Brechts Geste als transkulturelles Erkenntnismittel im Theater

This article analyzes Brecht’s concept of gesture in the context of contem- porary transcultural theater as a means of cognition for an inquisitive stage practice of cultural self-reflection, self-representation, and self-perception. In this respect, Günther Heeg’s main thesis on transcultural theater as a reappraisal of one’s own traditions and cultural phantasms and their distor- tion into recognizability, Alfred Schütz’s reflection on “thinking-as-usual,” and Hans-Thies Lehmann’s Postdramatic Theatre (1999/2006) form the theoretical framework for the present considerations. After approaching gesture epistemologically as a transcultural means of cognition, this contri- bution secondly examines—based on Schütz’s “thinking-as-usual” and on concrete examples of texts as well as theater and performance projects— several theatrical strategies of categorizing what is foreign in oneself and their respective construction of perception in the cultural other. Thirdly and finally, this study deals with the question of the “migration dilemma” and introduces the transcultural theater’s concept of gesture as a means of cognition for transcending “thinking-as-usual” in contemporary European theater.