There are two ways of thinking about political theatre, two sentence beginnings: I. ‘Theatre is political because …’ or II. ‘Theatre is political if …’.

I. ‘Theatre is political because …’

Then general conditions would have to be outlined which theatre as a whole fulfils in all possible variations and which justify the qualification as political.

II ‘Theatre is political if …’

a) descriptive

This sentence structure seems to introduce a description of a genre of theatre, a purely analytical statement that names the conditions under which a certain type of theatre can be described as political. There would then be a kind of theatre that is not political and one would have to name the difference between political and non-political theatre.

b) normative

Often, however, this ‘if …’ seems to be heading towards a value judgement. The condition is actually a wish or a demand. Theatre ought to be political. It is characteristic of the discussion in theatre criticism and theatre studies that this ought to is not explicitly formulated, but only insinuated.
How is this ought to justified?

aa) In Hegelian terms: it follows from the concept or basic structure of theatre that it is political, and only if it fulfils this concept it is theatre in the full sense. If not, is it somehow inferior? So, as with I., one would have to define the concept or basic structure of theatre more precisely. And explain how an ‘ought’ emerges from this ‘being’ of theatre.

bb) Or is the demand for a political theatre simply a moral demand like any other? Theatre should be political because it then promotes the interests of the greatest possible number of people? It would be more than just a demand that theatre meets the requirements of politics (‘politically correct’), but that it makes a morally valuable contribution to politics. The theatre would therefore not be autonomous, but subordinate to politics, which in turn would be subordinate to morality.

I.+II. Politics or the political

For both analyses, the question arises as to whether the quality ‘political’ refers to politics or to the political (in  English often polity). For in the philosophy of politics and also in the discussion of theatre theory, the distinction between ‘politics’ (la politique) and ‘the political’ (le politique) has become established. So does political theatre refer to the realm of politics or to the political or both? So what is the relationship between the noun ‘politics’, the attributive adjective ‘political’ and the substantivised adjective ‘the political’ in the case of theatre?

In her encyclopaedia article ‘Politisches Theater’¹ Erika Fischer-Lichte distinguishes between four conceptual understandings:

1. structural politicality of theatre, 2. anthropological impact of theatre as political, 3. thematic politicality of theatre, 4. new politics of the aesthetic.

Conceptual understandings 1 and 2 are of the type ‘theatre is political because …’ (I.) and are aimed at theatre as a whole, at its structure (1) or its effect (2). 3. is a definition of a certain type of theatre, i.e. II a), but often also II b) bb). However, Fischer-Lichte’s term no. 4 is the most interesting because it has occupied the theatre studies debate in recent years.

In the following, the questions arising from I, II a) and b) as well as Fischer-Lichte’s No. 4 will be examined, in each case with reference to the philosophical or theatre studies literature and occasional references to current theatre practice.

I. ‘Theatre is political because …’

1 Alain Badiou

From Alain Badiou, the French philosopher who has always been politically active to this day and who was also present in the theatre as an author, one could expect an answer.²

For Badiou, there is a ‘formal analogy’ between theatre and politics (‘la politique’)³ He also calls this relationship of similarity ‘isomorphism theatre/politics’. It is not based on thematic congruence, but on structure. However, he also sees a distance between politics and theatre, which he calls ‘figurative’⁴. To show the analogous relationship between theatre and politics, he lists the elements of both areas:

‘So: place, text, director, actors, set, costumes, audience are the elements of theatre that can be deduced a priori. And organisations, textual speakers, thinkers, proper names, the state, different points of view and eventful masses are the mandatory ingredients of a political situation.’ ⁵

For Badiou, politics is nothing permanent, ‘politics takes place’ and so does the theatre: ‘The performance takes place.’⁶. For Badiou, theatre and politics (‘la politique’) have the complete precariousness of time in common. For Badiou, ‘substantial’ theatre, unlike cinema and commercial ‘theatre’, is a matter for the state and therefore requires subsidies.⁷.

‘Of all the arts, theatre is the one that most persistently leans towards politics (or presupposes it).’ ⁸

For Badiou, events produce truths, both in art (and thus in theatre) and in politics. For Badiou, truth is the process of fidelity to an event.⁹

This conception of politics¹⁰ can be criticised because it does not take into account the antagonistic element of politics¹¹. But regardless of his political theory, it can also be said that even Badiou does not claim an identity between politics and theatre. For Badiou, the sentence ‘Theatre is political because …’ could not be continued in this way. It should read: ‘Theatre is similar to politics because …’.

With his definition of the relationship between theatre and politics as a relationship of proximity without identity, Badiou hits on a point that other theories of political theatre also consider.

Oliver Marchart, for example, also states

‘a certain similarity of theatrical and political action’, “a fundamental comparability of the boards that mean the world with the public space of politics.”¹²

Marchart examines two of the prime examples of political theatre, the occupation of the Theatre Odéon in Paris in 1968 and the re-enactment of the Russian October Revolution in 1920 in St. Petersburg by the director Nikolai Evrejnoff. However, Marchart uses these examples to show the fundamental unrepresentability of antagonism, which is the essence of politics. For him, there is therefore only a rough approximation, a ‘passage à l’acte’ to antagonism. For him, the genre of theatre that most closely corresponds to the antagonism of politics is melodrama (whereby he is referring to the French and British stage melodramas of the 18th and early 19th centuries, not the musical genre). However, because he can hardly recommend melodrama to contemporary theatre as a future-oriented model for political theatre, he leaves the conclusion for future theatre to the English theatre scholar Janelle Reinert:

“In casting my comments within the discourse of what might be called ‘democratic civics’, I am attempting to theorize a theatrical space patronized by a consensual community of citizen-spectators who come together at stagings of the social imaginary in order to consider and experience affirmation, contestation and reworking of various material and discursive practices pertinent to the constitution of a democratic society.” ¹³

For Marchart, political theatre seems to be possible without all theatre being political for him or theatre being part of the political or of politics. Only an approach to politics is possible.

It is therefore impossible to find a valid reason why all theatre is political per se. The sentence ‘Theatre is political because …’ remains unfinished.

2 Jens Roselt

A completely different philosophically based definition of the structure of theatre can be found in Jens Roselt’s habilitation thesis ‘Phänomenologie des Theaters’ ¹⁴. It does without any reference to politics. However, Roselt does examine the particular structure of the community that a theatre performance creates. He analyses the theatre situation between performer (actor/actress) and audience (spectators) as a we, without any reference to politics.

Unlike Badiou, he does not parallel audience (theatre) and ‘eventful masses’ (politics), but rather defines the specificity of theatre closely oriented to the manifestations of contemporary theatre. Its audience is constituted in the ‘interplay of seriality and dissidence’¹⁵. Seriality is the interdependence of a collective, but one that is purely external, without individual reciprocal influence. On the other hand, a theatre audience is not completely determined by this seriality; everyone can reclaim their individual freedom at any time (by heckling, booing, leaving the auditorium, etc.). As an audience, one acts ‘together in individual difference’¹⁶.

Following the phenomenologist Aron Gurwitsch, Roselt distinguishes between three dimensions of we-experiences: partnership (“Partnerschaft”), community (“Gemeinschaft”) and covenant (“Bund”). All three can characterise the situation of a theatre performance:¹⁷ the encounter in a role (partnership), the experience of affiliation (community), emotional fusion (covenant). However, Roselt cites the Living Theatre’s production ‘Paradise Now’ (which was shown in January 1970 at the Berlin Akademie der Künste) as an example of this seemingly antiquated terminology from the 1930s¹⁸. Roselt can thus analyse the effect of the avant-garde theatre of the 1960s ‘as a new form of social experience’ ¹⁹ without declaring it ‘political’, although the Living Theatre explicitly saw itself as a political theatre in the radicalised succession of Erwin Piscator²⁰. Roselt thus shows through precise analysis that new experimental theatre forms that overcome the traditional ‘viewing and listening arrangement’ of the theatre and offer an ‘exploration of the situational aspect’²¹ of theatre, do indeed make new forms of social experience possible for the audience, but these do not have to be equated with a political experience.

Or in the words of Oliver Marchart:

‘Not every social practice is a political practice.’²².

II ‘Theatre is political when …’

a) descriptive

1 Erwin Piscator

Erwin Piscator coined the term ‘political theatre’ in the 1920s. He was referring to his own  theatre, the Piscator Theatre. The term therefore originated from the perspective of the theatre makers, not as an analytical term of theatre observation. Because by ‘political theatre’ Piscator meant his theatre, which he created as a director and theatre manager, ‘political’ was not a descriptive term for him either. For him, political theatre is therefore necessarily a ‘proletarian-political theatre.’²³. For him, the necessity of this theatre was based on the present, in which he developed his theatre in the 1920s and 1930s.

‘A time in which the relationships between the general public, the reorganisation of all relationships are on the agenda, can only see man in his position in society, as a political being.”²⁴

Conditions that make every expression of life a political one also require a political theatre.

For Piscator, there is also non-political theatre, but only if a ruling class wants to keep theatre out of the power struggles of a society. For Piscator, the sentence would therefore be: ‘Theatre is political when it is necessary.’

2 Siegfried Melchinger

This view that political theatre is a special subspecies of theatre, alongside entertainment theatre, commercial theatre, children’s theatre, etc., is rarely held today. A prominent example of this view in the 1960s and 1970s, when the concept of ‘political theatre’ came back into the discussion, is Siegfried Melchinger’s comprehensive ‘Geschichte des politischen Theaters’²⁵.

Melchinger’s account of theatre history is of little use for today’s discussion because, despite his knowledge of Living Theatre and Bread and Puppet Theatre, it only refers to theatre texts, to plays, and only to those that were still being performed in 1970. For him, theatre is always an object of politics. But politics is also a subject of theatre (plays).

‘Politics is an important and at times urgent theme of the theatre. But it has never been the only one, and it will and can be as little so as in life.”²⁶.

For Melchinger, not all theatre is political, but his definition of the difference between political and apolitical theatre remains imprecise:

‘Political theatre sets up situations, processes that are important for many, most, perhaps all. It shows possible forms of behaviour in these situations; it shows them critically and appeals to criticism. To the criticism of the audience. Only when political theatre succeeds in involving the audience in the situations and events does it create the public sphere that is its most distinctive feature.’ ²⁷.

The criterion of publicity applies to all types of (contemporary) theatre, as long as they are not private events. This also means that theatre tries to be important ‘for everyone’ – which it can never achieve in full. The counter-image of apolitical theatre is only pejoratively labelled with common terms such as ‘sentimental emotion’, ‘strange identification’, ‘beautiful or uplifting illusion’²⁸.

Melchinger’s initially descriptive concept of political theatre becomes more normative in the course of his presentation. Not only should political theatre be critical, it should not serve the ‘intentions of ruling systems’ ²⁹, but there should always be political theatre. Despite the ineffectiveness of political theatre, which Melchinger states at the end of his passage, he demands:

‘Now that nothing has been achieved, the task remains: to intervene in the arrogance of politicians through political theatre.’ ³⁰

Melchinger’s ‘History of political theatre’ is written from the perspective of a theatre critic, and any critic cannot refrain from making judgements.

Preliminary conclusion:

There does not seem to be a truly descriptive concept of ‘political theatre’. But why?

To be continued