Academic Work – andymachals.de

Performance Researcher & Theatre Academic

Having obtained a Master of Arts in Performance Research (directing, non-verbal/visual theatre, dance & performance) and a PhD in theatre (specialised in show theatrical production) from the University of Bristol, I am exposed to the most recent debates in theatre scholarship and have acquired specialist knowledge in the fields of performance, theatre, cultural history, and performance making. In my pursuit of making work that is relevant, I try to fuse engagements with show theatre and academic critical approaches. In this way, I productively connect British/American and European/German approaches to entertainment and theatre.

Research interests

Show histories of European capitals, Las Vegas, New York; Arabic performance cultures; Queer studies and Queer theory; Feminist theatre and women in theatre; revue theatre; revue & show design methods; production methods and regimen; socialist and capitalist spectacle and how to make it interesting; show choreography; technology and performance; show ideas and dramaturgies; immersive theatres; intermedial theatres and post-media/post-digital performance.

Anglophone Research Network

Having been based in Bristol, and having presented my research in Bristol, Liverpool, London, Paris, Berlin, and Cologne, my academic views have been formed my the Anglo-American discourse about performance, performativity, history, and production.

PH.D DOCTORIAL DISSERTATION

Reconstructing the East German Extravaganza: Acquisition and appropriation of revue practice at the Friedrichstadt-Palast since 1945

The dissertation investigates the cultural production regimes of large-scale revue shows during and after East German socialism. It interprets formerly Marxist concepts of cultural acquisition and appropriation in terms of performance studies and applies this lens to an analysis of the Friedrichstadt-Palast’s revue practices since 1945. For the first time, it considers the contiguity of revue practice from before and after German reunification in 1990 by construing the revue as the epitome of performance reconstruction. The concepts developed include dramaturgical (perspective consciousness), embodied (socialist virtuosity), and technological (techno-futurism) considerations that shaped and shape the directorial practice of German show theatre.

You can download the thesis here.

ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN THEATRE SURVEY (Cambridge, USA; 01/2017)

«Of course there is no such thing as a socialist handstand, but…»: Socialism, humanism, and virtuosity in East Germany variety theatre practice during the 1950s and 1960s

Using the example of the revue performances at the Friedrichstadt-Palast, Berlin, as a historiographical case that demonstrates a kind of movement from a socialist theatre practice based in narrative to one which is based very much in the body, the article investigates dance and circus practice during the 1950s 60s in the GDR. Connecting variety and show practice to the idea of humanism, which rendered Marxist affect in state socialism, the article revisits the often forgotten in histories of the moving bodies of socialist performance.

The article was published in Theatre Survey in January 2017, and is available here.

RECONSTRUCTING THE EAST GERMAN EXTRAVAGANZA

The doctoral dissertation (awarded Feb 2019) interprets formerly East German Marxist concepts of cultural acquisition and appropriation in terms of performance studies and applies this lens to an analysis of the Friedrichstadt-Palast’s revue practices since 1945. The methodology of this dissertation revisits archival material of the revue’s past and, for the first time, relates the theatre’s revue practice from before to the practices after German reunification in 1990 by construing the revue as the epitome of performance reconstruction. This dissertation thus challenges dominant notions of reappraising the East German past by relating the Friedrichstadt-Palast’s present to its past performance practices.

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Chapter 1 considers conscious reconstructions of dramaturgical patterns since 1945 and introduces the concept of ‘prospective consciousness’ as an ideological form.

Chapter 2 explores how unconscious ways of reconstructing and appropriating bodily practices have formed the moving socialist revue body in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In light of this analysis, the Friedrichstadt-Palast’s development from a variety to a revue theatre in the 1970s is re-evaluated as a development based in both economics and what I call ‘socialist virtuosity’.

Chapter 3 considers the building of the New Friedrichstadt- Palast in 1984 as an extension of Marxist cultural techniques into aspects of stage technology. Although it is commonly considered as the last functional building built in the GDR, I discuss it as a manifestation of a specifically East German ‘techno-futurism’.

Chapter 4 considers the Palast’s contemporary practice and identifies how principles, which used to be based in ideological considerations of culture, have turned into paradigms, that is, foundational designs that express the ways in which the Palast’s contemporary global aspirations take form.

Through considering the GDR revue, I was able to draw out the various temporalities that still shape the contemporary revue and that, at the same time, trouble concepts of Germany’s coming-to-terms with its past.

Want to talk about research or academic matters? Please send an e-mail to:

dr@andymachals.de