Studies in International Performance Published in association with the International Federation of Theatre Research General Editors: Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton Culture and performance cross borders constantly, and not just the borders that define nations. In this new series, scholars of performance produce interactions between and among nations and cultures as well as genres, identities and imaginations. Inter-national in the largest sense, the books collected in the Studies in International Performance series display a range of historical, theoretical and critical approaches to the panoply of performances that make up the global surround. The series embraces Culture which is institutional as well as improvised, underground or alternate, and treats Performance as either intercultural or transnational as well as intracultural within nations. Titles include: Khalid Amine and Marvin Carlson THE THEATRES OF MOROCCO, ALGERIA AND TUNISIA Performance Traditions of the Maghreb Patrick Anderson and Jisha Menon (editors) VIOLENCE PERFORMED Local Roots and Global Routes of Conflict Elaine Aston and Sue-Ellen Case STAGING INTERNATIONAL FEMINISMS Matthew Isaac Cohen PERFORMING OTHERNESS Java and Bali on International Stages, 1905 1952 Susan Leigh Foster (editor) WORLDING DANCE Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo PERFORMANCE AND COSMOPOLITICS Cross-Cultural Transactions in Australasia Milija Gluhovic PERFORMING EUROPEAN MEMORIES Trauma, Ethics, Politics Helena Grehan PERFORMANCE, ETHICS AND SPECTATORSHIP IN A GLOBAL AGE Susan C. Haedicke CONTEMPORARY STREET ARTS IN EUROPE Aesthetics and Politics James Harding and Cindy Rosenthal (editors) THE RISE OF PERFORMANCE STUDIES Rethinking Richard Schechner s Broad Spectrum Silvija Jestrovic and Yana Meerzon (editors) PERFORMANCE, EXILE AND AMERICA Silvija Jestrovic PERFORMANCE, SPACE, UTOPIA Ola Johansson COMMUNITY THEATRE AND AIDS Ketu Katrak CONTEMPORARY INDIAN DANCE New Creative Choreography in India and the Diaspora
Sonja Arsham Kuftinec THEATRE, FACILITATION, AND NATION FORMATION IN THE BALKANS AND MIDDLE EAST Daphne P. Lei ALTERNATIVE CHINESE OPERA IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION Performing Zero Carol Martin (editor) THE DRAMATURGY OF THE REAL ON THE WORLD STAGE Carol Martin THEATRE OF THE REAL Yana Meerzon PERFORMING EXILE, PERFORMING SELF Drama, Theatre, Film Lara D. Nielson and Patricia Ybarra (editors) NEOLIBERALISM AND GLOBAL THEATRES Performance Permutations Alan Read THEATRE, INTIMACY & ENGAGEMENT The Last Human Venue Shannon Steen RACIAL GEOMETRIES OF THE BLACK ATLANTIC, ASIAN PACIFIC AND AMERICAN THEATRE Marcus Tan ACOUSTIC INTERCULTURALISM Listening to Performance Maurya Wickstrom PERFORMANCE IN THE BLOCKADES OF NEOLIBERALISM Thinking the Political Anew S.E. Wilmer NATIONAL THEATRES IN A CHANGING EUROPE Evan Darwin Winet INDONESIAN POSTCOLONIAL THEATRE Spectral Genealogies and Absent Faces Forthcoming titles: Adrian Kear THEATRE AND EVENT Studies in International Performance Series Standing Order ISBN 978 1 403 94456 6 (hardback) 978 1 403 94457 3 (paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
Performing European Memories Trauma, Ethics, Politics Milija Gluhovic School of Theatre, Performance, and Cultural Policy Studies University of Warwick, UK
ISBN 978-1-349-33430-8 DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-33852-5 ISBN 978-1-137-33852-5 (ebook) Milija Gluhovic 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-0-230-29790-6 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978 0 230 29790 6 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
To the memory of my grandparents: Ned o and Ljeposava Gluhović Danilo and Savka Lažetić
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Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Series Editors Preface viii ix xii 1 Introduction: Theorising Europe and Recollection 1 2 History, Memory, and Trauma in Heiner Müller s Theatre 30 3 Contested Pasts and the Ethics of Remembrance in Tadeusz Kantor s Theatre of Death 101 4 Postmemory, Testimony, Affect 171 5 Conclusion: European Memories and the Margins of Europe: Sarajevo Theatre Tragedy and Three Prayers for One Wish 248 Notes 269 Bibliography 289 Index 319 vii
List of Illustrations 2.1 Inge and Heiner Müller on the Lehnitzer Lake, circa 1958; photograph courtesy of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, Heiner Müller Archive 69 2.2 Scene from Heiner Müller s Bildbeschreibung, dir. Philip Tiedemann, the Berliner Ensemble, 2001; photo courtesy of Monika Rittershaus 73 3.1 Wielopole Skrzyńskie, main square, circa 1910; foreground, from the left: Stanisław Berger, and Helena and Marian Kantor; courtesy of the Cricoteka Archive 106 3.2 Scene from Kantor s Wielopole, Wielopole, preparations for the Last Supper, photographer unknown, image courtesy of the Cricoteka Archive 120 3.3 Katyń, opening of the mass graves, April 1943; Bild 183-J21201; photograph courtesy of the Bundesarchiv 131 3.4 Scene from Kantor s Let the Artists Die (The Parade); photograph: Leszek Dziedzic, courtesy of the Cricoteka Archives 138 3.5 Scene from rehearsals for Kantor s I Shall Never Return; photograph by Jacquie Bablet; courtesy of J. Bablet 166 4.1 Scene from Harold Pinter s Ashes to Ashes, dir. Vahid Rahbani, SummerWorks, Toronto, 2007, photo by Pooyan Tabatabaei; courtesy of Lemaz Productions and Pooyan Tabatabaei 193 4.2 Still from Artur Żmijewski s 80064, courtesy of the artist, Foksal Gallery Foundation Warsaw and Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich 217 5.1 Still from Sarajevo Theatre Tragedy, dir. Gorčin Stojanović, the National Theatre in Sarajevo, 2010; courtesy MESS Sarajevo 260 viii
Acknowledgements I am greatly indebted to the many friends, teachers, and colleagues who have provided me with encouragement, advice, and support over the years. At the University of Toronto, I thank first and foremost Tamara Trojanowska for her unrelenting support, encouragement, and thoughtful guidance. Her sharp critical insights and commitment to scholarship have been an inspiration for me. I owe a special debt of appreciation to John H. Astington, whose witty advice, kindness, and unfailing encouragement were indispensable, as well as to Jörg Bochow for his many useful insights, especially into the German aspects of my work. I am also grateful to Rebecca Comay, who helped me think through the field of memory studies, Frederick J. Marker for useful suggestions on Pinter, as well as to Nancy Copeland, Pia Kleber, Alan L. Ackerman Jr., Veronika Ambros, Thomas Lahusen, and Linda Hutcheon for the various forms of support and insight they offered. My warmest thanks are also due to my former Drama Centre colleagues, faculty, and staff for their friendship, intellectual companionship, and assistance over the years I spent among them. The School of Theatre, Performance, and Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick provided an excellent environment for my research and teaching over the past six years. My special thanks go to my current and former Warwick colleagues Janelle Reinelt, Silvija Jestrović, Jim Davis, Nadine Holdsworth, Yvette Hutchison, Tim White, Gurminder Bhambra, Nobuko Anan, and Claire Bishop, all of whom have been amazing intellectual and personal resources. The Erasmus Mundus MA in International Performance Research has also provided an important venue for feedback. Colleagues from Amsterdam, Tampere, Helsinki, Belgrade, Warwick, and many international scholars and students that have taken part in the MAIPR programme since 2008 have helped me to articulate the pan-european and internationalist aspects of this project in more detail. The University of Warwick generously granted me study leave in the autumn terms of 2009 10 and 2012 13 for which I am grateful. ix
x Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful, moreover, to Andrew Busza, Ira B. Nadel, John Xiros Cooper, Sneja Gunew, and Errol Durbach from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where I started my graduate career, for helping me frame the first questions for this project; I owe many thanks also to Ross Chambers from the University of Michigan, who was the first to introduce me to testimonial writing through his guest course at UBC; this intellectual encounter has been formative for my thinking about forms of collective violence and other traumatic experiences. There are also those whom I would like to acknowledge for their implicit and explicit forms of solidarity and inspiration, which have meant a great deal to me: Agnieszka Polakowska, Karen Fricker, Katrin Sieg, Leslie Katz, Justyna Sempruch, Natalie Alvarez, and Olivera Jokić, who read the whole or substantial parts of this manuscript at its various stages and offered valuable comments; Michal Kobialka for commenting on my chapter on Kantor, sharing generously his unpublished work and translations of Kantor s work, as well as for inspiring conversations about this artist s theatre while teaching at Warwick in 2012; Freddie Rokem and Pirkko Koski for sending me their essays and offering crucial advice; Joachim Fiebach for sharing his knowledge of Müller s work; Dragana Varagić for many inspiring conversations over the years, which moved my thinking in too many ways to recount; Joanna Falck, Kim Solga, Barbara Orel, Lisa Fitzpatrick, Eszter Jagica, Olga Ponichtera, Jesenka Karamehmedović, the late Aleksandra Ðajić Horvath, Lejla Hasanbegović, Nihad Kreševljaković, Nataša Glišić, and Lisa Skwirblies. Many thanks go out to the late Harold Pinter for his kindness in allowing me to access the drafts of his plays in the Pinter Archive at the British Library. I am also grateful to the staff of the following libraries and archives: the University of Warwick Library; the Libraries of the University of Toronto; the Harold Pinter Archive at the British Library and the Royal National Theatre Archive in London; the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor (Cricoteka) in Cracow; the Berliner Ensemble Archive and the Archives of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. Furthermore, I would like to express my gratitude to the Humanities Research Centre at Warwick; the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, the Munk Centre for International Studies and the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto, as well as to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and
Acknowledgements xi the Ministry of Education and Training, Provincial Government of Ontario, for the various fellowships and travel grants that made this research possible. I would also like to thank my current and former students at Warwick and in Toronto and Vancouver for their curiosity about memory issues, theatre, and critical theory, which has proved both addictive and sustaining. I owe many heartfelt thanks to Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton, who brought this project on board through their series Studies in International Performance, for their enthusiastic encouragement and incisive advice throughout the project. To Janelle, whose scholarship I have long admired and who remains an invaluable interlocutor, I owe an inestimable debt. She has been a model senior scholar since I have known her, as well as a dear colleague and friend. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Paula Kennedy and the staff at Palgrave Macmillan for their expert production work. Thanks also to the Toronto Slavic Quarterly, Polish Theatre Perspectives, and the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, for allowing me to reproduce segments from earlier versions of Chapter 3 as well as all the editors and editorial staff concerned. Many thanks as well to Brigitte Maria Mayer, Inka Ihmels of the Aufbau Verlag, and Manuel Quirin of Suhrkamp Verlag for permissions to include poems by Inge and Heiner Müller in my book. For their generous assistance with obtaining photographs of Kantor s work and permissions to include them here, I am very grateful to Duncan Jamieson, Adela Karsznia, Małgorzata Paluch-Cybulska, and Tomasz Tomaszewski. With devotion, I thank my families on both sides of the Atlantic, especially my parents Borika and Miladin Gluhović. Most of all, for his love and support and for seeing me through this project, my heartfelt thanks to Brent Fowler.
Series Editors Preface The Studies in International Performance series was initiated in 2004 on behalf of the International Federation for Theatre Research, by Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton, successive Presidents of the Federation. Their aim was, and still is, to call on performance scholars to expand their disciplinary horizons to include the comparative study of performances across national, cultural, social, and political borders. This is necessary not only in order to avoid the homogenizing tendency of national paradigms in performance scholarship, but also in order to engage in creating new performance scholarship that takes account of and embraces the complexities of transnational cultural production, the new media, and the economic and social consequences of increasingly international forms of artistic expression. Comparative studies (especially when conceived across more than two terms) can value both the specifically local and the broadly conceived global forms of performance practices, histories, and social formations. Comparative aesthetics can challenge the limitations of national orthodoxies of art criticism and current artistic knowledges. In formalizing the work of the Federation s members through rigorous and innovative scholarship this Series aims to make a significant contribution to an ever-changing project of knowledge creation. Janelle Reinelt and Brian Singleton International Federation for Theatre Research Fédération Internationale pour la Recherche Théâtrale xii