Keywords: Theater - Garden - Gender
Affiliation: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
My research focuses on the connections between gardens and theatre in 18th and early 19th century German literature. This was the period of the so-called ‘garden revolution’, when French gardens were laid out as English landscape gardens, designed like small dramas, and garden spaces were used as stages, thus increasing the number of gardens as settings for dramatic texts.
In my second book I write about the entanglement of plants, natural spaces, or spaces that pretend to be natural, and their significance for character and plot. I am particularly interested in gender, power and the theatricality of using gardens or even wilder places like forests as settings.
My approach to environmental humanities helps to understand how natural places, such as gardens, influenced the history of theatre in the 18th century. It also offers ways of using plant studies to better understand the plants on stage.
https://www.ndl4.germanistik.uni-muenchen.de/team/mitarbeiter/axtner-borsutzky/index.html