Abstract

In the German cultural landscape of the 1990s, the name Christoph Schlingensief (1960-2010) was commonly associated with the epithets "agitator‟, "agent provocateur‟ and "enfant terrible‟. His eclectic theatre productions often engaged with current political and social issues that generated intense media coverage for this film-maker turned theatre director. The primary response to his work consisted of an ambiguous fascination: his detractors disregarded him as a theatrical amateur and publicity-seeking prankster, while his enthusiastic supporters tended towards conferring guru status upon him. Neither of these responses really defuses the political edge of Schlingensief‟s performance theatre, in which he plays a central role and deliberately creates uncertainty by dissolving clear distinctions between art and reality. The ambiguity of his approach indicates a parallel with the attempts of the historical avant-garde to forcibly close the gap between art and daily life. Analogously, Schlingensief has sought to create his own models of "unpredictable fields of action‟, that are uniquely characterised by "improvisation and the participation of the audience‟.