Erika Fischer-Lichte
Director
Erika Fischer-Lichte is director the International Research Centre "Interweaving Performance Cultures" and Professor of Theatre Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. From 1995 to 1999 she was President of the International Federation for Theatre Research. She is a member of the Academia Europaea, the Academy of Sciences at Goettingen, and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. She has published widely in the fields of aesthetics, theory of literature, art, and theatre, in particular on semiotics and performativity, theatre history, and contemporary theatre. Among her numerous publications are Global Ibsen. Performing Multiple Modernities (2010), The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics (2008, German 2004), Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual. Exploring Forms of Political Theatre (2005), History of European Drama and Theatre (2002, German 1990), The Show and the Gaze of Theatre: A European Perspective (1997), The Semiotics of Theatre (1992, German 1983), and The Dramatic Touch of Difference: Theatre, Own and Foreign (1990).
THIS AUTHOR WROTE
December 4, 2016
The 2016 Thalia Prize of the International Association of Theatre Critics has been awarded to former IRC-Fellow and IRC Advisory Board Member Femi Osofisan from Nigeria, a playwright, director, actor, critic, poet, novelist, editor and newspaper columnist. The Thalia Prize is meant to highlight the work of those who have helped critics around the globe to understand new ways of seeing and appreciating the performing arts worldwide. The 2016 Thalia Prize was presented to the awardee during the IATC Congress last September in Belgrade, where Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Erika Fischer-Lichte presented the award to Femi Osofisan – we share her laudatory speech held on this occasion with you.
August 6, 2011
To welcome the new Fellows to the International Research Centre “Interweaving Performance Cultures”, Erika Fischer-Lichte and Christel Weiler convened a meeting at the beginning of the academic year 2010/11 to discuss the Centre’s programme and concepts. The following conversation between Erika Fischer-Lichte and Rustom Bharucha about “interweaving” versus “intercultural” took place on this occasion.
August 11, 2010
In this article Erika Fischer-Lichte argues that, since the beginning of the twentieth century, in different parts of the world, modern theatre was invented by way of interweaving cultures in performance. Different examples from the early twentieth century and the 1990s show how theatre acted as a laboratory for testing and experiencing the potential of cultural diversity. An innovative performance aesthetics enabled the exploration of the emergence, stabilization, and destabilization of cultural identity, merging aesthetics with politics.
