Theatre as Dispositif. Aesthetics, Practice, and Epistemology of the Performing Arts

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Gerald Siegmund
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 262397687

The research project Theatre as Dispositif aims at defining theatre performance as a dispostif, or apparatus. Understood as dispositif, performance as the main research object in the field of theatre studies opens up towards its historically specifc aesthetic, practical, and epistemological regimes. The research project is based on the hypothesis that German theatre since the 1960 has developed three distinct dispositifs. Thus, the project is comprised of three distinct but interdependant projects which in their entirety present a picture of the history of West German theatre since the 1960s. Each section is based on one representative theatre director: The first dispositif focuses on the so called directors theatre on the basis of the work of Hans Neuenfels since the 1970s in the city theatre of Frankfurt am Main. At the time the theatre was involved in an experiment of institutional participation of everyboy working at the theatre. The second dispositif, the theatre of co productions in the 1980s and 1990s, will focus on the paradigmatic work of Heiner Goebbels, whereas the third section, the dispositif of difference, engages with the work of Xavier le Roy and Mette Ingvartsen since the late 1990s. Viewed in their chronology, the three dispostifs reveal a significant shift in genres from spoken word to musical and choreographic theatre, a shift that in itself is significant of how the dispisitfs produce, frame, perform, and regulate theatre. While each performance asks its own questions, all three dispositifs will deal with the artists modes of production, their working methods during rehearsal, the institutional frameworks they work in, as well as the discourses produced around their work. As an ensemble, the three dispositfs provide an hitherto unknown in depths understanding of the constitution of theatre performances. The research project Theatre as Dispositif thus makes a significant contribution to the development of a methodolgy to study and understand theatre in its aesthetic, practical, and epistemolocical conditions as well as its relation to other economical or sociological dispositifs. With these four artsits in mind, it is possible to research the ruptures and changes in production, performance, and reception of theatre which have not been dealt with as of yet. The research project thus makes a significant contibution the undestanding of West Geman theatre after 1945. In oder to achieve this, the project will consult private and public archives that have not yet been consulted and whose documents have not yet been studied.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants