Theaterstück.blogspot.de is a theatre criticism page founded by me, Richard Pettifer, in 2013. It comes out of what I percieved back then as a drift away from criticism and critical thinking within what remains of the public sphere, most significantly represented by the disappearance of accessible criticism. As many before me have recognised the role that theatre criticism can play: Oscar Wilde with his "to deepen its mystery, to raise round it, and round its maker, that mist of wonder which is dear to both gods and worshippers alike", Bernard Shaw with his
"A critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned", or Anne Bogart, still one of the clearest writers about the role of the artist in theatre:
from And Then, You Act (2007)
...to this we might add: 'but enthusiasm about what?' And here is where a critic enters.
This page is based on a previous project by the theatre critic/fantasy novelist Alison Croggan, whose site
Theatrenotes proved a breeding ground for many independent artists of Melbourne's theatre scene in the early 2000s. Like Croggan, I undertake
Theaterstück largely as a labour of love and enthusiasm: to draw attention especailly the work of independent artists, whose work often goes into important unexplored territories, and would often otherwise never be written about and perhaps forgotten, as well as remaining largely unexamined.
Although this project began nominally with writing about theatre in Berlin, it has grown to include many festivals of Europe, with over 300 shows reviewed across 18 countries over a 10-year period so far. The discourse is especially oriented to my concerns of ecological crisis, democratic theatre, and radical possibility in theatrical imagination, and particularly in the former Eastern Bloc region. Theaterstück, in principle, does not fly: where the piece was in Europe, I did not fly to see it (longest trip so far: Azerbaijan in 3 days). I hope to challenge the idea of a theatre critic, given the unfavourable conditions for critical thinking and theatrical art today - the "stuck" on which the lame joke of the page's title is based (the word "das Stück", in German, means "piece", and is completely different to the English "stuck").
This site uses Google/Alphabet's "Blogger" engine because of Google's specific clauses protecting ownership of material, which (as opposed to competitors) offer some protection for author rights including against its co-option for advertising. I cannot guarantee that data is not collected from your visit here: your visit is at your own digital risk. All published work on this site is my own, unless specifically acknowledged (particularly that of stage photographers). Where possible, artists are notified that their work will be written on in a dialogic process - otherwise, their work is considered a public matter based on its submission as public activity through offering it as performance. The work of the artists featured on these pages are their own, and I do not claim any authorship over them by writing about them here. Where a conflict of interest is present, I will state it clearly - otherwise, the work I do here strives for impartiality and journalistic integrity in line with my training and best practices.
I do not claim necessarily to offer an authoritative version of artists' work. At its most powerful, criticism is a reflective and generous practice, one that gives attention to the meeting of an artwork through deepening its context, and positions itself in relation to the artistic gesture and the audience response. When it is working well, it creates a forum - a conversation - and that is always my plan when I reach for the keyboard. It's been an amazing dialogue so far.
Lastly, Theaterstück exists because of the generousity of certain people who have built relationships with me and who invite me to see theatrical work. I am grateful to those cultural producers who support me like this - and especially to artists, whose determination to continue their work in the adverse circumstances in which I am often meeting them gives me courage to continue.
My Biography:
Richard Pettifer
(AUS/GER) is an Australian theatre director, theorist, and critic based in
Berlin. 2021-22 he was Artistic Director for Faki Festival, a large-scale free
festival for alternative theatrical art in a former factory of Zagreb, Croatia.
As a critic he has been an author for Berlin-based tanszschreiber.de since
August 2022, and is published in online magazines such as Sirp (EST), Arterritory
(LVA), Arta (ROU), and Artslant (USA) and an invited guest critic to Latvian
Theatre Showcase 2018 and DRAAMA Festival Estonia. He has led workshops on
critical writing and Theatre of the Oppressed in Ukraine, Serbia, and London.
In 2013 he attempted travel between Australia and Germany without flying,
performing the anti-oppression work People
Spoke and residencies in Indonesia, India, Iran, Turkey, and Romania. He
has toured independently in the UK (End
of Species, 2014), Romania/Serbia/Croatia (The Croatian Climate Change of Indonesia, 2015), and has
collaborated with government institutions on works for the UN’s COP 21 in Bonn,
Germany (Stay, 2017).
His works often
approach the subject of climate change and technology as key battlegrounds for
the ethics of human intervention, seeking a re-centring of ‘the human’ as a
collective social being in a context where misanthropy, individualism,
alienation, and cynicism are the dominant cultural traits. His works often
aspire to a global collective theatre that activates spaces for social change
through cross-cultural collaboration, cultural theory, philosophy and
art-activism, advocating anti-oppression through models of culture-building and
direct intervention, and emphasising a critical perspective on our complicity
with global capitalist systems of exploitation and disempowerment.
Since 2018, he
has been director and lead librettist of the opera project My Data and Me: Una Storia d’Amore, an epic opera devised in
collaboration with composer Tomasz Prasqual with the HUMAINT team of the
European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC).
His contribution
“The Artist is Absent: Non-Human Agency and Superhumanism in the Situation of
the Theatre” was published in the University of Tartu’s journal Methis in Summer, 2021. He has also
published theory in Symbolon
(University of Arts, Targu Mures).
Since March
2022, he is supporting organiser for Cultural Workers Studio in Flutgraben
e.V., a studio for Cultural Workers fleeing the 2022- invasion of Ukraine.
Richardpettifer.blogspot.com
Theaterstuck.blogspot.de
rpettifer@gmail.com
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