Teaching Postdramatic Theatre: Anxieties, Aporias and Disclosures by Glenn D'Cruz

Abstract

Reviewed by: Teaching Postdramatic Theatre: Anxieties, Aporias and Disclosures by Glenn D'Cruz Dean Wilcox Teaching Postdramatic Theatre: Anxieties, Aporias and Disclosures. By Glenn D'Cruz. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 2018; pp. 206. To write about the postdramatic and not argue with or explicate Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatic Theatre is a futile exercise. D'Cruz, like most who tackle this subject, draws inspiration from Lehmann's work and critiques its shortcomings. Refining Lehmann's observations, D'Cruz defines postdramatic theatre as "contemporary works that reject the primacy of the written text in theatre performance, but do not reject the principles of modernity (formal innovation, experimentation, political engagement)" (3). Each chapter focuses on a specific historical shift, production, or text that D'Cruz has explored, seen produced, or directed. He filters these through theoretical or methodological approaches that center on the "practical, intellectual and artistic aspects of the performance-making process from the inside," and presents case studies that draw on "experience of teaching and directing scripted and devised student productions of postdramatic theatre" (7). D'Cruz offers a highly personalized account that in many ways reviews the history of the academy from the late 1980s to the present as it absorbed performance studies, critical theory, semiotics, feminism, postmodernism, and finally the postdramatic. Moving from chapter to chapter, the book reads like a series of journal articles that veer from theoretical explication, to performance analysis, to teaching diary. What emerges is a journey toward teaching postdramatic theatre, with all of its dead ends, missteps, learning opportunities, and moments of enlightenment. After an introduction that provides an overview of each chapter and his goal of interrogating "the utility of Lehmann's vocabulary" (4), chapter 2 addresses the basic tenets of postmodern theory outlined by Jameson, Lyotard, and Baudrillard, among others, and represents the postdramatic through a discussion of the Sydney Front's 1987 production of John Laws/Sade. This production was the author's introduction to the postdramatic, after which he began to compile the theoretical vocabulary useful in dissecting his experience; a process he appears to replicate with his students in approaching a text by avoiding "using academic jargon to describe the play in the first instance" (21). Here, D'Cruz echoes his thesis stated in the preface "that different vocabularies perform different functions, and we need to be mindful of the limitations of academic discourse when we teach creative practice" (vi). Subsequent chapters explore the shift from drama to theatre to performance studies, the Back to Back Theatre's production of Ganesh Versus the Third Reich, D'Cruz's staging of Crimp's Attempts on Her Life, Müller's Hamletmachine, and Jelinek's Princess Plays, as well as reflections on devising within the academy and final thoughts on the postdramatic. The main focus of D'Cruz's exploration is pondering whether Lehmann's work offers "another way to read performances as opposed to new strategies for creating them" (38). As he points out, "we need to be mindful of the difference between analyzing performance (breaking it down into a set of formal components) and making a performance, which requires an expansive orientation to the world around us" (166). Offering detailed descriptions of his production classes, D'Cruz outlines a practice-based approach that does not seem to engage in any formal theoretical analysis of the text, but transpires through a fairly straightforward theatre-making process that includes close reading, improvisation, research, and staging with a certain amount of student autonomy, independent of Lehmann's vocabulary. Clearly, D'Cruz is knowledgeable about critical theory, postmodernism, and the postdramatic, so it is curious why he does not seem to engage students in conversation on these subjects. Much like the absent central character in Attempts on Her Life, there is a disconnect between the theoretical material used to analyze texts and performances and D'Cruz's pedagogical observations. Reflecting on the staging of Crimp's play, he writes: "From the very first class of this unit, I made a few sly references to some of the postmodern criticism I cited in the first part of the chapter to give students a frame of reference" (114). Although he proposes to explore...