Theatre in the Making, Subjects in Becoming: Participant Observation in the Study of Theatre Festivals Benjamin Hoesch (Giessen) This article explores the theatre festival as an epistemic frame and participant observation as the necessary approach to both following its logic and getting beyond its dominant mode of knowledge. The festival is reflected as an effective performative context of theatrical events, involving the body and its presence. Festivals develop a distinct public sphere for the observation of artists by spectators who are addressed as experts. In response to the competitive pressure arising from this asymmetrical relationship, different strategies of breaking with the festival logic in participant observation are discussed: looking behind the event at its production, negotiating absence and presence, and establishing possible counterpublics - the most promising emerging from an aesthetics of self-assertion in performance. All these approaches, it is argued, must fundamentally unsettle the epistemological position of the participating observer. The conclusion reflects the hybrid position of the festival cherishing live performance in a digital age. Whenever I enter the courtyard of Thalia Gaußstraße, the secondary venue of Thalia Theater in Hamburg-Altona, I feel a tightness in my lower stomach. I stand up straight, breathe more consciously and tense my neck, while walking across the parking lot towards the entrance. I can be seen from afar by all the people standing outside and in turn scan the crowd for friends and colleagues, important people, or eye-catching characters - the field seems to lie open to my observation as much as I am noticeable as an arriving observer. I first perceived my physical reaction to this location when returning to it for a completely different occasion shortly after my first intensive stay there in 2015, and I can feel it - somewhat muted - in every visit until today. I got to know the place as a theatre student together with two colleagues when we gave a public performance of our first production at Körber Studio Junge Regie, an annual festival for all theatre directing schools in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. The experience was far from traumatic, involving much attention, praise and some critical attacks, but also resulting in working friendships and further festival invitations. And yet, the situation of being exposed over several days, challenged in discussion and in competition - which is heightened by a professional jury awarding a prize for the best production and spectators voting on an audience award - became entrenched as an unease in my body, connected to this particular location. This intensity and pressure of the experience as a participating artist was later validated by many of the students I surveyed when I returned to the field in a different role. As part of a research project on festivals for young artists (Nachwuchsfestivals) 1 , I visited Körber Studio Junge Regie - among many other sites - regularly between 2018 and 2022, worked through its publications and press archive, and interviewed organisers and participating artists. 2 My research studied the organisational function and social relations of the festival, as well as their impact on aesthetic practice and per- Forum Modernes Theater, 36/ 1-2, 95 - 109. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ FMTh-36-0008 ception. In conducting this research, I changed from the position of a participant under observation to that of an academic observer who chose to participate in the festival as a spectator. But still in my research position, secured by an interval of several years, archival knowledge and an academic assignment, my fieldwork was haunted - as my physical reaction every time I arrived at the scene reminds me - by the primary experience of my own participation as an artist. In this role shift, the complexity, ambiguity, and unsettledness of ‘ participant observation ’ comes into play. As a participating artist, I had both an emic role and privileged access to field practices - a position for which many fieldwork approaches endlessly strive. I had ‘ gone native ’ - before ‘ coming home ’ to my university - but in the field I was too busy and absorbed for any observation that went beyond my subjective struggle. Only when I came back as an ‘ outsider ’ at various times, did I notice my physical unease - and I could start to see through the field logic: Festivals for young artists centre on novices in the field like I had been, on initiating a stream of aspirants hoping to succeed as theatre professionals or forced to find other fields to work in. My return as a participant observer put me in an awkward in-between position. Of course, my personal experience as a participating artist informed the questions, assumptions and sensitivities with which I approached the field and its social actors, but as an observing researcher, I had to distrust my preconceptions enough to have them refuted or differentiated by other perspectives. From my different participations and observations as an artist and a researcher at the festival, multiple epistemological possibilities and problems arise. They suggest that participant observation is a delicate balance between complementary, yet mutually prohibitive practices and attitudes in generating knowledge. It is both possible to participate ‘ too much ’ to yield relevant observations and to observe too distantly to ground observations in social interaction. The negotiations and ambiguities resulting from my role shift underline crucial issues in the necessary self-reflection of research strategies in fieldwork. 3 As a research approach, my participant observation took on the role of a spectator and most of its common practices but differed in interest and attitude - a difference that is not easy to point out. As I experienced, festival spectators are not merely interested in entertainment but also gain a certain knowledge, related to forms of power, from their participation. My interest was to generate knowledge on that knowledge, not encompassing a superior power position but acknowledging power as dispersed between many contributing actors and factors. The proximity and friction between spectator and participating observer proved to be a fruitful source of reflection. Most research in Theatre Studies does not (openly) reflect on the position of the researcher in the field and the contribution of the knowledge produced to its ongoing power dynamics. I want to argue for a critical adoption of participant observation in Theatre Studies that gains first-hand experience of field dynamics, yet deliberately breaks with certain established principles in order to get beyond the dominant field logic and the knowledge it implements. The result of this argument may not be an elegant, wellgrounded research strategy, but rather a constant reflective struggle with the object of study and the methods and concepts applied. The course of my reflection leads me from arrival in the field and its spatiotemporal structure via the involvement of the body and the making of subjects to the emergence of counter-publics inside the dominant festival culture and its digital afterlife. 96 Benjamin Hoesch Arrival and Return: Festival Knowledge Mary Louise Pratt has emphasized the crucial role of opening narratives and arrival scenes in ethnographic studies for the authority of the knowledge acquired in the field. 4 The arrival description with which I chose to begin this article consciously deviates from conventional narrative tropes in various regards and can therefore hardly grant much authority: It depicts a ‘ return ’ to the field instead of the consequential event of a ‘ first contact ’ - a reiteration of arrival again and again - and marks a pivotal time shift from my first field experience to establishing a reflected mode of observation; it is obvious that the people observed are not ‘ indigenous ’ to the place where I encounter them, but are also arriving or returning for a public gathering, accessible in principle to anyone; my arrival as an observer is no surprise to any of them, instead, mutual observation is already at work in many directions; and instead of focusing on the observed, I am forced to notice my own body, which knows more from previous field experience than I had thought. It is these dimensions of the festival I want to highlight as challenges to its research: the cultural event, the body, public spheres and modes of observation. Field research in the study of theatre festivals has to date not been considered as a negotiation of participant observation, although its main practices are comparable with this influential research approach. 5 My first step to address this lack does not concentrate on the most fruitful research design for festival studies. Instead, I focus on the question of how festivals, through an emic practice of participant observation, have shaped our production of knowledge on theatre. I take festivals for young artists as a model that more openly exhibits certain dynamics and characteristics common to most - if not all - festivals. The festival is an epistemic formation for the study of theatre, one that calls for and at the same time challenges approaches of participant observation - the tightness I observe in my stomach bears witness to both. This methodological and epistemological ambivalence of the festival is an indication of fundamentally changing modes of perception and knowledge. If the digital age, as Ulf Otto has argued, has radically altered how knowledge on theatre is generated 6 - and it seems very early for a definitive evaluation - festivals have been effective as an epistemic filter long before the digital revolution and are still very much in place after its advent. They seem to bridge and mitigate the ongoing transition into the digital age, prefiguring some of its modes of knowledge while still insisting on the analogue conditions of live performance. I argue that academic festival research - as research ‘ on ’ festivals and theatre research ‘ through ’ festivals - needs to adapt to the challenges posed by their epistemic frame but also to deviate from certain modes of knowledge it imposes in order to resist a ‘ festivalisation of knowledge ’ prevalent in current theatre discourse. Much of the discourse is shaped by festival curators and programmes and centres around a number of heavily hyped, widely toured productions that establish short-lived aesthetic and thematic trends. The epistemic frame of the festival determines what is discussed under which aspects and what is instead overlooked. The focus is placed on individual theatre works selected as significant aesthetic events from a vast supply of options, while the generation of the event and its attribution of significance tend to remain out of sight. A revision of these focal points must challenge the observer positions the festival frame provides. My shift in focus through participant observation seeks to deepen rather than clear up its inherent contradictions and pitfalls and will not lead to a comfortable, secured research 97 Theatre in the Making, Subjects in Becoming path, but will ultimately undermine the position of the researching subject - a certain epistemological stomachache will persist. Performative Contexts and ‘ Eventifying ’ Platforms One basic reservation to applying participant observation to the study of festivals concerns its temporal and spatial scale. While “ [t]he hallmark of participant observation is long-term personal involvement with those being studied, including participation in their lives to the extent that the researcher comes to understand the culture as an insider ” 7 , field experience in festival research seems almost too easy. Festivals happen over a limited time span of only several days at a certain location, are publicly advertised and accessible, and often enough rooted in domestic cultural life. Anthropologist Jonas Tinius argues, however, that fieldwork in Theatre and Performance Studies needs to “ consider the idiosyncratic time frames, calendars, and rhythms of theatre and performance as fields ” and deduce its timing from “ an attentiveness to a given field ” 8 . Of course, festivals require a whole complex of administrative preparation and artistic planning, but they essentially deliver ‘ events ’ - and in that frame, they invite everyone in to display all the dimensions of culture: social structures and hierarchies; cultural performances inside and outside the aesthetic; institutions as unwritten rules and patterns of behaviour; economies, both symbolic and material; rituals such as opening and award ceremonies, etc. Festivals propel the fragmentation of culture into events, an ‘ eventification ’ of culture. They offer to bring culture in bits and pieces from a variety of origins closer to the observer as consumer, while developing a complex institutional culture of their own. Festivals want to be observed by participation in their event, which is culturally rich enough for us to easily forget about the cultural, social and political conditions of this public display itself. Clearly, ethnographic research could also cover longer-term processes of festival work in production bureaus and curatorial meetings - but the core of festival culture lies arguably in the realisation of all this planning as a festival event. Insofar as their culture consists of the event, festivals disrupt systematic research techniques of fieldwork and hardly allow for slow acculturation or the diligent keeping of a field diary. They present an extremely dense picture for any “ thick description ” 9 . This eventification is not without epistemic effects: By furthering a growing event economy, festivals highlight the ‘ event-ness ’ of culture and raise awareness of theatre performances as events. It is no coincidence that, during the global boom of theatre festivals since the 1990s, a new working group in the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR) has formed around ‘ The Theatrical Event ’ on the assumption that “ [w]e cannot think of theatre other than as events ” 10 and has subsequently dedicated much of its collaboration to the study of festivals around the world. 11 The theatrical event, according to their concepts, originates from a break with ordinary, everyday life and a foregrounding of activities against this backdrop as meaningful and significant. Festivals, then, are seen as one current strategy for “ the eventification of the theatrical event ” 12 , in which performances are reframed in order “ to enhance their meaning, value, impact and celebrity, as well as their marketability, as societal events ” 13 . This can be demonstrated by the fact that festivals are not dependent on any inherent quality of the performances they show, but may grant significance even to trivial practices, unhedged experiments or unknown young 98 Benjamin Hoesch artists. Public attention, but equally the discipline of Theatre Studies in its selection of performances, aesthetics, and artists to be studied, rely heavily on this highlighting function of festivals. As “ an event consisting of single events, in other words: a meta-event ” 14 , the festival sparks reflections on the notion of the event itself. Crucial in the working group ’ s debate was the attempt to not isolate the theatrical event from its preconditions but to integrate cultural, political and social contexts in its research - at exactly the same time as festival curators like Florian Malzacher declared it their own “ central task to create contexts [. . .: ] Links between artists, artworks, audiences, cultures, social and political realities, parallel worlds, discourses, institutions. ” 15 Academic research on these contexts, however, resulted mostly in descriptions of festivals ’ histories, cultural policies and effects on communities, while omitting aesthetic questions, leaving the performance events again untouched by their contexts. Together with such research, festivals have established a paradoxical epistemic frame. 16 They gain recognition as indispensable enabling structures for performances, but when they begin, they recede far enough into the background to be completely forgotten and let the performances stand for themselves. Consequently, social and aesthetic dimensions of festivals are still being studied separately, which allows for a shift of focus between ‘ either ’ the festival as context ‘ or ’ the framed performances, but does not allow the performative influence of one on the other to be considered. While festivals have become a topic for organisational research, 17 most performance analysis in Theatre Studies - although heavily influenced by festivals and their practices of production and dissemination - treats their performances as isolated aesthetic events without any consideration of the organisational and institutional frame that had brought them about. The festival remained context, to be either focused on or completely neglected as the researcher chose. Trading organisational research and performance analysis for (or rather: embedding both in) participant observation can bring contexts back into aesthetic play. Such research is not bound to reproduce curatorial concepts of social and political connectivity but retraces their actual effects on the subject entering the festival frame. These observations help reveal the tangible, constitutive influence this frame has on each of the performances as their very ‘ performative context ’ - social, political, and economic conditions that tacitly co-star in each show. Participant observation - “ a continuous tacking between the ‘ inside ’ and ‘ outside ’ of events ” 18 , according to James Clifford - follows the specific temporalities and spatial orders of a festival but also reconnects it with the ordinary, everyday tasks of research work. Thus, field research can become a practical quest for “ an idea of theatre being more than performance ” 19 by exploring the festival being more than event. One strategy to achieve this could be the recurrent - or even redundant - return to the field in (slightly or extremely) different roles, which breaks with the logic of the singular event and reveals its formation as the updating of and deviation from established patterns. At Körber Studio Junge Regie, despite a complete turnover of artists each year, a group of ‘ regulars ’ , comprising teaching staff, local theatre employees, and journalists, has settled, developing practical routines, drawing comparisons to previous years and commenting on changes and specialties of the current edition. Joining this group after returning only a few times, the participant observer quickly possesses more knowledge of the field logic than the novice insiders - the participating artists - but cannot know which part of it will be 99 Theatre in the Making, Subjects in Becoming relevant for their experience or will be rebutted by the current festival event. This is why even the well-versed regular observers in the festival audience remain in a “ heightened state of participation ” 20 and cannot escape the excitement and sense of (possible) significance - the event allows for no knowledge advantage. Increasing this tension between the event and the ordinary - even while never rejecting the event logic completely - opens up new perspectives on festivals: Participant observation can help to disclose how the ‘ event-ness ’ of performance is practically generated and installed in the participating subjects. Moreover, linking the event to its social structure embeds the exceptional time and space of festivals in broader sociohistorical developments. This reveals the extraordinary as a permanent state in contemporary culture and both explains and questions the prominent self-portrayals of festivals. Körber Studio Junge Regie is described as “ the most important platform for emerging theatre directors nationwide ” 21 , but organisers leave the selection of students ’ productions completely to the collaborating theatre departments at universities and conservatoires. While other festivals emphasize their own curatorial selection instead, they also oscillate between celebrating and downplaying their influence on theatre works and present themselves as ‘ platforms ’ where artists can put any performance into practice. Festivals, thus, are pre-digital forerunners of a growing ‘ platform economy ’ where organisations control access to basic infrastructure while refusing to take any responsibility for the quality of the ‘ content ’ offered or for the workers producing it. At the same time, festivals function as ‘ gatekeepers ’ for attention markets, as admitted by Malzacher: “ Who they don ’ t see, who they refuse to see, has [. . .] almost no chance of being seen. ” 22 What theatre researchers get to see and write about is for a large part decided by festivals, their hierarchies and discursive impact - it is time for the discipline to no longer reproduce and reenforce their eventification, but to examine its mechanisms and dynamics as the production and exploitation of social, artistic and epistemic value. From FOMO to Exhaustion: Theatre Festivals and the Body Festivals already imply and involve the theatre researcher ’ s discourse and body. They make it possible to attend a variety of performances that will likely become recognized by many as interesting, outstanding or even pioneering. In seizing this opportunity, theatre research inevitably contributes to the significance of the event, beginning with the presence of the researcher ’ s body as part of the festival audience. Reflections on the impact of physical presence in participant observation or the body as a medium of knowledge are still quite rare in ethnography. 23 According to David Howes, while the “ idea of ‘ participant observation ’ was a sensationalist one, ” the discipline took “ a shift away from the participatory and sensual to more textual modes of understanding cultures ” . 24 Since then, however, a stream of ‘ radical empiricism ’ in anthropology has taken the researcher ’ s body as “ both the instrument and the key to understanding ” and embodied experience as assurance of a privileged “ first-hand, direct, intersubjective engagement ” 25 . In contrast to both statements, festival research requires a practice of participant observation that is aware of the crucial role of the body, but critical of its targeting as a guarantor for presence and experience - a mode receptive to the unease in my stomach without taking it as a sign of privileged knowledge. Theatre festivals structurally engage the body in specific ways. Knowledge of the 100 Benjamin Hoesch festival as event is engrafted in the body and put into practice with every new beginning. Festivals promise to reward physical presence with acute experience and restrict theatricality to a limited time and space, insisting on its transitory nature - much more than repertoire or recurring programmes. By making us forget that many productions tour for longer periods and can indeed be seen again elsewhere, festivals create a fragile opportunity that could easily be missed, but should not, producing maximum FOMO (the ‘ fear of missing out ’ ), not only in the academic spectators. 26 Despite the recurring feeling in my stomach, I always felt remorse whenever I couldn ’ t make it to one day or just one of the many performances at a festival and I rarely stay away from Körber Studio Junge Regie even years after the completion of my research project. Many spectators and festival observers develop the ambition to see as much theatre as possible in the dense timeline. Only the body ’ s presence at the ‘ right place ’ at the ‘ right time ’ can alleviate FOMO - and justifies it by helping to fulfil the festival ’ s promise as a signifier for its significance. Studies of theatre festivals have largely underestimated this key role of the present body and have not focused on the mechanisms of its involvement. They tend to be organised in volumes mapping an international festival landscape through individual case studies on every continent. 27 While none of the methodological chapters on festival research brings the body into play, most authors (if their research focus is not exclusively historical) only write about cases they have personally attended, underpinning the global consciousness of the festival circuit with local credentials. Without reflecting it, these studies follow the paradigm of participant observation as established by Bronis ł aw Malinowski, privileging physical presence at significant places as a path to knowledge superior to the study from afar. 28 Clifford has dubbed it the “ predominant mode of modern fieldwork authority [. . .]: ‘ You are there, because I was there. ’” 29 But festivals not only evoke the presence of every truly committed observer - they make participant observation more challenging by overstressing the body as a medium of experience. It is not just stimulated by a variety of theatre performances, but also addressed by decoration and space design, panel talks, exhibitions and publications, dining and drinking options, dance and party invitations - all of these promising an ‘ out of the ordinary ’ experience and contributing to a distinctive ‘ festival atmosphere ’ which is shaped by sounds, odours, touch and taste as much as by sight and discourse. At Körber Studio Junge Regie, as at most festivals in summer, sunloungers and couches are set up, encouraging attendees to enjoy the weather before and between shows - but this relaxing appearance is deceiving: With a more extensive time frame and yet a higher density of sensory and social attractions than most usual theatre visits, festivals pose a challenge to the body, its susceptibility and endurance. Disorientation, vertigo and exhaustion are the inevitable counterparts to excitement and ecstasy, as I experienced in my different roles and learned from artists and spectators alike. They are, however, no reason for frustration. These sensations show that a participant ’ s body has come full circle from the FOMO prior to the event. Exhaustion provides a soothing confirmation that one ‘ really ’ experienced and took part in the festival in its totality. By letting these dynamics take effect on the researcher ’ s own body, participant observation can instigate their reflection from experience - and test what prevents deviant practices of the body during the festival. The observer not only repeats the mechanisms of FOMO and exhaustion but can also become sensitive to aspects of tension and pressure in the festival atmosphere, stemming from 101 Theatre in the Making, Subjects in Becoming an oversupply of attractions in a limited market of attention. Festivals have always been the perception experiment of processing an abundance of theatre that would deserve our attention as individual works of art - today, they become sites of fierce competition between artists and aesthetics for positions in a contested field. Participant observation is in line with festivals ’ imperative for physical presence, and, paradoxically, the only approach to test its limits. The overwhelming sensations in participation that challenge observation should liberate us from demands for completeness and an overview in festival research. Instead of just reproducing an exclusionary norm where researchers have to be able to afford live attendance at performances in order to write about them legitimately, 30 participant observation at festivals can reveal how live experience is always incomplete, fragmented, and flawed by many factors that are characteristic of the festival as event. Confronted with the challenge of always being present everywhere, researchers can also strategically implement ‘ absences ’ without averting their attention: How to write about a performance I have missed - which in a sense, at least for me, didn ’ t take place? 31 Which performances will be talked and written about and how is this influenced by other spectators, awards, festival timelines, a state of anticipation or exhaustion? These mostly tacit practical concerns for performance analysis can become a focal point in participant observation, illuminating the shaping of aesthetic experience by the social and communicative structure of a festival. Observing the Observed: Producing Publics and Making Subjects The most consequential of all the festival ’ s sensual and social practices is observation itself. As the scene of my arrival at the festival site has shown, the researcher is not the first to bring observation into the field, but in participating finds manifold relations of observation already at work: Theatre critics review the quality of the event; jurors, decision-makers and leading experts monitor its significance; theatre directors and festival curators are on the hunt for young talent; artists assess their audience, get to know the business in the local theatre scene, size up their competition and learn from successful colleagues. For the general audience, these dynamic relations of observation are not always comprehensible but never hidden and often enough put on public display. In panel talks, introductions and award ceremonies, festival newspapers and blogs, spectators are given the opportunity to look behind the ‘ ready-made ’ performances at a ‘ theatre in the making ’ . Festivals usually offer much more insight into the production processes of performances than regular theatre visits, and thus occasions to observe a system of observations that usually goes on ‘ behind the scenes ’ . At Körber Studio Junge Regie, the audience can get to know the directors of each production in introductory video interviews, is led through backstage corridors to a Q&A with the whole cast after each performance, may meet them again at the bar or in the foyer, and can attend a public jury discussion at the festival ’ s finale where all performances are reviewed and the award decision is justified. It is therefore easy to make observations at a festival that relate back to the production of theatre, but it is hard to reach beyond these already public accounts. Access to the field, its various sites and stages, can still be problematic, its limitations revealing a lot about the field structure and the role of observation therein. With their insights into theatre in the making, festivals not only develop a theatrical public sphere 32 , but 102 Benjamin Hoesch also what Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge called a “ production public sphere ” (Produktionsöffentlichkeit) - a “ pseudo-public ” 33 display of production processes in the spirit of advertising and publicity, as a “ complex conjuncture of production interests, life interests, and legitimation ” 34 . While the development of performances in longterm rehearsal processes and previous showings remains impenetrable through the event, the festival produces only a certain public knowledge on theatre in the making - thereby shaping our dominant conceptions of theatre production. Instead of simply repeating this institutional self-fashioning of theatre, participant observation can retrace how the production public sphere is generated. This places a focus on the frictions between production interests of the festival organisation, life interests of both artists and audience and, most importantly, legitimation effects on all participants. As social legitimacy is always fragile, uncertain and contested, 35 a participant observer can point to the gaps, omissions and contradictions in legitimising accounts and reveal how they override open conflict and radical critique. For an observation sensitive to these dynamics, spaces and their boundaries can become porous and permeable to the social practices, economies, and power relations behind them. Festivals are structured to enable and publicise relations of observation between participants that are mutual, but not symmetrical. Many of the artists participating in my survey stated that they felt compelled by the abovementioned formats to “ self-position ” as artists with a certain identity and vision; others experienced the sequence of their video interview, show and Q&A as one prolonged performance challenge to thrive on. What is publicly produced at the festival event is not primarily performances but artists as subjects. This is most evident at festivals for young artists where they hold no prior position in the field and enter public discourse for the first time. The making of artists as subjects includes putting their names on the map of the current theatre landscape, attributing them agency over their performance, publishing their profiles and linking them to certain practices and aesthetics. Between discourses of talent, promotion, and speculation, the artist is, as Georg Döcker has put it, summoned as “ a subject of potential, need, and risk ” 36 at once. The production public sphere and its interest in theatre in the making are only a detour to observing ‘ subjects in becoming ’ - and in competition. Subjectivation as the effective promotion of talent is not granted to everyone and not to all the artists equally. Observing them as subjects in becoming during the festival event and its challenges entails assessing which of them deserves what level of attention and which future prospects in the field. The study of festivals can therefore pave the way to understanding the competitive attribution of value to performing subjects in a “ Society of Singularities ” 37 . This subjectivation by observation reflects back on the observing subject. Every audience member is invited to get to know the artists and is addressed as a theatre expert able to decide on their future careers. At Körber Studio Junge Regie - and various other festivals for young artists - spectators are called upon to cast their vote on an audience award right after leaving the theatre hall. If they like the show, they cast a ballot paper into a well-positioned box, if they dislike it, they pass. In such emblematic procedures, a ‘ privilege of the spectator ’ , whose subjective judgement is strengthened and made consequential, is foregrounded. Festivals apparently democratise an observation that feels obliged to make sense of the actions of unconscious practitioners - as Clifford Geertz has put it: “ In the country of the blind, who are not as unobservant as they 103 Theatre in the Making, Subjects in Becoming appear, the one-eyed is not king but spectator. ” 38 Participating in these observation practices and exploiting the privilege of the spectator may easily lead to research that only reproduces a festival ’ s dominant mode of knowledge. Selecting certain artists as worthy of closer discussion, introducing them to public discourse or strengthening their position therein, outlining their artistic method and practice and determining their characteristic works and aesthetics adds nothing new to the observations of festivals, but only extends their valorisation game into academic debate. Instead of taking subjects and their relations of observation for granted, reflection must understand not just the observed, but also the observer as subjects in becoming. Participant observation - “ as a means for producing knowledge from an intense, intersubjective engagement ” 39 - is an ambivalent subject-relation. Geertz considered participant observation as an engagement “ with [. . .] informants as persons rather than as objects ” , but called it “ our most powerful source of bad faith ” if the observer conceals “ the very special, culturally bracketed nature of his own role ” or “ imagine[s] himself something more than an interested (in both senses of that word) sojourner ” . 40 What is needed is both secondorder participation and second-order (or rather third-order) observation that oscillate between deliberate entanglement with field mechanisms and the resolute rejection of them. Counter-Publics: Solidarity and the Aesthetics of Self-Assertion There are two possible toeholds for participant observation to intervene in the subject order of the festival and both arise from its display of a production public sphere. While such a formation, according to Negt and Kluge, may become a system of oppression, it organises the common experience of subjects and can therefore be taken as an opposite pole for solidarity and an emancipating “ counter-publicity ” 41 . Instead of reproducing and expanding the dominant public of the festival, participant observation can look out for potentials of a self-determined subjectivation emerging in resistance and imagining alternatives to its designated patterns. For years, the artists at Körber Studio Junge Regie have made various attempts to unite during the festival and speak up against its competitive pressure. Undermining the festival public, they form alliances in open space discussions, foyer talks and written statements. During at least one edition, they even obtained the organisers ’ consent to disburse the prize money for a collective workshop project of all the artists instead of awarding it to just one of them - until their unanimity broke apart and the award ceremony took place as usual. None of these recalcitrant acts in the quest for solidarity against competitive subjectivation through the festival frame was mentioned in the numerous press reports on Körber Studio Junge Regie. Only participant observation can bear witness to such critical negotiations under the public radar and maintain their memory as possible courses of action to be followed or explored further by new participants. What ’ s problematic about this role is not a possible intervention in the observed field dynamics by the observer - which, given the reciprocal subjectivation between observer and the observed, is unfeasible to avoid anyhow. As Tinius stresses, fieldwork involves a strong commitment to the people studied and an “ ethics of interlocution ” 42 . But the provision of knowledge for the observed in attempted solidarity with their becoming self-determined subjects will remain hollow. If counter-publics of the festival must be about the self-awareness and 104 Benjamin Hoesch emancipation of the artists as those usually subjected to public scrutiny, they cannot genuinely be promoted by an observer, again exerting the privilege of spectator. An effective alliance of artists is already rendered highly improbable by their mutual subjectivation and obliteration as rivals in a narrow market and should not be burdened with the added expectation of overcoming the competitive character of the festival. My role shift from participating artist to researcher cannot be reversed. The observer will never become one of them simply by participating in their discussions, but at best stands awkwardly by while they struggle to form a collective stance. Another, more promising outlook for counter-publics on festivals is offered by activities already public, but immensely enclosed and rapidly classified by the festival frame and its enactment through the audience: the performances. It is precisely statements assuming publicity in an aesthetic mode that can open up a collective reflection and reveal a counter-public - hence the important role ascribed to “ fantasy ” for its creation by Negt and Kluge: As fantasy always implements “ immediate present impressions, past wishes, and future wish-fulfillment ” 43 , it can bust the logic of the event - if it is both produced and received in its own right. The latter, however, requires an aesthetic turn of participant observation not stipulated in the field logic. The dominant mode of observation imposed by the festival is, in fact, not aesthetic judgement - that would struggle with an unsettling aesthetic force and therefore reflect infinitely on itself without reaching a final verdict - but a social judgement that assigns a fixed status on the basis of unambiguous social competence to subjects both judging and judged. 44 Regaining aesthetic perception in participant observation can therefore baffle the subject order of the festival, as it gives up the privilege of the spectator for the privilege of the performing subject to claim any social position and to play with its judging observation. I have reviewed, over the years, many performances that cleverly reflect subjectivation in the theatre market and unmask the mechanisms of the festival - employing autobiographical anecdotes, political manifestos, disarming self-evaluation, ironical career planning or self-aggrandizing imaginations as well as diverse experiments with the performance situation. These performances never just deliver messages, insights and views of the artists but, through their aesthetic force, spark reflection on their contingency and dependency, their ambiguity and sincerity, on their making and counting as theatre. I have termed such onstage explorations of artists in contention to the demands of competition and productivity an ‘ aesthetics of self-assertion ’ - in the double meaning of the word: as maintenance of the self, confronted with competitive expectations, and as an openly fictional play of a self (or a variety of selves) undermining any judgement and playfully testing their creative leeway and prospects at recognition. The aesthetics of self-assertion both enriches and requires participant observation, as classic performance analysis oblivious to the social conditions of performance could not make any sense of its engagement or even discern its referent. These performances address an audience well aware of the festival ’ s social dynamics, both responsible for and sensitive to its competitive pressure - that is, a participant observation. In provoking agreement, irritation and denial during the performance and beyond, such aesthetics bring about controversial debates and unlikely alliances not provided by the production public sphere - in other words: counter-publics. In these negotiations, the participant observer, exposed to aesthetic force, cannot maintain a steady, reliable position as a 105 Theatre in the Making, Subjects in Becoming consistent subject of knowledge, but will often be misled, irritated, mocked and stumped by performances, which aim to perplex the becoming subjects of artists, not to accommodate their observation. The most interesting of these performances make it impossible to decide, and even more so to convincingly argue, if they are brilliant explorations on the contemporary condition of subjects or self-referential nuisances. Thus, the strange feeling in my stomach each time I return may also be a symptom of this precarious subjectivity as an observer - seeing through the festival ’ s logic and remaining incapable of foreseeing the developments of each new event; attending critically and yet affirming the event with my bodily presence; becoming part of an oppressive production public sphere, but being cut off from its resistance; awaiting the emergence of counter-publics and struggling with their aesthetic apparition. Pandemic Breach: Festivals and Digitalisation With their structure as gate-keeping platforms, the accumulation of content, and participation in a public like/ dislike evaluation, festivals point the main principles that are characteristic of communication in the digital age. At the same time, they hold up the value of live experience that is presented as indispensable by any media. Their relative success in the attention economy of the ongoing transition to the digital age may derive from this hybrid bridge function by which festivals reach an audience in large parts already attuned to digital media while not alienating those frightened by the digital revolution. Relating both to the pre-digital and the digital spheres, festivals demonstrated adaptability during the time of pandemic measures but have shown their prevailing preference for the live culture of physical co-presence since the lifting of restrictions. Only shortly before its announced date in June 2020, in response to the lockdown of theatres in Germany, Körber Studio Junge Regie was publicly postponed to October of the same year and advertised as an exclusively digital edition. That decision, however, led to the selected artists intervening with a joint letter to the organisers, listing for each performance fundamental obstacles to a digital showing. Unanimously opposing a digital edition of the festival, they suggested a further postponement to the summer of 2021 for a ‘ double feature ’ , together with a next generation of artists in a live event. The organisers fully complied with this proposal, but in early 2021 declared that due to the renewed lockdown the planned double feature could also take place only as a digital edition. All the artists of 2020 participated, mostly with video streaming of preproduced live performances on rehearsal stages, only in individual cases with genuinely digital performances or video art. These responses to the pandemic rupture at Körber Studio Junge Regie provide an illustrative case study for the hesitant acceptance, rather than the wilful adoption, of digitalisation by theatre festivals. While the refusal to fill digital surrogates with productions meant for live performance was a possible stance only in the early phases of the pandemic and gave way to pragmatic participation, all digital communication referred to the experience of the live event as the better, more intensive, and more complete option. But distant observation, to be conveniently conducted from the disdained armchair at home, ironically, became the only possible mode of participation in that year, embedded in everyday pandemic life with digital access to video streaming and conference calls. Following the programme of the digital edition in 2021, I saw that it did not induce half as much FOMO as the live 106 Benjamin Hoesch events before and after - although it was actually extraordinary for once, with conditions that have not recurred since. Digitalisation in this vein was abandoned by most festivals as abruptly as it was set in motion: With the return to a live event in 2022, digital performances have completely vanished from the programme of Körber Studio Junge Regie. Since no video streaming is offered - except of the final jury discussion - participation in the festival via digital media is impossible. It may be true that live performances are not the same since their digital alternatives and the option of additional online availability are a common experience, 45 but Körber Studio Junge Regie seems to need no justification to renounce digital content and, what may be more significant, academic theatre training (at least in the German-speaking countries) does not make any demands for the arrangement of digital or hybrid formats. Analogue live performance, it may be inferred, has come back to stay at least a little longer. But, of course, the digital age leaves many marks on festivals. Live performances are in fact increasingly staged to also look good in digital media and make extensive use of digitally generated sounds, visuals and even texts as well as dramaturgies and iconographies from digital content. At the same time, many festivals have notably intensified endeavours to establish publicly accessible online archives that give the events some permanency. Körber Studio Junge Regie has maintained an online archive of previous editions for years and has expanded it since the pandemic, storing programmes with announcements and artists ’ biographies, video interviews and photos of performances and the festival site. Instead of a linear displacement of live performance by digital content, it seems more fruitful to assume a complex concomitance of live and digital cultures and to shift attention to their countless interlockings in festivals. This, for the time being, can only be achieved by a combination of participant observation and digital research. Digitalisation has, in fact, opened up new research perspectives on festivals. The available content of online archives, together with the increasing number of artists ’ websites, facilitates approaches to underexposed characteristics of the festival beyond the event: co-production networks, funding schemes, relations between curators, festivals and artists, previous and subsequent shows of a production, different versions and casts 46 are dimensions of theatre production that evade the scope of participant observation at the events documented. These perspectives not only enrich participant observation with further information but can also reveal recurring patterns and long-term tendencies of theatre in the making. There is no doubt that new possibilities of digital observation and digital participation in the festival event will emerge which may decentre bodily presence - for counter-publics and the aesthetics of self-assertion, digital communication opens up a multitude of opportunities. In the meantime, digital research adds the valuable option of a deliberate ‘ non-participant observation ’ to the balance of research strategies, breaking most decisively with the logic of the live event - although participation pressure can still take effect digitally. However, with increasing prospects of digital research on festivals, there should be no illusions of a secured epistemological position, aloof from the messy social dynamics on site and their tampering with knowledge. I can only wonder what digital form my stomachache will take. Notes 1 This research was conducted in the nationwide research network “ Crisis and Institutional Transformation in Performing Arts ” , 107 Theatre in the Making, Subjects in Becoming funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) - 387849349. 2 Benjamin Hoesch, Nachwuchsfestivals. Institution, Organisation und Wandel des Gegenwartstheaters, Freiburg 2024, pp. 423 - 490. 3 Charlotte Aull Davies, Reflexive Ethnography. A Guide to Researching Selves and Others, London / New York 1999, pp. 65 - 93. 4 Mary Louise Pratt, “ Fieldwork in Common Places ” , in: James Clifford and George E. Marcus, Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Berkeley / Los Angeles 1986, pp. 27 - 50, here p. 32. 5 Ric Knowles, International Theatre Festivals and 21st-Century Interculturalism, Cambridge et al. 2022, p. 20. 6 Ulf Otto, “ Post-performance: Pandemic Breach Experiments, Big Theatre Data, and the Ends of Theory ” , in: Theatre Research International 48/ 1 (2023), pp. 24 - 37. 7 Davies, Reflexive Ethnography, p. 71. 8 Jonas Tinius, “ Fieldwork as Method in Theatre and Performance Studies ” , in: Tracy C. Davis and Paul Rae (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Mixed Methods Research for Theatre and Performance Studies, Cambridge et al. 2024, pp. 190 - 212, here p. 200. 9 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. Selected Essays, New York 1973, pp. 6 - 7. 10 William Sauter, “ Introducing the Theatrical Event ” , in: Vicky Ann Cremona, Peter Eversmann, Hans van Maanen, Willmar Sauter and John Tulloch (eds.), Theatrical Events. Borders Dynamics Frames, Amsterdam / New York 2004, pp. 1 - 14, here p. 11. 11 Temple Hauptfleisch, Shulamith Lev-Aladgem, Jacqueline Martin, Willmar Sauter, Henri Schoenmakers (eds.), Festivalizing! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture, Amsterdam / New York 2007. 12 Temple Hauptfleisch, “ Eventification: Utilizing the Theatrical System to Frame the Event ” , in: Cremona et al. (eds.), Theatrical Events, pp. 279 - 302, here p. 287. 13 Ibid, p. 289. 14 Henri Schoenmakers, “ Festivals, Theatrical Events and Communicative Interactions ” , in: Hauptfleisch et al. (eds.), Festivalizing! , pp. 27 - 37, here p. 28. 15 Florian Malzacher, “ Cause & Result. About a job with an unclear profile, aim and future ” , in: Frakcija 55 (2010), pp. 10 - 19, here p. 12. 16 Comparable with the function of the editor: Uwe Wirth, “ Performative Rahmung, parergonale Indexikalität. Verknüpfendes Schreiben zwischen Herausgeberschaft und Hypertextualität “ , in: Wirth (ed.), Performanz. Zwischen Sprachphilosophie und Kulturwissenschaften, Frankfurt am Main 2002, pp. 403 - 433; Hoesch, Nachwuchsfestivals, pp. 152 - 155. 17 Jennifer Elfert, Theaterfestivals. Geschichte und Kritik eines kulturellen Organisationsmodells, Bielefeld 2009. 18 James Clifford, “ On Ethnographic Authority ” , in: Representations 2 (1983), pp. 118 - 146, here p. 127. 19 Otto, “ Post-performance ” , p. 28. 20 Wilmar Sauter, “ Festivals as Theatrical Events: Building Theories ” , in: Hauptfleisch et al. (eds.), Festivalizing! , pp. 17 - 25, here p. 20. 21 Körber Stiftung, “ Körber Studio Junge Regie ” , https: / / koerber-stiftung.de/ projekte/ koerber-studio-junge-regie/ [Accessed on 25.07.2024]: “ die bundesweit wohl wichtigste Plattform für den Regienachwuchs ” , citing an NDR radio feature. Own translation. 22 Malzacher, “ Cause & Result ” , p. 14. 23 Judith Okely, “ Fieldwork embodied ” , in: Sociological Review 55/ 1 (2007), pp. 65 - 79. 24 David Howes, Sensual Relations. Engaging the Senses in Social and Cultural Theory, Ann Arbor 2003, p. 17. 25 Julius Bautista, “ Painful Fieldwork? Radical Empiricism and Ritual Performance in the Philippines ” , in: Davis and Rae (eds.), Mixed Methods Research, pp. 176 - 189, here p. 180, 185. 26 Otto, “ Post-performance ” , p. 32. 27 Hauptfleisch et al. (eds.), Festivalizing! ; Ric Knowles (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals, Cambridge et al. 2020. 28 Bronis ł aw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native En- 108 Benjamin Hoesch terprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, London 1922. 29 Clifford, “ Authority ” , p. 118. 30 Otto, “ Post-performance ” , pp. 31 - 33. 31 Ibid., p. 28. 32 Christopher Balme, The theatrical public sphere, Cambridge 2014. 33 Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, “ The Public Sphere and Experience ” , in: October 46 (1988), pp. 60 - 82, p. 63. 34 Negt and Kluge, “ The Public Sphere ” , p. 72. 35 John W. Meyer and Brian Rowan, “ Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony ” , in: American Journal of Sociology 83/ 2 (1977), pp. 340 - 363. 36 Georg Döcker, “ Potential, need, risk. On control and subjectivation in contemporary production networks ” , in: Christopher Balme/ Tony Fisher (eds.), Theatre Institutions in Crisis. European perspectives, New York / London 2021, pp. 194 - 205, here p. 195. 37 Andreas Reckwitz, The Society of Singularities, Cambridge 2020. 38 Clifford Geertz, “’ From the Native's Point of View ’ : On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding ” , in: Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 28/ 1 (1974), pp. 26 - 45 (1974), here p. 30. 39 Clifford, “ Authority ” , p. 119. 40 Geertz, Interpretation, p. 20. 41 Negt and Kluge, “ The Public Sphere ” , p. 60. 42 Tinius, “ Fieldwork ” , p. 191. 43 Negt and Kluge, “ The Public Sphere ” , p. 78. 44 Christoph Menke, Die Kraft der Kunst, Berlin 2013, pp. 56 - 81; Hoesch, Nachwuchsfestivals, pp. 410 - 413. 45 Otto, “ Post-performance ” , p. 31. 46 Alexandra Portmann, “ International Festivals, the Practice of Co-production, and the Challenges for Documentation in a Digital Age ” , in: Ric Knowles (Hg.), The Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals, Cambridge 2020, pp. 36 - 53. 109 Theatre in the Making, Subjects in Becoming