Exiles, Eccentrics, Activists

Exiles, Eccentrics, Activists accomplishes a long overdue task of supplementing the history of twentieth-century German theater by including the most important, popular, and controversial women's voices. Along the way, Katrin Sieg also critically reevaluates the dominant cultural discourses of modern Germany, offering bold outlines of the "hidden" side of contemporary German culture and politics.

German artists and theorists have furnished many of the groundbreaking models of political theater whose critical, and sometimes revolutionary, potential continues to keep theater alive. German women's dramatic work reflects their active participation in major movements for social change, yet their plays have rarely reached the main stage or the accounts of theater history. Sieg's study investigates how gender, central to these artists' works yet missing from the language of dramatic criticism, influenced women's use of politically powerful models and prompted their invention of new dramatic forms and performance styles.

Exiles, Eccentrics, Activists breaks new ground in examining one of the twentieth century's most important forms of artistic activism. A lucidly written cultural history, it will appeal not only to experts in German theater and feminist criticism but also the general educated reader.