Theatermachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context is an in-depth, multidisciplinary compendium of essays about one of the most influential theater artists of the twentieth century. Hans-Thies Lehmann’s theory of postdramatic theater and developments in critical theory—particularly Bill Brown’s thing theory, Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory, and posthumanism—serve to provide a previously unavailable vocabulary for discussion of Kantor’s theater. Drawing on diverse approaches, the contributors write about Kantor from both global and local perspectives: as an exemplar of “postdramatic tragedy”; in relationship to Jewish culture and Yiddish theater; through the prism of postmemory and trauma theory; and in relation to Japanese, German, French, Polish, and American avant-garde theater. This comprehensive anthology arrives at a time when we grapple with the materiality of our modern lives—AI, technobjects, and algorithms—and might thus also be better poised to understand the materiality that permeates Kantor’s theater. Theatermachine argues that while confronting the twentieth century’s most pressing, but least comfortable, questions—those of a human’s worth, dignity, essence, and purpose—Kantor might also have been, unwittingly, a harbinger of the twenty-first century’s political, ethical, aesthetic, and critical discourse.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Kantor: A Short Biography Part I: Kantor in Theory Tadeusz Kantor and Modernism Tadeusz Kantor’s Objects: Materialism of the Encounter Human/Object/Thing: Kantor’s Puppets and Bio-objects Crushed People: Kantor and Trauma Theory Kantor and the Theatre of Postmemory Postdramatic Tragedy: Notes on the Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor Kantor and the Posthuman Stage Part II: Kantor, Locally Transgression and Eschatology in the Work of Tadeusz Kantor Possessed by the Traumatic Past: Postmemory and S. An-sky’s Dybbuk in Kantor’s Dead Class Tadeusz Kantor and Bruno Schulz Kantor and Witkacy: Childish Games with Death Witkacy’s and Gombrowicz’s Influence on the Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor Kantor’s and Grotowski’s Poor Theatre Imagining a Future that Never Was: Tadeusz Kantor’s Symbiotic Jewish-Polish Stage Kantor and Slobodzianek: The Dead Class and Our Class From Tadeusz Kantor’s Anatomy Lesson to the Autopsy in Polish Contemporary Art Part III: Kantor, Globally Kantor and Early Twentieth Century European Avant-Garde Directors Tadeusz Kantor and the German Bauhaus: From Technological to Metaphysical Utopia. Kantor and Japan On the Reception of Tadeusz Kantor’s Work in Germany Kantor and the Contemporary European Avant-Garde: Marthaler, Perceval, and Hermanis Kantor and the Contemporary French Avant-Garde Kantor, Pina Bausch, and Dance Theatre Kantor and the American Avant-Garde Contributors