Minou Arjomand is an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.

This is a brilliant work that gives us both a social history and critical theory of postwar theatre. One thinks about the show trial as a terrible miscarriage of justice, but Arjomand gives trial theatre another function: public deliberation and judgment on responsibility and political justice. Whereas much attention has been given to the theatricality of legal trials, Arjomand asks us to value the public function of theatre in enacting debates on justice and establishing a public practice of considered judgment. The history of postwar German theatre offered here engaged in critical theory and aesthetics in a new and engaging argument about aesthetics and politics and the public functions of art in a democracy.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Show Trials and Political Theater1. Hannah Arendt: Judging in Dark Times2. Bertolt Brecht: Poetic Justice3. Erwin Piscator: Theater After Auschwitz4. Trials in NurembergConclusion: Archives, Law, and Theater TodayNotesBibliographyIndex

Minou Arjomand is an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.

This is a brilliant work that gives us both a social history and critical theory of postwar theatre. One thinks about the show trial as a terrible miscarriage of justice, but Arjomand gives trial theatre another function: public deliberation and judgment on responsibility and political justice. Whereas much attention has been given to the theatricality of legal trials, Arjomand asks us to value the public function of theatre in enacting debates on justice and establishing a public practice of considered judgment. The history of postwar German theatre offered here engaged in critical theory and aesthetics in a new and engaging argument about aesthetics and politics and the public functions of art in a democracy.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Show Trials and Political Theater1. Hannah Arendt: Judging in Dark Times2. Bertolt Brecht: Poetic Justice3. Erwin Piscator: Theater After Auschwitz4. Trials in NurembergConclusion: Archives, Law, and Theater TodayNotesBibliographyIndex

Minou Arjomand is an assistant professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.

This is a brilliant work that gives us both a social history and critical theory of postwar theatre. One thinks about the show trial as a terrible miscarriage of justice, but Arjomand gives trial theatre another function: public deliberation and judgment on responsibility and political justice. Whereas much attention has been given to the theatricality of legal trials, Arjomand asks us to value the public function of theatre in enacting debates on justice and establishing a public practice of considered judgment. The history of postwar German theatre offered here engaged in critical theory and aesthetics in a new and engaging argument about aesthetics and politics and the public functions of art in a democracy.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Show Trials and Political Theater1. Hannah Arendt: Judging in Dark Times2. Bertolt Brecht: Poetic Justice3. Erwin Piscator: Theater After Auschwitz4. Trials in NurembergConclusion: Archives, Law, and Theater TodayNotesBibliographyIndex