Institute for applied theatre studies
The Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the Justus -Liebig- University of Giessen is a university-level institution that combines the study of theater arts with a study of the artistic practice of theater.
At the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies total of three courses are offered: The three-year Bachelor's degree in Applied Theatre Studies and the two -year master's degree programs studied theater and choreography and performance. In all three study programs lay the academic and artistic practice are equally part of the study. In seminars, reading courses and exercises scientific problems are investigated, in scenic projects, practical courses and workshops tested artistic approaches. In each varying degrees, other humanities and social science institutes of the Justus -Liebig- University, the so-called stakeholders compartments involved in science education. In the MA program in choreography and performance parts of the practical course offerings are organized and held in cooperation with the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main.
Bachelor and Master of Applied Theatre Studies (BA and MA ATW)
The BA program provides a comprehensive basic education of theater and artistic practice and is aimed at students who have either an even non-directional interest in theater, dance and performance, or want to make a conscious decision with their first degree to choose any specialization. The scientific seminars, reading courses and exercises are aimed at the provision of key competences of theater, dance and performance theory, aesthetics and history and the performance analysis. The scientific teaching is supplemented by shares of the participating subjects, including the offers of the German, English, Romance, Slavic, art history, musicology, ancient culture and philosophy in the BA program and give to the students with interdisciplinary expertise to expand their horizons. In scenic projects, students can try out in different projects and develop their own aesthetic interests in exchange with the other students and with the support of teachers, so that they are capable of independent work. In addition, practical courses offer the opportunity to meet the individual theater means such as voice, body, movement, light, sound and video and to deal with them experimentally. The bachelor's degree program is a scientific work, bachelor thesis, completed.
The two-year MA program in Applied Theatre Studies serves the individual well of the scientific and artistic interests of students. His study structure offers great freedom of choice and the opportunity to either focus on scientific or artistic practice or continue to practice both parallel. The scientific debate can be followed in MA seminars and colloquia on, in particular, the theory and aesthetics, but also the politics and economics of the theater of the present are examined. The artistic practice takes place in scenic projects and practical courses for advanced and independent work on their own art projects, in which students receive individual attention. To interdisciplinary Vertiefungsseminare can be visited in musicology and art history, philosophy, sociology, political science, English, Romance or Slavisitik. Will conclude the study of the MA Applied Theatre Studies with either an academic master's thesis or a private theater project and associated theoretical reflection.
Master Choreography and Performance (MA CuP )
The MA program in choreography and performance is offered in collaboration with the department of contemporary dance at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt am Main. Unlike BA and MA Applied Theatre Studies, the MA Choreography and Performance, an international, German and English-language study program. German language skills are not necessary for the completion of studies required, as the majority of the courses are offered in English.
In the study body, movement and composition practices are connected with a reflective approach that trains the views of students for a critical and broader understanding of dance, choreography and performance. The physical expression will be tested not only as an artistic medium and analyzed, but also discussed with respect to current social, political and economic contexts. To help the students to an independent positioning their operating method also dealing with international contemporary dance and performance art, and their working and production methods is given special attention.
The curriculum of the MA degree program consists of events of the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies, the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt and other partners of the Hessian Theatre Academy as Tanzlabor_21. Due to the wide assortment of scientific seminars and reading courses on the one hand and artistic events such as scenic projects, practical classes, workshops, personal training, dramaturgy and mentoring courses on the other side many approaches for the independent work will be taught. After two years studying the MA Choreography and Performance is finished with an artistic project and an accompanying written reflection of the project. The completion of a scientific master's thesis is not possible.
History
Creation time
Founded in 1982 by Andrzej Wirth, the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies was the first university institution in the German-speaking area that was to connect the study of theater arts with a study of the artistic practice of theater. Unterwirth and the collaboration of Hans -Thies Lehmann, the Institute quickly developed on the one hand to a counterbalance to established schools of performing arts, the theater exclusively understood as acting on the basis of dramas and their students were training for an established city theater market. On the other hand, it also formed a counterpoint to other theater arts institutions which gave no room practice and understood Theatre Studies primarily as theater historiography. On the newly created sample stage Wirth studied and visiting professors and visiting professors such as Heiner Müller, George Tabori, Emma Lewis Thomas or Robert Wilson with the students for new forms of theater which presented the monopoly of the German city theater on the making and the definition of theater in question. From Wirth and his choice of guest professors coined some early work of students employed about with the tradition of Brecht's didactic pieces and minimalist tendencies in the visual arts. Lehmann worked in parallel on a theory that very theatrical approaches that no longer could be detected with the previously known theories of representation on the basis of drama and spectacle. Today, these theater forms are known by Lehmann's concept formation as a post-dramatic theater.
The 1990s and 2000s
In the 90 years the theater scholar Helga Finter and the composer and director Heiner Goebbels took over the scientific and artistic director of the institute. Goebbels extended the doctrine to new artistic representations by the media and music, sound and light shows. With the establishment of sound and video studios he was creating the necessary equipment for the independent work with the new media. In science Finter set new priorities, mediated by the theatricality of theater and literary experiments of the historical avant-gardes, in particular by Antonin Artaud. The work of Wilson and other contemporary directors and artists like Klaus Michael Gruber were among those objects of investigation, led Finter to a theory of the theater as a space of negotiation of subjectivity in deposing to an ever- transforming society of the spectacle. The tradition of visiting professorships was with artists and theorists and theorists such as Marina Abramović, Richard Schechner, Patrice Pavis, Josette Feral, Samuel Weber, Georg Seeßlen, Mathilde Monnier, Jerome Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Rabih Mroué, Tino Sehgal and Claudia Bosse continued to this day and still constitutes a major influence for the institute.
Finally, in 2008 was the introduction of the Master's program Choreography and Performance and a Professor of Dance Studies with a focus on choreography and performance a further opening to the contemporary dance and choreography field. There were thus continued those first impulses to employment with the aesthetics of dance and structurally rooted, which already went out in the 90s by Gabriele Brandstetter activity as short-time professor at the Institute. The MA program in choreography and performance is offered in cooperation with the Department of Contemporary Dance the University of Music and Performing Arts in Frankfurt and was constructed in the first years of its existence by Gerald Siegmund. As for the existing courses of Bachelors and Masters of Applied Theatre Studies MA program allows the choreography and performance at the same time a scientific and artistic study, however, especially with the focus on the body, its movement, but also its politics and economy.
The institute today
Today, four professorships at the Institute are located for Applied Theatre Studies, three of which are permanently occupied: Currently Heiner Goebbels holds the artistic professor, Gerald Siegmund since 2011 holds the Chair of Theatre Studies and is the managing director of the Institute, and Bojana Kunst has 2012, the Chair of dance Studies accepted. The fourth chair is the artistic Visiting Professorship, which is every semester occupied with changing artists. Formed in the 80s and 90s in particular, conventional and limiting theater practices and notions of German municipal theater system context and negative reference point of the science and art of teaching and research at the Institute are, today, in view of the importance of loss of the city's theater and large changes in the whole theater scene other conditions in the center of the debate: the ambivalences of a free scene whose internationalization and their working conditions with new challenges and problems for production, but also for the aesthetics of the theater of the present pose due to stricter economic constraints.
The Institute for Applied Theatre Studies wins his productive life of its own since its inception, not least by a high degree of personal initiative of its students. For many years, the students set up in perfect self- directed several festivals from: the theater machine, a presentation platform for their artistic work of students; the discourse, which is being organized since 1984 and today is a recognized international festival of performing arts to which every year artists are invited to work with their discourse and discussion; and finally the fledgling instant Festival, a format to promote exchanges with faculty for Scenic Arts of the University of Hildesheim, which takes place alternately in casting and Hildesheim. All festivals, but also the presentation of scenic projects and practical courses are accompanied by criticism conversations that form a institution's internal, but also open to the outside critical exchange about their own practice and significantly shape the culture of discussion of the Institute.
The graduates of the Institute
Graduates of applied theater research work in all fields of dance, theater and performance in the fine arts, the media, and science. For 30 years now they mix equally to the Municipal Theater, the independent scene and the science in the German- speaking countries and beyond. Réne Pollesch, Gob Squad, She She Pop, Rimini Protokoll, Showcase Beat Le Mot, Monster Truck, Auftrag: Lorey and many others have changed the theater landscape permanently with non-hierarchical, often collective working methods and each singular aesthetics; Miriam Dreysse, Jens Roselt, Annemarie Matzke, André Eiermann or Jörn Etzold, to name only a few, formulate in science at many institutes in the German-speaking new analysis approaches and theories for the theater of the present.