Theatre of Real People

Theatre of Real People offers fresh perspectives on the current fascination with putting people on stage who present aspects of their own lives and who are not usually trained actors. After providing a history of this mode of performance, and theoretical frameworks for its analysis, the book focuses on work developed by seminal practitioners at Berlin’s Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) production house. It invites the reader to explore the HAU’s innovative approach to Theatre of Real People, authenticity and cultural diversity during the period of Matthias Lilienthal’s leadership (2003–12).Garde and Mumford also elucidate how Theatre of Real People can create and destabilise a sense of the authentic, and suggest how Authenticity-Effects can present new ways of perceiving diverse and unfamiliar people. Through a detailed analysis of key HAU productions such as Lilienthal’s brainchild X-Apartments, Mobile Academy’s Blackmarket, and Rimini Protokoll’s 100% City, the book explores both the artistic agenda of an important European theatre institution, and a crucial aspect of contemporary theatre’s social engagement.

“"With this book, Garde and Mumford notably advance the study of Theatre of the Real and of the performer in documentary theatre ... The notion of a skeptical approach to Authenticity-Effects and the impact that this can have on willing audiences is a thrilling step forward in the field and one that can have a wide impact among both scholars and theatre practitioners." -Theatre Survey”

With this book, Garde and Mumford notably advance the study of Theatre of the Real and of the performer in documentary theatre … The notion of a skeptical approach to Authenticity-Effects and the impact that this can have on willing audiences is a thrilling step forward in the field and one that can have a wide impact among both scholars and theatre practitioners. Theatre Survey
A fascinating account of recent modes of socially engaged performance that places contemporary people drawn from the everyday, rather than trained actors, at the center of the theatrical experience ... the analyses in Chapters 5-8 of Theatre of Real People are lively and incisive. Limbus

Dr Ulrike Garde is Senior Lecturer in German Studies at Macquarie University, Australia. Her research interests range across Intercultural German Studies, German literature and the performing arts. Her publications include Brecht & Co: German-speaking Playwrights on the Australian Stage (2007).Dr Meg Mumford is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her research focuses on social engagement, intercultural exchange, and the politics of performing bodies, particularly with regard to theatre from Germany and Australia. She has published extensively on the work of playwright-director Bertolt Brecht, and is the author of Bertolt Brecht (2009).The authors co-edited Rimini Protokoll Close-Up: Lektüren (2014) together with Johannes Birgfeld, as well as the 2015 issue of Performance Paradigm on the arts and effects of non-professional theatre performers.

Recent socially engaged Western theatre has shown an intense fascination with putting contemporary people on stage. Garde and Mumford's book provides the first in-depth analysis of how innovative forms of this theatre present and invite encounters between participants from diverse backgrounds through a study of the work arising from Germany's Hebbel-am-Ufer theatre in Berlin. In so doing it opens up the work of an important European theatre and illuminates a distinct and prevalent mode of performance and aesthetic trend. .. The Theatre of Real People focuses on productions by leading practitioners from Germany - including Mobile Academy, Shermin Langhoff, and Rimini Protokoll - that were curated by the award-winning Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) production house in Berlin during the period of Matthias Lilienthal's leadership (2003-11). Through its investigation of the HAU productions, this book encourages readers to consider how performance can invite fresh ways of perceiving culturally diverse and unfamiliar people through the creation and destabilization of a sense of the real and authentic.

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