Post-dramatic theater

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Austrian post-dramatic theater and radio play author Elfriede Jelinek , 2004
Heiner Goebbels , director, radio play author, musician, composer and since 1999 professor for applied theater studies at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen
The theater musician TD Finck von Finckenstein gives a signal to the actors in the piece 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane at Schauspiel Dortmund, 2014 - The music is influenced by body sensors.
Feridun Zaimoglu , playwright, prose writer, visual artist and co-founder of Kanak Attak , 2012

The post-dramatic theater is a diagnosed since the 1980s performance close form of theater, which extends from the traditional straight theater separates and reacts to the world of electronic media by opening other artistic, performing and media genres and techniques. The term was significantly coined by the theater scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann in 1999 in his book of the same name, which has been translated into numerous languages. Post- dramatic theater allows postmodern philosophical (especially post-structuralist ) discourses to flow in and continues them, questions authorship and authenticity , separates communication and subject and reflects itself. Post-dramatic theater relates to social events, negotiates social issues - is in this regard often very topical - and reflects social science theses and theories. There are tendencies towards the aesthetics of the documentary. In post-dramatic theater, everyday and specialist discourses as well as discourse-theoretical reflections on theater come together.

Characteristics and aesthetics

The programmatic departure from the tradition of spoken theater, from mimetic-fictional representational theater, from text as an important part of the theatrical process, from drama, from action, from imitation, is characteristic of post-dramatic theater. Postmodern and especially poststructuralist discourses and philosophies play an essential role. The theater reflects itself and a. with the question of representation: who represents whom in the theater? Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistic findings, conveyed through post-structuralist philosophies , that the linguistic sign (e.g. word) is not uniform with what is designated (that which the word names), also led to linguistic skepticism in the theater . According to Erika Fischer-Lichte, meanings could “be equated with states of consciousness, but not with linguistic meanings.” Sensual impressions and their meanings could not be “simply expressed linguistically”.

Post-dramatic theater has “largely broken away from the use of dramatic literature as a prescription for a staging event”. The characters on the stage do not follow any “psychological character guidance”, the focus is no longer on the speaking and acting of characters. The drama has "moved into the sign systems that generate role characters, space, time and the continuum of action," and it deconstructs the elements that make it up.

Christine Bähr sees a productive intertwining of post-dramatic aesthetics and socio-political reflection in post-dramatic theater, especially in René Pollesch . The explicit reference to the social demands a great topicality, a prompt appearance of theater texts on the stage. Elfriede Jelinek's play “Kontrakte des Kaufmanns” was planned for “an immediate world premiere”, which took place in 2009 “in time for the crisis”. Jelinek says: "You really have to have a rapid theater reaction force that can always respond quickly to such events."

An important aspect is questioning and critically reflecting on authorship. Authors work on their texts collectively and / or then become performers themselves. For this reason, they do not give up their pieces for replay ( René Pollesch , Christoph Schlingensief , Falk Richter , Fritz Kater / Armin Petras ). The Rimini Protokoll theater group pursues the concept of open authorship . a. in that non-professional actors act as so-called “theatrical ready-made” in the pieces.

When post-dramatic theater there are no roles in the sense of the dramatic theater, the work of the actor's more in a performative direction. This practice corresponds to a post-structuralist, subject-critical position that separates communication from its imagined subjects. This is used in z. B. by choirs (with Pollesch and Jelinek) or the change of roles among the actors. With Feridun Zaimoglu , in this sense, the characters are only "containers for ideas, or rather for words, and stagger through a roughly set action as a barrel of language."

The influence of media (consumption) and pop culture is what sets the style of post-dramatic theater. Heiner Goebbels adapts z. B. a "Dramaturgy of Sampling", his work contains traces of writing by other authors. Cinematographers and sound assistants were often involved in performances by René Pollesch, who transferred the events behind the stage onto a large screen. One example is the play "The Perfect Day" from the "Ruhr Trilogy", in which the very persistent sound engineer who picks up the sound of the actor Fabian Hinrichs with a microphone hook is not only visible in the play itself, but also appears in the play occurs.

Post-drama arose under a certain influence of theater studies. Theater studies brought itself close to art, staged itself artistically. Instead of letting artists have their say or entering into dialogue with them, she translated aesthetic points of view.

A certain interdisciplinarity is essential in post-dramatic theater (analogous to Adorno's “Fraying of the Arts”). There are mixed forms with other genres such as opera, music (theater), visual arts, performance, dance, choreographic theater ( William Forsythe , Sasha Waltz ), performative installation ( Heiner Goebbels , “Stifter's things”), and interactive documentary installation ( Stefan Kaegi , “Log of a documentary theater project before its premiere”), New Music and New Radio Play.

Judith Malina and other actors from the Living Theater, 1983

term

As early as 1985, Helga Finter noticed that contemporary theater had freed itself from the dominance of text. Shortly afterwards (1987) Andrzej Wirth coined the term “post-dramatic” . In 1996 Gerda Poschmann coined the term “post-dramatic theater art” in her dramaturgical analysis of contemporary theater texts when she wrote about plays by Heiner Müller and Peter Handke . In 1999, Hans-Thies Lehmann compiled an overview of trends in contemporary theater. Lehmann relates the term post-dramatic to a specific type of theater that can refer to modern productions that have no drama text as a basis, but also modern productions of drama texts. The word post-dramatic signals, as he says, "[...] the continuing connection and exchange between theater and text". The drama text is no longer the basis, central object and goal of the staging, it becomes one of several equal components as a result of the dehierarchization, i.e. the equalization of all theatrical means in the creation of post-dramatic theater. In addition to the other theatrical means, the text becomes a further "material" for the scenic design. For Lehman, postdramatic does not refer to a genre of theater, but to a certain type of theater: When looking at modern theater as a whole, it is "methodologically decisive" even when dramas are staged that when certain techniques are used, "the analytical view [...] >> changes over << and [...] recognizes the new in a no longer dramatic language of theater. " "No longer dramatic" means in this case not dependent on tension or binding form that arises from mutually opposing moral positions which have been a cornerstone of theater at least since ancient times. So the plot, the "drama" is no longer the "ruler" over the staging. For him the term "post-dramatic" is only descriptive and not judgmental. For Patrick Primavesi the term describes "various new performance-related forms of theater that follow different principles than that of the production of the work."

Post-dramatic theater with Andrzej Wirth

The term post-dramatic in relation to theater was coined by the Polish theater scholar Andrzej Wirth in 1987 to describe current forms of theater such as sound collage, spoken opera and dance theater.

For Wirth, theater reacts with post-dramatic forms to a global medialization of the everyday world. He sees the origin in Bertolt Brecht's Radiotheorie (1930), even if he does not attribute his dramatic work to post-dramatic theater. By raising this question, he outlines the self-reflective demands of post-dramatic theater: “Can the audience's consumer attitudes diagnosed by Brecht be therapeutically overcome in the theater?” The subcultural street theater he described as “poor theater” (Barba, Mnouchkine, Brook, Kantor) overcomes the separation of audience and actors by "depriving the comfort of a conventional audience position" in the environment - the audience is involved in the acting process. The "rich theater" (Wilson, Foreman), which takes place in financially and, above all, technically well-equipped venues, raises traditional audience expectations through the "de-literarization of theater production", through massive use of technology and light or adaptation to media reception habits ( television ) and radical deconstruction of the classic theater texts - the audience would be awakened from their “educational dream”. The playwrights disappeared “behind the play that could no longer or would no longer be a drama”.

Post-dramatic theater distinguishes itself from spoken theater by including previously unused types of text: interrogation protocols, correspondence, memoirs, other non-dramatic text forms, as well as means of film dramaturgy, photography, film, camera, sound recordings, and film voice, reading voice, television voice as theatrical means. It establishes the multimedia discourse in theater. According to Wirth, other features include a high level of topicality and the inclusion of trivial literature, pop and television formats, which creates a "post-television drama". By building on the reception habits of television, the distance between the audience and the action on the stage would be reduced.

Postmodern discourses and philosophies arise e.g. B. in the suspension of theater roles as a critique of "the uncritical belief in the stability of the subject ". This means that communication is treated separately from the subject.

Furthermore, Wirth states that post-dramatic theater has “crossed borders” in the direction of other genres such as opera with “complex large-scale opera productions ” ( Hans Neuenfels , Ruth Berghaus ) and dance and music theater (with Pina Bausch , Reinhild Hoffmann , Christoph Marthaler , Meredith Monk , Robert Wilson ).

Christoph Schlingensief starts his "Germany Search 99" at the Volksbühne in Berlin with Sachiko Hara, Christoph Schlingensief, Bernhard Schütz, Irm Herrmann, Klaus Beyer, Kerstin Grassmann, 1999.

Post-dramatic theater with Hans-Thies Lehmann

The theater scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann underpinned the term post-dramatic theater in 1999 , expanded it theoretically and included trends and stylistic devices in theater since the late 1960s.

Hans-Thies Lehmann describes a theater as post-dramatic that no longer primarily adheres to the primacy of the drama , i.e. the literary drama text. Instead, this form of representation develops an aesthetic that creates a possibility in the performance situation to place the text of the drama in a special relationship to the material events on the stage in order to achieve alternative perceptions in the audience.

Post-dramatic theater is less aimed at staging a drama as faithfully as possible to the text, but rather to achieve a corresponding effect on the audience through spatial, visual and phonetic signs . However, it must not be confused with Brecht's concept ( epic theater ): Brecht sticks to the fable and prefers - despite all alienations - a dramatic concept of theater. Post-dramatic theater no longer knows illusionism . It focuses on centralizing the performance and emphasizing the communication process between actor and audience . It is also about a process of self-creation and self-preservation ( autopoiesis ) in the respective performance situation.

Such a theater means works in which the literary text, i.e. the actual drama, is no longer the central object in the performance process, but other characters emerge. Theater presents its phenomenological character in order to get into a special relationship to the text. The complex phenomenon of post-dramatic theater can therefore only be defined uniformly to a limited extent. Lehmann answered the question of whether there were already beginnings of post-drama in the historical avant-garde by stating that the representatives of the anti-bourgeois avant-garde also kept an eye on drama as a central reference.

Lehmann's approach is useful when it comes to re-asking current questions about theater and its possibilities, for example the question of the relationship between theater and politics or its political impact. Lehmann advocates looking for the political not in the content of a play, but in the performance process, which should be interrupted and made aware of its regularity.

Volksbühne Berlin, 2013

Post-dramatic theater since the 2000s and René Pollesch

In the 2000s, tendencies appeared on European theater stages that relate to both the textuality and the performativity of theater: While productions in the 1990s focused on materiality and modes of production, since the years after 2000 new developments have emerged Orientation towards the literary text under post-dramatic paradigms. On the one hand we can speak of the post-dramatic theater of the 1990s and on the other hand of the contemporary post-dramatic theater.

René Pollesch , who has been staging at the Volksbühne in Berlin since 2001, has advanced the discourse on post-dramatic theater with his work. His fundamental theme is the "crisis that the alternative to alienation cannot and should not be self-evolvement, but is required". In particular, he deals with problems of representation in connection with sexism , racism and homophobia . So says z. B. Fabian Hinrichs in his piece “The Perfect Day”: “The dildo. The dildo. Dildo. Now you have only heard dildo again, and not that I mark man and woman as an invention. "

Diedrich Diederichsen states three core aspects of René Pollesch's work: the “theme of the lost role”, the “idea of ​​the third text that slips between the old forced role and the new forced authenticity” and the “question of production”: “Who speaks and what is brought to speak, what is the relationship between the subject position and positions distributed among a group of actors and empirical contemporary subjects? "

  • The “theme of the lost role”: Pollesch negotiates the question of authenticity, which he regards as forced in connection with neoliberal exploitation compulsions. There are no roles in his pieces, but “only voices, broken out of earlier classical subject positions”. They could "not escape the curse of authenticity".
  • The “idea of ​​the third text, which slips between the old forced role and the new forced authenticity” deals with Pollesch's use and citation of “theoretical texts read in student and activist circles”. These texts experience practical application beyond their scientific use. They are read “in order to be able to solve or formulate one's own problems and questions of self-image”. B. have to do with the psychological distress caused by the overlap between self-realization and self-evaluation. With their application in Pollesch's plays, the theory gains a practical value if theoretical models are applied in everyday life. In reception, this reading is mostly ignored, and Pollesch's practice is misunderstood at this point as a “parody of a theory jargon”.
  • For Pollesch, the “question of production” and thus of representation is fundamentally important: “Who speaks and what is made to speak, what is the relationship between the subject positions and positions distributed among a group of actors and empirical contemporary subjects?” imagined figures, but do not appear under their names, as is common in performance art. Their actions are related to that of the pop music performers: it is clear that they do not appear with their everyday self-identity, but their presence is not covered by the term “acting”. The performing collective is not a collective of people or individual fates, but of voices that do not necessarily belong to different people. But they can also belong to an empirical person. In this context, Diederichsen speaks of the “collapse of coherent self-models” and the “relativization of the model of a sovereign subject” in Pollesch's texts. The performers relate to their own life - not as an expressive representation of a specific person, but in approval or rejection of the text. The actresses need to understand and find plausible if the text relates to their work.
Roland Schimmelpfennig at the awarding of the Nestroy Theater Prize , 2009

Criticism of post-dramatic theater or its further development with dramatic forms

The post-dramatic theater was u. a. criticized. So the dramaturge and theater scholar Bernd Stegemann , who complained that the avant-garde techniques had no more connection to a political intention or attitude to the world, but only quote that effect were. Furthermore, he states problems with authenticity , which should be established with the use of those affected or amateur actors: It is a fetish , a value-adding moment. He believes that authenticity is “the successful game of forced lying” - using the example of an amateur saleswoman who is perceived “authentically” on stage and is doubly alienated.

Further advocated z. B. Birgit Haas “for a dramatic drama” after she, with reference to Ihab Hassan, attested the “flattening of postmodern culture by the cultural industry” and thus a certain “senselessness” or “arbitrariness” to post-dramatic theater. The separation of communication and subject also came under fire.

As time went on, more theater pieces were created beyond post-drama, and contemporary drama tended to reformulate a realistic aesthetic. Negotiated topics include a. Environment-related sexual power and violence relationships as well as psychological and physical suffering, which are caused by the means of exaggeration, stylization and poeticization e.g. B. by Marius von Mayenburg , Roland Schimmelpfennig , Sarah Kane or Jon Fosse were implemented. Nevertheless, this turnaround is not to be understood as a turning away from post-dramatic theater back to dramatic forms of theater, but rather in the sense of a "post-post-dramatic theater" without "drama", especially in Fosse's plays.

Stefan Tigges sees this change as “complex transformation processes in the smooth interplay between tradition and innovation”. These transformations are more important than "their aesthetically already established post-stage". "Partially dramatic strategies" are also called for.

The term post-dramatic theater is now also applied to productions “whose basis is based on dramatic, even classical theater texts.” According to Andreas Kotte, it is not about the post-dramatic theater replacing the dramatic, but about coexistence. Both forms exist side by side and the focus shifts every now and then.

In this context, the relationship between text and direction is important. Stefan Tigges asks: "Is it more the post-dramatic texts (...) that prompt the stages to adopt new performance practices, or is it the performance practice that demands post-dramatic writing from the playwright?" While in dramatic theater the text is first produced, and later the As a director, the practices in post-dramatic theater and thus the directions of influence are more complex.

actors

The post-dramatic theater and radio play author Kathrin Röggla , 2010

Authors (selection)

This list gathers authors with post-dramatic tendencies in their works as well as activities.

Judith Malina, Julian Beck and another actress from the Living Theater, 1983
Ariane Mnouchkine , 2007
Theater du Soleil , at the Sydney Festival, 2002
Miki Malör , 2007
Tim Staffel at the blue sofa

Directors (selection)

This list gathers directors with post-dramatic tendencies in their works as well as activities.

Radio play authors

Dance / choreography

Artist groups (selection)

This list gathers groups of artists with post-dramatic tendencies in their works as well as activities.

Theory / science

Post-dramatic theater and film

  • Miriam Dehne, Esther Gronenborn and Irene von Alberti: Stadt als Beute , 2005. The film is based on René Pollesch's play of the same name from 2001 and explains how he works as a director.
  • Laila Soliman is one of the three protagonists of the documentary "Laila, Hala and Karima" - a year in revolutionary Cairo by Ahmed Abdel Mohsen and Eduard Erne , a production of Swiss television in 2012.

literature

  • Sylvia Deinert, Sibylle Peters, Tine Krieg, Kai van Eikels: making the HOW speak. Post-dramatic play development in children's theater. Nold, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-935011-57-1 .
  • Nina Birkner, Andrea Geier, Urte Helduser (Ed.): Scope of the other. Gender and Alterity in Post-Dramatic Theater. transcript, Bielefeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-8376-1839-6 .
  • Erika Fischer-Lichte : Aesthetics of the Performative. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-518-12373-4 .
  • Marijke Hoogenboom, Alexander Karschnia: NA (AR) HET THEATER - after theater? Amsterdam 2007, ISBN 978-90-812455-1-7 .
  • Pia Janke : "Postdrama". Reflection and revision. Vienna: Praesens, 2015. ISBN 978-3-7069-0811-5
  • Hans-Thies Lehmann : The political writing. Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-934344-16-X .
  • Hans-Thies Lehmann: Post-dramatic theater. Publishing house of the authors, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-88661-209-0 .
  • Denis Leifeld: Bringing up performances. For performance analysis of performers in theater and art. transcript, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-8376-2805-0 .
  • Gerda Poschmann: The no longer dramatic theater text: Current stage plays and their dramaturgical analysis. Tübingen 1997
  • Patrick Primavesi, Olaf A. Schmitt (eds.): AufBrüche. Theater work between text and situation. Hans-Thies Lehmann on his 60th birthday. Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-934344-39-9 .
  • Bernd Stegemann: Lessons 1. Dramaturgy. Publisher Theater der Zeit. Berlin 2009
  • Gérard Thiériot: “Le théâtre postdramatique. Vers un chaos fécond? ”Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand 2013, ISBN 978-2-84516-589-2 .
  • Stefan Tigges (ed.): “Dramatic Transformations. On current writing and performance strategies in German-speaking theater. ”Transcript, Bielefeld 2008, ISBN 978-3-89942-512-3 .

swell

  1. ↑ a b c d e Andrzej Wirth: Reality in the theater as an aesthetic utopia or: Changes in theater in the media environment. In: Gießener Universitätsblätter 202, 1987, 83-91.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Martina Haase: Postdramatisches Theater (p.Th.). ( Memento from January 1, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Additional material on Bose u. a .: Introduction to Speech Science. Cape. F.1.1.
  3. ^ Christel Weiler: Post-dramatic theater. In: Erika Fischer-Lichte u. a. (Ed.): Metzler Lexikon Theatertheorie. Verlag JB Metzler Stuttgart, Weimar 2005, pp. 245–248.
  4. ↑ a b Helga Finter: The camera eye of postmodern theater. In: Chr. W. Thomsen (Ed.): Studies on the aesthetics of contemporary theater. Heidelberg 1985, pp. 46-70.
  5. ↑ a b c Christine Bähr: The flexible person on the stage: social drama and time diagnosis in the theater at the turn of the millennium. Bielefeld 2012.
  6. ↑ Elfriede Jelinek: Lux: Money or Life. P. 3.
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Stefan Tigges: Dramatic Transformations. For the introduction. In: Stefan Tigges (ed.): Dramatic Transformations. On current writing and performance strategies in German-speaking theater. Bielefeld 2008, p. 9.
  8. ↑ Feridun Zaimoglu: rampage is the order of the day. Conversation with jury members of the Berlin Stückemarkt. In: Theater der Zeit, 05/2007.
  9. ↑ a b Peter Laudenbach: The perfect day. In: Tip-Berlin. July 8, 2010.
  10. ↑ Gerda Poschmann: The no longer dramatic theatrical text: Current stage plays and their dramaturgical analysis. Tübingen 1997.
  11. ↑ Hans-Thies Lehmann: Postdramatisches Theater , p. 13. Verlag der Autor, Frankfurt am Main 1999.
  12. ↑ Hans-Thies Lehmann: Postdramatisches Theater , p. 158., Verlag der Autor, Frankfurt am Main 1999.
  13. ↑ Hans-Thies Lehmann: Postdramatisches Theater , p. 13. Verlag der Autor, Frankfurt am Main 1999.
  14. ^ Patrick Primavesi: Places and strategies of post-dramatic theater forms. In: H.-L. Arnold (Hrsg.): Text + criticism. Special volume: Theater for the 21st century. Munich 2004, pp. 8-25.
  15. ^ A b Christine Laudahn: Between post-drama and drama: Roland Schimmelpfennig's room designs. (= Forum Modernes Theater series of publications. Volume 40). Tübingen 2012, ISBN 978-3-8233-6730-7 .
  16. ↑ a b c d e Diedrich Diederichsen: Maggie's agency. René Pollesch's theater. In: Stefan Tigges (ed.): Dramatic Transformations. On current writing and performance strategies in German-speaking theater. Bielefeld 2008, pp. 101–110.
  17. ↑ Conversation with the theater director René Pollesch: "Love can only be achieved as a by-product", says Pollesch in an interview about his new Volksbühne production "Cruel to be kind". In: Tip. June 25, 2014.
  18. ↑ Jakob Hayner: "It is not true because it does not lie". Bernd Stegmann in conversation about postmodern theater and capitalism. In: Jungle World. No. 44, October 30, 2014.
  19. ^ Andreas Kotte: Theater Studies. An introduction. Cologne 2005
  20. ↑ Laila Soliman - The historian. ( Memento from August 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Film portrait by Pilu Lydlow, from: Kulturplatz from January 16, 2012, SRF Video.