Scenographies of the everyday in Contemporary German theatre – Anna Langhoff and Sasha Waltz restage the family drama

Abstract

This article investigates what it means to move beyond the text in two works – Anna Langhoff's Frieden Frieden (Peace Peace) (1997) and Sasha Waltz and Guests' Allee der Kosmonauten (Avenue of the Cosmonauts) (1996, 1997, 2000) – chosen for the way they show how contemporary dramatic theatre and non-text based Tanztheater alike exemplify new directions in scenography. Through a focus on mise en scène, particularly scenography, movement and sound, the article will look ‘beyond the text’ to the performative, visual and aural image-making in these two productions as they shed light on tensions and debates in post-reunification Germany. The works are analysed as examples of a noticeable trend in 1990s' theatre that revisits the domestic spaces of everyday life within a post-communist frame of reference. The essay concludes by suggesting that this renewed interest is a critical response to the increasing pressures on the family of a deregulated, privatized, post-industrial economy. These politicized scenographies present the everyday as both violent and bizarre but they also open up possibilities for imaginative reconstruction and play.