dc.description.abstract | This thesis aims to explore the concept of modern political theatre in light of the international political theatre project TERRORisms, involving the national theatre of Norway, Nationaltheatret, and Israel’s national theatre, Habima. The collaboration caused public debate in Norway, specifically surrounding the Nationaltheatret’s moral responsibility regarding its association with Habima. Under Israeli government, Habima is obligated to perform in the West Bank’s occupied territories. Protesters argued that the theater thereby acts as the regime’s collaborator. According to Habima’s artistic director, the theatre looses public funding if they oppose touring in these settlements. Nationaltheatret’a artistic director stated that the collaboration should continue, because of her belief in the political potential of theatre – in the value of dialogue, protest, and confrontation through art. But is it legitimate to argue the political possibilities of theatre and simultaneously ignore the political context surrounding it? This question forms the basis of the thesis, which is shaped as a critical analysis of political theatre that ultimately is limited to an aesthetical-political context. The intent is to challenge today’s widespread notion that the political aspect of theatre is to be obtained first and foremost in its aesthetics – in the way it creates a disruption of Jacques Rancière’s police (the prevailing order in society) through the ‘reconfiguration of the distribution of the sensible’. The question is whether this can lead to a further distance between the theater and the political reality surrounding it. Can this cause a loss in macro-perspective on the political, and instead of challenging the logic of domination of the police, actually end up reproducing it? The objective here is to find a concept of political theatre that can exist between the aestheticalpolitical context and the political reality it is being created in. | en_US |