Band 3 der von Florian Malzacher herausgegebenen englischsprachigen Reihe Performing Urgency. Im Kontext heutiger Politik, Wirtschaft und sich permanent verändernden kulturellen Trends kommt das traditionelle Theater mit seiner Trennung von aktiven Darstellern und passiven Zuschauern immer mehr aus der Mode. Zeitgenössische Künstler emanzipieren ihr Publikum, laden es auf die Bühne und in die Performance ein, beleidigen und provozieren es und erproben verschiedenste Techniken der Teilhabe. Das Buch verbindet zahlreiche Beispiele von Publikumsbeteiligung mit Problemen der Partizipation in Demokratie und sozial engagierter Kunst. The nineteenth century was a century of actors. The twentieth century was a century of directors. The twenty-first century is a century of spectators. With Jacques Rancière's The Emancipated Spectator (2009) being the most discussed theatre-related text of the last decade, there is an increase in scholarly and curatorial interest in the most mysterious, potentially dangerous and, in fact, most important participant of the performance, who stays silent, motionless, and hidden in darkness: the audience. And similarly, artists desire to finally 'meet the spectators': to let them speak, get into a dialogue with them, invite them to involve themselves in pursuing the performance.

Anna R. Burzyska born 1979. Theatre scholar, assistant lecturer, theatre and music critic, journalist, editor, translator, curator. In 2009 received Ph.D. for the dissertation Twórczo dramatyczna Stanisawa Grochowiaka w kontekcie jego poezji (The dramatic oeuvre of Stanisaw Grochowiak read in context of his poetry). Since 2010, works as an assistant professor at the Department of Theatre at the Jagiellonian University (main interests: contemporary European theatre and Polish and German drama of 19th and 20th century). Associate of the Goethe Institute in Krakow, where she worked as a curator of Polish-German theatre projects (e.g. with Stefan Kaegi of Rimini Protokoll), cooperates with Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Jerzy Grotowski Institute and (as a curator) with Cricoteka. As a guest of foreign universities, culture centers and festivals had lectures and seminars on Polish theatre in USA, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, Slovakia, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Cuba and China. Editor of the "Didaskalia" theatre journal since 2000, in years 2004-2010 critic for the "Tygodnik Powszechny" weekly (years 2007-2008 also working in editorial team of the weekly). Author of the books Mechanika cudu (2005), The Classics and the Troublemakers. Theatre Directors from Poland (2008), Maska twarzy (2011) and Mae dramaty (2012) and of over 250 articles and reviews that have appeared in newspapers, journals and collected volumes in Poland and abroad (in English, German, French and Romanian).