Theatre Without Audience

The founder of the Gießen School, ATW, coined the term "post-dramatic theater" in post-war Europe for a theater form that has no definition. The documentary film THEATER WITHOUT AUDIENCE, formally a post-drama, emphasizes and strengthens the values ​​of democracy today.

"Learning from Brecht how to think of oneself in the third person singular, I realized that displacement is not a curse but part of condition humaine.", ATW
From his point of his interest in theater, he was always fortunate to be in the right place at the right time: with Kantor and Grotowski in Poland, Bertolt Brecht and 'Gruppe 47' in Berlin, Gertrude Stein and Robert Wilson in New York.
ATW taught drama and comparative literature at Harvard, Yale School of Drama, Oxford, Stanford and the CUNY.
In 1982 he returned to Europe, though persona non grata and still blacklisted in his native country, and established the legendary 'Applied Theater Studies' (Angewandte Theater-Wissenschaften) at the University of Giessen, Germany. Since then he has no inhibitions to call himself ATW, an anagram of Andrzej Tadeusz Wirth and of a discipline he invented.
As a teenager on the death lists of Hitler and Stalin, in 1966 ATW, not yet forty, was catapulted through political events from Sovietized Poland to the United States.
From his point of his interest in theatre, he was always fortunate to be in the right place at the right time: With Kantor and Grotowski in Poland, Bertolt Brecht and „Gruppe 47“ in Berlin, and Robert Wilson in New York.
ATW taught drama and comparative literature at Harvard, Yale School of Drama, Oxford, Stanford and the CUNY. In his New York lectures in the Seventies he introduced Gertrude Stein, Brecht and Witkiewicz as predecessors of the post-dramatic.
In 1982 he returned to Europe, though persona non grata and still blacklisted in his native country, and established the legendary Institute of „Applied Theatre Studies“ (Angewandte TheaterWissenschaften) at the University of Giessen/Germany, seminary for artists like Rimini Protokoll, Hans Werner Kroesinger, Moritz Rinke, René Pollesch, Gob Squad and She She Pop .
Since then he has no inhibitions to call himself ATW, an anagram of Andrzej Tadeusz Wirth and of a discipline he invented.

  • Andrzej Tadeusz Wirth
    Key Cast
    "ATW"
  • Pawel Kocambasi
    Director
  • Carolin Mader
    Codirector
  • Kristine Knudsen
    Producer
  • Tom Streuber
    Producer
  • Andrzej Tadeusz Wirth
    Writer
  • Pawel Kocambasi
    Writer
  • Alva Noto
    Music
  • Tadashi Tajima
    Music
  • Pawel Kocambasi
    Editor
  • Tobias Amann
    Camera
  • Pawel Kocambasi
    Camera
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Theater Ohne Publikum
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 14 minutes 25 seconds
  • Production Budget:
    50,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Germany
  • Country of Filming:
    Germany, Poland, Ukraine, United States
  • Language:
    English, German, Polish, Ukrainian
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital, Canon 5d
  • Aspect Ratio:
    cinemascope
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Volksbühne
    Berlin
    Germany
    February 25, 2015
Director Biography - Pawel Kocambasi

Pawel Kocambasi alias P.M.Starost studied German and Polish philology at the University of Heidelberg, where he wrote an application to the film school, and graduated from film directing at the Baden-Württemberg Film Academy.

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Director Statement

the emotions of a holocaust victim

"I think, that understanding of my life as displacement
finds satisfaction in seeing it as stereomatric.

Maybe we should popularize it as a slogan:
displacement is good for you, if you manage to survive it.

Learning from Brecht how to think of oneself
in the third person singular,

I realized that displacement is not a curse
but part of condition humaine."

ESSAY FILM