Expanding the Canon, Creating Alternative Knowledge, Marketing the Field? Performance Practices in Theatre Studies

Authors

  • Meike Wagner University of Stockholm

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v28i1.23968

Keywords:

Artistic Research, German Theatre Studies, Alternative Knowledge, Theory and Practice

Abstract

Departing from examples of German theatre study programs (University of Giessen, University of Hildesheim, University of Bochum), which include performance practice, my contribution discusses specific roles and functions of practical experience in the academic context. I will present and discuss three discursive fields in relation to performance practice as part of academic education: 1) Performance practice as a way of taking a political stance with the aim of changing academic education and to promote alternative forms of theatre. 2) Performance practice as a marketable good within humanities to promote study programs. 3) Performance practice as a means of acquiring alternative knowledge for theatre education and research.

Author Biography

Meike Wagner, University of Stockholm

Meike Wagner is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Stockholm. She received her PhD degree from Mainz University in 2002 and her habilitation from LMU Munich in 2011. She is currently researching 19th century theatre and its relationship to the advent of modern media. Using the methodology of historical intermedia research, she is carrying out a fundamental investigation into the social functions of theatre as a specific medium of the period. From this perspective, she also analyses performative phenomena of the present time such as postdramatic theatre, puppet theatre, performance art, internet-based video art, and animated films. She is currently conducting research on the relation between practice and theory in historiographical research. She is project leader of the research project ”Performing Premodernity” (performingpremodernity.com).

References

Tobias Becker: “Die Dilettanten aus Hessen” in Spiegel Online, 19 December 2012, http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/das-buch-von-der-angewandten-theaterwissenschaft-a-873656-druck.html, last access 25 January 2016.

Baz Kershaw and Helen Nicholson (eds.) Research Methods in Theatre and Performance, ed. by, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2011.

Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, Routledge, New York 2006. Peter O’Connor and Michael Anderson: Applied Theatre. Research. Radical Departures. Bloomsbury Publishing, Sydney et al., eBook, 2015.

Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge. Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958, 50.

Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire. Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas, Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2003.

Andrzej Wirth: “Adepten der Gießener Schule. Die Neuen Coolen”, in Grenzgänge. Das Theater und die anderen Künste, ed. by Gabriele Brandstetter, Helga Finter and Markus Weßendorf, Narr, Tübingen, 1998, 317-326.

Uwe Wirth, “Dilettantische Konjekturen”, in Dilettantismus als Beruf, ed. by Safia Azzouni and Uwe Wirth, Kulturverlag Kadmos Berlin, 201.

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Published

2016-06-22

How to Cite

Wagner, M. (2016). Expanding the Canon, Creating Alternative Knowledge, Marketing the Field? Performance Practices in Theatre Studies. Nordic Theatre Studies, 28(1), 4–14. https://doi.org/10.7146/nts.v28i1.23968

Issue

Vol. 28 No. 1 (2016): Crossing Borders

Section

Essays

License

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