Includes bibliographical references.

When a Tree is Already Being Mentioned, You Don’t Also Have to Show It: A Preface -- Aesthetics of Absence: How it all began -- PART I: Texts on Work(s). Description of a Picture, Table-Parties and Comparative Degrees: About the opera Landscape with Distant Relatives -- ‘Some Things You Only Remember, Because They Don’t Have Anything To Do With Anything’: Questions on constructing Eraritjaritjaka -- Real Time In Oberplan: On “Stifters Dinge” - A Theatre of Deceleration -- Peculiar Voices: On working on “I Went to the House But Did Not Enter” -- The Space as Invitation: The spectator as the object of art -- PART II: Texts on Artists. ‘But I wanted this to be a narrative’: Jean-Luc Godard as a composer -- What We Don’t See, Attracts Us: Four theses on “Call Cutta” by Rimini Protokoll -- The Mystery Of Signs: For Robert Wilson -- Trust No Eye: For Erich Wonder -- ‘To Comprehensively Build Up A Society With Modest Prosperity’: The Ensemble Modern as an example -- PART III: Texts on Education. Research or Craftsmanship? Nine theses on the future of an education for the performing arts -- If I Want An Actor To Cry, I Give Him An Onion: On working with actors -- A Giant Wooden Pistol: Theory and Practice in Giessen -- Organising Hearing and Seeing: The Practical Study of Theatre -- Compromise Is a Bad Director: Theatre as museum or laboratory.

"Aesthetics of Absence presents a significant challenge to the many embedded assumptions and hierarchical structures that have become 'naturalised' in western theatre production. This is the first English translation by Heiner Goebbels, the renowned German theatre director, composer and teacher. These writings map Heiner Goebbels' engagement with 'Aesthetics of Absence' through his own experience at the forefront of innovative music-theatre and performance making. In this volume Goebbels reflects on works created over a period of more than twenty years staged throughout the world; introduces some of his key artistic influences, including Robert Wilson and Jean-Luc Godard; discusses the work of his students and ex students the collective Rimini Protokoll, and, sets out the case for a radical re thinking of theatre and performance education. He gives us a rare insight into the rehearsal process of critically acclaimed works such as Eraritjaritjaka and Stifters' Dinge explaining, in meticulous detail, the way he weaves an eclectic range of references from fine art, theatre, literature, politics, anthropology, contemporary and classical music, jazz and folk, into his multi- textured music-theatre compositions. As an artist who is prepared to share his research and demystify the processes through which his own works come into being, as a teacher with a coherent pedagogical strategy for educating the next generation of theatre makers, in this volume, Goebbels brings together practice, research and scholarship"-- Provided by publisher.