Lay Judges and Lay Actors: Emancipating the Spectator in Rimini Protokoll’s Zeugen! and Ferdinand von Schirach’s Terror

Are viewing and acting separate things? In his essay "The Emancipated Spectator" (2008), Jacques Rancière argues that the state of passivity inscribed in the traditional role of the spectator must be revoked by theatre itself, whose primary aim should be to liberate “a form of consciousness, an intensity of feeling, an energy for action” that can empower the spectators, make them aware of the social reality they live in, and potentially foster their desire to transform some of its structures. This paper looks at two examples of contemporary attempts at “staging justice” that expressly require an emancipated spectatorship, though in different ways: "Terror. Ein Theaterstück" (2016) by Ferdinand von Schirach, a courtroom drama in which the spectators are requested to judge on a fictional legal case, and "Zeugen! Ein Strafkammerspiel" (2004) by theatre collective Rimini Protokoll, in which experts of justice from the Berlin-Moabit criminal court share their knowledge and experience with the audience. By examining the aesthetic strategies through which both texts portray the world of justice on stage, the paper outlines their political relevance as well as the different ways in which they thematise the theatricality of legal processes and the relationship between make-believe and reality.