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JONAS TINIUS, 2023, State of the Arts: An Ethnography of German Theatre and 

Migration, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 290 pp., ISBN 978-1-009-32112-9 

 

KEYWORDS: Theatre, performance, ethics, migration, Germany 

 

Jonas Tinius’s State of the Arts (2023) tells the story of Theater an der Ruhr (“the Theater” 

hereafter), a public repertory theatre ensemble based in the Ruhr Valley in North Rhine-

Westphalia founded by Roberto Ciulli, an émigré philosopher and self-taught director who 

moved from Italy to Germany in the 1960s. Ciulli founded the Theater specifically as “a theatre 

of and for the Bastardo,” meaning those without a fatherland or a mother tongue, and to 

challenge the predominant framing of cultural production through the category of the nation (p. 

3). The theatre operates on the economic model instituted in the German Kulturstaat, with 

funding and other support from the regional municipality. This economic model allows the 

Theater to pursue artistic production aimed at “a long-term process of self-cultivation 

altogether unrelated to profitability” (p. 87). The Theater has a stable in-house ensemble of 

artists and crew who stay with the Theater for years if not decades and a set of “repertoire,” or 

“stock plays,” that is repeatedly rehearsed and performed over the years. This stability of the 

ensemble and its repertoire encourages dramaturgs and actors to cultivate, ethically and 

artistically, longer-term relations with their repertoire and their roles. 

Tinius theorizes Theater an der Ruhr as an exemplary institution of contemporary German 

public theatre that is situated at the interstices of important German cultural-intellectual 

traditions, yet ethically and artistically committed to pursuing a political otherwise. Artistically, 

the Theater challenges the expected identification of actors with their roles; politically, the 

Theater challenges the category of the nation that fundamentally underpins conventional 

understandings of cultural identity in modern Germany. The Theater is committed first and 

foremost to the art of theatre, for which ethical self-cultivation must be enacted and through 

which political engagement would be facilitated. Through in-depth ethnographic description 



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and anthropological analysis of professional performance practices under the Theater and its 

aegis, Tinius productively puts into conversation the anthropology of ethics, theatre/art, and 

migration and simultaneously offers an invaluable contribution to the field of Performance 

Studies, in which serious theoretical engagement with professional practices of performance 

remains surprisingly rare. The book would be of great interest to anthropologists of ethics, art, 

migration, and citizenship, as well as scholars of German Studies and Performance Studies. 

In Chapter 1, Tinius outlines a genealogy of Bildung in German intellectual and political history. 

Bildung describes a longstanding German tradition of self-cultivation and self-realization 

conceptualized and developed by a series of thinkers, including Friedrich Schiller, Friedrich 

Schlegel, and Wilhelm von Humboldt, many of whom were deeply involved in theatre. While 

diverse and heterogeneous in nuances, Tinius emphasizes that the core idea of Bildung is not 

apolitical or anti-political but constitutes a particular political stance that promotes an 

introspective critical relation with the self. It holds as a primary principle that the bettering of 

oneself should precede, but not preclude, the care for others for the greater common good. 

Theater an der Ruhr, Tinius argues, constitutes not a direct extension of Bildung traditions but, 

rather, a response to them. 

Chapters 2 and 3 develop the core theoretical argument of the book by elaborating on what 

Tinius calls the “ethico-aesthetic traditions” of the Theater, particularly through the cultivation 

of Haltung through rehearsals, that make the Theater an institution. Haltung, a tradition 

developed after playwright Bertolt Brecht, refers to “the reflected practice and capacity of 

relating to a character,” which also involves a capacity “to detach from other characters,” and, 

ultimately, “the learning of the conduct of conduct to oneself and the multiplicity of characters” 

(p. 111). Daily rehearsals help actors cultivate Haltung and enact the Bastardo through the 

Theater’s repertoire. For Ciulli and his ensemble, the theatre affords, especially through 

Haltung, “a way of thinking beyond linguistic, national, and cultural borders” (p. 166).  

Chapter 4 recounts how transnational engagements have challenged the Theatre to creatively 

adapt its repertoire according to local sensibilities. Repetition of repertoire across time and 

geographies encourages actors to develop relations with their “characters” and “theatre-images” 

beyond one-off performances and, thereby, to cultivate “artistic conduct beyond the stage” (p. 

158). Here, “theatre-images” refer to abstract theatrical language that transcends particular 

concrete languages. They allow for multiple potential interpretations and, therefore, could 

inspire actors and audiences to exercise critical thought to interpret theatrical performances in 



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their own ways. Finally, Chapter 5 discusses the Ruhrorter refugee project that has emerged 

under the aegis of the Theater and the direction of Adem Köstereli, a protégé of Ciulli, which 

sought to inspire “reflective cultivation of conduct” among refugee communities in Mülheim.  

Tinius’s discussion of how the ethico-aesthetic commitment of Theater to cultivate the 

“capacity for character” and, thus, enable multiple and ambiguous political identities through 

theatre is highly convincing and original. The book offers rich and sophisticated insights into 

intellectual traditions of self-cultivation in German theatrical and political histories, and the 

crucial point that reflexive introspection equates to neither an apolitical attitude nor a lack of 

care for others is rigorously and effectively argued. However, while Tinius explains Haltung 

as a concept that “denotes both posture and attitude, but also demeanour, conduct, and 

comportment” (p. 201) and mentions the particular significance of “corporeal and emotional 

experiences” in theatrical training and performance (p. 176-177), description of how embodied 

comportment is trained physically through rehearsals or otherwise remains relatively thin. In 

comparison with the thorough discussion of how “concept conversations 

(Konzeptionsgespräche)” (p. 108) are facilitated in rehearsal processes to direct actors’ critical 

reflection, thicker descriptions of how actors are trained to be, to move, and to act in their 

bodies through their posture, attitude, demeanour, conduct, and comportment both onstage and 

offstage are left to be imagined. This is perhaps to do with the inherently non-verbal nature of 

such training and performance, yet one could not help but wonder how the relation between 

physicality and mentality might yield a whole new dimension in this discussion of subject 

formation if given more room. 

Nevertheless, Tinius’s framing of ethnographic analysis and conceptualization through the 

anthropology of ethics is creative, fitting, and exceptionally fruitful. This analytical frame 

allows for the distinctively theatrical and artistic practices of the Theater to be taken seriously 

as theatre and art—a “field of professional practice,” as Tinius describes, that is conditioned 

and governed by its own logics, ethics, aesthetics, and politics—without being reduced to or 

explained away by something else, such as the social or the political. Inasmuch as metaphors 

of theatre and performance have been used in anthropological theorization, Tinius offers a 

refreshing and unique contribution to the anthropology of theatre, performance, and the arts by 

critically analyzing the conceptual, material, and historical constitution of an actual theatre, its 

repertoire, its traditions, and its actors. By framing the theatre as an “extra-ordinary” field of 

ethical reflection and cultural production and describing in detail the rehearsal and production 

processes of the Theater, Tinius has made a significant anthropological contribution to 



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ethnographic and theoretical discussions of theatricality and performativity and their uses for 

politics, society, and intellectual thought. 

 

Jenny Tang is a PhD candidate at the Department of Social Anthropology and King’s College, 

University of Cambridge. Her current research concerns the development of contemporary art 

and the lives of artists in the specters of modernity in Mongolia today. She holds a BA in Human, 

Social, and Political Sciences from Churchill College, University of Cambridge, and is 

professionally trained in classical ballet. 

 

 

© 2024 Jenny Tang 

 


