Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the German Theatre

David Barnett helps to unlock the much discussed theatricality of Fassbinder's films by showing its many concrete sources.

Using extensive and untapped archival material as well as a series of in-depth interviews with Fassbinder's main theatre associates, this book offers commentary on and insights into Fassbinder's plays, his dramaturgies and staging practice. David Barnett helps to unlock the much discussed theatricality of Fassbinder's films by showing its many concrete sources. The first study of Fassbinder's work in the theatre, as a playwright and director, this book gives a full contextualisation of his work within the upheavals of its times. Readers are introduced to the cultural history of the West German theatre in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Radicalism in society meets experiment on stage as Fassbinder emerges from the cellar theatre scene of Munich, co-founds the antiteater and is then integrated into the most subsidised theatre in Europe, before being offered his own theatre to run for one fateful season.

List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The roots of the antiteater; 2. 1969 and all that; 3. Beyond Bavaria; 4. The big time; 5. Post Frankfurt, post mortem; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.

Using extensive and untapped archival material as well as a series of in-depth interviews with Fassbinder's main theatre associates, this book offers commentary on and insights into Fassbinder's plays, his dramaturgies and staging practice. David Barnett helps to unlock the much discussed theatricality of Fassbinder's films by showing its many concrete sources.

David Barnett is Lecturer in Drama Studies at University College Dublin. He is the author of Literature Versus Theatre, a study of the later plays of Heiner Muller in performance (1998). He has also published widely on contemporary German drama, metatheatre and postdramatic theatre.