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The study at hand discusses comprehensively a range of poetical, ethical and political questions involved in the staging of Elfriede Jelinek´s Princess Dramas [Prinzessinnendramen] as the Austrian Nobel Prize for Literature winner´s first work on the Australian stage. Introducing the ´poetic of an arriving artist´ as a productive approach to staging Jelinek´s plays internationally, the author of this study, and director of the production, consequently scrutinises this poetic´s grounding in a poststructural reconception of the ´palimpsest´ as a dramaturgical figure of thought. He points to the danger of unintentionally causing disempowering effects through emancipatory strategies of empowerment and eventually comes up with a series of timely proposals for effective and responsible artistic activity in 21st century immigration societies of an ever-globalising world. Engaging with Jelinek´s mythoclastic work serves thus as a highly relevant springboard for giving new impulses to current debates on artistic freedom, political correctness, diasporic art production and Australian discourses of indigeneity.

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CONTENT
Staging Elfriede Jelinek in Australia - Preliminary Remarks

Part One: Before the Staging - The Aesthetics (or Poetics) of Staging a Play

I. The ´Poetics of an Arriving Artist´
1. Creative homesickness as a motor for cultural transfer
2. Elfriede Jelinek as an ´unknown´ literary celebrity
3. From ´intertextuality´ to ´palimpsest´
4. Re-framing ´relevance´, re-focussing ´audience´, re-naming ´actance´

Part Two: The Production
The Materiality of the Performance

II. DVD 1: Princess Dramas [Full Run]
1. Credits
2. Music and video projections in order of appearance

III. DVD 2: Princess Dramas [Additional Material]
1. Track descriptions

Part Three: After the Staging - Ethics (and Politics) of Staging a Play

IV. Staging Jelinek´s Princess Dramas in Australia - Dangerous Decisions and Multiple Circumstances
1. Artistic statement and ethical implications
2. Theatre as a powerful place for ´radical democracy´
3. Decisions and their context(s) - Staging Princess Dramas in Melbourne (Australia)
4. The mise-en-scène/staging or die Inszenierung
5. Ethical dangers - Violence and "the right thing to do"
6. Policies, subsidies and necessities

V. ´The Artist´ as (Civilising) Leader or (Moral) Outlaw - The Self-Image as Theatre Maker at the Intersection of Philosophy, Law and Politics
1. Relevance as a product of self-description - From the artist as representative of a universal entity to art as a social system
2. The instability of democratic values - Self-censorship and artistic decisions

VI. A Conclusion and an Afterthought - Arriving as Palimpsestuous Process
1. Conclusion: The role of the artist in liberal democracy
2. An afterthought: Destabilising without erasing

List of Works Cited

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ANDRÉ BASTIAN studied Performance Studies and Spanish Philology in Melbourne (Australia) and Granada (Spain). He is a theatre practitioner (director, dramaturge, author, translator) and theorist and earned his doctorate at Monash University in Melbourne (Australia).

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