Zwischen Hamlet, Hanswurst und dem Andrucktermin um 22.30 Uhr – Der Alltag der Theaterkritik
Between Hamlet, Hanswurst and the 10:30 p.m. text submission deadline – the everyday life of theatre criticism

Summary/Abstract: Critics are often caricatured on stage, in movies and in drawings. One of the first examples are the viewer comments in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Caricatures are also found in Arsen und Spitzenhäubchen [Arsenic and Old Lace] and the computer-animated film Ratatouille. The claim that theatre criticism began with the publication of Lessing’s Hamburgischer Dramaturgie must be rejected. Without theatre criticism, neither the ancient playwright competitions nor Aristotle’s Poetics are thinkable. From a purely stylistic perspective, theatre criticism is very heavily inclined towards orality, especially with Ludwig Börne, Theodor Fontane, Alfred Kerr and Friedrich Luft. Kerr’s claim that criticism should be considered the fourth major literary genre next to epic, drama, and poetry, served the purpose of self-establishment; other critics do not share this point of view. In the context of media, contemporary theatre critics are faced with new challenges: on the one hand, the pressure to be up to date has risen sharply as a result of online competition, on the other hand the formal diversity (post-dramatic theatre, post-migrant theatre, site-specific theatre, research projects, deconstruction of traditional themes, etc.) constantly demands new positions to be taken.

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