Pearson's Preview

Since 2014, Joseph Pearson has offered his discerning insights and background on selected premieres and guest performances during the season and for the Festival International New Drama, with his English-language »Previews«. By now, the writer and historian has penned more than 70 essays and conversations for his »Pearson’s Preview« column. Most of the essays have also been translated into German. In the 2021/2 season, the theatre continues this collaboration. The Schaubühne’s essayist will again cover the festival, and focus on the productions of artistic director, Thomas Ostermeier, visiting rehearsals and posing unusual questions, from the perspective of a blogging »polymath« and keen spectator, which – we hope – will broaden the audience’s perspective.

Dr. Joseph Pearson is a Canadian writer, and cultural historian, based in Berlin for more than a decade. His portrait of the German capital, »Berlin Cityscopes«, with Reaktion Books/University of Chicago Press, was published in Spring 2017. A work of literary non-fiction, »My Grandfather's Knife«, is forthcoming from HarperCollins and The History Press in April 2022. Pearson, meanwhile, lectures at the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin, having come to Berlin from the humanities program of Columbia University in New York City. He chairs writing workshops at New York University and the Berlin University of the Arts.