Singspiel – A Proto-European Phenomenon? A contemporary practice of theatre, its genealogy and its potentiality.

Abstract

Abstract:By analysing Heiner Goebbels' latest performance Everything that happened and would happen, the article shows the Singspiel to be a significantly transnational, even proto-European genre. Its structural characteristics reciprocally link today's practice of performing arts with the practice from the second half of the 18th century. In both time periods, the Singspiel answers to the questions and problems of the aesthetic and political regime of the time, standing against rigid regulations more or less predefined by leading media and political paradigms. Through its vernacular, but also transnational practice, the genre opposes national and normalizing trends in theatre and the pernicious idea of instrumentalizing the performing arts as an identity-establishing tool. Today it fosters the advancement of art forms and aesthetic genres in a globalized and digitalized environment.