Rejecting the Page, Inciting Visuality: Staging Woyzeck in a Mediatized Culture

Abstract

The influence of new media on theatrical practice over the past fifty years has spurred a movement towards theatrical forms which are increasingly organized around the sensory elements of performance. This change is most noticeable in the visual approaches to theatre, and it has produced what I have labeled a theatre of visuality. This thesis argues that the tendencies for visualization found in visual media have extensively marked the performance strategies of contemporary theatre practice, resulting in a shift away from the logocentric dramatic text and towards theatre performance organized around the visual. Looking at four contemporary productions of Georg Buchner’s Woyzeck –Thomas Ostermeier’s Woyzeck (2005), Vesturport’s Woyzeck (2005), Robert Wilson’s Woyzeck (2000), and Josef Nadj’s Woyzeck ou l’Ebauche du Vertige (1994)– this thesis produces a preliminary typology of four distinct visualities/theatrical forms which make up the theatre of visuality: hyperrealism, synesthesia, superficiality, and visual narration. This thesis contributes to the conceptualization and understanding of postdramatic theatre by linking the theatre’s rejection of the text to the increased centrality of the visual in performance, and by tracing these shifts to the influence of visual media.