Theatermachine

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 Lehmanns theory of postdramatic theater and developments in critical theoryparticularly Bill Browns thing theory, Bruno Latours actor-network theory, and posthumanismserve to provide a previously unavailable vocabulary for discussion of Kantors 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 livesAI, technobjects, and algorithmsand might thus also be better poised to understand the materiality that permeates Kantors theater. Theatermachine argues that while confronting the twentieth centurys most pressing, but least comfortable, questionsthose of a humans worth, dignity, essence, and purposeKantor might also have been, unwittingly, a harbinger of the twenty-first centurys political, ethical, aesthetic, and critical discourse.