English
Biography
Azadeh Sharifi studied German Literature, Philosophy and Law at the Rupprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and received her PhD Cultural Studies and Aesthetic Practice at the Institute for Cultural Policy at the University of Hildesheim with a thesis on “Theater for everyone? Participation of post-migrants using the example of the stages in the city of Cologne” (2011). Among other things, she was a fellow at the International Research College Interweaving Performance Cultures at the Free University of Berlin (2014—2015) and she was a researcher at the Balzan Prize research project “The Role of Free Theaters in Contemporary European Theater: Structural and Aesthetic Changes” under the direction of Prof emer. Dr. Manfred Brauneck and International Theater Institute (iTi) Germany). From 2016 to 2019 she had a DFG-Eigene Stelle (PostDoc project) for her research on “(Post-)migrant theater in German theater history — (Dis-)continuities of aesthetics and narratives.”
In addition to her academic work, she also works as a curator. She was a co-curator for the children's and youth theater festival “Augenblick Mal 2017” and the festival “Politics in Free Theater 2018,” a cooperation between the Federal Agency for Civic Education, the Munich Kammerspiele and Spielmotor e.V.
Azadeh Sharifi is a member of the Future Advisory Board (Fab) of Performance Studies international (PSi).
Research Interest
Postmigrant Theater, contemporary theater, Independent Performance scene, postcolonial and decolonial discourses, theater history of the 20th and 21st century, activism and interventions, intersecitonality and feminist discourses in theater
Research Project
Azadeh Sharifi has been researching the history of (post-)migrant theater since 2016. Post-migrant theater that has been emerged at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse in 2008, is been considered as the starting and turning point for theater by immigrated theater practitioners and artists of color in Germany. However, postmigrant theater as a paradigmatic moment for the German theater requires an examination within the German theater history that can be traced back in its (dis)continuity of narratives and aesthetics to the beginning of labour recruitment (1955) and the first theater productions in the 1960s that continues until the contemporary theater of 21st century. The hypothesis is that Post-migrant theater and its success was only possible because (racialized) artists (of color) have been practicing and producing theater under precarious and exclusive conditions since the 1960s and they were able to create (regional, national and international) networks and develop production and presentation conditions for themselves.
For the examination of the history of a (post-)migrant theater, I will be also doing a critical analysis of German theater studies as a discipline. I will investigate particularly German theater history and its historiography that have been excluded and overlooked the (marginalized and racialized) peripheries of German theater. The absence of theater work and theater practitioners in the academic syllabus and canon as well as in the theater archives and collections are testimony of this practice.
The research work aims to generate an archive of (post-) migrant theater history and formulate a post-colonial critique of German theater studies.