Philosophers and Thespians: Staging Concepts

Maska Ljubljana, Mladinsko Theatre, Aufhebung Association and University of Ljubljana – Faculty of Arts are organizing a symposium Philosophers and Thespians: Staging Concepts.

On the occasion of the publication of the Slovenian translation of Freddie Rokem's Philosophers and Thespians: Thinking Performance (Maska 2019, trans. by Jernej Županič) and Mladen Dolar's Staging Concepts: Writings on Art (Maska 2019), scholars and performance artists will tackle the question of what exactly happens at the intersection of philosophy (or concepts in general) and theater (or performance in general).

To a great extent, it seems that everything began with Plato's infamous claim that truth can only be found beyond theatre, beyond the world of appearances. And yet at the same time, it was Plato himself who treated theatre with the utmost seriousness and argued that the functioning of the (ideal) state is itself to be considered as the most perfect form of theater. To an extent, even Plato thus allowed for a certain theatricality of the truth itself, which became one of the most widely discussed positions in contemporary philosophy. Based on the common background of Dolar’s and Rokem’s work, the symposium will address this old question in our contemporary conjuncture.