This week we examined Postdramatic theatre and its components. A notion suggested by German Hans-Thies Lehmann as a ‘comprehensive and accessible theory articulating the relationship between drama and the ‘no longer dramatic’ forms of theatre that have emerged since the 1970s’ (2006, p. 1). What is important to establish straight away is that the “post” in Postdramatic should not be read as “after”, but rather “beyond”, as the theory continues to entertain the relationship with drama as it moves in a new direction. A direction away from the binary categorisation of theatre work being produced as either strict “new writing” or something seen as contemporary experimental performance. The Postdramatic is not so rigid. The Postdramatic is essentially a study of the numerous, and to some extent infinite, ways in which the relationship between theatre and drama can be reconfigured.
So for example, the dramatic tradition in theatre requires a performance to meet certain motifs through its evening’s duration so that the audience can recognise the medium of theatre. These motifs or logos, among others, would consist of moments of:
- Action & Plot – A clear narrative.
- Catharsis – The brining about of a collective & reciprocal feeling or emotion from the audience, in response to what is shown on stage.
- The primacy of the text – The staging consists of what has been constituted by an author.
- The constructive of a fictive cosmos – The ability for the audience to enter the world of the play.
‘The Postdramatic does not reject these events; it converses with them to find what good drama is. Lehmann is not interested in ‘the stage as a vehicle for the dramatic text’ (Bolton, 2014) he is more interested in re-communicating the theatrical conditions of perception. It ceases to become about copying what is on stage, and about creating a valid piece of independent art, through reassessing the aesthetics, the semiotics, the form and the structure of the text. Lehmann wished to deflect the idea of the text assuming the role of master of theatre.
It is this dissolution of the logocentric hierarchy, the removal of text as the most important building-block of theatre, which in my eyes forms the basis of the Postdramatic manifesto.
Tim Crouch, one theatre maker who seemed to be creating Postdramatic theatre may perhaps (in Lehmann’s terms) actually have created the opposite. While what Crouch does on stage is indeed relative to the post dramatic, he does realign theatrical conventions, but he fails to distance himself from the logocentric hierarchy. Text plays a dominant role in his performances. In An Oak Tree (2005) he has a member of the audience join him on stage with a script. In Commonwealth (2012) the entire performance sees crouch stood in front of a music stand reading from a script. He partners his text with his own unique stance of staging theatre to enhance and amplify the dramatic journey for the audience to reach a shared experience at the conclusion, a catharsis.
Herein is where the argument lies: some may consider Tim Crouch a Postdramatic artist because of the ways he is able to reinvent his audiences’ experience, but the form of his performance very much meets the logos of dramatic convention.
Works Cited
Bolton, Jacqueline (2014) ‘Week Five: The Postdramatic’ [Lecture] Current Issues in Drama, Theatre and Performance. University of Lincoln. 22nd October.
Lehmann, Hans-Thies (2006) Postdramatic Theatre, Translated from German by K. Jürs-Munby, London: Routledge.