Stefani Brusberg-Kiermeier*, James McKenzie and Daniel Schäbler Fear and Anxiety in Contemporary Drama and Performance: An Introduction https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2019-0001 Contemporary Western social and cultural discourses are preoccupied with narra- tives of fear and anxiety. In contrast to the anxieties and fears that come with and are clearly linked to immediate dangers, for instance in times of religious persecu- tion or civil war, in Western democracies fear has turned into – what we would describe as –‘fear for fear’s sake’, whereby “being scared has become a culturally sanctioned affectation that pervades all aspects of life” (Furedi 1). The sociologist Frank Furedi even goes so far as to speak of a current “politics of fear,” which “exists as a force in its own right [...and] is the inevitable consequence of the pre- vailing mood of political exhaustion” (123). Consequently, one might even de- scribe fear and anxiety today as approaches to reality and modes of perception that serve as perspectives in the processes of sense making (cf. 131). In this context, it is not surprising that there has been a significant increase in (popular) cultural production negotiating contexts, people, events, and situations that relate to these emotional states. Contemporary drama and performance have proven especially productive with regard to the negotiation of fear and anxiety, and, especially after the events of 11 th September 2001, there has been a signifi- cant increase in the number of plays and productions that can be regarded as engaging in the politics of fear. To consider these phenomena as intellectual and cultural challenges and to investigate them in greater detail appeared timely, nec- essary even, and thus the annual conference of the German Society for Contem- porary Drama in English, which took place at the University of Hildesheim from 31 st May to 3 rd June 2018, focused on fear and anxiety in contemporary drama and performance. Similar to Furedi, the feminist scholar Sara Ahmed also points to the political functions of emotions when she argues that “emotionality as a claim about a sub- ject or a collective is clearly dependent on relations of power, which endow *Corresponding author: Stefani Brusberg-Kiermeier, Hildesheim University, E-Mail: brusberg@uni-hildesheim.de James McKenzie, Hildesheim University, E-Mail: mckenzie@uni-hildesheim.de Daniel Schäbler, Hildesheim University, E-Mail: schaeble@uni-hildesheim.de JCDE 2019; 7(1): 1–11