Religion in Contemporary German Drama

Critics often claim that the twenty-first century has seen a sudden return of religion to the German stage. But although drama scholarship has largely focused on politics postmodernity gender ethnicity and postdramatic performance religious themes forms and motifs have been a topic and a source of inspiration for German dramatists for several decades as this study shows. Focusing on works by four major dramatists - Botho Strauß George Tabori Werner Fritsch and Lukas Bärfuss - this book examines how why and to what effect religion is invoked in German drama since the late 1970s. It asks whether contemporary German drama succeeds in developing religious insights or is at most quasi-religious exploiting religious signs for aesthetic theatrical or dramaturgical ends. It considers the performative and historical intersections between drama and religion contextualizing the playwrights' treatments of religion by exploring how they lean on or repudiate the traditions of modern European drama especially that of Strindberg the Expressionists Artaud Grotowski and Beckett. It also draws on the sociology anthropology and psychology of religion exploring how these works reflect the changing place of religion and spirituality in the world from secularization to the alternative modes of religiosity that have proliferated in Western society since the 1960s.<BR><BR>Sinéad Crowe is a Teaching Assistant at the University of Limerick Ireland.