ABSTRACT
This chapter examines internationalization in the theatres of Austria, Germany, and German-speaking Switzerland, and contemporary German-speaking theatre makers’ and playwrights’ engagement with issues beyond national borders. It focuses on two aspects. First, it highlights frameworks and funding structures which invite internationalization. Secondly, it compares conceptualizations of theatre by three highly influential German-speaking theatre makers of the present time: the Germano-Swiss collective Rimini Protokoll, the German Falk Richter, and the Swiss Milo Rau. This chapter maps how, since the 1990s, internationalization in European theatre has been produced at a previously unknown scale by the combination of a push for theatres and independent groups to generate funding through international co-operation, the EU’s enabling of free movement of workers within its borders, and the EU’s creation of frameworks to intensify international co-operation in the arts. However, as this chapter demonstrates, internationalization is also a conceptual element of contemporary theatre such as Rimini Protokoll’s ‘theatre of experts’, Falk Richter’s ‘choreographic theatre’, and Milo Rau’s theatre of ‘global realism’. Although their aesthetic approaches differ, the works of Rimini Protokoll, Richter, and Rau are based on a similar awareness of the world becoming a global capitalist village, forcing theatre to tackle global issues before international audiences with international casts.
