Stanislavski, Brecht and Beyond: An Integrated Approach to Actor Training in Berlin

The curriculum will focus on the study and practical application of aspects of German theatre that have made and continue to make a significant contribution to international theatre practice. It includes the integration of the Russian based Stanislavski Method of Physical Actions and Active Analysis with Brecht’s Epic Theater, Advanced Realistic scene study, classes in video performance with the company Gob Squad, Brecht scene study, Devised theatre, Post Dramatic Theatre, movement, voice and rigorous actor-oriented Dramaturgical research. Students will study the history of 20th Century German Dramatic Literature, Dramatic Theory and Theatrical practice, German language, attend productions in several major theatres and take field trips to other cities in Germany. The program will culminate with workshop performances of several original devised theatre pieces based on short plays (Lehrstucke) by Brecht.

Students will see professional productions from different countries in the FIND festival, a two-week theatre festival hosted by the Berlin Schaubuhne, for many years the premier theatre in Germany. They will also meet with members of the creative team (directors, actors).

The overall goal of the program is to enable students to create and perform realistic and devised theater that balances full physical and emotional embodiment with critical distance and actively interfaces the dramatic story and the theatrical context. This integrated approach aims to strengthen and deepen their presence on stage and their ability to create performances that are intellectually informed, viscerally exciting, and theatrically courageous.

Theatre in Germany serves as a hotly debated public venue for working through major social and political issues and critiquing the status quo. This tradition begins in the late 18th century with the radical dramatists of the Sturm und Drang period and continues up to the present. This course centers on 20th-century German theatre and on the theories, movements, and dramas that shaped it against the backdrop of a tumultuous century. However, we begin by critically engaging with the foundational contributions of Lessing and Schiller with attention to their attempts to emancipate theatre from existing power relations, before moving on to the dramatist Hauptmann and the socially critical Naturalist movement. Our exploration of 20th century theatre seeks to foreground voices that—in form and/or content—sought to transform the bourgeois theatre institution and the hierarchies associated with it. These include dramatist Frank Wedekind and director Max Reinhardt, female avant-gardes such as Else Lasker-Schüler and Marieluise Fleiβer, and the left-wing theatre of the Weimar Republic, including Piscator and Brecht, whose concepts we will critique and deconstruct. In subsequent weeks, we look at racializing theatre of the Nazi dictatorship, postwar theatre trends in East and West Germany, and developments in reunified Germany starting in the 1990s. Finally, we explore current debates surrounding structural inequalities in German theatre and attempts to create more diverse and equitable stages—a concern we will trace throughout our course. Our weekly meetings center on history and theory, tying the past to the present, and usually including a dramatic text. We will also attend performances at several theatres and performance venues connecting them to our course material and attending to the ways the theatre is responding to urgent issues facing German society today.

You will take one of the German language courses offered through NYU Global. Placement is based on your experience.