ABSTRACT
Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia is quite helpful in the description and analysis of the development of European theatre around 1800. The transition from courtly to bourgeois culture in particular was accompanied by a multitude of heterotopias that determined the development of theatre for a long time and that still or again play a role in contemporary forms of theatre. This in particular concerns the idea of the public sphere and the closely related vision of a festive transgression of the stage toward an all-encompassing community of the audience, the nation, or even toward the fraternization of all human beings, as invoked by Friedrich Schiller. But these new aspirations also revealed the tension between heterotopian and utopian elements in the theatrical discourse throughout the German-speaking world around 1800. To investigate this tension in more detail, the following remarks will outline how Foucault's concept of heterotopia can be applied to the practice of theatre that has repeatedly sought to evade the principally utopian ideal of a discursive public sphere. Starting with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meister, I demonstrate how the ambivalent stance adopted by bourgeois culture toward theatre, festival, and public sphere unfolded in heterotopias, reflecting the spread of theatre across society. Focusing on the (self-)reflection of theatre in that period, I conclude by developing certain aspects fundamental to all the heterotopian ideas of the public, that remain relevant to contemporary questions concerning the places and localization of theatre in society.
