The debate on the politics of contemporary theater in an age of schism

"When it comes to political theater, stereotypical ideas emerge: protesting gestures, chanting crowds, a manifesto of revolution, or the direct discussion of political figures and social events on stage. In recent times, names like Trump's have frequented the stage," said Sahar Rahimi, artistic director of the Brechtfestival Augsburg, but the issue is far more complex.

Rahimi also spoke about her own experiences. Born into an immigrant family, she did not join the art world for a noble cause. For her, theater itself is demanding and laborious, and 'politics' was never just a slogan on stage; it was the matter of how she came to be here in the first place.

Thus, whenever asked about her involvement in political theater, her answer has always been the same: "All theater is political." To Rahimi, no such thing as 'non-political theater' exists. Even works that emphasize entertainment and claim to be "art for art’s sake" are still forms of ideology, choosing not to address war, gender, or social conflicts as a political stance. She points to Germany, for instance, where the recent rise of far-right factions has driven new calls to "depoliticize" theater: some want a return to Goethe- and Schiller-style historical costume drama, and would rather the stage leave war, gender, and colonialism untouched.

Nonetheless, Rahimi is wary of another danger: Is theater only communicating with the agreeable?

She's noted that many political theater works end up preaching to the choir: audiences already share the same values as they walk in and simply reaffirm their position once inside the theater. As a feminist, for example, Rahimi says that people sometimes walk away with nothing more than a reconfirmation of "yes, we're certainly against patriarchy," after viewing feminist works.

For Brecht, though, theater and drama were never meant to manufacture agreement; their purpose was to instigate division and debate. What Brecht wanted, Rahimi explained, was a divided audience, people with different perspectives sharing the same space, arguing, questioning each other, even feeling uncomfortable. Drama isn't meant to give everyone the same answer; it's meant to create real discussions.

Rahimi drew on an idea from Greek tragedy: the theater as a tribune, never just entertainment, but a place where society can reflect on its own contradictions. This ties directly into the situation in Germany's cultural world today. Rahimi noted that since October 2023, the war between Israel and Gaza has driven divisions within the local creative scene to more severe levels.

Shadowed by the historical ties with Nazis and antisemitism, pro-Palestinian rhetoric in Germany is extremely sensitive. Many artists worry that speaking out could mean losing funding, cancelled collaborations, or being labelled politically, especially with the cultural sector being heavily dependent on state funding. For these reasons, the relationship between political stance and cultural subsidy has grown increasingly tense.

She noted that Germany's recent cultural policy shifts are quietly redefining "which cultures deserve institutional support." This cultural warfare (Kulturkampf) is not merely a political debate; it alters the very mechanics of artistic creation.

"Artistic freedom is under permanent threat," she warned. Yet, this threat rarely manifests as overt, direct censorship. Instead, it operates through a form of systemic anxiety: artists begin to internalize a quiet terror of whether they can structurally survive within the funding apparatus if they cross certain ideological lines.

The final segment of the panel tackled a more immediate crisis: why should modern audiences step into a theater at all, when the outside world is faster, more chaotic, and more aggressive than anything on stage? What distinct value does theater retain? Yi-wei Keng crystallized this blur at the closing of the session: "Contemporary art increasingly resembles the news cycle, while the news cycle increasingly resembles a performance." The border separating lived reality from calculated spectacle has effectively dissolved.

On the other hand, Rahimi cautioned that when art reduces itself entirely to "ideological correctness," it risks becoming a performative facade. True artistic power does not rush to moralize or preach, nor does it demand consensus from the audience.

"Change" is rarely engineered on the stage; it begins the moment the audience exits the theater and recalibrates their understanding of the world.

The dialogue ultimately returned to Brecht, as Rahimi pointed to a line from his interviews collected in Our Hope Today is the Crisis (Unsere Hoffnung heute ist die Krise): "The crisis forces us to act." Even while operating under a permanent current of pessimism, Brecht refused to give up on hope.

Perhaps the stage survives today precisely because of this underlying conviction: that humans can still occupy the same physical space and, against the chaos of the outside world, begin to fundamentally re-examine each other.