On with the Show? The Transition to Post-Socialist Theatre in Eastern Germany

As with so much in the GDR [German Democratic Republic or East Germany], the theatre too is especially German: a subsidized enterprise with strong culturalpolitical claims, a disguised 'moral institution,' an audience-oriented masquerade.' This was the opinion of Cologne theatre students who in 1987 traveled around the GDR hinterland. At least in this sphere one might expect in 1992, then, the unity that inspired the slogan Germany united fatherland in Fall 1989. After only one year of a united German theatre, however, an East German critic concluded: The defining experience of the new German unity is the difference that separates us. What remains is the otherness.2 And yet it all began with great promise. Regardless of their antithetical socio-political structures and ideological aims during the previous forty years, both states were committed to a common German tradition: the responsibility of the state to support culture. This explains why a specific section (Article 35) of the official Unification Treaty addresses culture

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• Notes on the German Theatre Crisis

  David Hughes, David Ashley Hughes•TDR/The Drama Review•2007

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