Institutional Dramaturgies in German and Danish Theater

Theaters across Europe face what art critic Nora Sternfeld describes as their “postrepresentational” transformation: In contrast to the earlier “postdramatic” turn, this shift does not concern the aesthetic form but points towards considerable shifts in the infrastructural and institutional frameworks of producing theatre. Drawing on the postmodern critique of representation as a mechanism that constitutes cultural “normalities,” standards, and therefore also exclusions, Sternfeld analyses contests over representational strategies where theaters (as well as museums and other cultural institutions) no longer unproblematically represent national grandeur, civic Bildung, and (white) middle-class cultural capital.1 They are confronted with, among other developments, shifting audience demographics, changing cultural habits resulting not least from the pervasiveness of social and digital media, and turbulences in the political public sphere with its clashes between power-critical decolonization and antidemocratic radicalization. Our research project at Aarhus University’s Department of Dramaturgy, Reconfiguring Dramaturgy for a Global Culture: Changing Practices in Twenty-First Century European Theater, observed how theaters in Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Sweden, and Denmark respond to this challenge by developing new institutional politics of extended, plural representation. In this article I introduce two examples: Schauspiel Dortmund and the Betty Nansen Teatret. Applying the lens of institutional dramaturgy allows us to capture the shifts in the professional role and required competencies of theater dramaturgs, as their work more and more extends beyond the classical focus on script and production development not only toward audience development but even more so toward postrepresentational (re)developments of the theater institution itself. At the same time, dramaturgy — as the competence to articulate and represent dramatic conflicts in both fictional and real worlds — becomes a potent tool for navigating the sometimes dramatic conflicts caused by shifting (and hence often competing) institutional values, which frame and impact on creative decisions and the conditions for artistic production.