Benjamin Wihstutz, Daniele Vecchiato, and Mirjam Kreuser (eds), #CoronaTheater. Der Wandel der performativen Künste in der Pandemie

Authors

  • Beatrice Berselli University of Verona

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13136/m2by9290

Abstract

This review focuses on #CoronaTheater, a thought-provoking collection of essays issued in 2022. These essays discuss the intersection of performing arts with the COVID-19 pandemic, examining the use of communication technologies to define a new kind of theatre, performer, and audiences. By reflecting on the immediate and long-term transformations of the theatre, as well as on the political and social developments during and after the pandemic, #CoronaTheater foregrounds at least three points of discussion: the impact of lockdown on the performing arts, providing a representative selection of firsthand accounts; the burning question of the post-pandemic future of theatre, attempting to understand how institutions might reinvent their spatial and dramaturgical practices in a virtual community-building; the reflection on questions of sustainability, social participation, and inclusion by exploiting digital theatre’s potential to reform the theatre as institution. Finally, yet importantly, the contributors of #CoronaTheater introduce a decidedly cultural viewpoint into a discussion that had so far been dominated primarily by medical, political, and epidemiological perspectives.

Keywords: COVID-19; theatre; performance; performing arts; pandemic

Author Biography

  • Beatrice Berselli, University of Verona

    Beatrice Berselli is a PhD student in German Literature at the University of Verona. Her research project focuses on the literary, political and ideological relationship between Klaus Mann and Stefan Zweig, starting from the analysis of their - partially unpublished - correspondence written between 1925 and 1941. Her research interests focus on the fields of German Exilliteratur and Briefkultur of 20th century, but also on interdisciplinary relations between literature and linguistics, literature and performing arts, literature and architecture. In 2018, she published a short monograph on Lessing's Laokoon and its reception from Goethe to Aby Warburg. For Winter Verlag (Heidelberg), she published a contribution on translation theory in eighteenth-century Germany. She also dealt with Arno Schmidt, Alfred Andersch and Winfried G. Sebald.

     

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Published

2024-06-19

Issue

Vol. 10 No. 1 (2024): Memory and Performance. Classical Reception in Early Modern Festivals

Section

Special Section

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Copyright (c) 2024 Skenè. Journal of Theatre and Drama Studies

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