Summary of the Postdramatic Theatre
I thought someone might find my summary of the traits of Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatische theater useful. Here we go:
| text is merely a component | fragmentary and partial | abandons itself to chance/risk |
| trusts individual impulses | microstructures of text | theatre of states and scenically dynamic formations |
| makes ceremonial aspect of theatre important for its own sake | replacement of action with ceremony | theatre of the voice (reverberation of the past) |
| drama, emptiness, in-betweenness are protagonists | dialogue takes place between sound and space | phenomenon over narrative |
| a time of the gaze | human beings become gestic sculptures | post-anthropocentric |
| open and fragmenting perception | heterogenous, individual imaginations | resembles structures of dreams |
| non-hierarchical elements | more presence than representation | more shared than communicated experience |
| more process than product | more manifestation than signification | more energetic impulse than information |
| simultaneity | aims at synaesthesia | density of signs—or not (thereby activating imagination) |
| plethora, overabundance, hypernaturalism—theatre of props | musicalization = sound is a new language in the theatre? | visual dramaturgy through scenography |
| coldness of characters | shocking physicality | theatre of perceptibility (we start seeing seeing) |
| irruption of the real—not knowing whether something is real or not | no aesthetic distance (we are part of a common situation) | an event (feast, debate, public action, political manifestation) |
| social situation for all participants: what you experience depends on all | overlap between theatre and performance art | a theatre of the present, not intermediary but continuous point of presentness |
| body’s presence over logos | theatre becomes chora-graphy | rupture of meaning between being and meaning |
| polyglossia | reminders of reading/speaking a text = unnatural | not an I that speaks but an it through a complex machinized composition/agencement |