ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, the Center for Performance Studies (ZPS) at the University of Bremen has carried out projects that facilitate an artistic orientation in academic contexts. Closely affiliated with the ZPS in Bremen is the Theater der Versammlung (Theater of Assemblage) (TdV), one of the first research theaters in Germany. TdV brings together students, scholars from all faculties, and professional performance practitioners to work together on a range of theoretical themes and questions that arise within various academic contexts, using the methods and means of performance. This allows for an intensive collaboration with people whose expertise is in a wide range of different discourses. The performances that emerge from this interdisciplinary process have been presented and discussed throughout the German-speaking world and beyond. This chapter, a dialogue, is the result of an encounter between philosopher and theater scholar Anna Seitz, and Jörg Holkenbrink, director of the ZPS and artistic director of the TdV. In this conversation, they discuss various ways in which a dramaturgical lens can help to enhance performative methods of research, teaching, and learning at the university where standardized processes of linearization that threaten the very principles of higher education are increasingly becoming habitualized to negative effect. Key to their fresh approach is an understanding of the mutual responsibility that both actors and audience (in the case of a performance) or teachers and students (at the university) carry, and the inherent risks of failure and vulnerability at play in both contexts. Touching on various formats of knowledge production (as opposed to mere transfer), as well as on the role of certain dramaturgical principles (including attentiveness to atmosphere and setting the stage for surprise), their dialogue explores the importance of being conscious of differences when transgressing the boundaries between practical-aesthetic and theoretical dimensions of presentation and assembly.