The interpretive gesture: Heiner Goebbels and the imagination of the public sphere
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2019
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Melbourne Authors
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School of Culture and Communication
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Masters Research thesis
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Open Access
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© 2019 Luke Matthews
Abstract
Heiner Goebbels’s Stifters Dinge and When the Mountain Changed Its Clothing are examples of “postdramatic” theatre works that engage with the political by seeking to challenge socially ingrained habits of perception rather than by presenting traditional, literary-based theatre of political didacticism or agitation. Goebbels claims to work toward a “non-hierarchical” theatre in the contexts of his arrangement of the various theatrical elements, in fostering collaborative working processes between the artists involved, and in the creation of audience-artist relationships. I argue that, in doing so, he follows a familiar theoretical trajectory that employs the theatre as a convenient metaphor for the public sphere. Two broad traditions exist concerning this connection between theatre and publicness: first, a line of thought that sets theatre against the rational community of equals; and, second, an opposing tradition which looks in hope to theatre for the possibility of a participatory democracy. In situating Goebbels’s practice within this second tradition, I moreover argue that the metaphor of the theatrical public sphere may also be understood in terms of a negotiation between Kantian sublimity and the notion of the beautiful.
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Heiner Goebbels, postdramatic theatre, public sphere, Stifters Dinge, When the Mountain Changed Its Clothing