LMU alumna: “Theatre must not just cater to its own bubble”

Ms. Zorn, you and your sister Magdalena have published an academic paper on Herbert Achternbusch’s film “Bierkampf” (“Beer War”). Did you go to the Oktoberfest yourself this year?

Johanna Zorn: I’ve only ever walked through it once with my parents. Although I come from a village in Tyrol, this whole traditional costume and beer culture is alien to me. I feel a mixture of fascination and aversion towards it. The funny thing is that I live right next to the Wiesn, the Oktoberfest grounds. People go there in the morning full of anticipation and come back hours later completely wasted. The whole drama is quite entertaining.

You came to LMU in 2011 to do your PhD and were supported by the Bavarian Elite Funding Program, for example. How did you find the university and Munich back then?

It was at once impressive and overwhelming. Before that, I’d studied comparative literature, philosophy and musicology in Innsbruck, the south of France and Zurich. I switched to theater studies for my thesis on Christoph Schlingensief. Christopher Balme agreed to supervise my doctoral thesis, which is how I ended up at LMU. The Geschwister-Scholl-Platz, the Aula, the history of this place – there was something awe-inspiring about it.

The opportunity to attend lectures by academics from a wide variety of disciplines had a particularly formative influence on me. On one occasion, Jürgen Habermas was speaking in the main auditorium. This academic world held a tremendous appeal for me. At the same time, Munich has a very local feel to it: After lectures, people head off to the pub to have a beer together.

During the winter semester of 2020–21, you were a Junior Researcher in Residence at LMU’s Center for Advanced Studies (CAS). How did this come about, and what did you work on there?

I applied through the regular application process. Having an entire semester free of teaching responsibilities to work on my postdoctoral thesis was a wonderful opportunity. Unfortunately, my time in residence coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, so I wasn’t able to be there in person at all. CAS nevertheless organized interdisciplinary workshops and discussions and helped foster valuable connections. The level of support was exceptional. But of course, the spontaneous encounters that would normally have occurred at a place like that couldn’t happen. I didn’t make as much progress on my postdoctoral thesis as I had hoped, but that was because of the pandemic, not CAS. (Laughs)

You deal with a broad spectrum of art forms, from Schlingensief to Beyoncé. Can you still simply enjoy art without analyzing it scientifically?

Yes, of course. I find that particularly easy with classical music. Recently, I was sitting in the Herkulessaal at the Munich Residenz, listening to Beethoven’s Ninth with Simon Rattle. I simply enjoyed it. Of course, questions do come to mind. But it would be a rather grim prospect if I could no longer enjoy art at all, but were instead always exploiting it solely for the sake of my own research.

Your doctoral dissertation focused on Christoph Schlingensief’s final theater productions. Would his style of artistic provocation still work today?

Schlingensief was known as a provocateur. But he once said, “Provocation is a tool for idiots.” If all you do is provoke and stir things up, you leave everyone else to deal with the commotion. Of course, he did provoke people, and he sometimes did so quite deliberately. But what mattered most to me was his understanding of political art. He deliberately refused to make it clear to his audience which side they were supposed to be on. He didn’t make things that easy for people. Today, I see a much stronger desire for clear-cut political positions. Perhaps Schlingensief, with his ambiguity, wouldn’t find the same audience today.

Are you skeptical about the demand for clear-cut positions?

I sometimes feel there’s a lack of effort to look beyond one’s own political bubble. There are obviously ideological perspectives that shouldn’t find a place on the stage. But the potential of theatre lies in bringing social contradictions to the stage, rather than merely preaching to the converted. Simply seeing on stage the stance that I already hold is not enough for me. I want to see conflicting positions. That also includes the question of why so many people in Saxony-Anhalt vote for the AfD, for example. Engaging with this issue does not mean sugarcoating it. But I do not believe in simple solutions. Nor does the idea that we simply need to listen to one another, and then everything will be fine, go far enough. The world is complex, and that is what theater should show.

At the Städel Museum’s AI Festival, you discussed art in the digital age. How is artificial intelligence changing our relationship with art?

We can hardly tell any longer whether content originates from humans, AI or both together. I don’t believe the distinction can be reliably determined in terms of quality. Precisely for that reason, the need to know there is a human behind a work of art could grow in importance. I find that a comforting thought. In literary studies, we have been discussing the ‘death of the author’ for decades: The point was precisely that it shouldn’t matter whether Goethe or an unknown writer had penned a text. AI could shift that perspective again. Suddenly, it does matter who is behind a work – and whether anyone is behind it at all.

You have been a professor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg since May 2025. How are you finding the move from LMU to an art-focused university – especially in light of your own experience in theater?

It’s an interesting change of perspective. At a large university, as a humanities scholar, you sometimes have to defend the value of your own subject against other disciplines. At the Mozarteum, on the other hand, I work alongside many artists, for example from the fields of music, directing or acting. I see myself quite clearly as an academic. Although I used to enjoy working in theater practice, I never wanted to become an actress or a director. Making a conscious decision to pursue research was the right choice. Today, I appreciate that questions arising from artistic practice have touchpoints with my research – questions that might not arise in a purely academic setting.

Added to that is a special opportunity to shape the program: One of the reasons for establishing my professorship was to set up a scientific and artistic master’s program in theater studies and dramaturgy. The aim is to bring theory and practice together.

Many students do not know what career path to take after reading theater studies. What advice would you give them?

My answer might be a bit old-fashioned: They should let their interests guide them and pursue their creativity in both thought and action. After all, people who take theater studies do not necessarily spend their entire working lives with their noses in books. You learn to view the world through the lens of theater – and thereby also to recognize and contextualize media and political orchestration. The same can be said of a wide variety of professional fields. For me, theater studies is first and foremost an educational course of study; it’s not simply about training for a specific profession. There are many opportunities if you’re prepared to discover them.