State of the Arts
An Ethnography of German Theatre and Migration

This contemporary ethnographic study of German theatre brings anthropology into renewed dialogue with theatre and performance studies.

Jonas Tinius (Author)

9781009321129, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 August 2023

290 pages
28 x 19 x 2.3 cm, 0.539 kg

'State of the Arts is a (perhaps the first) genuine organisational ethnography of a German theatre. Tinius has written a groundbreaking study that links ethnographic fieldwork with fundamental insights into German theatre's institutional makeup to illuminate the remarkable Theater an der Ruhr.' Christopher Balme, Professor of Theatre Studies, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

This is a bold and wide-ranging account of the unique German public theatre system through the prism of a migrant artistic institution in the western post-industrial Ruhr region. State of the Arts analyses how artistic traditions have responded to social change, racism, and cosmopolitan anxieties and recounts how critical contemporary cultural production positions itself in relation to the tumultuous history of German state patronage, difficult heritage, and self-cultivation through the arts. Jonas Tinius' fieldwork with professional actors, directors, cultural policy makers, and activists unravels how they constitute theatre as a site for extra-ordinary ethical conduct and how they grapple with the pervasive German cultural tradition of Bildung, or self-cultivation through the arts. Tinius shows how anthropological methods provide a way to understand the entanglement of cultural policy, institution-building, and subject-formation. An ambitious and interdisciplinary study, the work demonstrates the crucial role of artistic intellectuals in society.

Introduction. Scaling Traditions: An Anthropology of Theatre, Migration, and State
1. Activism, Aesthetic Education, and the Making of Modern German Theatre
2. A Public Migrant Theatre: Inventing Institutional Traditions and the Becoming of an Artistic Organisation
3. Rehearsal as Method: Ethnographies of Conduct and Character
4. Repertoire Politics: Transnational Theatre and Travel as Diplomacy
5. Places Along the Ruhr: Situated Knowledge and Refugee Theatre
Conclusion. Proposals for an Ethnography of Theatre and Performance.

Subject Areas: Theatre studies [AN]