Postdramatic Theatre

Postdramatic Theatre Hans-Thies Lehmann’s groundbreaking study of the new theatre forms that have developed since the late 1960s has become a key reference point in international discussions of contemporary theatre. Postdramatic Theatre refers to theatre after drama. Despite their diversity, the new forms and aesthetics that have evolved have one essential quality in common: they no longer focus on the dramatic text. Lehmann offers a historical survey combined with a unique theoretical approach, illustrated by a wealth of practical examples, to guide the reader through this new theatre landscape. He considers these developments in rela- tion to dramatic theory and theatre history, and as an inventive response to the emergence of new technologies and a historical shift from a text-based culture to a new media age of image and sound. Engaging with theoreticians of drama and theatre from Aristotle, Hegel, Szondi and Brecht to Barthes, Lyotard and Schechner, the book analyses the work of recent experimental theatre practitioners such as Robert Wilson, Tadeusz Kantor, Heiner Müller, The Wooster Group, Needcompany and Societas Raffaello Sanzio. This excellent translation is newly adapted for the Anglophone reader, including an introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby which provides useful theoretical and artistic contexts for the book. Hans-Thies Lehmann is Professor of Theatre Studies at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His numerous publications include Theater und Mythos (1991) on the constitution of the subject in ancient Greek tragedy, Writing the Political (2002) and, with Patrick Primavesi, Heiner Müller Handbuch (2004). Karen Jürs-Munby is Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Huddersfield. Postdramatic Theatre Hans-Thies Lehmann Translated and with an Introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby For Eleni Varopoulou First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group German edition © Verlag der Autoren, D-Frankfurt am Main 1999; English edition © Routledge 2006 The publication of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Lehmann, Hans-Thies. [Postdramatisches Theater. English] Postdramatic theatre / Hans-Thies Lehmann; translated and with an introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Theater—Germany—History—20th century. 2. Experimental theater—Germany—History—20th century. 3. German drama— 20th century—History and criticism. I. Title. PN2654.L35 2006 792.02'23'09430904—dc22 ISBN10: 0–415–26812–5 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–26813–3 (pbk) ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–26812–7 (hbk) ISBN13: 9–78–0–415–26813–4 (pbk) Contents Preface to the English edition ix Introduction 1 What’s in the ‘post’? 1 (Post)dramatic theory ‘post’ Szondi and Hegel 2 The turn to performance 4 Post-1960s institutional context, memory, history and palimpsest 7 Theatre and world in the age of media: are we post-postdrama? 9 Postmodern and postdramatic theory 13 Note on the translation and acknowledgement 15 Prologue 16 The stakes 16 Intentions 18 Trade secrets of dramatic theatre 21 Caesura of the media society 22 Names 23 Paradigm 24 Postmodern and postdramatic 25 Choice of term 26 Tradition and the postdramatic talent 27 Drama 29 Drama and theatre 29 ‘Epicization’ – Peter Szondi, Roland Barthes 29 The estrangement of theatre and drama 30 ‘Dramatic discourse’ 31 vi Contents Theatre after Brecht 32 Suspended suspense 33 ‘What a drama!’ 35 ‘Formalist theatre’ and imitation 36 Mimesis of action 36 ‘Energetic theatre’ 37 Drama and dialectic 39 Drama, history, meaning 39 Aristotle: the ideal of surveyability (synopton) 40 Hegel 1: the exclusion of the real 42 Hegel 2: the performance 44 Prehistories 46 Towards a prehistory of postdramatic theatre 46 Theatre and text 46 The twentieth century 48 First stage: ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ drama 48 Second stage: crisis of drama, theatre goes its own way(s) 49 Autonomization, retheatricalization 50 Third stage: ‘neo-avant-garde’ 52 A short look back at the historical avant-gardes 57 Lyrical drama, Symbolism 57 Stasis, ghosts 58 Stage poetry 59 Acts, actions 61 Speed, numbers 61 Landscape Play 62 ‘Pure form’ 64 Expressionism 65 Surrealism 66 Panorama of postdramatic theatre 68 Beyond dramatic action: ceremony, voices in space, landscape 68 Kantor or the ceremony 71 Grüber or the reverberation of the voice in space 74 Wilson or the landscape 77 Postdramatic theatrical signs 82 Retreat of synthesis 82 Dream images 83 Contents vii Synaesthesia 84 Performance text 85 1 Parataxis/non-hierarchy 86 2 Simultaneity 87 3 Play with the density of signs 89 4 Plethora 90 5 Musicalization 91 6 Scenography, visual dramaturgy 93 7 Warmth and coldness 95 8 Physicality 95 9 ‘Concrete theatre’ 98 10 Irruption of the real 99 11 Event/situation 104 Examples 107 1 An evening with Jan and his friends 107 2 Narrations 109 3 Scenic poem 110 4 Between the arts 111 5 Scenic essay 112 6 ‘Cinematographic theatre’ 114 7 Hypernaturalism 115 8 Cool Fun 118 9 Theatre of ‘shared’ space 122 10 Theatre solos, monologies 125 11 Choral theatre/theatre of the chorus 129 12 Theatre of heterogeneity 132 Performance 134 Theatre and performance 134 A ﬁeld in between 134 The positing (Setzung) of performance 135 Self-transformation 137 Aggression, responsibility 139 The present of performance 141 Aspects: text – space – time – body – media 145 Text 145 Chora-graphy, the body-text 145 Textscape, theatre of voices 148 viii Contents Space 150 Dramatic and postdramatic space 150 Time 153 Postdramatic aesthetics of time 153 The unity of time 158 Body 162 Postdramatic images of the body 162 Pain, catharsis 165 Media 167 Media in postdramatic theatre 167 Electronic images as a relief 170 ‘Representability’, fate 171 Epilogue 175 The political 175 Intercultural theatre 176 Representation, measure and transgression 177 Afformance art? 179 Drama and society 180 Theatre and the ‘Society of the Spectacle’ 183 Politics of perception, aesthetics of responsibility 184 Aesthetics of risk 186 Notes 188 Bibliography 200 Index 208 Preface to the English edition In presenting this study to the Anglophone readership (with a certain delay due to adverse circumstances), I would like to express my gratitude to Karen Jürs- Munby who carried out the translation not only in an impressively short time but with admirable precision and competence. In addition, she contributed many a valuable reference. Her introduction will facilitate the access for the interested Anglophone readership and offer the possibility to relate the analyses and theses of the book to other theatre works especially in Britain and the USA. Wherever possible I have placed importance on discussing only perfor- mances I have been able to see myself. Consequently, the occasional imbalance has been unavoidable due to my personal reception or the accidental nature of circumstances. Otherwise, there would have been more of an emphasis, for example, on British fringe theatre and performance. The American avant-garde has left deep marks on international theatre and thus it comes as no surprise that a number of American artists and companies are acknowledged and discussed in the present study (Wilson, Foreman, Schechner, Jesurun, The Living Theatre and The Wooster Group to name but a few). The case is objectively somewhat different with respect to British theatre and here the introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby will add to the picture. It should be mentioned that a (roughly speaking) neo-realist wave in the new German theatre of the 1990s has frequently been considered as having been inspired by the British ‘movement’ of ‘in-yer-face’ theatre. Indeed the ‘attack’ on the spectator in such plays is a trait that would have to be theorized as a tension between dramatic and postdramatic theatre; and 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane would almost have to be invented as one of the great texts in analogy to postdramatic theatre if it did not already exist. But as is explained in the book, it is not the text but the theatrical means that are the focus of this study. The investigation is aimed at theatre, in as much as it problematizes the constitution of a dramatic fiction and world in general and with it also an immediate reference to social reality. The book intends to give prominence to an aesthetic logic within the develop- ment of theatre towards the postdramatic. The analyses do not aim at a compre- hensive review of the discussed productions and artists but are rather designed for the reader to transfer and translate mutatis mutandis what is developed here to x Preface to the English edition other work in the theatre. The international resonance of the book makes me hopeful that this will also be the case for Anglophone theoreticians, students and practitioners of theatre. Hans-Thies Lehmann Frankfurt am Main, January 2005 Introduction Karen Jürs-Munby What’s in the ‘post’? Due to the delayed English translation of this book (published in German in 1999 and already translated into several other languages1), we are faced with the curious situation that, ahead of its publication in English, Postdramatic Theatre has already become a key reference point in international discussions of contemporary theatre.

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