Since the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011, concepts such as participation and assembly have been radically updated. Subsequent to Judith Butler's well-known theorization of a renewed sense of public assembly in 2015, German theorist and dramaturg Florian Malzacher has extended Butler’s ideas to consider 'theatre as assembly'. In Theatre as Assembly: Spheres of Radical Imagination and Pragmatic Utopias (2018), he examines concrete and ‘agonistic’ forms of contemporary theatre practice.
This keynote will first introduce Malzacher’s highly contextual yet theoretically relevant notion of ‘theatre as assembly’, referring to a long-standing continental-European tradition of theatre as a self-reflexive public institution. It will then examine an alternative form of ‘theatre as assembly’ in Japan, where after a complete neo-liberalisation and de-politicisation of the cultural sphere, it has become necessary to launch a more humane exploration of culture through alternative arts platforms. More concretely, I will discuss a new kind of small scale yet politically refreshing transnational performing arts festival called Theatre Commons, where workshops and lecture-demonstrations are the main features, The curator of Theatre Commons, Soma Chiaki, viewed as a dramaturgical presenter and cultural activist, has been considered successful in creating a new kind of ‘theatre commons’ among politicised youths.