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In a recent article surveying the theatre of the last decade the Berlin-based theatre critic Ralph Hammerthaler remarked: "If there is a trend in the theatre of the 1990s, then it is the trend to the theatre movie." 2 As the most important representative of this development in German theatre he cites the infamous director of the Berlin Volksbühne Frank Castorf, who in an interview for the Berliner Zeitung openly admitted that the theatre he dreams of can be found, "if at all in the cinema, in the films of Quentin Tarantino." 3 In other words, theatre as 'Pulp Fiction', a theatre, which makes use of filmic devices such as -and Hammerthaler enumerates them -"Soundtrack, Rhythm, clips, fade overs and the continual play with citations and clichés.". 4 The neologism 'Theatermovie' is symptomatic of the increasingly urgent need to find critical categories and evaluative yardsticks for media products characterized by their hybridization: Video dance, dance film, film versions of plays and so on. It is easy to make a long list of old and new cross-media genres, many of which are quite familiar. Their identification does not pose a problem.Problematic is, however, their appreciation: both from the view of the judgemental critic and the dispassionate theatre scholar. Hammerthaler's rather positive judgement of such hybrid products is uncharacteristic of the German critical establishment. Hybridity in general and the Theatermovie in particular are categories that generate suspicion and rejection in the German mind. As a more representative example of this attitude I shall quote briefly from a review of Castorf's Theatermovie Trainspotting, his adaptation of the 1 This essay is a revised version of a paper published in German in Christopher B. Balme and Markus Moninger (eds.) Crossing Media: Theater -Film -Fotografie -Neue Medien (Munich: ePodium, 2004). An earlier version was presented at the interdisciplinary colloquium ‚The Theory and Analysis of Performance' organized by the Department of Germanic Studies, Cinema & Media Studies, Theater & Performance Studies at the University of Chicago, 5-6 March 2004. My thanks to David J. Levin for the generous invitation and particularly to the discussants Loren Kruger and Tracy Davis. The paper also benefitted from contributions by other members of the colloquium, in particular David Wellbery and Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht. 2 Hammerthaler, Ralph: "Das Kino und sein Double: Warum das Theater tut, was es tun muß: Es klaut beim Film.": Süddeutsche Ze itung, 12.1.1998, n.p. 3 ibid. 4 ibid.
In a recent article surveying the theatre of the last decade the Berlin-based theatre critic Ralph Hammerthaler remarked: "If there is a trend in the theatre of the 1990s, then it is the trend to the theatre movie." 2 As the most important representative of this development in German theatre he cites the infamous director of the Berlin Volksbühne Frank Castorf, who in an interview for the Berliner Zeitung openly admitted that the theatre he dreams of can be found, "if at all in the cinema, in the films of Quentin Tarantino." 3 In other words, theatre as 'Pulp Fiction', a theatre, which makes use of filmic devices such as -and Hammerthaler enumerates them -"Soundtrack, Rhythm, clips, fade overs and the continual play with citations and clichés.". 4 The neologism 'Theatermovie' is symptomatic of the increasingly urgent need to find critical categories and evaluative yardsticks for media products characterized by their hybridization: Video dance, dance film, film versions of plays and so on. It is easy to make a long list of old and new cross-media genres, many of which are quite familiar. Their identification does not pose a problem.Problematic is, however, their appreciation: both from the view of the judgemental critic and the dispassionate theatre scholar. Hammerthaler's rather positive judgement of such hybrid products is uncharacteristic of the German critical establishment. Hybridity in general and the Theatermovie in particular are categories that generate suspicion and rejection in the German mind. As a more representative example of this attitude I shall quote briefly from a review of Castorf's Theatermovie Trainspotting, his adaptation of the 1 This essay is a revised version of a paper published in German in Christopher B. Balme and Markus Moninger (eds.) Crossing Media: Theater -Film -Fotografie -Neue Medien (Munich: ePodium, 2004). An earlier version was presented at the interdisciplinary colloquium ‚The Theory and Analysis of Performance' organized by the Department of Germanic Studies, Cinema & Media Studies, Theater & Performance Studies at the University of Chicago, 5-6 March 2004. My thanks to David J. Levin for the generous invitation and particularly to the discussants Loren Kruger and Tracy Davis. The paper also benefitted from contributions by other members of the colloquium, in particular David Wellbery and Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht. 2 Hammerthaler, Ralph: "Das Kino und sein Double: Warum das Theater tut, was es tun muß: Es klaut beim Film.": Süddeutsche Ze itung, 12.1.1998, n.p. 3 ibid. 4 ibid.
This paper revisits the interpretations of Endgame by Theodor Adorno and Stanley Cavell via an unusual route: Samuel Scheffler’s afterlife conjecture. Scheffler’s thought experiment—based on a doomsday scenario that Beckett’s characters already appear to inhabit—seeks the achievement of the ordinary in an age of climate change by disclosing our evaluative dependence on future generations. I suggest that the paradigm shift to a global subject lies not in the dystopian fiction Scheffler looks to, however, but the “shudder” of the ‘I’ in aesthetic experience, the model for which is Beckett’s Endgame.
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