»… muß nach drei Seiten Jelinek-Lektüre schreiend aus dem Fenster springen…«

Abstract

In her writing for the theatre, Elfriede Jelinek has reinvented not only writing but also theatre. Yet her aesthetic concept of »das andere Theater« (the »other theatre«), which she outlined in various texts on drama theory, seems realizable only in theory and in her plays Jelinek herself has realized only partially the radicalness she proposes in her texts. In their most consistent realizations, her plays resist any easy specification as they can no longer be identified strictly as plays but more as prose. Also on stage, Jelinek’s concept of the »other theatre« has been realized only partially. While some productions (Einar Schleef ) and production proposals (Nicolas Stemann) have tried to comply with Jelinek’s call for »other« staging methods of her plays, other stagings have returned to portray her »Sprachflachen« (montage texts) again as stage characters in concrete scenes and places (Jossi Wieler). In contrast, reviews of stagings of Jelinek’s plays seldom respond to the »other theatre« presented on stage. The reviews are text centered, analyzing the play at work with regard to how well it succeeds in conveying the »message« of the play to the audience. Elfriede Jelinke herself, on the other hand, at times »complicates« a radical interpretation of her plays and their theatrical realizations, because her aesthetic concept appears at times contradictory. Thus, Jelinek’s aesthetic concept seems only realizable on stage when it resists any specific definition of acting.