives — dont un fonds inédit appartenant au Centre du Théâtre de l’opprimé de Paris — et des entretiens avec les praticiens qui ont été membres du centre parisien, les recherches menées nous ont permis de retracer une histoire qui se veut à la fois politique et esthétique du Théâtre de l’opprimé.
Structurée chronologiquement, l’étude commence dans les années 1950 au Brésil, afin d’évoquer les préoccupations artistiques d’Augusto Boal — alors metteur en scène au Teatro Arena de São Paulo —, centrées sur la recherche d’un renouvellement des formes dramatiques répondant à un impératif politique : faire du théâtre populaire, c’est-à-dire pour le peuple brésilien. Il s’agit de déceler, dès cette époque, les prémices d’une réflexion théorique, mais aussi les racines de certaines techniques théâtrales, qui constituent le terreau sur lequel se développera le Théâtre de l’opprimé, au milieu des années 1970, alors que Boal est en exil.
La suite de cette étude se déroule en France, un pays où Augusto Boal commence à se faire connaître en 1971 grâce au Festival mondial du théâtre de Nancy et à la revue Travail théâtral. C’est à Paris, à la fin des années 1970, qu’il fonde le tout premier groupe permanent de Théâtre de l’opprimé, dont la mission est de diffuser et de transmettre cette méthode. Le groupe va progressivement se professionnaliser et s’institutionnaliser, pour finir par trouver sa place dans le champ du théâtre d’intervention socioculturelle, un espace dans lequel la structure va poursuivre son activité jusqu’en 1998, date à laquelle celle-ci va éclater pour donner naissance à de multiples compagnies éparpillées sur le territoire français, laissant un centre dont l’identité s’en est trouvée profondément renouvelée.
L’histoire française du Théâtre de l’opprimé est l’histoire d’un dialogue permanent entre le théâtre, le champ politique, militant et l’éducation populaire. C’est également l’histoire d’un collectif, que rassemble l’usage d’une même méthode théâtrale et qui traverse deux décennies au cours desquelles l’époque a profondément refaçonné le visage de la société. C’est donc une histoire traversée de contradictions, d’évolutions, mais aussi de positions maintenues et réaffirmées, qu’il s’agit ici de mettre au jour. Des mouvements militants à la politique de la ville, le parcours du centre parisien de Théâtre de l’opprimé est celui d’un groupe en prise avec son époque. Parisienne, la structure fondée par Boal est cependant centrale dans la diffusion à l’échelle mondiale des techniques du Théâtre de l’opprimé. En cela, écrire l’histoire du Théâtre de l’opprimé en France est une façon de contribuer modestement à en écrire une histoire mondiale, dont le centre parisien constitue une étape cruciale.

Resumen

Lillian Hellman es la dramaturga más célebre de su época. La originalidad de sus textos teatrales reside en el uso mayoritario de personajes femeninos como centro de sus obras. Es una autora radicalmente contemporánea que aborda cuestiones palpitantes de la época en la que vive. En el ámbito doméstico donde sitúa la acción se forjan y transmiten las desigualdades y las injusticias, particularmente hacia las mujeres que intentan encontrar un lugar de libertad e independencia. El análisis de algunos de los personajes femeninos más relevantes en sus ocho obras de teatro permitirá al lector recorrer los grandes acontecimientos políticos y sociales de treinta años clave del siglo pasado con una perspectiva femenina y reevaluar la situación de las mujeres en una sociedad que las relega a un papel secundario.

Abstract

Lillian Hellman is the most famous woman playwright in her time. The originality and appeal of her texts lie on the abundant representation of female characters as the centre of the stage. She is a woman of her time, dealing with contemporary political and social issues. The domestic realm in her plays is the perfect milieu for inequality, and this is more so in the case of women struggling for freedom and independence. An analysis of some of the most relevant female characters in her plays will allow the reader to experience some of the great events of three key decades of the past century with a female perspective and to reassess the situation of women in a society which confines them to secondary roles.

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.
 

En su introducción a la Antología de escritores políticos del Siglo de Oro editada por Pedro de Vega, Enrique Tierno Galván insistió en que "Al margen del sistema metafísico heredado, España no ha dado, a mi juicio, un solo pensador político original al pensamiento político europeo"-afirmación polémica, claro está, que se puede matizar no sólo desde la perspectiva de la historia de las ideas políticas sino también, como voy a proponer en esta charla, desde una perspectiva literaria. Esencialmente, lo que propondré aquí es que dirigamos la mirada hacía el teatro áureo como un experimentarium de pensamiento político o bien, un espacio donde se reflexionan y trabajan, creativamente, temas políticos actuales y también controvertidos. Puede que, en la teoría política tal cual, España no tenga su gran figura de renombre internacional, su Maquiavelo o su Bodino (también puede ser que la teoría política española del Siglo de Oro todavía se queda por entender y habilitar, pero esto es otra historia). Sin embargo, lo que España sin duda alguna tiene es a sus famosos dramaturgos y estos escribían a menudo sobre temas políticos, si bien de manera bastante distinta que los escritores políticos. Esto sí: conforme a la forma esencialmente dialógica del género dramático, los "pensadores políticos creativos" de España-si así podemos llamar los ingenios del teatro áureo-presentaban temas políticos de manera esencialmente dialéctica, ya que los articulaban necesariamente por boca de sus diversos personajes dramáticos con sus divergentes puntos de vista, dejándolos confrontarse y relativizarse entre sí. En otras palabras: precisamente por su forma no diegética y por lo tanto no monologizante, el drama se prestaba eficientemente al examen dialéctica inteligente de temas políticos complejos y controvertidos tales como, por ejemplo, la sucesión, el rey tirano, la rebelión popular, la relación entre rey y vulgo o el papel político de la nobleza. Así, mientras que los dramaturgos barrocos, como nos recuerda José Antonio Maravall, en su capacidad de sujetos responsables ante las autoridades censoriales, tendían a canalizar el entendimiento político de su público en una dirección determinada, el pensamiento político engendrado en paralelo en el espacio dialógico de sus obras al mismo tiempo podía llegar a ser problematizante; su representación del poder, ambigua; y su visión del mundo político, marcada por un contraste de luces y sombras-por un claroscuro, elusivo pero decisivo que hace pensar y reflexionar. En cuanto al pensamiento político creativo del teatro áureo podemos hablar, en mi opinión, de un balance fino entre el dialogismo esencial del género dramático y el manejo autorial del entendimiento político popular.

Why some radical artists were attacked more brutally than others?Jana Natya Mandali (People’s Theatre Troupe; henceforth, JNM) was a popular revolutionary cultural organization linked to the banned Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War, now the Communist Party of India (Maoist), also known as the Maoists or the Naxalites. After the demise of the people’s theatre movement in India led by the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) by the 1960s, JNM was one of the few political theatre organizations in India which had a widespread reach and influence across diverse social sections. The organization flourishes under the dynamic leadership of Gummadi Vittal Rao, popularly known as Gaddar. What D. Venkat Rao terms the “radical heterogeneity” of Gaddar and JNM’s audience included landless laborers, farmers, students, adivasis and Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), making it popular across the classes and the various sections of the communities.

The following article comparatively analyzes the theatrical theories of
Erwin Piscator (Das politische Theater, 1968) and César Vallejo (El arte y la revolución, 1973)
and their practical applications. It also attempts to locate César Vallejo’s theater within the
parameters of political theater. Piscator, Vallejo and other authors of revolutionary drama
present an ideological and aesthetic model in which the “new” proletarian aesthetics
overcomes that of the bourgeoisie. This aesthetics lie in the utilization of the cinematograph,
the interpretative techniques of collective characters, and the use of documentation from a
proletariat perspective.

The paper takes into account several tragedies based on the Roman subject – drawn by Titus Livius – of Appio and Virginia, composed in English, French and Italian between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in order to show how the subject's progressive refinement allows the dramatists to cope with essential matters of the Early modern political philosophy, from the relationship between the sovereign and the law to the gap between public and private happiness. The analysis aims to prove that, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the subject of Virginia becomes an unavoidable passage for dramatist interested in representing political tragedies. (http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/view/2720)

Recent plays by Anne Washburn, Jennifer Haley, Bekah Brunstetter, and Douglas Carter Beane take audiences off the grid along with young protagonists who struggle to make sense of a militarized world they only know through live streams and simulations. Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play (2013); The Oregon Trail (2013); Neighborhood 3:Requisition of Doom (2009) and Lysistrata Jones (2012) use an ironically apocalyptic and diasporic theatre with wandering pioneers, zombies in streets, and Greek columns in ruin, to call for an urgent examination of digital modes of both militarization and democratic participation. To get their bearings, adolescent protagonists assemble palimpsests of Aristophanes and Homer. Placing these crudely drawn icons of the Western canon alongside (in Mr. Burns, for example) television’s paradigmatic animated comedy, The Simpsons, establishes what Linda Hutcheon terms a “politics of intertextuality,” in which the “implicitly negative cultural evaluation” of the secondary text is challenged by millennial characters that value only the most contemporary cultural objects (even in spite of those objects’ own smart and frequent moments of historical referentiality). In their examinations of the relationship between historical texts, culture, and politics these plays quietly, modestly posit the theatre’s long legacy of localized efficacy as one possible antidote to a generational surge of political dislocation and indifference.

Several theatrical traditions have disposed that drama as an art, has a civic duty in which the formation of citizens is primordial. Currents of political theater (Piscator, Brecht, Boal) attempt to create awareness of actors, technicians and public with the end to form them critically and introduce them in the imaginary of power.  In the present article, I will analyze Animalario´s Argelino, servidor de dos amos [Argelino, servant to two masters] directed by Andrés Lima, and adapted by him and Alberto San Juan. San Juan utilizes Goldoni´s classic Arlecchino, servant to two masters as an example of contemporary social protest. The play neatly exemplifies the ductility of the classics in terms of their adaptation to contemporary thematics of discrimination for reasons of gender and race.  The dramatic text is seen as a tapestry where to present and amplify contemporary issues in a game of space and time continuity which is all too magnificently human.
en Teatro y marginalismos por sexo, raza e ideología en los inicios del siglo XXI, eds. José Nicolás Romera Castillo; Francisco Gutiérrez Carbajo & Raquel García Pascual, Madrid, Editorial Verbum, 2017, 411-429.
Indicios de calidad:
Editorial situada en el ranking SPI de prestigio de las editoriales según expertos españoles. ICEE: 0.94.
Presente en Norwegian lists / CRISTIN y SPI

Corporeity can be shown as an important study element of the relations between individuals, indicating a singular modus for the development of cognitive-affective processes. The aim of this study was to develop a reflection, starting from the analysis of a creative process that involved the realization of a poetic-theatrical experiment, in order to investigate how the dynamics between the word and the subtext were processed, using corporeity as argument for the explanation of the signification process. The thesis that I defend is that corporeity is the element that propitiate the process of signification, and the subtext being the in-between-place of this communication, establishing this dynamic as a pedagogy of the theatrical event. The dramaturgy of corporeity proposes a working way, originating from an intense intimate dynamization between the sensorial, corporeal, affective, aesthetical, esthesical, volitional, synaesthesical and imagery perceptions developed at the moment of the actors’ creative process. The working procedure addressing the dramaturgy of corporeity would also be a methodological alternative for the actors to learn to understand themselves as artists-educators and on how to make their work a potentiator of the link between these two words. In this study, the poetic-theatrical experiment, based on the text Prometheus Chained, by Aeschylus, was carried out as fieldwork, in order to foster the reflexive motes necessary for understanding the moments of aesthetic living, essential to an understanding of how pedagogy of the theatrical event works. With this work, it was possible to elucidate a differentiated way of operating the cognitive-affective processes, which occurs through the relations of corporeity. This fact made it possible to establish a singular means of educational, cognitive-affective processes, detached from traditional meanings in the field of education which usually think of them when focused through cognitive cognitive-encephalic analyzes. Thus, it was possible to observe the experiential relationships that occur during the theatrical event as an important field in the area of education, which has not yet received an explanatory approach as developed in this research.

Partindo de uma investigação conjunta do espetáculo Branco: o cheiro do lírio e do formol e das diversas críticas escritas sobre ele por ocasião de sua estreia e temporada paulistana, o ensaio busca refletir sobre o possível sentido político de um teatro contemporâneo entendido como pós-dramático, localizando-o num regime estético da arte (em oposição aos regimes representativo e ético, como propõe o filósofo Jacques Rancière).

Chronicle of a Failure Foretold: representation, ethics and aesthetics in the (meta)critique of white reason
ABSTRACT
Starting from an investigation of the play Branco: o cheiro do lírio e do formol and the many critiques written about it on the occasion of its premiere in São Paulo, this essay intends to meditate on the possible political sense of a contemporary theatre, understood as “postdramatic”, locating it in an aesthetic regime of art (in opposition to the representative and ethical regimes, as proposed by philosopher Jacques Rancière).

In the third issue of Polish Theatre Journal, we examine institutional practices in Polish theatre in the context of political and social changes. We analyse conditions for freedom of artistic expression and of mechanisms of censorship; we observe significant conflicts and struggles in theatre life, and scrutinize the entanglement of economic, political and aesthetic determinants. We query the possibility of making theatre institutions into social laboratories in which cultural practices for the new democratic order can be developed.

U ovom tekstu usredsrediću se na one aspekte alternativnog teatra – i, šire, izvođačkih umetnosti – u Beogradu i Srbiji tokom poslednje decenije dvadesetog veka koji se tiču, za njegovo razumevanje možda najvažnijeg, odnosa "etike i estetike". Alternativni teatar je kao vaninstitucionalna praksa bio direktnije eksponiran i aktivnije uključen u tada brojna i radikalna društvena zbivanja, nego instutucionalno pozorište koje je inertnije i po definiciji nastoji da zadrži status quo očuvanjem postojećih društvenih, kulturnih i umetničkih paradigmi. Na to je ukazivalo i nekoliko prominentnih lokalnih teoretičarki, kao što su Milena Dragićević-Šešić, Aleksandra Jovićević i Dubravka Knežević, koje su kritikovale institucionalna pozorišta u devedesetim zbog njihove "lagodne" pozicije i eskapizma.

Resumen: En el presente trabajo se traza la historia de las compañías hermanadas Animalario y Teatro del barrio y se analiza uno de sus espectáculos más representativos: Ruz-Bárcenas. Una de las corrientes que mejor explotan estas dos compañías es la del teatro do-cumento à-la-Peter Weiss, aspecto especialmente notable en el montaje citado donde se presenta la declaración de Luis Bárcenas (el famoso tesorero del Partido Popular) frente al juez de instrucción Pablo Ruz. El documento primigenio, la depositio, se transforma en una pieza compleja con algunos mecanismos de distanciamiento y elementos dramáticos aristotélicos.
Abstract: The present paper traces the history of the twin theatre companies Animalario and Teatro del barrio, and analyses one of its most representative shows: Ruz-Bárcenas. One of the leading trends of these two companies is documentary theatre á la Peter Weiss, a remarkable feature in the mentioned play, which presents Luis Barcenas's statement in court (the famous treasurer of Spanish right-wing Partido Popular) infront of the examining magistrate Pablo Ruz. The original document,
the depositio, is transformed into a complex work with several distancing
mechanisms and Aristotelian dramatic elements.
Recibido: 07/2016-Aceptado: 11/2016

In 2012, the German/Swiss theater collective NEUE DRINGLICHKEIT1 facilitated and produced the performance Saving Philotas2 in Israel. Based on G. E. Lessing's 1759 play, the performance was developed and performed by Jewish and Arab adolescents in Tel-Aviv and Jaffa. By examining the process of production as well as the presentation of the project, I hope to exemplify wherein the potential chances and pitfalls of (political) inter-group theater lie. To this end I will merge current debates about contemporary political theater with reflections on the theory of inter-ethnic encounter work.

Portuguese dramatist Bernardo Santareno (1924­1980) has been practically ignored by the English­speaking critics and theatre practitioners, most likely because only two of his nineteen plays have been translated into English. One of these is the author's first drama, The Promise (A Promessa), written during the year he spent aboard a Portuguese fishing boat along the coast of Newfoundland and Greenland, immediately after having graduated from medical school at the University of Coimbra. The play was published in 1957, in an edition sponsored by the author, and produced in November of that same year by Teatro Experimental do Porto. After ten days of performance, however, the production was closed down by the government censors, on the grounds of immorality raised by the Portuguese Roman Catholic Church. Arguably, the play's narrative focuses on marital quarrels with no overt political implications to justify its ban during Salazar's fascist regime in Portugal. This aspect is confirmed by the fact that the text was authorized for performance by the same official censors that later closed down the production. Differently, I suggest that it is not the narrative but rather Santareno's shaping of the material in melodramatic form that made evident in performance, because of the genre's characteristic theatricality and Manichean conflicts, the author's oppositional views to the prevailing political and religious regime.

Si le théâtre est profondément politique, c’est parce qu’il est engagé et participatif : il répond à l’urgence des temps, en traitant le spectateur comme un citoyen et en faisant de la scène un espace social inclusif. Retour sur un potentiel révolutionnaire.

Anna R. Burzyńska analyses the most interesting phenomena in political theatre in Germany and Poland in the early 21st century. She proposes a periodisation to describe the different generations of directors and playwrights, and shows how left-wing German theatre has affected the development of politically engaged theatre in Poland, comparing German-Polish pairs of artists who are most representative of contemporary trends: the deconstruction of bourgeois theatre (Frank Castorf – Monika Strzępka and Paweł Demirski), documentary theatre (Rimini Protokoll – Jan Klata), innovative use of new media (Gob Squad – Wojtek Ziemilski) and the search for new choral forms (Einar Schleef and Volker Lösch – Marta Górnicka).