State of the Arts

An Ethnography of German Theatre and Migration

Author: Jonas Tinius Series: Theatre and Performance Theory

This contemporary ethnographic study of German theatre brings anthropology into renewed dialogue with theatre and performance studies.

Introducing key debates about German public theatre, Jonas Tinius shows how anthropological methods provide insights into cultural history, nation-building, and artistic production. His rigorous analysis covers case studies from a post-industrial region in transition, featuring in-depth examples of migrant and refugee urban theatre projects.

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Summary

This contemporary ethnographic study of German theatre brings anthropology into renewed dialogue with theatre and performance studies.

Description

This is a bold and wide-ranging account of the unique German public theatre system through the prism of a migrant artistic institution in the western post-industrial Ruhr region. State of the Arts analyses how artistic traditions have responded to social change, racism, and cosmopolitan anxieties and recounts how critical contemporary cultural production positions itself in relation to the tumultuous history of German state patronage, difficult heritage, and self-cultivation through the arts. Jonas Tinius' fieldwork with professional actors, directors, cultural policy makers, and activists unravels how they constitute theatre as a site for extra-ordinary ethical conduct and how they grapple with the pervasive German cultural tradition of Bildung, or self-cultivation through the arts. Tinius shows how anthropological methods provide a way to understand the entanglement of cultural policy, institution-building, and subject-formation. An ambitious and interdisciplinary study, the work demonstrates the crucial role of artistic intellectuals in society.

Critic Reviews

'In this truly captivating book, Jonas Tinius shows most convincingly anthropology´s unique quality to explain the large scale: Germany as a nation and ideas of Bildung in combination with recent migration, through a small scale case of contemporary theatre, the Theatre an der Ruhr. By including the concept 'ethico-aesthetic' the analysis opens up for further understandings of how ethical issues and practices complement aesthetic ones, importantly also further afield. Inspiring and impressive, State of the Arts is a game-changer.' Helena Wulff, Professor Emerita of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University
'State of the Arts is a (perhaps the first) genuine organisational ethnography of a German theatre. Tinius has written a groundbreaking study that links ethnographic fieldwork with fundamental insights into German theatre's institutional makeup to illuminate the remarkable Theater an der Ruhr.' Christopher Balme, Professor of Theatre Studies, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
'Tinius offers a refreshing and unique contribution to the anthropology of theatre, performance, and the arts by critically analyzing the conceptual, material, and historical constitution of an actual theatre, its repertoire, its traditions, and its actors. By framing the theatre as an 'extra-ordinary' field of ethical reflection and cultural production and describing in detail the rehearsal and production processes of the Theater, Tinius has made a significant anthropological contribution to ethnographic and theoretical discussions of theatricality and performativity and their uses for politics, society, and intellectual thought.' Jenny Tang, Anthropology Book Forum
'… an excellent example of anthropology's capacity to draw larger insights from local practices. … this book can be recommended as a foundational contribution to understanding state patronage for the arts in modern Germany.' Rose Campion, Ad Marginem. Randbemerkungen zur europäischen Musikethnologie
'… the most valuable aspect of the book lies in its synthetic approach, freely combining the German aesthetic paradigm … with advanced anthropological reflections on contemporary art, performance, visual culture, arts, and politics. … [it] will be of interest for anthropologists working at the intersection of political and visual anthropology or interested in institutional ethnographies of experimental artistic spaces, with a keen focus on migration to Europe.' Nataliya Tchermalykh, Visual Anthropology Review
'Against the contemporary backdrop of right-wing nationalisms and populist sentiment across the world, in a country steeped in authoritarian state history (Germany), Jonas Tinius' ethnography highlights the 'reflexive' ethical possibilities of artistic practice in a public theatre institution.' Matthew Raj Webb, CaMP Anthropology

About the Author

Jonas Tinius is a sociocultural anthropologist, and currently scientific coordinator and post-doctoral researcher in cultural anthropology in the European Research Council project Minor Universality: Narrative World Productions after Western Universalism based at Saarland University. He studied Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge (2009-2012), before completing a PhD in the Department of Social Anthropology (2016). Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage (CARMAH) of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, funded by Sharon Macdonald's Alexander von Humboldt Professorship. He is an associate member of CARMAH and teaches at the Institute of European Ethnology of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He was founding co-convenor of the Mellon-Newton Interdisciplinary Performance Network at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) of the University of Cambridge and co-founded the Network for Anthropology and the Arts of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) with Roger Sansi. His publications include Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial (with Margareta von Oswald, 2020), Der fremde Blick. Roberto Ciulli und das Theater an der Ruhr (two volumes, with Alexander Wewerka, 2020), and Minor Universality. Rethinking Humanity After Western Universalism (with Markus Messling, 2023).