The State of Things

Editorial

Few genres of performing arts have so consistently conquered new aesthetic fields and successfully occupied new spaces in recent years as figure and object theatre. Puppeteers were among the first artists to establish interdisciplinary approaches to productions, post-dramatic dramaturgies and international collaborations and, at least in festivals, see them through. When you look at performance spaces in German-speaking Europe now, it is difficult to imagine them without the puppet, the object and other non-human actors. Eighteen years after Silvia Brendenal brought out the workbook Animation of Foreign Bodies for Theater der Zeit, we feIt the time was right to once again investigate contemporary forms of figure and object theatre. While the artistic discourse around the genre has been largely determined by aesthetic issues, with The State of Things we wanted to propose a more content-based perspective and investigate the complex connections between performative forms and materials of figure and object theatre, and social and political phenomena. In this volume, the writers introduce diverse artistic positions on current fields of discussion. The artists represented use their work to examine everything from digitalisation to protest cultures, they position themselves on body image and issues like horne and migration, and they explore practices of memory and identity. Our aim was to include artists in this workbook who we think have most influenced the genre and its discourse in German-speaking Europe in recent years, or will influence it the years to come – in theatres and production sites, in institutional and independent contexts, at festivals and not least in the context of the publishing institutions Schaubude Berlin and Deutsches Forum für Figurentheater und Puppenspielkunst in Bochum. Naturally this includes numerous international positions, as given in such a globally connected scene and something reflected in this bilingual publication. We hope that this book inspires readers to look more closely at a special form of theatre and to gain new insights into its current development. We would like to thank all those who made this workbook possible: the artists and writers who shared their thoughts, perceptions and ideas with us; the conception team of Seta Guetsoyan, Silke Haueiß and Christina Röfer for wonderful and intensive collaboration; our supportive colleagues at the Deutsche Forum für Figurentheater und Puppenspielkunst, at the Schaubude Berlin and at Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH; and naturally our partners at Theater der Zeit, particularly Jakob Hayner, and Kerstin Bigalke for the layout. We hope this proves an inspiring read. Annette Dabs and Tim Sandweg