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which strongly echoes the upheaval of 1968.

      Paul McCarthy has been working since the late 1960’s, but only in the 1990’s did his work gain popularity. Inspired by icons of the mediatized, pop-cultural world of children, like Heidi or Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the artist’s controversial oeuvre ranges from sketches to videos and sculptures. Unlike Hermann Nitsch, McCarthy has never used real blood or made himself bleed. Instead, he uses human excretions and food such as “ketchup, mayonnaise, saliva, chocolate syrup, cold cream and raw meat […].”10 Wunderbaum freely and obviously references McCarthy’s performances Sailor’s Meat, Meatcake (1974), Hot Dog (1974), Spit Face (1970-75), Shit Face (1974), and Class Fool (1976).11 Besides the obvious parallels, the self-critical questioning of the myth concerning artistic inspiration is another element that can be found in both McCarthy’s work12 and in Looking for Paul.

      Looking for Paul is presented as a true story, the records of which can be found online. This seems to prove its authenticity. However, Wunderbaum or others may have only created these records for the Internet. Questions concerning reality and fiction are hence not clearly answered, but are incidental to the focus of the dramaturgy. The performance and the appeal to the audience work because of the conflictual search for self-positioning a) with regard to the controversies within Wunderbaum on the nature of the L.A. project (playing Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire versus staging a political debate on art sponsoring) and b) concerning the work of McCarthy. The latter opens up a debate on the meaning and morality of art (funding), which Wunderbaum presents as a critique of the privatization of art funding in the Netherlands. On the one hand, their predecessor’s works serve as models for younger artists. On the other hand, they stage a certain skepticism in the face of current (economic) constraints. Wunderbaum explicitly thematizes this through their searching for a way to deal with the drastic funding cuts for art and culture in the Netherlands.

      In Looking for Paul the travelling of performances through different times and spaces creates a transcultural theatre, which isn’t concerned with the exotic “other”, but finds the “other” in the creator’s “own” culture. “The other”, which is at first symbolized by the installation of the sculpture Santa Claus by the U.S. artist Paul McCarthy, for Wunderbaum is increasingly concerned with exploring one’s “own” culture as the performance continues. Ultimately, it becomes clear that “other” and “own” can’t be split apart; by discovering “the other” we are drawn back to ourselves, and one will find “the other” in one’s “own.”

      The Concept of World Theatre in Postdramatic Context: Scientific and Aesthetic Points of Reference and Implications

      Roundtable discussion with Christopher Balme (New Zealand, Germany), Günther Heeg (Germany), Eiichiro Hirata (Japan), Patrick Primaversi (Germany), Mziwoxolo Sirayi (South Africa), and Janine Lewis (South Africa). Moderator: Koku G. Nonoa (Togo, Austria)

      Koku G. Nonoa: Referring to Goethe’s World Literature, we would like to address the concept of World Theatre in this podium discussion and call into question its meaning and its implications for the diversity of theatrical forms of expression in today’s world. Which form of theatre is relevant for the globally diverse performative and ritual forms of expression of theatrical practices? Goethe’s idea of World Literature, which could also be related to the concept of World Theatre, raises the following question: is this concept still up-do-date?

      Günther Heeg: In my view it is not very helpful to assume that World Theatre is composed of a few basic theatrical elements, which are identical everywhere in the world. This concept was already highly debated in the 1980’s. It was characterized as the other side of Western theatre, drama, language, literature, etc., since concepts such as this one require a binary scheme or an enemy image. This results in opposition and hostility towards foreigners instead of dialogue. If there is such a thing as World Theatre, then it is still in its developmental stages. An emerging World Theatre cannot be a theatre of bogeymen and political opposition, but must rather be a theatre based on displacement and disposition. I would suggest favoring a historical approach when discussing the idea of a World Theatre, instead of reverting to anthropological, originary and basic practices and forms that exist everywhere in the world. In the context of globalization structurally accompanied by fundamentalism, returning to origins, to the original and to the anthropological is not helpful. The postdramatic theatre of Hans-Thies Lehmann strictly follows a historical approach. Lehmann never sought to name the original. In opposition to language-based theatre, there is currently a form of theatre based in ritual and which confronts the superiority of the text with the body.

      Christopher Balme: I will speak here from the viewpoint of New Zealand. My first question is: does New Zealand have theatre like other countries in Africa, Europe or Asia? Yes, New Zealand does have theatre. But the more interesting question is the meaning of the word “world” in the concept of World Theatre. Where do we find similar structures? There is, for example, World Music, World Literature and World Art. So there are many meanings of the word “world”. Maybe you will disagree with me, but I do think that in every place the word “world” means something different. For example, World Music was and is more of a marketing concept for a specific kind of music; if you go to a record shop you will find a category called “World Music”; or if you study music in the UK today to earn a degree in music, you would probably find it as part of the curriculum. World Art is another concept that has frequently been discussed in the last fifteen years. What does it mean? In art history, for example, the origins of art go back to prehistorical cave paintings discovered in Europe. And basically, World Art seems to mean everything except the European canon. So, we have an interesting situation of “world” referring to everything and anything except the European canon. This seems to be one way of understanding the term “world”. How are we going to apply the term “world” to theatre? I will argue that this doesn’t work: the idea of everything being the world except Europe cannot be applied to theatre because theatre is not an European concept. It is interesting enough that all these music and art histories have a very strong national orientation. Literature in particular defines itself in nationalistic terms, for example French literature, German literature or English literature. Theatre has never really defined itself in very strong nationalistic terms, even if we have national theatre buildings and so on. But theatre has always travelled all around the world as a medium. I agree, there are times when it becomes localized and established in some cities, but theatre has always undertaken tours. When I consciously said at the beginning that there was theatre in New Zealand, what I meant of course was that the institution theatre has been adopted all over the world. If we talk about World Theatre, we should also ask ourselves the interesting question: Why do we have a theatre building in New Zealand, in Ulaanbaatar, in Wladiwostok, in Lomé, or in all Japanese cities? Why do we play theatre? How does the theatre institution enter the world and under which conditions? It is a complex story and we have to look at these questions. This is why the term “World Theatre” appears relevant to me.

      Patrick Primavesi: We should regard theatre not just as an art or as one of the art forms that can be compared to music, the fine arts or literature, but also as a cultural practice. This helps us to understand why theatre, particularly in the 19^th century but also in our times, could become a means of national representation while at the same time opening the horizons to other cultures, traditions and practices. In order to examine its representational values and structures with regards to the concept of nation and national culture, it is indeed helpful to go back to Goethe’s idea of a World Theatre. This idea already contains two different tendencies. On the one hand you have the vision of open horizons that include all those elements of human experience beyond the limitations of a particular local or regional culture, e.g. in Weimar. When Goethe became director of the Weimar court theatre he wanted to build something like a transnational repertoire, based on new translations. As we all know, translations became very important in those times for German theatre culture. However, the methods and ends of translation were highly controversial regarding the extent to which the experience of the foreign as such should be conveyed to an audience. Goethe enlarged the horizon of German theatre by including not only Greek theatre

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