Us and Them: Nationalism Staged

Andrea Tompa traces how rising state nationalism has manifested in contemporary Eastern European performance. She contends that “consensus” art constructs national identities through dualistic roles of “us” against “the threatening Other” and national histories stripped of their ambiguities—soaked in the aesthetics of folklore, kitsch, and spectacle. Tompa suggests that “less hierarchical forms of performance, such as postdramatic theater” hold the potential to upset these dominant single narratives with multiviewpoint art, including “forum theater, reenactment, and documentary plays.” “Subversion” through exaggerated “overidentification with nationalistic rhetoric” offers another potential counteraesthetic.