| This dissertation combines performance studies, media-phenomenology and intermediality to examine how far there is a new politics of aesthetics of theatre and performance that does not follow as clear a political agenda as political theatre in Brecht's tradition. The starting point is the observation that there are increasingly intermedial international theatre productions with, I would argue, global political implications. My dissertation is founded on the hypotheses that, firstly, there is a contemporary political theatre, which, secondly, marks a shift away from productions with a prescriptive political intention and instead is based on a politics of aesthetics; thirdly, this phenomenon is located in the field of intermediality and, fourthly, this seems to be an international development. Contemporary theatre productions reveal and clash various media to achieve an awareness for this politics of aesthetics by employing a technique that I call mediaclash. This dissertation uses an amalgamation of political philosophy, Visual Culture Studies and Cultural Analysis to derive a interdisciplinary definition of politics that explains the change in politicity of contemporary political theatre. This definition is then combined with research from the fields of media theory and intermediality to develop the concept of mediaclash. My approach will take into account current conditions, especially from the points of view of globalization, mediatization and internationalization of political communication. All theoretical steps will be measured against various international theatre productions, creating a mixture of theory and practical analyses that captures the complexity of the field. |
