| dc.description.abstract | This thesis studies the production of Ein Volksfeind created in 2012 by Thomas Ostermeier in the Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz in Berlin. A stage adaptation of Hernik Ibsen s En folkefiende made by Florian Borchmeyer presents an altered version of the play focused on contemporary western society with the overrule of market and consumer values replacing the values of truth and honesty. However, it is not the topic of the production that is at most interest, but its aesthetics. The speech of Doctor Stockmann is followed by the discussion with the spectators who are asked to reflect on the situation within the story line and compare it to their country s socio-political reality. The audience thereby finds itself between fiction and reality, between illusion and the need to act, between spectatorship and participation. Such in-between state, or liminal state, to borrow the term often used in ritual and theatre studies, presents interesting examples of audience s behaviour in theatre. Having watched Ein Volksfeind in three cities, Berlin, Oslo, and Moscow, I am comparing my three experiences in order to illustrate the variety of receptions within the same production and suggest possible explanations for it. Moreover, I believe that the question of spectatorship is closely linked to the discourse on political and aesthetical and can shed light on our understanding of the politics of performance. In the Introduction to the thesis I present an overview on how the role of spectator in theatre and the notion of political theatre developed. In addition, this section introduces the method of performance analysis used in my thesis, based on the works of Christopher Balme and Erika Fischer-Lichte. The next section contains production analysis of Ein Volksfeind and three performance analyses describing my experience as a spectator in Berlin, Oslo, and Moscow, with the use of phenomenological and semiotic approaches. ´ The discussion and comparison of the three performances is the subject of the last section. It describes the peculiarities of theatre event, which can be found in works of Max Herrmann and Erika Fischer-Lichte. Moreover, this section concerns itself with developing a tool for determining the politics of performance on the basis of Jacques Rancière s theory of political and aesthetical and Gareth White s method of studying participatory theatre. This research is intended to be a useful resource for anyone interested in the special nature of performance and ways of analysing it, as well as those concerned with the question of politics and its relation to arts and aesthetics. | eng |