WHEN I HEAR THE WORD “CANON” I USED TO THINK OF A SONG

“I didn’t grow up with the theatre […], or with the books you were supposed to have read.” The Berlin Schaubühne’s video-column “Mareice Kaiser geht ins Theater” begins with this open statement. On behalf of many others, Kaiser describes what has become its own target group in the theatre and cultural sector today: the so-called non-audience. Why do we still or why do we even go to the theatre these days? In conversation with Nicola Bramkamp, Mareice Kaiser shows how a visit to the theatre might be a worthwhile experience even without any bourgeois prior knowledge of texts, plays and literary history. This question reveals a number of other issues that investigate the visit to the theatre – which seems to be something that members of the educated classes do as a matter of course – from a classist perspective.