DR 444 - Theater in Berlin

This course will give students fundamental insights into post/modern theater in Berlin. It will provide students with historical, analytical, and performative knowledge about Bertolt Brecht’s theatre model, its realization and abjection in the theatre landscape of divided Berlin (1949-1989) and today’s postdramatic form(s) of Berlin theater. Students will be introduced to different analytical approaches to dramatic texts, both from the perspective of Literature and from the perspective of Drama. We will be dealing with various German theater plays and read them in their aesthetic and political contexts. Most of the plays read in class will be watched in famous Berlin theaters such as Berliner Ensemble or Gorki Theater as well as off-theatres. Thereby, we will be discussing theater directors, such as Heiner Müller, Yael Ronen or ‘free’ art collectives. In cooperation with Berlin theater practitioners, students will deepen their theoretical knowledge of the plays through performative research. This gives students not only a practical understanding of the process of theater making but also of performative practices as research instruments in academia. At the end of the class students will be familiar with current trends, schools, aesthetic, and sociopolitical discourses of Berlin theater and of Berlin as theater.