Berlin's theatre culture easily excites scholars and artists because of the city's financial support for and never-ending crises in the theatres. This excitement is obvious in Brandon Woolf's Institutional Theatrics: Performing Arts Policy in Post-Wall Berlin for those familiar with Berlin's theatre culture. Woolf also provides detailed descriptions of the theatres, performances, buildings, and protests for those new to it. He achieves writing such a compelling book not only through extensive archival research but also by analyzing mundane performances both at the theatres and on the streets. Although much has been written on Berlin theatre, Woolf offers a new perspective “by examining the intersections of performance and policy” to demonstrate how politicians support but simultaneously limit the theatres (2). Analyzing various theatre institutions and practices, he explores “theater's changing role in a changing society” since German unification in 1990 (2). The author argues that “understanding performance as itself a form of policy can help us understand the ways artists engage systems of state support” (8).

To discuss the idea of “performance as itself a form of policy” and his notion of “institutional dis/avowal[s],” which means accepting or resisting theatre's institutional structures and state funding for theatres, Woolf structures his book in two main parts, “State-Stages” and “Free-Scenes,” with two chapters in each part (11). In Part 1, he examines traditional state-funded theatres to show how performance manifests itself as policy in institutions and how theatre institutions avow state funding while disavowing policies made without theatre makers’ involvement in the process. In Part 2, he investigates nontraditional theatre institutions that receive project-based state funding to demonstrate how independent performance groups disavow the theatres’ problematic institutional structures and director's dominance on theatre productions and explore new institutional forms. To do so, Woolf draws on Christopher Balme's and Peter Boenisch's scholarship on contemporary Berlin theatre and employs theories developed by Theodor W. Adorno, Tony Bennett, Toby Miller, George Yúdice, Judith Butler, Shannon Jackson, and Hans-Thies Lehmann.

Chapter 1 investigates the closure of the State-Stage Complex—the house for the Schiller Theater, the Schiller Werkstatt (Studio) Theater, and the Schlosspark Theater—in former West Germany. Woolf shows how the Berlin Senate's decision to close the complex sparked public protests in which both theatre artists and audiences participated. Highlighting the tension between politicians and theatre makers, Woolf illustrates how institutional disavowal appeared in the protests. This chapter shows the paradox of state-funded theatres’ financial dependence on the state and their resistance to recklessly made policies.

Chapter 2 looks at Frank Castorf's Volksbühne, where Castorf directed Bertolt Brecht's first Lehrstück (Learning Play), The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent, to investigate how Brecht developed the play with his collaborators for “artistic, theoretical, political, and institutional exploration” (64). While juxtaposing Castorf's production of Lehrstück in 2010 with Brecht's original production in 1929, the author offers thick descriptions of Castorf's production to help the reader not only understand why this reworking of Brecht's play mattered, but also how “Castorf's unique art of institutional dis/avowal” appeared in his theatre making (96). Woolf contends that Castorf did “imagine, and subsequently enact, a new kind of public—and publicly supported—theater in post-Wall Berlin” by putting Brecht's Lehrstück theory into practice to improve the theatre's social function (69). Woolf clearly shows that Castorf repudiated the theatre's outdated institutional structures and practices while still supporting the state theatre's transformation in post-Wall Berlin.

Chapter 3 begins exploring the role of “the free-scene” (22) in Berlin theatre. Woolf explores how interdisciplinary artists and curators created “a new kind of temporary performance institution” called “People's Palace” to transform the Palast der Republik—an unused building—into a temporary performance space (119). Underscoring “a performative turn in architecture,” he further investigates how the Palast—loaded with memories—inspired experimental durational performances while waiting to be demolished. The author also raises questions to highlight performance's relation with architecture: “Can a built structure dis/avow itself?” (114). “Can a construction site turn into a cultural place?” (116). Although a built structure cannot dis/avow itself alone, interdisciplinary artists and curators can use the building to avow its significant role in post-Wall Berlin while disavowing the policies made to demolish the Palast.

Chapter 4 focuses on another free-scene group, andcompany&Co., to demonstrate how it defies the theatre's institutional hierarchy by resisting the label of Regietheater (director's theater). He uses thick descriptions again to explain how andcompany&Co.'s (Coming) Insurrection embodies free-scenes’ dis/avowals onstage. Analyzing the performance at Hebbel am Ufer (HAU), a performance complex that presents Berlin's free-scene groups, the author contends that (Coming) Insurrection promotes “conversations about performance and precarity in a neoliberal economy” (141). Although the artists of andcompany&Co. collaboratively created performances by maintaining their creative autonomy, they faced many challenges due to lack of financial support. This chapter, therefore, plays a crucial role in showing the paradoxical existence of independent theatre groups/free-scenes that demand both creative independence and economic security. And the question Woolf asks—“How free is the free-scene after all?”—underlines the paradox (152).

Institutional Theatrics aptly elucidates how performance and policy intersect in temporary and permanent theatre institutions in post-Wall Berlin. Whereas it strongly disavows “the long-standing tradition of state-subsidized theater in Berlin,” it makes scant effort to disavow male dominance at the Berlin theatres (8). It also leaves the reader with a question: How have the burning issues of migration, citizenship, and nationalism impacted performing arts policies in post-Wall Berlin? It is understandable that Woolf does not address the question, however, because his primary focus is to explicate the complex relationship between performance and policy. Although he leaves this to other theatre and performance scholars for further exploration, Woolf makes a significant contribution to theatre studies, performance studies, German studies, and cultural studies.