Staging Blackness : representations of race in German-speaking drama and theater / Priscilla Layne and Lily Tonger-Erk, editors.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Layne, Priscilla Dionne.

Contributor:

Layne, Priscilla, editor.

Tonger-Erk, Lily, 1977- editor.

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), publisher.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

German drama--History and criticism.

German drama.

Theater--Germany--History.

Theater.

Black people in literature.

Human skin color in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 volume : illustrations)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Representations of race in German-speaking drama and theater

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2024.

Biography/History:

Priscilla Layne is Professor of German and Adjunct Associate Professor of African and Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture (2018). Lily Tonger-Erk is Associate Professor at the German Studies Department and Research Associate at the Rhetoric Department of the University of Tübingen, Germany.

Summary:

Staging Blackness provides a multifaceted look at how Blackness has been staged in Germany from the eighteenth century, the birth of German national theater, until the present. In recent years, the German stage has been at the forefront of discussions about race, from cases of blackface to fights for better representation within the professional community. These debates frequently invoke larger discussions about the politics of race in German theater and their origins, and beyond. Written by scholars and theater professionals with a wide variety of historical and theoretical expertise, the chapters seek to explore the connections between the German discourse on national theater and emerging ideas about race, analyze how dramaturges deal with older representations of Blackness in current productions, and discuss the contributions Black German playwrights and dramaturges have made to this discourse. Historians question how these plays were staged in their time, while cultural studies scholars contemplate how to interpret the function of race in these plays and how they can continue to be staged today.

Contents:

Centuries of staging blackness in Germany : an introduction / Priscilla Layne and Lily Tonger-Erk

I. Black figures : race-ing the canon. "Looking at the overlooked" : the table as global stage in Karl Gotthelf Lessing's "Die M̃tresse" (1780) / Wendy Sutherland

Black revolution - or : reflection of history in tragedy : resistance and slavery as theme in popular German-language theater (1775-1810) / Sigrid G. Köhler

Monostatos' longing : staging blackness in Mozart's The magic flute / Irmtraud Hnilica

Economies of compassion and skin color in Friedrich Schiller's Fiesco's conspiracy at Genoa (1783) / Franziska Bergmann

Staging whiteness : race and aesthetics in Schiller's The robbers and Antù Romero Nunes's 2012-2013 production / Lily Tonger-Erk

Blackness in Heiner Müller's imaginary / Norbert Otto Eke

II. Black performance and practices of blackfacing. Blackface and black faces on German and Austrian Stages, 1847-1914 / Jeff Bowersox

Racisms and representation : staging defacement in Germany contextualized / Evelyn Annuss

The Biguine : the African diasporic presence at Weimar's end / Jonathan Wipplinger

How education about racism can(not) succeed : blackface in literature, theater, and film / Andrea Geier

III. Black artists : race, theater, institution. Coloniality and decolonial practices in contemporary German theater / Azadeh Sharifi

"Black Bismarck" and the circum-Mediterranean performance of black German theater / Olivia Landry

From drama school to stage : young actors of color in German-speaking "Sprechtheater" / Hanna Voss - "We need structural change" : roundtable discussion / Simone Dede Ayivi, Rahel Jankowski, Michael Klammer, Philipp Khabo Köpsell, and Olivia Wenzel

Judgment, power, and participation in theater : based on the ascending career of a black female artist in Germany during the latter half of the 2010s / Anta Helena Recke.

Notes:

Title from eBook information screen..

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

9780472903566

047290356X

OCLC:

1417339277

Access Restriction:

Open Access Unrestricted online access