In Part 3 of the ‘Essay on political theatre’, the development of the distinction between ‘the political’ and ‘politics’ from Herodotus to Lyotard was outlined. Now this development will be followed up to the theatre of the present day.¹

f) Derrida

Lyotard’s parallelisation of representation in politics and representation in theatre is taken up by Jacques Derrida in a lecture from 1997 on the occasion of a theatre performance “Karl Marx, Théâtre inédit” in Nanterre. For him, the concept of representation is the intersection of politics and theatre. Derrida speaks of a disease of representation or an evil (“mal de répresentation”) that has infected both areas. His criticism of political representation is less sharp than Lyotard’s; he does not want to attack representative democracy as such, but only to remind the political representatives of their function. To do this, he demands of the theatre:

‘We must change the stage, change the time, change the order of time’ ².

Without making a clear distinction between politics and the political, he calls for ‘allowing politics or the political to enter the structure of the theatre.’ ³ This can be achieved, ‘by interweaving several heterogeneous times in a single time that is divided and out of joint; by interweaving several orders of speech, modes of speaking that are simultaneously real, that is, realistic, and fictional, that is, lyrical and poetic.’ ⁴ Like Rancière, he also demands that theatre has the function of giving a voice to the unrepresented.

‘The art of disruption, of contratiempo (off-beat), is also an art of the political, an art of the theatrical, the art of giving the floor at the most inconvenient of times to those who, in the current course of events, have no right to raise their voice.”⁵

g) What used to be called political theatre

Jacques Derrida shares with Lyotard the rejection of

“what used to be called political theatre, which conveyed a message, sometimes a revolutionary content, without changing the form, time and space of the theatrical event”.⁶

This reproach against the old political theatre has been running through the discussion about politics in theatre since the 1990s, without the reproach being substantiated by examples. In the French context, one might assume that Sartre’s plays are meant, since they work with the traditional means of theatre: fictional plot and characters, empathy, arcs of suspense, concentrated narration with a condensed fictional time structure, clear separation of stage and auditorium (fourth wall).

Brecht is also considered part of the outdated, old political theatre. Lyotard rejects Brecht in his radical criticism of all symbolism in theatre and Rancière sees in Brecht, as in Artaud, one of the ‘theatre reformers’ who started from the false idea that ‘the theatre is a place of community in itself.’⁷ Both Brecht and Artaud set themselves the task of

‘to teach their audience the means to stop being spectators and to become actors in a collective practice.”⁸

Rancière, on the other hand, believes that ‘in a theatre […] there are only individuals who go their own way through the forest of things, actions and signs that they face.’ Only the equality of minds, only the same ability to play an unpredictable game of associations and dissociations, connects individuals.

‘Being a spectator is not the passive state that we have to transform into activity.”⁹.

Jens Roselt has used the phenomenological method to work out exactly what being a spectator in the theatre is like. It is a temporary, even selective community that in no way suspends the associative activity of the individual spectators. The spectator is actually not passive, he or she acts ‘in individual difference together’¹⁰. Although each spectator makes his or her own way through the forest of theatrical signs, the fact that all the others are also in this forest also characterises the theatrical situation of the audience. Commonality and difference – both are part of being an audience member.

An example:

In Karin Beier’s production of Roland Schimmelpfennig’s drama “Iokaste”¹¹, the question of how the occidental culture of the political has developed from a ritual to a political culture is discussed on stage.¹² The fact that a production like Karin Beier’s “Iokaste” deals with issues on stage that evoke associations in many minds to the current conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is just one example of the combination of individual freedom and temporary collectivity in the theatre: the fact that about 1000 people are staring in the same direction while at the same time being free to concentrate on whatever detail, that such a temporary collective subject arises, which reacts to the same thing in its own individually different mixture of emotions, considerations and judgements.

Brecht was already aware of this. As is well known, Brecht wanted to teach the ‘art of watching’ ‘an art that must first be learned, trained, then constantly practised in the theatre’¹³. He was also aware of the inconsistency of audience reactions in political theatre:

‘When plays with political effects are performed, the ambivalence of our audience […] can be clearly seen.’

He explicitly rejects the attempt to strive for ‘a uniformly reacting audience’; only Aristotelian drama, based on empathy, could attempt this. He even saw the possibility of theatre motivating action outside of the theatre more in the Aristotelian than in his epic theatre.¹⁴ However, he was not a ‘teacher without teaching’, as Rancière wishes teachers to be.

h) After Brecht

For post-Brecht German productions of political theatre, the accusation that they want to teach the audience to no longer be an audience is hardly true. In the 1960s, the predominant form of theatre was documentary theatre, but it only ever addressed political issues after the fact: Kipphardt’s ‘In the Case of J. Oppenheimer’ (In der Sache J. Oppenheimer, 1964) and ‘Brother Eichmann’ (Bruder Eichmann, 1982), Peter Weiss’s ‘Inquiry’ (Die Ermittlung, 1965) and ‘Vietnam Discourse’ (Vietnam-Diskurs, 1968) or Heiner Müller’s ‘Germania – Death in Berlin’ (Germania Tod in Berlin, 1971) and ‘The Commission’ (Der Auftrag, 1979) took up past political events to shed light on contemporary debates. With the exception of Rolf Hochhuth’s ‘The Deputy’ (Der Stellvertreter, 1963), none of these plays was formally naive in the sense of Schillerian or Ibsenian dramaturgy. The clarity of the ‘message’ conveyed by the old political theatre according to Derrida varied, however: very clear in Peter Weiss’ “Vietnam Discourse”¹⁵ and in the original version of Kipphardt’s ‘Bruder Eichmann’, very unclear in Heiner Müller’s ‘Der Auftrag’. The authors and directors of the 60s and 70s were also aware of the mode of operation of their medium. Or as Rancière puts it: the unavoidable split between intention and effect.¹⁶ Even then, Peter Stein thought that

‘the actual effect of art on politics is zero.’ ¹⁷

These banal insights were already known at the time. Only Peter Stein and Wolfgang Schwiedrzik’s Munich production of the ‘Vietnam Discourse’ in 1968, with an integrated collection of money for the Vietcong (FNL), tried (unsuccessfully) to rebel against this basal structure of reception, but it also only expected a mobilising effect only in the audience that was already in agreement.¹⁸

i) Hans-Thies Lehman and the post-dramatic theatre

The most influential definition of what political theatre is for German theatre in the 21st century can be found in Hans-Thies Lehmann’s essay “Wie politisch ist das postdramatische Theater?”(How political is post-dramatic theatre?) from 2001. [Hans-Thies Lehmann, “Wie politisch ist das postdramatische Theater?”, in: H-Th.L., Das Politische Schreiben. Essays zu Theatertexten. Berlin: Theater der Zeit, 2002 {= Recherchen 12}; first published in: Theater der Zeit, October 2001]. As a lecturer at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen and as a professor at the University of Frankfurt/M, Hans-Thies Lehmann has had a decisive influence on the generation of directors and dramaturgs after 2000. His essay, like his magnum opus, ‘Das postdramatische Theater’¹⁹, is a profound analysis of contemporary theatre and, at the same time, an aesthetic programme, i.e. not just theatre theory, but a science that is to be applied. From today’s perspective, however, one must formulate some reservations about his definition of political theatre.

Lehmann first reformulates the title question of his essay to ‘How is theatre, for example post-dramatic theatre, political?’ His premise is therefore: theatre is political in a way that is particular to it. So there is no question of whether theatre is political or what kind of theatre is political. He later writes that theatre is structurally political, that the political is ‘inscribed’ in it. In doing so, he explicitly refrains from a more precise definition of the term ‘political’.²⁰ In any case, the term ‘of the political’, which Lehmann always uses here, is not distinguished from ‘politics’.

As a theatre theorist, Lehmann does not want to give ‘instructions (programmes)’. But time and again, evaluations of theatre practice creep into his formulations. For example, when he warns against taking up political content in theatre because then there is a danger that it will ‘too obediently parrot’ what public discourse dictates. He is concerned with defending post-dramatic theatre (Fabre, Wilson, Pollesch, Lauwers) against the accusation that it lacks the political.

The political in theatre

Lehmann’s definition of the political in theatre is based on three formulas, the first of which has three sub-theses.

1. a) The political can only appear in theatre indirectly, in modo obliquo.

b) The political comes to bear in theatre when and only when it cannot be translated or retranslated into the logic, syntax and conceptuality of political discourse.

c) The political in theatre is to be thought of as an interruption of the political.

2. Political theatre is to be understood as a practice of exception. Only a theatre that shakes its own rules, that interrupts theatre as a show, enters into a genuine relationship with the political.

3. Political theatre takes the form of the shock of habit/disappointment of desire to find dramatised simulacra of political realities on stage. At the same time, this is a shock to the moralisation associated with the personalisation in politics and thus the avoidance of the moralistic trap.

Lehmann’s thesis that the political in theatre is the interruption of the political obviously draws on Walter Benjamin’s use of the term ‘interruption’ in his characterisation of Brecht’s epic theatre. Benjamin sees the ‘interruption of sequences’ in Brecht as an essential means of alienation and thus for the spectator to discover in amazement the conditions in which he lives. ²¹ Lehmann expands this concept of interruption, however, from the interruption of processes to the ‘interruption of the regulatory’ in general and in politics. The interruption thus becomes an intended effect rather than an aesthetic device. The ‘solidified façade of legal relationships’ in which we live is to be broken open so that the agonistic, the conflict as the essence of politics, becomes clear again.²² It also becomes clear to what extent Lehmann in 2001 assumed a society based on superficial consensus in which conflicts are hidden. Meanwhile, in 2025, Western societies in Europe and America are on the road to increasing polarisation. The façade of consensus is crumbling, even legal relationships are becoming fluid because the opponents of the pluralistic-democratic system (Trump, Orban, Le Pen, Meloni, Kickl, Ben-Gvir) are attacking the legal institutions first. For Lehmann, however, these agonal forces of politics have no place and are not persons. Therefore, they ‘offer no content that would be political, no form to representation’. This is the old insight that Brecht had already formulated as:

‘Actual reality has slipped into the functional’.²³

But if theatre wants to present these formless forces of the political (or of politics?), it cannot just present function graphs, it needs the detour via people, actors, performers or presenters. Lehmann seems to shy away from this detour and points to the possibility of retreating away from politics and towards one’s own rules, towards interrupting the ‘listening and viewing order’. The paradoxical formulation that the political aspect of theatre consists in keeping free of everything political is very much in line with Jacques Rancière’s:

‘Art that makes politics by abolishing itself as art is thus opposed by an art that is political on condition that it keeps itself pure of any political influence.”²⁴

Rancière’s critique of art that abolishes itself for the sake of politics applies more to the actions of the ‘Centre for Political Beauty’ (Zentrum für politische Schönheit, ZfS) and similar artivist projects than to current attempts at political theatre. The political (and politics) also appear in the theatre directly, in modo recto. The political in the theatre can be translated into the terminology of politics. The political in theatre is not an interruption of the political, but (also, not always) an interference in politics.

Political tendency and artistic tendency

Walter Benjamin’s definition of the relationship between political tendency and literary tendency seems to provide a template for determining the relationship between theatre and the political:

‘The tendency of a piece of writing can only be politically correct if it is also correct in literary terms. This means that the politically correct tendency includes a literary tendency, […] this literary tendency can consist of a step forward or backward in literary technique.”²⁵

Lehmann seems to want to reverse Benjamin’s formula: for him, progress in theatrical technique (‘overcoming the visual and auditory arrangement in favour of an exploration of the situational aspect’) is the condition for political theatre. For Benjamin, it was still clear which political tendency he meant. His lecture on the author as producer was delivered in 1934 in Paris at the ‘Institute for the Study of Fascism’. For Lehmann, on the other hand, there is no specific political tendency that political theatre should pursue, but only a ‘genuine reference to the political’, which, however, should consist precisely in a break with political content.

The auxiliary institute of theatre

‘Theatre cannot be an auxiliary institution of political education.’ ²⁶

On the other hand, it is certain that theatre is being used as such in the present day: it is often the case that theatre intervenes in the realm of politics, and thus in the realm of power and strategy. The temporal dimension plays a role here. Theatre often takes up global topics of medium-term relevance and relates them to contemporary issues²⁷ or locally in retrospect.²⁸ The most internationally well-known play of this kind, which deals with political processes in retrospect, is ‘Enron’ by Lucy Prebble about the fraud of the American energy company.²⁹ Or, more recently, Volker Lösch and Marlene Engelhorn’s show ‘Geld ist Klasse’ (Money is Class). Elfriede Jelinek’s almost daily text productions for the theatre, e.g. ‘Am Königsweg’ (On the Royal Road) 2017 on Donald Trump’s first election, most recently ‘Endsieg’ (Final Victory) on his re-election, and their staging by Falk Richter, are examples of how quickly the theatre can react and that a theatre that takes up current political content does not have to resort to the structures of traditional narrative-Aristotelian theatre.³⁰

Investigative Theatre

Theatre not only addresses the conditions of the constitution of the polity, the political, but also, to an increasing extent, politics itself. Theatre critics can criticise such projects aesthetically, one can question their political effectiveness, but theatre theory would have to take note of the fact that such a thing exists and explain the condition of its possibility: the analogy of theatre and politics.³¹ Jean Peters of the journalists’ collective Correctiv explains the function of this investigative theatre with the decline of newspapers:

‘Theatre is one of many answers: here you can tell a story in peace and at the end we know: there are witnesses to the shared experience…. Theatre has the calmness of development and of picking up on things, of contextualisation and of meta-levels.’ ’It’s about creating a space in which society can develop. We want to awaken the desire to shape society. … That is my vision – and theatre can do that.”³²

‘A space in which society can develop’ is a definition of the political, and this is the basis for a theatre project about a conference of far-right politicians who discussed the re-migration of emigrants: “Geheimplan gegen Deutschland” (Berliner Ensemble, Volkstheater Vienna 202 4).³³ Here, then, the ‘political’, the conditions for the constitution of society, and ‘politics’, the decisions about society that are concentrated in the state and organised institutionally, are to be connected; the one is not without the other in the theatre, not separated as in Lehmann. Here, the political comes into play precisely because it can be translated into public discourse, which is called politics. At most, one could apply Derrida’s proviso clause: provided that the theatre “does not simply turn into a meeting place and continues to follow its theatrical destiny.”³⁴ This journalistic theatre of revelations should certainly not be propagated as the future of theatre, but we should at least take note of its potential.

The moralistic trap

Lehman warns of the ‘moralistic trap’ that theatre could fall into by taking on political content, through the theatricalisation and personalisation of the political. This warning is in line with Rancière’s warning against the ‘ethical confusion’ that equates politics and art.³⁵ For Rancière, art and politics are two areas that are in a permanent state of tension, but do not merge into one another. The possibility of political theatre does not mean a weakening of the autonomy of art³⁶, although, as Janis El-Bira puts it, in the theatre “the post-autonomous has long since been rattling at the auditorium doors.”³⁷  Art remains a separate area with its own valuations, rules and procedures, like politics and morality, even if one system can be judged by the standards of the other.

The ‘moralistic trap’ does not snap shut as soon as the theatre takes up political content because the political, like art, is an autonomous realm. Since the ‘Machiavellian moment’, politics has established itself as a separate realm alongside morality.³⁸ But the autonomous realms of politics, art and morality are in a mutual state of tension.
For a pure ethics of reason, as advocated by Kant, there is no conflict between morality and politics, because politics must always be guided by morality, to which only what is possible is binding.³⁹ But for actual morality, for the moral concepts in people’s minds, for what Hegel calls ‘morality’⁴⁰, these conflicts between morality, politics and art arise constantly.

From today’s perspective, Hans-Thies Lehmann’s definition of the political in theatre, especially in post-dramatic theatre, seems to be a retreat from the ‘disgusting corruption of political discourse’⁴¹ to a ‘politics of perception’⁴², the effect of which remains questionable and the re-connection to the realm of the political is deliberately negated.

To be continued.