Picture from University of Toronto Press, 2023.
Join us on October 26th at 11am PT for an online Ziegler Lecture featuring Martin Wagner (University of Calgary). This lecture will be co-hosted with UBC’s Department of Theatre and Film.
Title: Rethinking the Politics of Theatre: Lessons from the History of Vienna’s Burgtheater in the Nineteenth Century
Abstract: Since the second half of the twentieth century, the politics of theatre have often been understood to revolve around the extent to which individual productions challenge prevailing structures or normative frameworks. Yet theatres typically offer many different productions and whatever a theatre achieves must have to do not only with its individual productions, but also with the effect of the multitude of works to which it exposes its audience. Taking this plurality of productions seriously, I propose to look at the internal differentiation of the repertoire (or repertoire polyphony) as an alternative indicator of political relevance. Through the differences between the various plays on stage, alternatives become visible, and it becomes clear that there is room for debate – and, potentially, change. In my lecture, I further develop the idea of repertoire polyphony through a historical case study of the most prominent German-language stage of the nineteenth century, Vienna’s Burgtheater.
Bio: Martin Wagner is a Professor of German in the School of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Calgary. His research focuses on the literary and intellectual history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Publications include A Stage for Debate: The Political Significance of Vienna’s Burgtheater, 1814-1867 (the University of Toronto Press in June 2023); The Narratology of Observation: Studies in a Technique of European Literary Realism (De Gruyter, 2018); and Selected Works by J.M.R. Lenz (translated and edited together with Ellwood Wiggins; Camden House, 2019). Together with Elystan Griffiths, he is working on the monograph The Age of Obedience: German Thought and Society, 1750-1850.
Watch Martin Wagner’s Lecture Online:
Missed Martin’s lecture on October 26th? You can access the video and audio recording on UBC’s cIRcle database.
