Peter M. Boenisch

Peter M. Boenisch (* 1971 in Wolfratshausen ) is a German theater scholar .

Life

In addition to studying theater studies, English literary studies and theoretical linguistics at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , he worked for several years as a freelance cultural critic, primarily for the Süddeutsche Zeitung , the Münchner Stadtmagazin and other media. After completing his doctorate, he worked as a research assistant for dance and performance theater at the Institute for Theater Studies at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich until 2003. From 2001 to 2003 he was involved as a consultant under Sigrid Gareis in setting up the theory center at Tanzquartier Wien .

From 2004 to 2018 he lived and worked in Great Britain, first at the University of Kent , then as Professor of European Theater at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London , where he continues to work part-time.

At the University of Kent, together with Patrice Pavis and Paul Allain, he founded the informal theater research network European Theater Research Network (ETRN), which was formally established by Dragan Klaic at a ceremony in Canterbury in 2007. The network set itself the goal of exchanging ideas between continental European and English-language theater research, but also theater practice.

Today, ETRN is still engaged in this exchange as an inter-institutional research center of the University of Kent, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and Aarhus University. In 2015/16 he was a fellow at the research college Interweaving Performance Cultures at the FU Berlin , led by Erika Fischer-Lichte . He lives in Munich and Aarhus.

research

His more than 50 published essays, book chapters and research papers deal primarily with aspects of direction and dramaturgy with a focus on German and Dutch-speaking theater , as well as with the institutional aesthetics of European theater. In relation to the culture-critical approaches of Slavoj Žižek , Fredric Jameson , Jacques Rancière and others, his works ask about the socio-political significance of theater work.

He did his doctorate at the LMU Munich with Christopher Balme with the dissertation körPERformance 1.0: On the theory and analysis of body and movement representations in contemporary theater (published in 2002 in the series Intervisionen at Epodium Munich). His works, which were created in England, deal primarily with the concept of directorial theater. His book Directing Scenes and Senses: The Thinking of Regie, which conceptualizes the continental European practice of interpretive theater directing in the context of European philosophy (especially with reference to Hegel's dialectic), received 2nd prize in 2016 from the British Theater and Performance Research Association TAPRA David Bradby Award for Research in International Theater and Performance.

From 2012 to 2015 Boenisch worked with the German theater director Thomas Ostermeier as part of a research project funded by the British Academy and the British Leverhulme Trust . This resulted in the book The Theater of Thomas Ostermeier (Routledge 2016).

As part of his appointment to Aarhus University , he received funding from the Aarhus University Foundation for the research project Reconfiguring Dramaturgy for a Global Culture: Changing Practices in 21st century European Theater, which will run until 2023 . In the interdisciplinary research program of the Aarhus University Cultural Transformations , he set up the research group Paradigms of Dramaturgy: Arts, Institutions and the Social .

Honors

The US news magazine Newsweek called him the "leading European theater scholar." He has been Professor of Dramaturgy at Aarhus University (Denmark) since 2019. In 2019 he was accepted into the Academia Europaea .

Publications (selection)

• (with Thomas Ostermeier) The Theater of Thomas Ostermeier. Abingdon and New York: Routledge 2016, ISBN 978-1-13-891447-6 (paperback) / 978-1-13-891446-9 (hardback)
• Directing Scenes & Senses: The Thinking of Direction. Manchester University Press, Manchester 2015, ISBN 978-0-7190-9719-5 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-5261-2301-5 (paperback).
• (Ed.), The Schaubühne Berlin under Thomas Ostermeier: Reinventing Realism. Bloomsbury Methuen, London and New York 2020, ISBN 978-1-350-16579-3 Hb./978-1-350-19070-2 Pb./978-1-350-16580-9 (Ebook).
• (Ed.), Directors' Theater , 2nd ed., David Bradby and David Williams, Macmillan Red Globe Press 2019, ISBN 9781352007978 Hb./ 9781352007947 Pb.
• (Ed. With Clare Finburgh Delijani), The Great European Stage Directors, Vol. 6: Littlewood, Planchon, Strehler. Ed. Of the series: Simon Shepherd. Bloomsbury Methuen, London 2018, ISBN 978-1-4742-5399-4 .
• (Ed., With Lourdes Orozco) Border Collisions: Contemporary Flemish Theater, Contemporary Theater Review - Special Issue Vol. 20, No. 4, 2010, ISSN 1048-6801 print, ISSN 1477-2264 online.
• (Ed., With Ric Allsopp), Bodiescapes. Performance Research Vol. 8, No. 2, London / New York: Routledge 2003, ISBN 0-415-32131-X , Pp. 144.
• (Ed., With Katharina Keim and Robert Braunmüller), Theater without Borders. Utz, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-8316-0237-9 , Pp. 504.
• BODY PERFORMANCE 1.0. Theory and analysis of body and movement representations in contemporary theater . ePodium, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-9807394-6-5 , Pp. 376.

Web links

• Homepage at Aarhus University
• Homepage at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London
• ORCID entry

Individual evidence

1. ↑ epodium Verlag - INTERVISIONS. Retrieved May 24, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Joseph Pearson On 12/4/16 at 7:40 AM EST: German theater director Thomas Ostermeier takes on the far-right. December 4, 2016, accessed May 24, 2020 .