“Eine Aufgekratztheit im Theater”: Acting the Agon at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz

Abstract

When the Berlin Wall came down, Berlin had no fewer than sixteen public theatres, five in the West, and eleven in the East. It would be the task of the municipal government to integrate these into some kind of unified cultural program for the new German capital. My article investigates the implementation of this governmental agenda through the lens of its arguably greatest success: the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Led by Frank Castorf – whose term as artistic director will conclude in 2017 – this theatre quickly became the hotspot of artistic experimentation and political contestation in unified Berlin. Through a close-reading of Castorf’s Clockwork Orange (1993), I demonstrate how the Volksbühne ensemble’s theatre practice made visible social antagonisms both on the stage and within the audience. This contestative or – to borrow Chantal Mouffe’s term – agonistic mode of theatre earned the Volksbühne a unique position in the Berlin public sphere, which it has struggled to maintain through Berlin’s transition to a cosmopolitan, European capital city.