From the Postdramatic to the Poly-dramatic: The Text/Performance Divide Reconsidered

Abstract

����� ��� Theatre is a critical minefield: concurrently a space of meditation in contemporary theory—of key concepts such as textuality, performativity, liveness, the real—and a site of contestation where interconnected and coexigent categories of drama, performance, and spectacle continue to be disputed. Much of contemporary theatre criticism remains enmeshed in the timeless debate over text and performance, bodies and language, liveness and mediation. At key moments in the twentieth century, it has been argued that theatrical writing does not belong to literature nor should literary tools define theatrical analysis. A t different times, the author, the director, the actor, the performer, and the audience have taken their turn as the primary arbiter of stage meaning. The dramatist’s authority was dislodged by the advent of the modern theatre director in the late nineteenth century. 1 Subsequently, many processes challenged the primacy of writing: the splintering of authorial univocality through collective creation, the actor-performer appropriations of the text, the multiplicity of audience interpretations and responses, and the disjointing