Kényelmetlen színház. A politikai tartalomtól az észlelés politikájáig

Uncomfortable Theatre. From the Political Content to the Politics of Perception
The book's title is a metaphor created from the author's desire to capture contemporary performances that bring the spectator into an identity crisis. The book confronts contemporary Hungarian and Romanian theatre with the definition of politics articulated by the German theatreologist Hans-Thies Lehmann: "The politics of theatre is the politics of perception. (...) What can also be called the aesthetics of responsibility." (Lehmann 2009:224). In addition to Lehmann and Erika Fischer-Lichte, philosophers Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou provide the most important pillars in the analysis of the performances chosen by the author. Using their studies as tools, the author enquires chapters of 20th-century theatre history: the political theatre of Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht, the surveillance and censorship of the communist period, and the response of art to these threats. The case study of the discussions after the critical rehearsals in the Hungarian State Theatre in Sfântu-Gheorghe during the sixties, seventies and eighties brings to light documents and correlations that were unknown before. Contemporary performance analyses include the first performance that thematized Hungarian-Romanian coexistence with the participation of Hungarian and Romanian actors, Gianina Cărbunariu's "20/20", a production in which the book's author worked as assistant dramaturg and translator.