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PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 22.2 (2000) 70-77



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Erika Fischer-lichte
Director of the Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, Freie Universität Berlin

Berlin Conversations

MARRANCA: Three years ago you took up the new position as director of theatre studies. Why don't we begin by having you describe the Institute.

FISCHER-LICHTE: The definition of the Theatre Institute or theatre department in Germany--and this is true for all of them--is quite different from the Anglo-Saxon one. It is a purely academic department. We do not train artists here. What is important here is both education for students and research. We have five tenured professors and 10 faculty members, along the order of what in America are called associate professors. Then we have quite a number of part-time teachers, like adjuncts--sometimes 15 or 25, mostly people from the theatre. They are stage directors, dramaturgs, stage designers. Whoever we can get. We have an introduction to dramaturgy and we usually hire a dramaturg from one of the theatres. They can do block seminars--Friday to Sunday--on the weekend.

DASGUPTA: How many students are being served by this faculty?

FISCHER-LICHTE: I think for Americans it would sound horrible but it is this way. We have lots of people officially enrolled who never show up. We have enrolled approximately 1000 students as theatre majors, but 40% of these have been students six years or longer. Normally, in the States they would do a B.A. and then leave. We don't have a B.A. or short term curriculum. Many of them already have a job but remain enrolled because as students they can have lots of economic advantages. So, they don't really count. In the end, we have about 500 students.

MARRANCA: What kind of degree of do they get?

FISCHER-LICHTE: Comparable to the Master's degree in the States. It needs at least four years study but usually it take five or six years.

DASGUPTA: And you also have a doctoral program. [End Page 70]

FISCHER-LICHTE: After the Master's, our best students then enroll in the doctoral program. There we have something that is relatively new in Germany. You have always had graduate schools in the States where there are Ph.D. programs. We never had that. If there was someone here who wanted to write a dissertation, he had to look for a professor who would agree to it and then when the dissertation was ready he just handed it in and the professor said, yes, it's fine. Well, now we have something comparable to the States and it was the German Research Council who sponsored that. We call it Graduiertenkolleg. It's not for just anything in theatre studies, although the subject of our focus--Körper-Inszenierungen--covers quite a lot. Translated, it means something like "staging the body."

Now we get from the Council scholarships for sixteen graduates to write their dissertations--they must do it in three years--and for three post-docs. In addition, we get money for students to travel to archives and wherever to do research and to invite experts in the fields students work in. For instance, we have invited Richard Sennett to do a seminar with the students. You--Bonnie--have been here. The Institute has to make an application to the German Research Council to receive funding for nine years and show that there are a number of colleagues--here we are 15--who do this together. Also, students must prepare for the committee lectures and discussions about their work.

MARRANCA: Generally speaking then, anyone who goes on for higher studies has a full scholarship.

FISCHER-LICHTE: Yes. But this depends to a certain degree on the professors. You can accept someone who hasn't gotten a scholarship and then they work part-time and do the dissertation. I only accept someone who is excellent because otherwise there are people who stay for ten years and their research goes on and...

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