Comparative Drama

"Authenticity" is something of a buzzword in recent, politically engaged theatre.¹ Central to the appeal of London's Royal Court Theatre for many years, the concept has gained new meanings and wider resonance in similarly engaged institutions throughout Europe, Berlin's Maxim Gorki Theater among them. But what does it mean to "be authentic," and how can one "perform authentically" on stage? In Theatre Studies, the concept has recently been aligned by Daniel Schulze with the "genuine and lasting," or "truth or the real," and contrasted with both story-led, text-based drama, as well as with traits of postmodernism such as "irony, detachment, and pastiche."² Theorizations by Carol Martin and Ulrike Garde of "theatre of real people" and "theatre of the real" have focused on the socio-artistic potentialities of non-professional performers who bring some fundamental aspect of their extra-theatrical identities to stage productions.³ These texts have tended to work towards a concrete definition of authenticity and its functioning on stage, usually through the location and analysis of inherently authentic genres: Schulze, for instance, identifies intimate, immersive, and documentary theatre as inherently authentic.⁴

At the same time, theatre scholars have taken a critical stance vis-à-vis any claim to authenticity on stage. In the German context, apparently authentic self-revelation has been interpreted as nothing more than a fleeting construct that demonstrates the impossibility of a coherent Self.⁵ Theorists such as Erika Fischer-Lichte and Annemarie Matzke have pointed to a so-called "authenticity problem" (Authentizitätsproblematik), [End Page 39] suggesting that theatrical authenticity is fully constructed in the moment of performance, and can therefore offer no more or less "realness" on stage than an overtly fictional dramatic role—an "impression of authenticity" instead of the real thing—no matter the intent of the theatre makers involved.⁶ In a 2007 volume on authenticity which brought together multiple critical voices, Fischer-Lichte argued that apparently authentic genres serve not to showcase any true or actual self but, rather, whether wittingly or not, call into question the existence of authentic selfrevelation in the first place.⁷ As a result, audiences are required to reflect on "the possibilities and conditions of self-constitution," as well as to fundamentally question "the category of the Self" as a whole.⁸ Any nonironic attempt at theatrical authenticity thus emerges as deeply suspect because it claims to be something (i.e., honest, true) that it is not, and can never be in the context of the theatre (or perhaps anywhere else, for that matter). The only viable solution is thus to transition from the presentation of "authentic" individuals and content on stage, as Matzke concludes, to a "confrontation with identity construction" that results in the recognition of the "impossibility of authentic representation."⁹

In the British context, scholarly discussion of authenticity has remarked on the authenticating potential of explicit overlaps between the "lived experience" of the playwright/performer and the often "difficult" subject matter represented on stage. For Charlotte Bell and Katie Beswick, "the problematic relationship between representation, 'authenticity', and perceptions of reality is often manifest in the slippages between the fictional representation and the lived experience of artists involved with the work,"¹⁰ allowing for a facile flattening of the two: what happens on stage is seen to epitomize the lived experience of a "type" or "group" of people. This understanding of authenticity grows out of "postcolonial concerns regarding the ethics of representation, ownership, and authorial subjectivity"—originating, in other words, from a discussion around who represents whom to whom.¹¹ Similarly, Liz Tomlin has evidenced the pitfalls of "consciousness-raising" authentic representation, which "leaves the existing power relations intact" and is thus "likely to restrict the role of the audience to that of the cultural tourist."¹²

Against the backdrop of these scholarly debates, this article explores a recent reconfiguration of the authentic at the Maxim Gorki Theater in [End Page 40] Berlin and the Royal Court Theatre in London, a reconfiguration that is central to both theatres...