Performing Politics of Care: Theatrical Practices of Radical Learning as a Weapon Against the Spectre of Fatalism

Abstract

It was in the 1920s and early 1930s that Erwin Piscator attempted to counter the fascist ‘aestheticisation of politics’ with ‘politicisation of art’ (cf. Benjamin 2009) by applying an advanced technical, documentary aesthetic. Up until his emigration, Piscator tried to use this kind of proletarian theatre to immunise a population suffering from the effects of the war and the economic crisis against the promises of Nazism. Much later, in 1965, the same Piscator would write the following:

Once before did a sterile, neutral and aesthetic art fail to stop our descent into barbarism — this should not be repeated. Political theatre seems to me to be a suitable tool for evaluating the political and social conditions of one’s time. […] Immanent in this image is the tendency to change. Based on evidence, the present is supposed to be altered. Whether this is successful is no longer within the capabilities of theatre. (1968: 340)

This text first appeared in June 2014 in German: ‘Theater der Sorge — Politisch Politisches Theater machen’ [‘Theatre of Care — Making Political Theatre Politically’] in Ringlokschuppen Mülheim an der Ruhr, Matthias Naumann and Mayte Zimmermann (eds) Mülheimer Fatzerbücher 3 — In Gemeinschaft und als Einzelner (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag). We would like to thank Neofelis for clearing the rights and the International Research Center ‘Interweaving Performance Cultures’ for supporting the translation into English.