When in 1926 Leopold Jessner (1878–1945) staged Hamlet at the Prussian State Theatre in Berlin, the production created a major scandal. This uproar was not only related to aesthetic matters but also to the discourse of national identity. With reference to Marvin Carlson's concept of the ‘haunted stage’ the article examines the traces of this scandal in the genealogy of Hamlet on the German stage and its intersection with the politics of national identity. These traces indicate that German productions of Hamlet have always been determined by an implicit politics of exclusion. Jessner's production, by contrast, offered a radical re-reading of Hamlet, aiming to adapt it for the, then newly democratized society. The rejection of this adaptation by major parts of the audience, thus revealed the still powerful and active anti-democratic forces in the Weimar Republic.

This article focuses on the National Community Theatre in Israel in order to demonstrate what happens when co-communities (marginal communities) appropriate the concept and the rules of the game of festival to their own benefit. Community theatre in Israel is a means of self-representation within co-communities that usually exist on the geographical, social, political and artistic margins of the public sphere. The National Community Theatre Festival is thus a subversive tactic by which the powerless groups present their move from the margins to the centre and transform themselves to visible social agents. This Festival then celebrates the latent potential for social activism that these groups have when they are coming together and imagine themselves powerful, united and prestigious.