Authenticity is one of the major values of our time. It is visible everywhere, from clothing to food to self-help books. While it is such a prevalent phenomenon, it is also very evasive. This study analyses the 'culture of authenticity' as it relates to theatre and establishes a theoretical framework for analysis. Daniel Schulz argues that authenticity is sought out and marked by the individual and springs from a culture that is perceived as inherently fake and lacking depth. The study examines three types of performances that exemplify this structure of feeling: intimate theatre seen in...

This is the first book to focus specifically on the late all-round German artist Christoph Schlingensief's theatre work, which subversively merges art, politics and everyday life to imbue his productions both inside and outside the theatre with a re-energized concept of the political in art. The book proposes the pluralistic concept of the phantasmagoria as a means to decoding Schlingensief's unique theatrical vision and examines how it achieves its political radicality, yet retains a critical ambivalence in regard to an explicitly political intention.

Scheer traces Schlingensief's...

The Initiation of History: Fiery Temporalities in Theatre and Peformance considers the three categories of time that can be thought to occur specifically in theatre and performance: inceptions, births, or initiations of human history. Each of these temporalities works against what are often thought to be theatre's prevailing temporal mechanisms.

Maurya Wickstrom grounds her analysis in the theories of three leading philosphers: Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, and Antonio Negri. She considers the ways in which theatre and performance responds to the questions of the new...