Metadrama

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The term metadrama (Gr.μετά meta: between, behind, after) is used as a literary theoretical or literary scientific term for that form of drama in which the dramatic work on itself as a literary form or fiction or as a theatrical illusion ( metatheater ) and makes this self-referentiality or this auto -reflexivity the object of the presentation.

Despite a different reference to the dramatic text substrate , the term meta-theater is often used as a synonym, especially in literary representations or in practice of interpretation .

Although there is an affinity between the playful character of the metadrama and postmodern literature , the metadrama basically represents an ahistorical feature or element of the drama, which is worked with in comedies in particular , but also in the audio-visual media of film or television.

Historically, the metadrama in European literary tradition can be traced back to the mystery games or spiritual games in the Middle Ages .

According to the typology of Karin Vieweg-Marks (1989), six different types of metadrama can be distinguished in operationalizable form:

Thematic metadrama
The theater or theater milieu becomes the setting ; Actors play actors. The audience's awareness of the “theatrical nature” of what is presented on stage is increased without destroying the dramatic illusion.
Fictional metadrama
As a play within a play , the drama represents the performance of a work (or the rehearsals for it); In this way the fictionality of the play is increased and the perspective structure of the drama is fanned out.
Epic metadrama
The absoluteness of the drama is broken up by prologue , epilogue , chorus , asides , narrative sub- or paratext or a narrative function . In this way, the situation of the performance is made clear to the audience in an anti-illusionistic way.
Discursive metadrama
The foregrounding of the medium is mimetically generated through theatrical references in the replicas ; the spectrum ranges from dead metaphors to verbalizing the consciousness of the dramatic characters that they are in a theatrical space. This also breaks the illusionistic expectations of the audience.
Figurative metadrama
The viewers are made aware of the duality or duplication of actor and role through various (episodic) means of representation, for example through the means of “ falling out of the role ”. Another means is the faking of secondary roles, which is assigned to the figure conception .
Adaptive metadrama
The reference of the primary text to a (known) material or a concrete pretext or an explicit reference to a genre (e.g. crime thriller , farce) creates a self-reflective nature of the medium. The intertextual reference clarifies and focuses the literary and fictional nature of the dramatic work.

literature

  • Lionel Abel: Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form . Hill and Wang, New York 1969.
  • Janine Hauthal: Metadrama and theatricality: genre and media reflection in contemporary English theater texts . Scientific publishing house Trier 2009, ISBN 978-3-86821-211-2 .
  • Richard Hornby: Drama, Metadrama and Perception . Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg 1986.
  • Karin Vieweg-Marks: Metadrama and contemporary English drama . Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1989, ISBN 3-631-41563-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Reingard Nischik: Metadrama / Metatheater . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory . Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , pp. 171f.
  2. ↑ See Reingard Nischik: Metadrama / Metatheater . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory . Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 171.
  3. ↑ See Reingard Nischik: Metadrama / Metatheater . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory . Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 171. Cf. also in detail the exemplary work analyzes and literary theoretical foundations in Robert Weimann: Shakespeare and the tradition of the people's theater - sociology · dramaturgy · design . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1975, for example pp. 121-139.
  4. ↑ Cf. on the typology of metadrama outlined here, in addition to the explanations by K. Vieweg-Marks, as well as the summarizing presentation by Reingard Nischik: Metadrama / Metatheater . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory . Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 171.