Markus Wessendorf

Associate Professor

Dept. of Theatre and Dance

University of Hawai‘i at Manoa

1770 East-West Rd., Rm. 206A

Honolulu, HI 96822

U.S.A.

Email: wessendo@hawaii.edu

Phone: +1 808 956-2600

* Ph.D. 1996. Department of Applied Theatre Studies, Justus-Liebig University Giessen/Germany. Dissertation on Richard Foreman’s Ontological Hysteric Theatre.

* Diploma in Theatre Studies 1991. Department of Applied Theatre Studies, Justus-Liebig University Giessen/Germany. Diploma-thesis on the deconstructive aesthetics of The Wooster Group.

Markus Wessendorf’s primary area of specialization is in experimental and avant-garde theatre. He has written several essays and a monograph about Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theatre, but he has also published articles on Ron Athey, Bertolt Brecht, William Forsythe, David Hare, Richard Maxwell, Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, Norman Price, Edward Sakamoto, Adriano Shaplin, The Wooster Group, and various German performance artists. From 1992 to 1997 Wessendorf was assistant professor at the Department of Applied Theatre Studies at Justus-Liebig University Giessen/Germany. In 1998 he was a guest scholar at the University of Queensland/ Brisbane, where he worked on a DAAD-funded post-doc project on "cultural transactions between Asian theatre and contemporary Australian performance." From 1999 to 2001 he taught theatre as an adjunct professor at various drama departments in New York City (NYU, Queens College, Marymount Manhattan College).

Markus Wessendorf has also worked as a theatre director internationally. In 1989 he directed the American premiere of Heiner Müller's Germania Death In Berlin at ABC No Rio/New York. In September 1998 he staged Barking Dogs by Australian playwright Norman Price for Brisbane's Metro Arts Theatre. He also presented Cynthia Farar's Curdom at the New York International Fringe Festival 2000. His production of Friedrich Schiller’s The Robbers was performed at Honolulu’s Kennedy Theatre in April/May 2003. In November 2005 the first American production of Laurent Gaudé’s Battle of Will opened at Kennedy Theatre under Wessendorf’s direction.

Selected Publications

“Postmodern Drama Post-9/11: Adriano Shaplin’s Pugilist Specialist and David Hare’s Stuff Happens,” in Drama and/after Postmodernism. (Contemporary Drama in English 14.) Ed. Christoph Henke and Martin Middeke. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2007. (Forthcoming.)

“Richard Maxwells postdramatiske teater (= Richard Maxwell’s Postdramatic Theatre),” in Norsk Shakespeare—og teatertidsskrift (Oslo) 1/2006: 29-33.

“Culture of Fear: Uncomfortable Transactions between Performance and Terrorism,” in International Journal of the Humanities, 3.3 (2006): 217-228.

“Contemporary Drama in Hawai‘i: Representations of Displacement and Diaspora in Edward Sakamoto’s Obake and Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl’s Ola Na Iwi,” in Staging Displacement, Exile, and Diaspora. (Contemporary Drama in English 12.) Ed. Anja Müller-Muth and Christoph Houswitschka. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2005, 95-110.

“Theatre as an Allegory of Unreadability: The Wooster Group’s TheRoad to Immortality Part Three: Frank Dell’s The Temptation of SaintAntony,” in The Wooster Group and Its Traditions. Ed. Johan Callens. Brussels: Peter Lang/Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes (Series: “Dramaturgies: Texts, Cultures, and Performances”), 2004, 129-140.

“Mahagonny and the Tourist Gaze,” in The Brecht Yearbook 29. Published by the International Brecht Society. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004, 84-96.

Review of Martin Puchner’s Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama, in The Brecht Yearbook 29. Published by the International Brecht Society. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004, 427-430.

“The (Un)Settled Space of Richard Maxwell’s House,” in Modern Drama 44:4 (2001), 437-457.

“’I’ll shine in the backyard. Bright like a beacon.’” Introduction to Barking Dogs by Norman Price. Brisbane: Playlab, 2002, 4-14.

“Ein Gespenst geht um in Foremans Theater – ‘Jetzt, da der Kommunismus tot ist’ (= A Spectre Haunts Foreman’s Theatre—‘Now That Communism Is Dead’),” essay for the Vienna Festival 2001.

"Im Dickicht der Vorstädte: Richard Maxwells House und Showy Lady Slipper (= In the Jungle of the Suburbs: Richard Maxwell's House and Showy Lady Slipper)," essay for the Vienna Festival 2000.

"Theater auf der Höhe der Medientechnik (= Theatre at the height of mediatechnology)," in Medieninszenierungen im Wandel. Interdisziplinäre Zugänge. Ed. by Rüdiger Ontrup and Christian Schicha. Münster: LIT, 1999, 38-49.

"Richard Maxwell, Hausmeister und Pausenwart (= Richard Maxwell, superintendant andsupervisor)," in Theater der Welt 1999 in Berlin. Arbeitsbuch. Ed. by Joachim Fiebach. Berlin: Theater der Zeit/International Theatre Institut, 1999, 136f.

"Richard Foreman's Hotel Fuck: Theatre at the Turn of the Century.” Interview. Theater der Welt 1999 in Berlin. Arbeitsbuch. 138-144.

"Richard Foreman's Theatrical Deconstruction of the Neo-Ritualistic Theatre of theSixties." Anthropological Perspectives. Ed. Werner Huber and Martin Middeke. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1998. 121-129.

Die Bühne als Szene des Denkens: Richard Foremans Ontological-Hysteric Theatre (= The Stage as a Scene of Thinking: Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theatre). Berlin: Alexander Verlag, 1998. 311 pp.

Gabriele Brandstetter, Helga Finter, and Markus Wessendorf, eds. Grenzgänge: Theater und die anderen Künste (= Crossing Boundaries: Theatre and the Other Arts). Tübingen: Narr, 1998. 393 pp.

Bibliography

Articles (English):

“Postmodern Drama Post-9/11: Adriano Shaplin’s Pugilist Specialist and David Hare’s Stuff Happens”

“Culture of Fear: Uncomfortable Transactions between Performance, Theatre and Terrorism”

“Bodies in Pain: Towards a Masochistic Perception of Performance—the Work of Ron Athey and Bob Flanagan”

Introduction to Norman Price’s Barking Dogs

“The (Post-) Dramatic Theatre of Richard Maxwell”

“Richard Foreman’s Hotel Fuck: Theatre at the Turn of the Century” (excerpts)

“Kabbalah and Gnosticism in Richard Foreman’s Theatre”

“A Short History of Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theatre”

Epilogue to The Stage as a Scene of Thinking: Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theatre

Articles (German):