Project Details
Projekt
Market as crisis: institutional change and crisis discourse in the German independent theatre scene
Subject Area
Theatre and Media Studies
Accounting and Finance
Accounting and Finance
Term
from 2017 to 2022
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 387849349
The project focuses on structural change in the German independent theatre scene using the example of Hannover and Berlin. The main research objective is to examine heterogeneous working processes, the development of new forms of work and the resulting change in the way how theatre makers see themselves and their artistic creation as well as how they deal with specific semantics of crisis. The German independent theatre scene forms a segment of the German public-funded performing arts labor market. Independent theatre artists are freelancer, often organized in collec-tives or groups, who receive project-based funding. In contrast to permanent funding of municipal and state theatres, independent freelance theatre artists have to apply regularly for funding and get evaluated on the basis of their prior production. Due to these fundamentally different working and finance structures, this research project evaluates which influential consequences these conditions have on the artistic practice. Currently, both the permanent funded state theatres and the independent theatre scene are confronted with strong public critique and changes in the institutional subsidy grant structure. This trend can be read as grounds and subject of crisis discourses. Against the backdrop of the public art funding in crisis, flexible production structures of the independent art scene are fed into the general debate when it comes to fiscal-driven reform thinking concerning the theatre system. In these debates, current work practices of independent theatre artists are regarded as a role model shaping work relations and forms of work of the future as do flexible work arrangements in other fields. These work practices comprise the collective process of artistic creation and productions, the distribution of risk among production members, working in a network structure and making use of a pool of experts with whom artists work together on a regular basis. Therefore, this project seeks to conduct a complementary analysis of the economic, social and artistic situation of independent theatre artists from 1989 until today using the example of groups and productions in and around Berlin and Hannover. Methods, concepts and theories from work and employment studies as well as theatre and institutional studies will be combined in this empirical analysis. The interdisciplinary approach is considered as necessary to get an integral insight into the connection between conditions of production and aesthetic expression.
DFG Programme
Research Units
