Postdramatic Theatre Research Articles

"The Musicality of Postdramatic Theatre: Hans-Thies Lehmann’s Theory of Independent Auditory Semiotics"

Lehmann's paradigm of postdramatic theater has mainly been criticized on two levels: its flexibility and its alleged putting to death of drama. The paper highlights to what extent flexible paradigms like the postdramatic one are necessary to study the numerous performances which are charac­terized by their in-between-ness between dramatic and postdramatic codes. The study of postdramatic jazz musicality that we observe in Jaz by Koffi Kwahule or in Isabella's Room by Jan Lauwers demonstrates the need for such flexibility. Lehmann's notion of independent auditory semiotics is developed in the paper to study the exploitation of text as music (and not only in music): the end of the convergences between arts, the performance as a musical score, voice as sound vs. voice as discourse, disintegration of the dramatic character in favor of the jazz body of the performer.

The Resistant Text in Postdramatic Theatre: Performing Elfriede Jelinek's Sprachflächen

This article places stagings of theatre texts by Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek in the wider theoretical context of the relationship between text and performance in postdramatic theatre. Countering a widespread misperception that postdramatic theatre is by definition theatre beyond the use of text, the article argues that in Jelinek productions, postdramatic forms of communication arise in response to a challenging new type of theatre text provided by the writer that actively demands new directorial and performative approaches. After first looking at Jelinek’s longstanding resistance to conventional theatre practice as articulated in her theoretical essays, I explore productions by Thirza Brunken, Einar Schleef and Nicolas Stemann. I argue that Jelinek’s texts act as a resistant force and that productions of her work increasingly acknowledge and openly exhibit the conflict between written text and performance in their dramaturgical approaches.

Teatr i dramat ciągle w morderczym uścisku. Uwagi na marginesie książki Hansa-Thiesa Lehmanna pt. „Teatr postdramatyczny"

Article refers to Hans-Thies Lehmann ideas of understanding the drama shown in his book Postdramatic Theatre and tries to discuss with them. Lehmann shows synthetic theory of drama based on the thought coming from Georg Friedrich Hegel by the theory of modern drama of Peter Szondi, which interprets drama as the product of historical progress. Article expresses disappointment with several simplifications embedded in Lehmann theory of the constructing mechanisms of the presenting the real world phenomena used by the drama. Indicates the possibility of the different interpretation of the philosophic inspiration coming from Hegel and shows as an example proposition of Jacques Derrida. Article remains in the area of this analytic tradition and emphasizes semantic polyphony of the dramatic text, which i based on the special sense of time but completely different than Lehmann's is.

Postdramatic Theatre (review)

Postdramatic Theatre (review)

Postdramatic Theatre by Hans-Thies Lehmann. Translated by Karen Jürs-Munby. London: Routledge, 2006; 214 pp. $43.95 paper

<i>Postdramatic Theatre</i> by Hans-Thies Lehmann. Translated by Karen Jürs-Munby. London: Routledge, 2006; 214 pp. $43.95 paper

Charting the Postdramatic

Following in the tradition laid out by Michael Kirby and RoseLee Goldberg, Hans-Thies Lehmann in his Postdramatic Theatre (first published in Germany in 1999) attempts to define a critical vocabulary and landscape for what has variously been called performance, performance art, installation art, and so on. More simply, it's theatre, but a theatre which decenters the text as a defining element in the production

When is a Play not a Drama? Two Examples of Postdramatic Theatre Texts

In this article David Barnett investigates the ways in which plays can be considered ‘postdramatic’. Opening with an exploration of this new paradigm, he then seeks to examine two plays, Attempts on her Life by Martin Crimp and 4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane, in a bid to understand how their texts frustrate representation and the structuring of time, and concludes by considering how the restrictions imposed upon the postdramatic performance differ from the interpretive freedom of text in representational, dramatic theatre. David Barnett is senior lecturer and Head of Drama at the University of Sussex. He has published monographs on Heiner Müller (1998) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (2005), the latter as Research Fellow of the Humboldt Foundation, Germany. He has also published articles on contemporary German, English-language, political, and postdramatic theatre.

How Do You Read a Sign that No One Has Ever Seen Before?: A Post-Semiotic Analysis of Chance-Driven Events

Spring 2008 103 Dean Wilcox isAssistant Dean for the UndergraduateAcademic Program at the North Carolina School of the Arts where he teaches The Aesthetics of Dissonance, Chaos Theory and the Arts, Postmodern Drama, and PerformanceArt. In addition to working periodically as a lighting designer, he has published articles and book reviews in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theatre Research International, and Modern Drama on topics such as the intersection of semiotics and phenomenology, Josef Svoboda’s multimedia design for Intolleranza, the convergence of chaos theory and performance, Karen Finley’s deconstructive technique, and ambient space in twentieth-century theatre. How Do You Read a Sign that No One Has Ever Seen Before? A Post-Semiotic Analysis of Chance-Driven Events Dean Wilcox We are used to, in the past, this idea that artists make defined finished things which the public then looks at. This is slightly different. This is like creating a seed and planting it . . . and it grows into whatever it grows into. —Brian Eno, 77 Million Paintings I was first introduced to semiotics while working toward an MFA in lighting design. My initial reaction was to dismiss it as needlessly complicated. I thought, “Yeah, I got it. Things mean things. Why do I need to learn a new language to talk about that?” But slowly the ideas, vocabulary, and insights afforded by semiotics began to unlock previously unseen ways of analyzing and discussing performances. Dissecting how a production signified, or at the very least, was put together, allowed me to understand better how I might approach the design process myself. Things still meant things, but now manipulating those elements and the context within which they were viewed became a much more complex and fertile procedure. As designer gave way to critic and scholar, I was drawn to performances that acknowledged the complexity of the semiotic process by toying with signification. The rich and varied work of people like RobertWilson, Meredith Monk, and Richard Foreman simply dripped with signs begging to be explored. Semiotics was a good first step in discussing this material but never quite seemed to capture everything that transpired in performance. The convergence of performance elements seemed to exceed the language of semiotics, indicating a need to move beyond semiotics for a more comprehensive method of analysis. I began to investigate other methodologies—deconstruction, phenomenology, chaos theory—which in one way or another draw on semiotics, but also offer specialized languages and ideas that aid in exploring elements surpassing the semiotic frame. My journey, as it turns out, is not all that unique. In the “post”-script to the 104 Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism second edition of his influential Semiotics of Theatre and Drama, Keir Elam discusses the pragmatic and methodologically conservative approach of British and American theatre: Semiotic performance analysis, being itself an ‘avant-garde’and methodologically anti-traditionalist endeavor, tended to look for its objects and for its ideal models of theatricality precisely in the avant-garde, anti-traditionalist forms of theatre, in the hope of bringing about a “natural” alliance or symbiosis between theory and practice.1 What is it about the avant-garde that is both attractive to critics using semiotics and brings about the development of postsemiotics? While the entirety of this question is beyond the scope of this paper, I propose to focus on a few key avant-garde elements—chance and indeterminacy. The term “post” is a very popular modifier when added to structuralism, modernism, semiotics, and “dramatic,” suggesting something beyond, an evolutionary trope that indicates time and movement, but also incorporates the very idea it exceeds. As Hans-Thies Lehmann articulates in Postdramatic Theatre, a genre that develops in conjunction with the postsemiotic, “the prefix ‘post’indicates that a culture or artistic practice has stepped out of the previously unquestioned horizon of modernity but still exists with some kind of reference to it.”2 The concept of “post” indicates a palimpsest in which past and present co-exist.As long as someone somewhere is performing an un-ironic version of The Crucible, the postdramatic will share the stage with the dramatic. As long as...

Postdramatic Theatre (review)

Postdramatic Theatre (review)

Hanswurst and Herr Ich: Subjection and Abjection in Enlightenment Censorship of the Comic Figure

The well-known ‘banishment’ of the popular comic figure Hanswurst from the German stage by Gottsched and the Neuber acting troupe in the early eighteenth century is usually read as part of the historical movement from improvised folk theatre to bourgeois literary theatre. In this article Karen Jürs-Munby goes beyond that received wisdom to discuss what kind of acting, what kind of body, and what kind of relationship between stage and audience were censored by banishing Hanswurst. Considering this censorship as part of the larger historical relationship between discourses on acting and the emergence of a modern self in the Enlightenment, she argues that the osmotic body and stage that Hanswurst stood for prevented the aesthetic mirroring relationship sought by eighteenth-century stage reformers in an increasing need for bourgeois self-representation. The Hanswurst banishment can be theorized with reference to Julia Kristeva as an abjection of grotesque acting – a form of acting whose political power to question the autonomous bourgeois subject was to be rediscovered by practitioners in the twentieth century. Karen Jürs-Munby is a lecturer in Theatre Studies at Lancaster University; she has published articles on theories and discourses of acting in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries and recently translated Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatic Theatre.

Die Rekonstruktion der Dekonstruktion in Dea Lohers Dramen, oder: Die Rückkehr des politischen Dramas

Pitting Lohers aesthetics of theatre against Hans-Thies Lehmann's view of the postdramatic, this essay examines the various ways in which Loher overcomes the postdramatic theatre. Drawing on a vast range of examples from her work, the essay clarifies Loher's position in regard to mimesis. Whilst postmodernism features as a theme in Loher's œuvre, the form of her plays denies the idea of the radicalized V-effect that is typical of postmodern performances. As far as the dramatic form is concerned, Loher's plays do not adhere to a postmodern-postdramatic style. By contrast, Loher harks back to the tradition of the political theatre of Sartre and Brecht. This does not mean, however, that she merely replicates their aesthetics. Mimesis means that she employs both Brecht's not-but and Sartre's engaged theatre, thus distancing herself from the idea of radicalized Brechtian (i.e., postmodern) theatre. In this sense, her theater is derived from modernist ideas, namely the focus on the individual in an increasingly mechanized environment; an individual who—in contrast to the two-dimensional figures of the post-dramatic—is still open to communication with others through language, thus being able to negotiate his/her position. Loher does not teach her audience what to think; yet she offers a dramatic framework for the struggle of the individual. (BH; in German)

Science and theatre in open dialogue: Biblioetica, Le Cas de Sophie K. and the postdramatic science play

Judging by the many new ventures into the genre of the 'science play' over the last few years, the surge of interest in science on stage continues unchecked. The most interesting aspect of this trend, however, is not quantity but variety, and the ways in which directors in particular are beginning to challenge the playwright-driven and biographically inflected engagements that have so far dominated science on stage. In this article we discuss two recent productions from two prominent directors: Luca Ronconi's Biblioetica, staged in Turin in February–March 2006, and Jean-François Peyret's Le Cas de Sophie K., given in Paris in April–May. The gulf between these productions and more theatrically conventional plays like Copenhagen and Arcadia is wide, and this new work represents a significant step for science plays in the direction of 'postdramatic theatre', a term used by Hans-Thies Lehmann in his groundbreaking work on the subject. We argue that for many reasons these productions suggest that the interaction of science and the stage lends itself by its very nature to the postdramatic condition.

Reading and Performing Uncertainty: Michael Frayn's Copenhagen and the Postdramatic Theatre

Michael Frayn's play about quantum mechanics, memory and history, Copenhagen, has taken a lot of criticism for ‘misrepresenting’ its historical characters, primarily Werner Heisenberg. This essay analyses the dramaturgy of the play and argues for a postdramatic reading in which questions of representation are dissolved by formal strategies that ally themselves with the thematics of the work. The text is viewed as a hybrid, somewhere between the dramatic and the postdramatic, set, as it is, in a fictional afterlife where conventional human categories no longer function. The postdramatic theatre, in refusing to interpret text, becomes a viable mode for performance in that the indeterminacy of meaning on stage equates with the uncertainty principle that lies at the scientific and moral heart of Copenhagen.

Editorial

It is my pleasure to present the first number of Theatre Research International in 2005. This issue is the second of several under my editorship that will have a focus section. The first on ‘postdramatic theatre’ (29.1) has occasioned a great deal of interest (at least judging by the number of downloads from the journal's website) and this positive response suggests that the policy of publishing focus issues meets a genuine need. Focus issues will seek to explore a particular topic from a number of different perspectives. In keeping with the journal's international readership this invariably translates into articles from scholars working in different countries and scholarly traditions. A focus issue does not usually mean, however, that an entire issue will be given over to the topic. As the present number on the ‘director in the theatre’ indicates, three to four articles are usually sufficient to define (but certainly not exhaust) a topic. This means that some space in the journal will be reserved for articles submitted and reviewed in the normal fashion.

Editorial

The first issue of the journal in 2004, and the first under my editorship, is devoted to a special focus on ‘Postdramatic Theatre’. While this term may not be familiar to many readers, the phenomenon it embraces most certainly is. Coined by the German theatre studies scholar, Hans-Thies Lehmann in his book Postdramatisches Theater,1 the concept refers to tendencies and experiments defining theatre outside the paradigm of the dramatic text. Also known, somewhat imprecisely, as postmodern theatre, it questions fundamentally the very tenets of the dramatic theatre. Postdramatic performances usually eschew clear coordinates of narrative and character and require therefore considerable effort on the part of the spectator. For this reason, it has been termed, in the words of New York theatre critic Elinor Fuchs, ‘spectator's response theatre: we write our own script out of the “pieces of culture” offered’.2 Like Lehmann, Fuchs tries to find an over-arching frame within which to make sense of the manifold experiments in theatre and performance that were taking place in the 1980s. Whereas Lehmann sees postdramatic theatre primarily as a question of form and history which affect the configuration of time, space and mediality of theatre, Fuchs regards the same developments as a response to the massive critique of Western models of subjectivity that we associate with terms such as poststructuralism and deconstruction.

Beyond Drama: Writing for Postdramatic Theatre

The article begins with a short description of the current situation in Polish theatre where the traditional understanding of a dramatic text has made the reception of formally innovative European playwriting difficult. On the basis of recent German plays by Rainald Goetz, Dea Loher and Roland Schimmelpfennig, which have been translated into Polish and published but have not yet received significant productions, the article tries to answer two important questions. Firstly, how the postdramatic texts written for avant-garde, feminist and postcolonial theatre during last three decades have influenced plays written for and put on the mainstream stages in the 1990s. Secondly, in what ways the new texts, which in many respects go far beyond the borders of traditional drama, have changed the existing definitions of theatrical mimesis and theories of drama

Look who's Looking!: Perspective and the Paradox of Postdramatic Subjectivity

In his Postdramatisches Theater Lehmann compares the effect of the dramatic theatre to that of perspective in painting. Both are structured according to an aesthetic logic that can be characterized as teleological. On the contemporary post-dramatic stage, this logic is deconstructed or rejected. In my text, I take a closer look at this comparison of drama and perspective in Lehmann's text. I confront Lehmann's account of the postdramatic theatre with the work of Dutch theatre director Gerardjan Rijnders. Rijndesr's work draws attention to the inevitably of the subjectivity involved in every vision of the world, even when this world seems to be shown ‘as it is’ in itself. As I will argue, it is precisely the relationship between what is seen and the subjective point of view from where it is seen that is obscured in Lehmann's account of the similarities between drama and perspective.

Irish Tradition or Postdramatic Innovation? Storytelling in Contemporary Irish Plays

Storytelling in Irish drama has traditionally been perceived as evidence for a continuity between Irish theatre and a pre-modern, distinctly Irish oral culture. Hans-Thies Lehmann’s theory of Postdramatic Theatre, however, allows one to describe the exhibition of the act of narration in contemporary Irish plays as a break with both Epic Theatre and the drama of the Irish Literary Revival. In contrast with the alienation effects of Epic Theatre, contemporary Irish theatre texts create intense relation-ships between narrator and story on the one hand and between narrator and audience on the other. Yet the acts of narration also differ from those in the drama of the Irish Literary Revival in that oral storytelling takes the form of intimate confessions and focusses not on collective but individual memory. At the same time, the Irish example casts a critical light on some of Lehmann’s concepts, particularly the avantgarde character of the so-called ‘post-epic’ narration and its inherent criticism of the mass media.

Bruderkrieg in Deutschland – zu Rolf Hochhuths Stück Wessis in Weimar

Rolf Hochhuth's Wessis in Weimar is one of the surprisingly few accounts of German reunification on stage. First performed in 1993, the play depicts how life in the former GDR changed under the influence of newly established capitalist rule. The article discusses the value of Hochhuth's political agenda as well as the aesthetic shortcomings and historical misappropriations of the play. In addition, it introduces the first production of Wessis in Weimar, staged at the Berlin Ensemble, which was heatedly debated by critics and theatre-goers alike. Casting aside the scenic realism desired by Hochhuth, the producer Einar Schleef deconstructed the narrative structure of the play, thereby radically altering its political potential. His version of Hochhuth's text has since become a classic example of so-called postdramatic theatre.

Making Sense of Sensation: Enlightenment, Embodiment, and the End(s) of Modern Drama

The end of the twentieth century may have postponed millennial fever, but it gives us a good opportunity to revisit prophecies for the end of drama, which, like those for the end of humanism or the end of modernity, have yet to be completely dispatched by any post-al delivery. We may be witnessing a post-dramatic theatre, as Hans-Thies Lehmann argues in a recent magisterial study entitled Postdramatisches Theater, but, as he concedes, the post-dramatic, like the postmodern and the post-structuralist, performs a double act, hedging its bets, as it were, in an ongoing engagement with the dramatic, the modern, the structure and form of the aesthetic object it deconstructs (II). I am not going to imitate the Hegelian gesture of Aufhebung (summary, but also supersession) borrowed by Lehmann, a gesture that is modern as well as magisterial in its claim to master its subject, but, rather, will press a little on the genealogy as well as the current and future implications of this double-talk. Before we declare drama dead and modernity passe, we ought to conduct a genealogical investigation of "drama," to track its modernity. and perhaps its obsolescence. If, as Raymond Williams suggested more than twenty years ago, "modern drama" has migrated to "fiction" and "non-fiction" television, is performance still dramatic? Or is the order of the day a "post-dramatic theatre" or a polymorphously metaphorizing performance, in which both "modern" and "drama" can expect only supernumerary appearances in antiquarian costume?