Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
Accepted Paper:
Paper Short Abstract:
What does community-based theatre tell us about people’s sense of themselves, the wider culture, and the place in which they live? This paper examines questions of local identity formation through the example of a historically inspired play performed – mostly in dialect - in rural Germany in 2024.
Paper Abstract:
Community-based theatre is a social practice often considered to contribute to a sense of belonging and sense of place among those who participate, whether as producers, actors or audience members. This holds true particularly for community-based theatre that (re)interprets local folklore, history, and cultural heritage.
This paper examines the performative materialisation of the past and its role in community-building in the present through a specific example of a performance which took place in rural Germany in August 2024. “Geschichten und Geschichtcher rund um den Königstuhl - Uns fällt kein Zacken aus der Krone” is a play specially written for the Milleniumsfest, a festival commemorating the 1000th anniversary of the election of a medieval German king. The play takes the oral tradition that Conrad II was elected in the vinyards above the village of Lörzweiler in 1024 as a starting point for commenting on the tensions between written history and oral tradition, as well as for exploring the cornerstones of local identity in an age of globalisation.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the paper explores how and what materials the writer and the actors draw on for performance. Focussing on how the play uses dialect as means of communication, a stylistic and formal device, and to mark social positions and relationships, and examining its reconfiguration of other forms of vernacular creativity and cultural heritage, notably the performance traditions associated with carnival as celebrated in Mainz, the paper illustrates how the play seeks to evoke a sense of local, cultural specificity.
Yet another folk revival? Problematising contemporary approaches to the folk and the vernacular
Session 2