Theatermachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context

Theatermachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context is an in-depth, multidisciplinary compendium of essays about one of the most influential theater artists of the twentieth century. Hans-Thies Lehmann’s theory of postdramatic theater and developments in critical theory-particularly Bill Brown’s thing theory, Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, and posthumanism-serve to provide a previously unavailable vocabulary for discussion of Kantor’s theater.

Drawing on diverse approaches, the contributors write about Kantor from both global and local perspectives: as an exemplar of postdramatic tragedy ; in relationship to Jewish culture and Yiddish theater; through the prism of postmemory and trauma theory; and in relation to Japanese, German, French, Polish, and American avant-garde theater. This comprehensive anthology arrives at a time when we grapple with the materiality of our modern lives-AI, technobjects, and algorithms-and might thus also be better poised to understand the materiality that permeates Kantor’s theater.

Theatermachine argues that while confronting the twentieth century’s most pressing, but least comfortable, questions-those of a human’s worth, dignity, essence, and purpose-Kantor might also have been, unwittingly, a harbinger of the twenty-first century’s political, ethical, aesthetic, and critical discourse.