DECOLONIAL AESTHETICS IN CONTEMPORARY THEATRE

16.10. 19:30 | Rauch & König Buchladen | Language German

In her new book, DEKOLONIALE ÄSTHETIKEN IM ZEITGENÖSSISCHEN THEATER [DECOLONIAL AESTHETICS IN CONTEMPORARY THEATRE], Grit Köppen examines contemporary plays by Francophone African and Afro-diasporic playwrights. These playwrights stage their plays in various countries, organize major tours on the African continent, and are widely received in current French theatre festivals.

Grit Köppen demonstrates how these playwrights cast a critical eye on Europe. According to her analysis, colonialism and the relations of violence that accompagnied it are recalled with an outcry by these artists. Moreover the postcolonial reality in its historical continuity, is accused of economic exploitation as well. The impoverishment of the global South and the consumer frenzy in the global North are particularly criticized.

In this context, forms of domination such as racism, classism, and sexism are exposed, deconstructed, or ridiculed on stage. This points to an “aesthetics of rebellion” in contemporary plays, through which a comprehensive resistance is articulated. 

However, many of the plays also exhibit an “aesthetics of transgression”, which is concerned with the imaginability of another world. This aesthetic contributes significantly to a different understanding of time, space, and being, which unsettles the perceptions of a postcolonial world and makes decolonial visions for a future reality possible. 

On October 16, the author Grit Köppen will join cultural journalist Merle Zils at Rauch & König Buchladen for an exciting tour through current theater research and the trends in decolonial writing for theatre. 

An event by Rauch & König Buchladen in cooperation with SPIELART.

Tickets available here

Grit Köppen is a schloar for Theatre Arts, Cultural Studies, and African Studies. Currently she is a visiting professor for “Theory and History of Theatre” in the Faculty of Performing Arts at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK). Since 2017, she has taught in the Department of Dramatic Writing at the UdK. So far Grit Köppen has researched and published on transcultural theatre, international theatre work, postcolonial theory, and decolonial aesthetics in the arts. She is currently researching the mise-en-scenes and art practices of female theatre directors in the 2020s.

DEKOLONIALE ÄSTHETIKEN IM ZEITGENÖSSISCHEN THEATER was published by Theater der Zeit.