Terror: the danger of legal theatre

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14220%2F21%3A00129191" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14220/21:00129191 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol25/iss1/7" target="_blank" >https://ro.uow.edu.au/ltc/vol25/iss1/7</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

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Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Terror: the danger of legal theatre

Original language description

When Ferdinand von Schirach wrote Terror, a perfect example of the legal theatre was created. It is a trial or tribunal play that deals both with current legal issues and a profound legal-philosophical dilemma of sacrificing human lives for the lives of others. Moreover, this play provides a space for the audience to express their legal opinion in a very theatrical way. In a sense, this play refers to the roots of ancient Greek theatre (see eg Gaakeer 2019) and its fundamentally political meaning. Thus, it may seem that this play is an answer to every law and theatre scholar’s prayer for a practical example of a widely know trial play. Unfortunately, it is more complicated than that. In a way, any theatre about law – legal theatre – is political theatre. Through its influence, legal theatre can pose consequences for the rule of law and democracy. In this text, I will focus on the specifics of legal theatre and its possible consequences. My research takes the form of a case-study of Ferdinand von Schirach’s play Terror. For comparison, another legal theatre play will be used: Milada. Milada is a documentary theatre play based on a real political trial concerning Milada Horáková in the 1950s in Czechoslovakia. Through the analysis of both plays, I will determine and explain the most problematic issues. This issues are, of course, too broad to deal with in one paper, so I will focus on the question of ‘reality’ in the presentation of law in both plays and its possibly dangerous consequences, especially in the geographical area of Central Europe.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50501 - Law

Project

<a href="/en/project/GA19-12837S" target="_blank" >GA19-12837S: Law in Literature: Qualitative Analysis of the Image of Law in Belles-Lettres at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Century</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2021

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Law Text Culture

ISSN

1322-9060

e-ISSN

2200-7121

Volume of the periodical

25

Issue of the periodical within the volume

1

Country of publishing house

AU - AUSTRALIA

Number of pages

26

Pages from-to

178-203

UT code for WoS article

000893266900007

EID of the result in the Scopus database

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