Shaustück and Lehrstück: Erwin Piscator and the Politics of Theatre

Abstract

It is logical to include in a book of this kind an essay on Erwin Piscator, and not merely because he was the author of a book with a similar title—The Political Theatre (1929)—which staked out for the first time the territory of ‘political drama’ as it has been understood and practised throughout the twentieth century. It is with the dramaturgical, directorial and technical work of Piscator in Germany, and with that of Meyerhold in Russia, that the specifically ‘modern’ forms of political drama first emerged. Here drama developed in close relation to social and political factors generally considered indispensable to the theory and practice of political theatre: a Marxist philosophy and a revolutionary Marxist movement; the immersion of theatre workers in materialist theory and proletarian cultural practice; the feasibility of a politicised working-class audience which such a theatre could hope to entertain, engage and urge towards further political consciousness.