Re:calling Notions of Home: A Roundtable Discussion on Amateur Theatre in Peripheral Regions of Eastern Germany (Curated Panel)

Amateur Theatre as a carrier and mediator of cultural education in rural areas of Eastern Germany is in the focus of the research project HeimatWeltBühne (HomelandWorldStage), which is located at the Centre of Competence for Theatre (CCT) at Leipzig University. The project deals with notions of homeland and their relationship to the world and examines multiple stages and groups of non-professional actors in rural regions of Brandenburg and Saxony. The roundtable will focus on four topics: the concept of homeland, questions of space and its ‘glocal’ relations, transfer and concrete amateur theatre practice — topics that all contribute to questioning not only notions of centre and periphery, but also the ‘naturalness’ of home in general. The concept of homeland is often linked both to the idea of a regional location in a limited space of origin and socialisation and to phantasms of a tradition-oriented, homogeneous community that clings together through time. However, the symbolic space of a “homeland world” also has the potential to transform itself into the direction of an opening towards the world and the foreign. By formulating a concept of a “homeland that is open to the world”, which encompasses both the relationship to history and tradition and the changes in local structures and practices that are subject to the dynamics of globalisation, we aim to bring in a shifting notion to home and belonging, thus connecting the local with the world.
It is a popular attitude to consider rural areas as peripheral spaces, radically different from urban centres. This juxtaposition of centre and periphery reinforces the phantasmatic notion of rural areas based on a concept of
‘space as a container’. We will talk about shifting concepts of space and time as objectifications of human practice and explore possibilities of influence and change in the cultural practice of amateur theatre. Not least, our project
seeks to be aware of our own – naturally biased – perspective. Refraining from an exclusively objective scientific description, the work in HeimatWeltBühne itself needs to undergo a shift in perspective: The actors have their say in making the specific phenomena of their concrete lifeworld visible. Based on a culture of listening, narrative interviews, dense descriptions of the locations, participatory observation of rehearsals etc., can be used to make assumptions about how these different homelands might be portrayed. In the proposed roundtable discussion, the researchers would like not only to discuss the state of their studies, but to talk in depths about their field research and propose and discuss amateur theatre in peripheral regions as a means and force for “Shifting Centres”.