27.10.2021
Essay by Luise Decaillet: Marta Górnicka’s GRUNDGESETZ: The chorus as Portrait and Proxy of Political Community

In the newest issue of Pamiętnik Teatralny you can read essay of Luise Decaillet from University of Zurych: Marta Górnicka’s GRUNDGESETZ: The chorus as Portrat and Proxy of Political Community. This text analyzes the function of the chorus in Marta Górnicka’s open-air production Grundgesetz (Berlin, 2018) in redefining the political community of “the German people.” While examining its relation to the audience, the author refers to examples of German mass spectacles from the Weimar Republic that invested choruses to both represent a political community in the making and to shape political subjects through collective action. Based on aesthetic and political concepts of representation, which intertwine in the performance, the author shows how the chorus of Grundgesetz both portrays and enacts “the German people” as a plurality of bodies and voices united by fundamental rights. Making it thus an available community to stand for, the performance questions the agency of the audience as a collective body capable of acting together in public space.
Full text you can find here: Pamietnik Teatralny, Marta Górnicka’s GRUNDGESETZ
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