David Barnett
David Barnett is Professor of Theatre at the University of York. He previously taught at the University of Sussex (2006-15), University College Dublin (2004-6) and the University of Huddersfield (1998-2003).
He mostly publishes on German theatre, with a particular interest in Bertolt Brecht, his company The Berliner Ensemble, Heiner Müller and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He also works on dialectics and performance, post-Brechtian theatre, and postdramatic theatre.
Major new publications:
A History of the Berliner Ensemble (CUP 2015), pp. 528
Brecht in Practice: Theatre ,Theory and Performance (Methuen, 2014), pp. 256
He mostly publishes on German theatre, with a particular interest in Bertolt Brecht, his company The Berliner Ensemble, Heiner Müller and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He also works on dialectics and performance, post-Brechtian theatre, and postdramatic theatre.
Major new publications:
A History of the Berliner Ensemble (CUP 2015), pp. 528
Brecht in Practice: Theatre ,Theory and Performance (Methuen, 2014), pp. 256
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"I’m good Hamlet gi’me a cause for grief"
At first glance, readers of The Hamletmachine (1979) could be forgiven for wondering whether it is actually a play at all: it opens with a montage of texts that are not ascribed to a character, there is no vestige of a plot, and the whole piece lasts a total of ten pages.
Yet, Heiner Müller’s play regularly features in theatres’ repertoires and is frequently staged by university theatre departments. In four short chapters, David Barnett unpicks the complexities of The Hamletmachine’s writing and frames its author as an experimental, politically committed writer who confronts the shortcomings of his age. In considering the problems Müller poses for the play’s performance, he also discusses two exemplary productions in order to show how the work can engage very different audiences.
This book examines why such a compact, radically open, and yet seemingly obscure play has proved so popular.
The Berliner Ensemble was founded by Bertolt Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel in 1949. The company soon gained international prominence, and its productions and philosophy influenced the work of theatre-makers around the world. David Barnett's book is the first study of the company in any language. Based on extensive archival research, it uncovers Brecht's working methods and those of the company's most important directors after his death. The book considers the boon and burden of Brecht's legacy and provides new insights into battles waged behind the scenes for the preservation of the Brechtian tradition. The Berliner Ensemble was also the German Democratic Republic's most prestigious cultural export, attracting attention from the highest circles of government, and from the Stasi, before it privatised itself after German reunification in 1990. Barnett pieces together a complex history that sheds light on both the company's groundbreaking productions and their turbulent times.
Methuen's blurb:
Bertolt Brecht's reputation as a flawed, irrelevant or difficult thinker for the theatre can often go before him to such an extent that we run the risk of forgetting the achievements that made him and his company, the Berliner Ensemble, famous around the world.
David Barnett examines both Brecht the theorist and Brecht the practitioner to reveal the complementary relationship between the two.This book aims to sensitize the reader to the approaches Brecht took to the world and the stage with a view to revealing just how carefully he thought about and realized his vision of a politicized, interventionist theatre. What emerges is a nuanced understanding of his concepts, his work with actors and his approaches to directing. The reader is encouraged to engage with Brecht's method that sought to 'make theatre politically' in order to locate the innovations he introduced into his stagecraft. There are many examples given of how Brecht's ideas can be staged, and the final chapter takes two very different plays and asks how a Brechtian approach can enliven and illuminate their production. Ultimately, the book invites readers, students and theatre-makers to discover new ways of apprehending and making use of Brecht.
Also available in German as 'Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Theatre als Provokation'.
At the heart of the book is the political position of whether plays can provoke the theatre's realization orthodoxies in order to create new, vibrant productions.
Edited books and journals
The chapters in this book discuss crucial aspects of the issues raised by the postdramatic turn in theatre in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century: the status of the audience and modes of spectatorship in postdramatic theatre; the political claims of postdramatic theatre; postdramatic theatre's ongoing relationship with the dramatic tradition; its dialectical qualities, or its eschewing of the dialectic; questions of representation and the real in theatre; the role of bodies, perception, appearance and theatricality in postdramatic theatre; as well as subjectivity and agency in postdramatic theatre, dance and performance.
Offering analyses of a wide range of international performance examples, scholars in this volume engage with Hans-Thies Lehmann's theoretical positions both affirmatively and critically, relating them to other approaches by thinkers ranging from early theorists such as Brecht, Adorno and Benjamin, to contemporary thinkers such as Fischer-Lichte, Rancière and others.
CONTENTS
Introduction (Jerome Carroll (University of Nottingham, UK; Steve Giles, Emeritus, University of Nottingham, UK; Karen Jürs-Munby, Lancaster University, UK)
1. Performing Dialectics in an Age of Uncertainty, or: Why Post-Brechtian Does Not Mean Postdramatic (David Barnett, University of Sussex, UK)
2. Spectres of Subjectivity: On the Fetish of Identity in (Post-)Postdramatic Choreography (Peter M Boenisch, University of Surrey, UK)
3. Political Fictions and Fictionalisations: History as Material for Postdramatic Theatre (Mateusz Borowski, Jagiellonian University, Poland, and Malgorzata Sugiera, Jagiellonian University, Poland)
4. Phenomenology and the Postdramatic: A Case Study of three plays by Ewald Palmetshofer (Jerome Carroll, University of Nottingham, UK)
5. Christoph Schlingensief's 'Rocky Dutschke, '68': A reassessment of activism in theatre (Antje Dietze, University of Leipzig, Germany)
6. Postdramatic Reality Theatre and Productive Insecurity: Destabilizing Encounters with the Unfamiliar in Theatre from Sydney and Berlin (Ulrike Garde, Macquarie University, Australia, and Meg Mumford, University of New South Wales, Australia)
7. Parasitic Politics: Elfriede Jelinek's 'Secondary Dramas' and their staging (Karen Jürs-Munby, Lancaster University, UK)
8. A future for Tragedy? Remarks on the Political and the Postdramatic (Hans-Thies Lehmann, Visiting Professor at University of Kent, UK)
9. Acting, disabled: Back to Back Theatre and the politics of appearance (Theron Schmidt, King's College London, UK)
10. Performing the Collective: Heiner Müller's 'Alone with these Bodies' ('Allein mit diesen Leibern) as a piece of Postdramatic Theatre (Michael Wood, University of Edinburgh, UK)
11. Crises of Representation: Towards a Postdramatic Politics? (Brandon Woolf, University of California, USA)
EDITORS
Dr Jerome Carroll is lecturer in German Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK.
Steven Giles is Professor Emeritus of German Studies and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham, UK. He has contributed to Brecht on Art and Politics (Methuen Drama, 2003) as well as authoring books on Modern European Drama and Critical Theory.
Dr Karen Jürs-Munby is a lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Lancaster, UK. She translated and wrote a critical introduction for Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatic Theatre (2006).
Papers on Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble
"I’m good Hamlet gi’me a cause for grief"
At first glance, readers of The Hamletmachine (1979) could be forgiven for wondering whether it is actually a play at all: it opens with a montage of texts that are not ascribed to a character, there is no vestige of a plot, and the whole piece lasts a total of ten pages.
Yet, Heiner Müller’s play regularly features in theatres’ repertoires and is frequently staged by university theatre departments. In four short chapters, David Barnett unpicks the complexities of The Hamletmachine’s writing and frames its author as an experimental, politically committed writer who confronts the shortcomings of his age. In considering the problems Müller poses for the play’s performance, he also discusses two exemplary productions in order to show how the work can engage very different audiences.
This book examines why such a compact, radically open, and yet seemingly obscure play has proved so popular.
The Berliner Ensemble was founded by Bertolt Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel in 1949. The company soon gained international prominence, and its productions and philosophy influenced the work of theatre-makers around the world. David Barnett's book is the first study of the company in any language. Based on extensive archival research, it uncovers Brecht's working methods and those of the company's most important directors after his death. The book considers the boon and burden of Brecht's legacy and provides new insights into battles waged behind the scenes for the preservation of the Brechtian tradition. The Berliner Ensemble was also the German Democratic Republic's most prestigious cultural export, attracting attention from the highest circles of government, and from the Stasi, before it privatised itself after German reunification in 1990. Barnett pieces together a complex history that sheds light on both the company's groundbreaking productions and their turbulent times.
Methuen's blurb:
Bertolt Brecht's reputation as a flawed, irrelevant or difficult thinker for the theatre can often go before him to such an extent that we run the risk of forgetting the achievements that made him and his company, the Berliner Ensemble, famous around the world.
David Barnett examines both Brecht the theorist and Brecht the practitioner to reveal the complementary relationship between the two.This book aims to sensitize the reader to the approaches Brecht took to the world and the stage with a view to revealing just how carefully he thought about and realized his vision of a politicized, interventionist theatre. What emerges is a nuanced understanding of his concepts, his work with actors and his approaches to directing. The reader is encouraged to engage with Brecht's method that sought to 'make theatre politically' in order to locate the innovations he introduced into his stagecraft. There are many examples given of how Brecht's ideas can be staged, and the final chapter takes two very different plays and asks how a Brechtian approach can enliven and illuminate their production. Ultimately, the book invites readers, students and theatre-makers to discover new ways of apprehending and making use of Brecht.
Also available in German as 'Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Theatre als Provokation'.
At the heart of the book is the political position of whether plays can provoke the theatre's realization orthodoxies in order to create new, vibrant productions.
The chapters in this book discuss crucial aspects of the issues raised by the postdramatic turn in theatre in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century: the status of the audience and modes of spectatorship in postdramatic theatre; the political claims of postdramatic theatre; postdramatic theatre's ongoing relationship with the dramatic tradition; its dialectical qualities, or its eschewing of the dialectic; questions of representation and the real in theatre; the role of bodies, perception, appearance and theatricality in postdramatic theatre; as well as subjectivity and agency in postdramatic theatre, dance and performance.
Offering analyses of a wide range of international performance examples, scholars in this volume engage with Hans-Thies Lehmann's theoretical positions both affirmatively and critically, relating them to other approaches by thinkers ranging from early theorists such as Brecht, Adorno and Benjamin, to contemporary thinkers such as Fischer-Lichte, Rancière and others.
CONTENTS
Introduction (Jerome Carroll (University of Nottingham, UK; Steve Giles, Emeritus, University of Nottingham, UK; Karen Jürs-Munby, Lancaster University, UK)
1. Performing Dialectics in an Age of Uncertainty, or: Why Post-Brechtian Does Not Mean Postdramatic (David Barnett, University of Sussex, UK)
2. Spectres of Subjectivity: On the Fetish of Identity in (Post-)Postdramatic Choreography (Peter M Boenisch, University of Surrey, UK)
3. Political Fictions and Fictionalisations: History as Material for Postdramatic Theatre (Mateusz Borowski, Jagiellonian University, Poland, and Malgorzata Sugiera, Jagiellonian University, Poland)
4. Phenomenology and the Postdramatic: A Case Study of three plays by Ewald Palmetshofer (Jerome Carroll, University of Nottingham, UK)
5. Christoph Schlingensief's 'Rocky Dutschke, '68': A reassessment of activism in theatre (Antje Dietze, University of Leipzig, Germany)
6. Postdramatic Reality Theatre and Productive Insecurity: Destabilizing Encounters with the Unfamiliar in Theatre from Sydney and Berlin (Ulrike Garde, Macquarie University, Australia, and Meg Mumford, University of New South Wales, Australia)
7. Parasitic Politics: Elfriede Jelinek's 'Secondary Dramas' and their staging (Karen Jürs-Munby, Lancaster University, UK)
8. A future for Tragedy? Remarks on the Political and the Postdramatic (Hans-Thies Lehmann, Visiting Professor at University of Kent, UK)
9. Acting, disabled: Back to Back Theatre and the politics of appearance (Theron Schmidt, King's College London, UK)
10. Performing the Collective: Heiner Müller's 'Alone with these Bodies' ('Allein mit diesen Leibern) as a piece of Postdramatic Theatre (Michael Wood, University of Edinburgh, UK)
11. Crises of Representation: Towards a Postdramatic Politics? (Brandon Woolf, University of California, USA)
EDITORS
Dr Jerome Carroll is lecturer in German Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK.
Steven Giles is Professor Emeritus of German Studies and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham, UK. He has contributed to Brecht on Art and Politics (Methuen Drama, 2003) as well as authoring books on Modern European Drama and Critical Theory.
Dr Karen Jürs-Munby is a lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Lancaster, UK. She translated and wrote a critical introduction for Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatic Theatre (2006).
I'm not usually one to upload papers, but the version of the article that appears both in print and on Project Muse are slightly incorrect. Modern Drama published errata in the following number of the journal, but I doubt people read those. So, the corrected version is available here, and the most significant correction occurs in the first thesis on p. 337. Readers of the incorrect version will note that the first thesis is not actually a thesis there.
In November 2011, the discovery of a Neo-Nazi terrorist cell called the National Socialist Underground (NSU) caused uproar in Germany. The group has been accused of several murders, including those of nine Turks, a Greek and a German policewoman, bomb attacks and a series of bank robberies. While the crimes themselves are horrifying, it is the complex that surrounds them that has raised questions not only about rightwing extremism, but the ways in which it has been treated by the German authorities. The group and its associates were known to and monitored by several law-enforcement agencies, yet soon after the cell’s discovery, several thousand pages of secret files were systematically shredded at the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Cologne. Complicity, negligence and incompetence have accompanied the increasingly unbelievable turn of events. The media has also played a major role in (mis)reporting and commenting on the murders and the investigations that followed them.
German theatre has not been slow to engage with the issues raised by the NSU in the 2013-14 season: there are at least five major productions in the repertoire, with more in preparation. The range of responses in writing and staging points to a concerted attempt to approach mindsets, rather than minds, and to view the many figures in the crimes and the scandals as parts of a multifaceted system of often contradictory beliefs and actions, rather than as sovereign individuals. The NSU has presented theatre-makers with a series of interconnected relationships that offer themselves as fecund material for dialectical analysis, something that may remind us of an earlier attempt to approach similar subject matter, Brecht’s Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (1938).
I will thus be offering a brief examination of Brecht’s dramaturgy and its contexts before considering examples of the new writing and performance that have arisen out of the NSU’s activities and their aftermath. My aim is to contrast a Brechtian dialectical approach to a set of political attitudes and behaviours with new formal strategies aimed at confronting the interplay of Nazism and contemporary German democratic society. While the NSU will form the thematic basis of the investigation, my interest lies more in the ways in which practitioners can engage dialectically with contentious social and political phenomena and what kinds of post-Brechtian theatre might emerge from the encounter.