1st Edition

Aesthetics of Absence Texts on Theatre

Edited By Jane Collins, Heiner Goebbels, Nicole Gronemeyer Copyright 2015
    154 Pages
    by Routledge

    154 Pages
    by Routledge

    Aesthetics of Absence presents a significant challenge to the many embedded assumptions and hierarchical structures that have become ‘naturalised’ in western theatre production. This is the first English translation of a new collection of writings and lectures by Heiner Goebbels, the renowned German theatre director, composer and teacher. These writings map Goebbels’ engagement with ‘Aesthetics of Absence’ through his own experience at the forefront of innovative music-theatre and performance making.

    In this volume, Goebbels reflects on works created over a period of more than 20 years staged throughout the world; introduces some of his key artistic influences, including Robert Wilson and Jean-Luc Godard; discusses the work of his students and ex-students, the collective Rimini Protokoll; and sets out the case for a radical rethinking of theatre and performance education. He gives us a rare insight into the rehearsal process of critically acclaimed works such as Eraritjaritjaka and Stifters Dinge, explaining in meticulous detail the way he weaves an eclectic range of references from fine art, theatre, literature, politics, anthropology, contemporary and classical music, jazz and folk, into his multi-textured music-theatre compositions.

    As an artist who is prepared to share his research and demystify the processes through which his own works come into being, as a teacher with a coherent pedagogical strategy for educating the next generation of theatre-makers, in this volume, Goebbels brings together practice, research and scholarship.

    Contents

    List of Illustrations

    When a Tree is Already Being Mentioned, You Don’t Also Have to Show It

    A Preface

     

    Aesthetics of Absence

    How it all began

     

    PART I: Texts on Work(s)

    Description of a Picture, Table-Parties and Comparative Degrees

    About the opera Landscape with Distant Relatives

     

    ‘Some Things You Only Remember, Because They Don’t Have Anything To Do With Anything’

    Questions on constructing Eraritjaritjaka

     

    Real Time In Oberplan

    A Theatre of Deceleration

     

    Peculiar Voices

    On working on I Went to the House But Did Not Enter

     

    The Space as Invitation

    The spectator as the object of art

     

     

    PART II: Texts on Artists

    ‘But I wanted this to be a narrative’

    Jean-Luc Godard as a composer

     

    What We Don’t See, Attracts Us

    Four theses on Call Cutta by Rimini Protokoll

     

    The Mystery Of Signs

    For Robert Wilson

     

    Trust No Eye

    For Erich Wonder

     

    ‘To Comprehensively Build Up A Society With Modest Prosperity’

    The Ensemble Modern as an example

     

     

    PART III: Texts on Education

    Research or Craftsmanship?

    Nine theses on the future of an education for the performing arts

     

    If I Want An Actor To Cry, I Give Him An Onion

    On working with actors

     

    A Giant Wooden Pistol

    Theory and Practice in Gießen

     

    Organising Hearing and Seeing

    The Practical Study of Theatre

     

    Compromise Is a Bad Director

    Theatre as museum or laboratory

     

    Appendix

     

    Biography

    Biography

    Heiner Goebbels is a professor at the Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft of the Justus-Liebig-University Gießen, President of the Hessische Theaterakademie, and Artistic Director of the Ruhrtriennale – International Festival of the Arts.

    "This book will have a wide appeal for scenographers, designers, theatre makers, students and academics who are interested in the interplay of theatre objects directly from the perspective of an exemplary practitioner of the form. [...] a welcome and stimulating perspective."

    - Theatre, Dance and Performance Training

    "A significant contribution to shifting the margins and the centre of the discourse on practice."

    - Ed McKeown, Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture