Open Access

Martin Riedelsheimer, Korbinian Stöckl

• debbie tucker green’s theatre can be seen as a reaction to the state of heightened mobility in a globalised world in which social problems can no longer be contained locally but inevitably register globally and vice versa. Her plays that move remote suffering to the centre of attention qualify as cosmopolitan for two reasons: Not only do they address such suffering by making use of globally diverse settings, but they also express cosmopolitanism’s belief in an undeniable responsibility for the other that connects all humankind. The plays make a cosmopolitan ethical appeal by facilitating an immediate affective accessibility of faraway suffering with an aesthetic strategy that can be described as ‘universalisation through familiarisation’: Devices such as cross-racial casting or the use of universally familiar constellations like the family are used to lend mobility to the abstract hardships of remote others, allowing them to intrude into the familiar world of the audience’s concretedebbie tucker green’s theatre can be seen as a reaction to the state of heightened mobility in a globalised world in which social problems can no longer be contained locally but inevitably register globally and vice versa. Her plays that move remote suffering to the centre of attention qualify as cosmopolitan for two reasons: Not only do they address such suffering by making use of globally diverse settings, but they also express cosmopolitanism’s belief in an undeniable responsibility for the other that connects all humankind. The plays make a cosmopolitan ethical appeal by facilitating an immediate affective accessibility of faraway suffering with an aesthetic strategy that can be described as ‘universalisation through familiarisation’: Devices such as cross-racial casting or the use of universally familiar constellations like the family are used to lend mobility to the abstract hardships of remote others, allowing them to intrude into the familiar world of the audience’s concrete experience. Implicitly, this entails the demand to accept responsibility for and, eventually, take action against global suffering, which is the core of any cosmopolitan ethics.…