Postdramatic Performance Research Articles

Transformative Potential and Utopian Performative: Postdramatic Hamlet in Turkey

Turkey is among those Non-Anglophone countries which have had a keen interest in Shakespeare and his plays for over two hundred years. When it comes to the staging of Shakespeare in Turkey, especially when protagonists or leading roles are considered, “overacting” is one of the most notable techniques highlighting, presumably, the spirit of the Renaissance and Jacobean times. Still, in recent years, there have been some productions which try to challenge and deconstruct the traditional ways of staging a Shakespearean play. One of such productions is Hamlet of Istanbul State Theatre, directed by Işıl Kasapoğlu in 2014, in which the director makes use of postdramatic theatre techniques. As the play begins, the audience sees a huge red jewel box which has been placed onto the centre of the stage. Soon after it is opened, it becomes clear that the character coming out of the box is playing and enacting not only the role of Hamlet but also many other roles in the play. Disrupting the habitual Shakespearean staging which heavily relies on mimesis in a closed “fictive cosmos” (Lehmann 22), the production, more strikingly, allows for an innovative Shakespearean acting as an innovative Shakespearean acting possible as the actor acts out all the major roles, such as Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, Polonius, etc., in such various ways as holding dummies in his hands and enacting their roles in monologues and dialogues. Fusing Hans-Thies Lehmann’s theory of postdramatic theatre with Jill Dolan’s argumentation on utopian performative, this study will investigate how postdramatic theatre techniques challenge the traditional Shakespearean performance and contends that postdramatic theatre techniques used in Kasapoğlu’s Hamlet contribute to the utopian performative and the possibility of creating a utopian impulse in the audience. The paper thus will claim that postdramatic performance of Hamlet renders a utopian performative possible by presenting a transformative potential in the audience members which engages in our present moment.

(Un)Belonging in the body of the chorus

In September 2019, Mark Fleishman in collaboration with the cast created a postdramatic performance of Sophocles’ tragedy ‘Antigone’, entitled Antigone (not quite/quiet). One of the key elements of the performance was the representation of Antigone as a chorus of 13 individual bodies, including that of my own body. During the performance, the chorus came to represent a re-imagined Antigone-figure as the youth of South Africa, the protesting body, and the female body saying ‘no’. Using auto-ethnographical writing, this article recounts the experience of (un)belonging in the postcolonial and postdramatic chorus that came to represent Antigone, specifically with regards to the discomfort and impossibility encountered in the attempt to position myself as a white, Afrikaans, female body in relation to that of a choral body representing the voice of the South African youth. It argues that the chorus functions as an ever-liminal state, one in which both the ‘I’ and ‘we’ exist, at once being within and without, and therefore holds the potential to function as a performance analytic to the tragic experience of the individual within a larger societal identity.

Escrita de Argumentos e Teatro Pós-dramático – Contradições e Oportunidades

The fundamental theme of this paper is the dynamics of influence between theatre and cinema. The paper focuses on a screenwriting perspective over postdramatic, a concept introduced by Hans-Thies Lehmann (Postdramatisches Theater, 1999). The specific domain of the research deals with the possibilities of operative appropriation from postdramatic practices by contemporary narrative filmmaking. Being a case study research paper, the qualitative nature of the approach method implies a tangible object of study, thus, the specific theme is approached through an analysis of the writing process of a particular narrative screenplay (Second Rate Poetry, 2012), which was simultaneously influenced by the principles of Hollywood’s screenwriting and by postdramatic theory. The essay’s ultimate goal is to address the possibilities of a production prototype that combines the seemingly antithetical principles of Hollywood’s text-centric approach, largely based on Aristotelian Poetics, and postdramatic performance practices.

The visual as an event: spect-acting gender in Out of a Doll’s House

Theatre is an image producer that is embedded with cultural practices of looking and critically involved in modes of looking. This case study offers an analysis of Out of a Doll’s House, a post-dramatic feminist performance. It demonstrates the manner in which visual dramaturgy exposes spectators to the process of performing an image as an action, and to the mechanism of constructing a theatrical image as a reflexive event. The analysis explores how visual post-dramatic dramaturgy allows participants to observe and experiment with gender as performance and with the visual as an event.

Sound situation and sound-event in postdramatic performance

Sound situation and sound-event in postdramatic performance

포스트드라마 연극텍스트(Postdramatik)의 무대화 특징- 엘프리데 옐리네크(Elfriede Jelinek) 작 《겨울 나그네》번역 공연을 중심으로

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationships between postdramatic play text, in other word ‘postdramati’c and postdramatic theater performance in Winterreise[Winter Journey] written by an Austrian playwright, Elfriede Jelinek. One of the important features of Jelinek’s playtext is non-reproducibility. Text created by intertextuality consists of segmental and fragmentary preceding text, like a collage. In the text, specific characters and stories are not reproduced clearly. Regardless of what character says, his (her) long lasting text strongly reflects the non-reproducibility. The postdramatic intertextuality of Jelinek’s playtext makes the characters and objects unclear, causing non-reproducibility. The director utilizes the text as a source material to complete his own postdramatic performance. Discussing how the characteristics of postdramatic text affect the postdramatic theatrical performance, this study considers Korean adaptation of Winterreise, as an example of postdramatic performance. One of the features of postdramatic performance is reproducibility of non-reproducibility. In Jelinek’s postdramatic performance, character’s words and actions rarely match one another. The existence of non-representative language created by Jelinek''s playtexts clashes with the reproduction of the character’s behavior. In this process, non-representation of the playtext draws an image that audiences may stimulate unique associations in his (her) mind. The other feature is polyphony that exists in the Jelinek’s postdramatic playtexts and it makes a hybrid form of monologue and chorus in the scene. The polyphony of playtexts derived from intertextuality can diversify the directions of the postdramatic performance with the director’s choice. The important significance of this study was to examine the basic tendencies of postdramatic playtext and get a glimpse of its impact on the relationship with its postdramatic performance. In particular, this study can dedicate to enhancing the practical development of postdramatic performances and expanding the theoretical horizon to the theater study in Korea by utilizing Korean adaptation of the postdramatic playtext abroad.

Post-dramatic Performance: Semantics and Pragmatics (Based on the Play Shpalikov Staged By the Yeltsin Center Theatre Platform “In the Center”)

The article is devoted to the understanding of the phenomenon of modern theatre, defined by the German theater critic Hans-Thies Lehmann as “post-dramatic theatre”. The purpose of the article is to show the mode of existence of post-drama in the real theatrical process. From Lehmann’s point of view, post-drama is not a new direction in art, but a state of the theater in which it emancipates from the literary source. The post-dramatic theatre breaks the tradition of narrative art and abandons the rigid structure of the play. The semantics of post-drama is considered in the tradition of contextualism, when the meaning directly depends on the context. The contextuality of the play Shpalikov is its semantic field. The pragmatics of post-drama is in the creation of a new polylinguistic space. Post-drama changes all the language elements of the theatre, including the audience’s expectations.
 Keywords: Lehmann, semantics, pragmatics, “post-dramatic theatre”, theatre platform “In the Centre”, the play Shpalikov

Zeitraum und Raumzeit: Dimensionen zeitlicher und räumlicher Narration im Theater

Zeitraum und Raumzeit: Dimensionen zeitlicher und räumlicher Narration im Theater

Postdramatic Performance and Audience Participation in Thomton Wilder’s Selected Plays

Postdramatic Performance and Audience Participation in Thomton Wilder’s Selected Plays

Moving Together in an Era of Assembly

Editors Alana Gerecke and Laura Levin frame the central concerns and interventions of the issue. They insist that in this historical moment of Women’s Marches, Black Lives Matter, Occupy, and the Idle No More ‘round dance revolution,’ of flash mobs and pop-up culture, of relational art and postdramatic performance practices, we must think seriously about what is at stake in gathering and moving together in public spaces. Increasingly mainstream and increasingly evident, these collective reimaginings of quotidian practices, cultural consumption, and political resistance challenge the atomized ways we normally move through cities. In doing so, they pose questions of aesthetics, use, access, exclusion, density, and mobility “in resolutely physical terms” (Gerecke 42). What does it mean to show up and, more specifically, move together in these collective arrangements? How do different choreographic arrangements of public assembly shape and re-shape the social, the aesthetic, and the political?

Active Experiencing in Postdramatic Performance: Affective Memory and Quarantine Theatre's Wallflower

Postdramatic approaches to performance and Stanislavsky's methodology seemingly occupy divergent performance traditions. Nonetheless, both traditions often require performers to mine their own lives (albeit to different ends) and operate in an experiential realm that demands responsiveness to and within the live moment of performing. Tracy Crossley explores this realm through an analysis of Quarantine Theatre's Wallflower (2015), an example of postdramatic practice that blends a poetics of failure with a psycho - physical dramaturgical approach that can be aligned with Stanislavsky's concepts of affective memory and active analysis.Wallflower provides a useful case study of practice that challenges the binary opposition between the dramatic and postdramatic prevalent in theatre and performance studies scholarship. Aspects of Stanislavsky's system, nuanced by cognitive neuroscience, can expand the theorization of postdramatic theatre, which in turn generates techniques that can prove valuable in the rehearsal of dramatic theatre itself. Tracy Crossley is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at the University of Salford, Manchester. She is currently developing a practical handbook, Making Postdramatic Theatre, for Digital Theatre Plus.

Speaking about Reality: Verbatim techniques in contemporary Finnish documentary theatre

During the past years, different modes of documentary theatre have gained popularity. A distinctive feature there is the use of verbatim texts, borrowed directly from authentic documents like recorded interviews or minutes, including sometimes even coincidental stuttering of the original speaker. In this article I analyse the verbatim-technique as part of the post-dramatic performance strategies. It makes it possible to focus on the materiality of language as a texture as well as an instrument for meaning making and communicating contents. It also gives a more active role to the audience. When texts are explicitly framed as authentic, and reiterated with exaggerated precision, the attention is drawn to the performative repetition of the speech acts. Thus, the verbatim performances do not so much refer to reality “as it is”, but rather stage acts of making claims about something we call reality. Borrowing Carol Martin, the contemporary generation of documentary theatre makers aspire to make relevant claims about social reality even if they use postmodern strategies and admit that truth and reality are not within their reach. I will discuss different strategies of using the verbatim techniques in documentary performances. I theorize the subject using well-known international examples, move on to a short overview of recent documentary theatre in Finland, and examine closer four cases: Parliament III in Ryhmäteatteri in 2015, Towards Work at Kouvolan Teatteri in 2014, Ruusula Street 10 at Q-teatteri in 2014, and My Palestine at Teatteri Takomo in 2015.

Speaking about Reality Verbatim techniques in contemporary Finnish documentary theatre.

During the past years, different modes of documentary theatre have gained popularity. A distinctive feature there is the use of verbatim texts, borrowed directly from authentic documents like recorded interviews or minutes, including sometimes even coincidental stuttering of the original speaker. In this article I analyse the verbatim-technique as part of the post-dramatic performance strategies. It makes it possible to focus on the materiality of language as a texture as well as an instrument for meaning making and communicating contents. It also gives a more active role to the audience. When texts are explicitly framed as authentic, and reiterated with exaggerated precision, the attention is drawn to the performative repetition of the speech acts. Thus, the verbatim performances do not so much refer to reality “as it is”, but rather stage acts of making claims about something we call reality. Borrowing Carol Martin, the contemporary generation of documentary theatre makers aspire to make relevant claims about social reality even if they use postmodern strategies and admit that truth and reality are not within their reach. I will discuss different strategies of using the verbatim techniques in documentary performances. I theorize the subject using well-known international examples, move on to a short overview of recent documentary theatre in Finland, and examine closer four cases: Parliament III in Ryhmäteatteri in 2015, Towards Work at Kouvolan Teatteri in 2014, Ruusula Street 10 at Q-teatteri in 2014, and My Palestine at Teatteri Takomo in 2015.

The legend of the grand inquisitor; Stanislavski that Stanislavskians don’t want you to know about

The high quality of Russian actors (and quantity thereof) is unarguable, if based on the evidence of Russian touring theatres and award-winning films. Nevertheless, I believe that the way in which these great artists were trained bears little resemblance to how actors training is described in Stanislavski’s books An Actor Prepares and Building a Character, which is not to say, paradoxically, that the aforementioned artists were not trained utilizing the Stanislavski System. Nevertheless, most books written in English about Russian acting technique continue revolving around these same Stanislavskian tomes which incidentally correspond to a very short period of activity within a very long career as actor, director and acting teacher. The meagre amount of English translations of seminal works on Russian acting technique written by direct pupils and collaborators of Stanislavski, is only partly to blame for this; considering that scholars can now travel to Russia freely and that most of these texts can be found on the Internet at the push of a button there is really no excuse for not correcting archaic or imprecise views. I believe that the true Stanislavski System utilized to train great Russian actors is in truth a bulk of knowledge which was and is still being passed down from teachers to students in the great acting schools of Russia and which can be found duly transcribed in the literary legacy of these selfsame teachers and students (and on some recorded media) but that, however, remains as yet unknown or unacknowledged by many English-speaking specialists. Things are shifting quickly in Russian acting as directors begin to explore post-dramatic performance and it is important that clarity is achieved in relation to Russian text-based acting before it moves on irretrievably in whatever direction it may, once again.

The Art of the Loop: Analogy, Aurality, History, Performance

The dramaturgical aesthetic of recent postdramatic performance returns to medieval representational modes: an eye can be used as an ear, and vision can be orchestrated like the auditory space of simultaneous relations. Whether an immersive, site-specific, one-to-one, or digital/new media performance, such performance has no one point of view, no “one” in control; success or failure is largely determined by individual and collective will. Closing the loop means beginning, again, in non-Euclidian space.

Spectatorship and the New (Critical) Sincerity: The Case of Forced Entertainment’s Tomorrow’s Parties

This article considers Forced Entertainment’s Tomorrow Parties (2011) as an example of the New Sincerity – an aesthetic mode that has emerged in the wake of postmodernism, particularly visible in contemporary American fiction. The particular contribution here is the trans-disciplinary shift from fiction to theatre studies as the New Sincerity – as theorised by American fiction scholars via Lionel Trilling’s Sincerity and Authenticity (1972) and David Foster Wallace’s essay ‘E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction’ (1993) – is assessed in terms of its applicability to the specificities of theatre performance. A trusting and trusted spectator is central to the operational practice of sincerity in performance. In many ways Tomorrow’s Parties succeeds in interpellating such a spectator; however, it remains a piece performed by an experimental theatre company renowned for engaging in metatheatrical innovation, immersive practice and ironic game playing, all of which haunt this particular postdramatic performance. To account for this troubling of sincerity – and all performance is on one level insincere – the term ‘critical sincerity’ is coined, a term that describes the knowingness that certain theatre pieces – like Tomorrow’s Parties – exhibit of the inherent insincerity of performance, while simultaneously striving for a sincere encounter.

Winning and/or Losing: The Perils and Products of Insecurity in Postdramatic Autobiographical Performance

Billed as a “staged conversation” between long-time friends and artistic collaborators James Long and Marcus Youssef, Winners and Losers is an autobiographical performance event where the audience is invited to consider what the real-world dangers of this contest might be. What at first appears to be an amusing and satirical debate about “winners” and “losers” in popular culture and current events becomes profoundly uncomfortable, even unpleasant as the two protagonists turn on each other. Persistent reality-markers in this postdramatic performance render it difficult for the audience to discern the boundary between reality and fiction. The result is an acute indecidability , generating what Ulrike Garde and Meg Mumford call “productive insecurity.” The first aim of this essay is to contextualize Winners and Losers as a work of postdrama in the theatre of the real genre and to demonstrate how its destabilizing strategies operate to create productive insecurity. Second, the essay connects the play’s thematic anxiety pertaining to the insecurity of being “not safe” or being a “loser” with this disruptive paralytic audience effect. This doubled insecurity compels the audience to reevaluate the initial premise of the game and its habituated attachment to confident knowing. When the game messily implodes, audience members are left to ponder how to move forward (or really in any direction) in a world of pervasive uncertainty.

Postdramatic Theatre and Postdramatic Performance

Abstract: Beginning with the concept of a postdramatic theatre as articulated by the German theorist Hans-Thies Lehmann, this essay considers the recent work of several major international directors - Ivo van Hove, Punchdrunk, Signa and others - as examples of postdramatic performance. It argues that what they have in common is a challenge to the traditional concept of mimesis and of the theatre world as a fictional construct distinctly separated from everyday life and its surroundings.

Sites of Dereliction: Beginnings and allies of performance

This paper charts a changing relationship to ruins over fifteen years of making site-specific performance. It looks at three sets of ruins (a nineteenth-century water tower and a chapel and almshouses, both of medieval origins) and records how they each acted as the beginning of three separate post-dramatic performance projects. By re-visiting and walking between the three sets of ruins, the author tests his own changing understanding of their materiality: from inert properties waiting for invasive or re-compositional acts to unfinished and vibrant materials actively recomposing themselves as allies in resistance and ‘slow revolution’.

Imaginative Communities: The Role, Practice and Outreach of Community–Based Theatre

Abstract In recent years, the artistic representation of communities (e.g. in community-based theatres) has found its source in the realm of the imagination (documentary drama, verbatim theatre, post-dramatic performance, etc.), addressing issues that are important and relevant not only for the communities themselves but also for the wider society. In this presentation I will use Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of the “seductive lightness of being” - or the transitory nature of our virtual experience - to talk about the role of selected community-based theatres in the United States and about their imaginative depiction and discussion of issues which are of vital importance for any community: identity, the personal vs. the political, a sense of belonging, progressiveness, social awareness and the capability of coexistence.