Reviewed by: Theatre of Anger: Radical Transnational Performance in Contemporary Berlin by Olivia Landry Sophie Nield (bio) Olivia Landry. Theatre of Anger: Radical Transnational Performance in Contemporary Berlin. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021. Pp 256 + 8 b/w illus. $79. This book opens with a book burning. In May 2016, as part of the two-day event Desintegration: A Congress on Contemporary Jewish Positions at the experimental performance space Studio Я, directly opposite the site of the infamous 1933 Nazi book-burning on Unter den Linden, a copy of the (newly re-available) Mein Kampf was torn into fragments and fed into the fire by Jewish American artist Daniel Kahn. This powerful image is the starting point for a rich and detailed study of the possibilities and potentialities of anger as a mode of politicised contemporary theatre practice. Focusing on seven key theatre pieces performed in Berlin between 2006 and 2017, Olivia Landry identifies and tracks "a form of theatre in which minoritized subjects perform anger and perform in anger," speaking out against social injustice, racism and prejudice in "an open and aggressive refusal to integrate into an unjust society" (4). Theatre of Anger explores the work and ideas of a generation of writers and theatre makers drawn from the "post-migrant" theatre movement, making a persuasive case for the centring of anger as an illuminating interpretive framework. The selection comprises Schwarze Jungfrauen (Black Virgins), 2006; Weissbrotmusik (White Bread Music), 2010; Verrücktes Blut (Mad Blood), 2010; Telemachos, 2013; Aufstand – Monolog eines wütenden Künstlers (Rebellion: Monologue of an Angry Artist), 2014; Get Deutsch or Die Tryin', 2017; and Zucken (Twitching), 2017. Through analysis of these plays, Landry provides a rich historiography of post-migrant theatre from its inception at Shermin Langhoff's 2006 festival Beyond Belonging - Migration at the Hebbel am Ufer theatre (HAU), tracking its development as a fringe, experimental, and increasingly significant force in contemporary German theatre. Post-migrant experience—the "post-," summarised by Wendy Brown as indicating something which is "temporally over but not after" (n. 16, p. 9)—identifies the particular experience of second- and third-generation people of migrant heritage, who nevertheless are still identified and treated as migrants within a supposedly "host" culture. Central to the analytical perspective of the book is the concept of "desintegration (de-integration): a rejection of integrational, assimilative narratives in favour of an investment in 'affirmative anger'" (7). It is important to note that Landry does not propose the theatre of anger as synonymous for post-migrant theatre. Rather, the term "theatre of anger" identifies a strategic re-constellation of minoritized voices away from a perpetual relation to the "centre," and it is by re-aligning the lens through which these works [End Page 424] are read that they become open to the rich and productive analysis. In this way, the theatre itself is re-proposed as a politicised space for action; one which opens possibility for the recuperation and political application of anger itself as both performative strategy and consciously affirmative practice. The book is organised in seven chapters: fluent and detailed introductory and concluding sections frame the central work of the book, which comprises a philosophical history of anger, a series of rich and complex case studies, and an extended interview with playwright Sasha Marianna Salzmann. Landry's "defence of anger" (chapter 1) provides a thorough-going intellectual and conceptual history though which to read the theatrical work. Brecht's formally-realized anger is important here, but it is the thought and work of feminist scholars of color—in particular the writings and political ideas of Audre Lorde, Sara Ahmed, and bell hooks—which are threaded most foundationally through the book. Subsequent chapters extend particular questions of violence, exclusion, religious identity, and disenfranchisement through the selected plays. The plays discussed are drawn from a number of distinct theatrical modes. The theatre of anger is not a particular style, but a particular attitude: the mobilization of anger as a productive affective force. Landry chooses plays that "do something riveting with affirmative forms of anger at a time and in a political climate when this affect is often otherwise perceived as negative and only capable of leading...
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Oct 10, 2024
Adrienne E Hacker Daniels + 1
Open Access