Christoph Schlingensief : staging chaos, performing politics and theatrical phantasmagoria / Anna Teresa Scheer.

"This is the first book to focus specifically on the late 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 artistic lineage as a filmmaker with no formal training in theatre, whose work does not correspond to theoretical frameworks such as postdramatic theatre, Regietheater, or established categories of political theatre such as Brechtian, community, and agit-prop theatre. She explores how his work instead draws upon the highly performative gestures of the historical and post-Cold War avant-gardes as well the happenings and event-based practices of the sixties. Comprehensive case studies of six diverse theatrical and activist events are offered to demonstrate both the immediacy of Schlingensief's response to contemporary social and political events and his use of a range of artistic influences and different genres: Rocky Dutschke '68 (1996), Save Capitalism: Throw the Money Away! (1999) The Berlin Republic - or the Ring in Africa (1999) Hamlet (2001), Atta Atta - Art Has Broken Out! (2003) and the Church of Fear (2003)"-- From publisher info.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Schlingensief, the all-round artist -- Beyond theatre: avant-garde influences, the Schlingensief "family" and German politics in the 1980s -- Schlingensief and German reunification: from independent filmmaker to Volksbühne rebel -- Re-playing the sixties: Rocky Dutschke '68 and performative activism -- The Berlin Republic: postcolonial amnesia, contemporary German politics, and Wagner as "light comedy" -- Spectres of fascism and a theatrical "ghosting": Hamlet/Nazi-line -- Art and terror: a church in cyberspace and a utopian social project -- Conclusion: the theatrical phantasmagorias of Christoph Schlingensief.