Theatre of Real People: Diverse Encounters at Berlin's Hebbel am Ufer and Beyond

by Ulrike Garde, Meg Mumford

Overview

Theatre of Real People offers fresh perspectives on the current fascination with putting people on stage who present aspects of their own lives and who are not usually trained actors. After providing a history of this mode of performance, and theoretical frameworks for its analysis, the book focuses on work developed by seminal practitioners at Berlin's Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) production house. It invites the reader to explore the HAU's innovative approach to Theatre of Real People, authenticity and cultural diversity during the period of Matthias Lilienthal's leadership (2003–12).

Garde and Mumford also elucidate how Theatre of Real People can create and destabilise a sense of the authentic, and suggest how Authenticity-Effects can present new ways of perceiving diverse and unfamiliar people. Through a detailed analysis of key HAU productions such as Lilienthal's brainchild X-Apartments, Mobile Academy's Blackmarket, and Rimini Protokoll's 100% City, the book explores both the artistic agenda of an important European theatre institution, and a crucial aspect of contemporary theatre's social engagement.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472580238
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	05/19/2016
Series:	Methuen Drama Engage
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	264
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Dr Ulrike Garde is Senior Lecturer in German Studies at Macquarie University, Australia. Her research interests range across Intercultural German Studies, German literature and the performing arts. Her publications include Brecht&Co: German-speaking Playwrights on the Australian Stage (2007).
Dr Meg Mumford is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her research focuses on social engagement, intercultural exchange, and the politics of performing bodies, particularly with regard to theatre from Germany and Australia. She has published extensively on the work of playwright-director Bertolt Brecht, and is the author of Bertolt Brecht (2009).
The authors co-edited Rimini Protokoll Close-Up: Lektüren (2014) together with Johannes Birgfeld, as well as the 2015 issue of Performance Paradigm on the arts and effects of non-professional theatre performers.
Ulrike Garde is Senior Lecturer in German Studies at Macquarie University, Australia. Her research interests range across Intercultural German Studies, German literature and the performing arts. Her publications include Brecht&Co: German-speaking Playwrights on the Australian Stage (2007).
Meg Mumford is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her research focuses on social engagement, intercultural exchange, and the politics of performing bodies, particularly with regard to theatre from Germany and Australia. She has published extensively on the work of playwright-director Bertolt Brecht, and is the author of Bertolt Brecht (2009).

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. A Historical Perspective on Theatre of Real People
2. Theatre of Real People at the HAU
3. Theatre and Authenticity-Effects
4. Encounters with Cultural Diversity at the HAU
5. Berliners with an 'Authenticity Guarantee': Cultural Complexity in 100% Berlin and 100% City
6. Meeting Unfamiliar Residents in Berlin: Playing with Frames of Reference in X-Apartments
7. Unsettling Journey into the Unfamiliar: Ambiguous Guides to the City in Call Cutta: Mobile Phone Theatre
8. Getting Closer to the Subject(s) of Migration: Partial Proximity in Schwarzmarkt No. 7 and Mr Dagaçar and the Golden Tectonics of Trash
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

With this book, Garde and Mumford notably advance the study of Theatre of the Real and of the performer in documentary theatre … The notion of a skeptical approach to Authenticity-Effects and the impact that this can have on willing audiences is a thrilling step forward in the field and one that can have a wide impact among both scholars and theatre practitioners.” –Theatre Survey

From the Publisher

The overall themes of the book speak to a global theme: the encounter with the Other, or with the Unfamiliar, as the authors prefer to call it. This is now an element of everyday life for most people in the developed world, and so theatre's engagement with this phenomenon is particularly timely. This is a book written by two acknowledged experts in the field ... their approach to their material is eminently sensible and promises to add important categories to the study of reality theatre.

David Barnett

This is something much more than a close look at the work of a particular company situated in Berlin. What the [authors] explore here is the much larger question of a drama based on "real" people as opposed to mere documentary drama. Hebbel-am-Ufer is a case in point, and the reference point, for the larger discussion at hand. This area of inquiry is much in vogue at the moment, both in Europe and North America.

Enoch Brater