Postdramatic Theatre and Form 9781350043169, 9781350043190, 9781350043183

Table of contents :
Cover
Half title
Series page
Title
Copyrights
Contents
Illustrations
Notes on Contribtors
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction: Form and Postdramatic Theatre Michael Shane Boyle, Matt Cornish and Brandon Woolf
2 Drama: The Szondi Connection Elinor Fuchs
Part One Formal Aspects
3 Text: The Director’s Notebook Edith Cassiers, Timmy De Laet and Luk Van den Dries
4 Space: Postdramatic Geography in Post-Collapse Seattle Jasmine Mahmoud
5 Time: Unsettling the Present Philip Watkinson
6 Body: Tadeusz Kantor and the Posthuman Stage Magda Romanska
7 Media: Intermission Nicholas Ridout
Part Two Social Formations
8 Festivals: Conventional Disruption, or, Why Ann Liv Young Ruined Rebecca Patek’s Show Andrew Friedman
9 Galleries: Resituating the Postdramatic Real Ryan Anthony Hatch
10 Process: ‘Set Writing’ in Contemporary French Theatre Kate Bredeson
11 Choreography: Performative Dance Histories Yvonne Hardt
12 Migration: Common and Uncommon Grounds at Berlin’s Gorki Theater Matt Cornish
13 Elder Care: Performing Dementia – Toward a Postdramatic Subjectivity Stanton B. Garner, Jr.
Notes
Index

Citation preview

Postdramatic Theatre and Form

Methuen Drama Engage offers original reflections about key practitioners, movements and genres in the fields of modern theatre and performance. Each volume in the series seeks to challenge mainstream critical thought through original and interdisciplinary perspectives on the body of work under examination. By questioning existing critical paradigms, it is hoped that each volume will open up fresh approaches and suggest avenues for further exploration. Series Editors Mark Taylor-Batty University of Leeds, UK Enoch Brater University of Michigan, USA Titles Fiery Temporalities: in Theatre and Performance: The Initiation of History, Maurya Wickstrom ISBN 978-1-4742-8169-0 Robert Lepage/Ex Machina: Revolutions in Theatrical Space, James Reynolds ISBN 978-1-4742-7609-2 Social Housing in Performance: The English Council Estate on and off Stage, Katie Beswick ISBN 978-1-4742-8521-6 Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain: Staging Crisis, Vicky Angelaki ISBN 978-1-474-21316-5 Theatre in the Dark: Shadow, Gloom and Blackout in Contemporary Theatre, edited by Adam Alston and Martin Welton ISBN 978-1-4742-5118-1 Watching War on The Twenty-First-Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict, Clare Finburgh ISBN 978-1-472-59866-0

Postdramatic Theatre and Form Edited by Michael Shane Boyle, Matt Cornish and Brandon Woolf

Series editors: Mark Taylor-Batty and Enoch Brater

METHUEN DRAMA Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, METHUEN DRAMA and the Methuen Drama logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Paperback edition published 2021 Copyright © Michael Shane Boyle, Matt Cornish, Brandon Woolf and contributors, 2019 Michael Shane Boyle, Matt Cornish, Brandon Woolf and contributors have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Series design by Louise Dugdale Cover image: Philippe Quesne – Mélancolie des Dragons © Martin Argyroglo Callias Bey All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-­party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934293

ISBN:



HB: PB: ePDF: eBook:

978-1-3500-4316-9 978-1-3501-8330-8 978-1-3500-4318-3 978-1-3500-4317-6

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Contents List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements 1 2

Introduction: Form and Postdramatic Theatre  Michael Shane Boyle, Matt Cornish and Brandon Woolf Drama: The Szondi Connection  Elinor Fuchs

vii viii xii

1 20

Part One  Formal Aspects 3 4 5 6 7

Text: The Director’s Notebook  Edith Cassiers, Timmy De Laet and Luk Van den Dries Space: Postdramatic Geography in Post-Collapse Seattle  Jasmine Mahmoud Time: Unsettling the Present  Philip Watkinson Body: Tadeusz Kantor and the Posthuman Stage  Magda Romanska Media: Intermission  Nicholas Ridout

33 48 66 81 96

Part Two  Social Formations 8

Festivals: Conventional Disruption, or, Why Ann Liv Young Ruined Rebecca Patek’s Show  Andrew Friedman 9 Galleries: Resituating the Postdramatic Real  Ryan Anthony Hatch 10 Process: ‘Set Writing’ in Contemporary French Theatre  Kate Bredeson

115 131 147

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Contents

11 Choreography: Performative Dance Histories  Yvonne Hardt 12 Migration: Common and Uncommon Grounds at Berlin’s Gorki Theater  Matt Cornish 13 Elder Care: Performing Dementia – Toward a Postdramatic Subjectivity  Stanton B. Garner, Jr. Notes Index

163 179 196 211 253

List of Illustrations 3.1 Page from Romeo Castellucci’s Inferno notebook. 3.2 A photo of one of the pages from Guy Cassiers’ theatre script for his performance Hamlet vs. Hamlet (2014). 4.1 The set of BarleyGirl, staged by Implied Violence in 2008 in a former trolley repair warehouse located in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighbourhood. 4.2 Ryan Mitchell and Mandie O’Connell of Implied Violence in Come to My Center You Enter the Winter, part of Motel #1 curated by D. K. Pan in 2007 at the now-­demolished Bridge Motel in Seattle. 9.1 Installation view of David Levine, Habit, Essex Street Market, New York City. 9.2 Detail, David Levine, Habit, Essex Street Market, New York City. 10.1 The four actors of Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort’s Germinal (2013) bask in a glow of light beneath a wall of words. 12.1 A poster for the Maxim Gorki’s 2017 autumn arts festival, commanding: Desintegriert euch! (De-Integrate Yourselves!). 12.2 The poster for Winterreise (Winter Journey), created by Yael Ronen with Exil Ensemble at the Maxim Gorki Theater in 2017. 13.1 Kirk Murphy and puppet Rose in Sandglass Theatre’s D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks, 2012.

40 43

49

57 142 142

158 189

194 201

Notes on Contributors Michael Shane Boyle works in the Drama Department at Queen Mary University of London as Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance. He is currently working on two books, a history of postwar West German performance and a study of how contemporary artists use key technologies that undergird the logistics infrastructure of global capital, like shipping containers, drones and GPS. Kate Bredeson is a theatre historian, a director and a dramaturg. Her books include Occupying the Stage: the Theater of May ’68 (Northwestern 2018) and a forthcoming edited collection of the lifetime diaries of Judith Malina (Routledge). Kate is a recipient of fellowships from the NEH and Fulbright Commission, and residencies at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France and the Rockefeller Center in Bellagio, Italy. She works as a dramaturg in theatre and dance. Kate is Associate Professor of Theatre at Reed College. Edith Cassiers studied Dutch, Theatre, Film and Literary Studies at the University of Antwerp. In 2018 she completed her PhD dissertation ‘PROMPT! From Page to Stage. A Theatrical Study of the Postdramatic Director’s Notebook’ as part of the project ‘The Didascalic Imagination’ (University of Antwerp and Vrije Universiteit Brussel). She has published several articles on director’s theatre, creative processes and postdramatic theatre in journals such as Performance Research; Digital Scholarship in the Humanities; and Theatre, Dance and Performance Training. She furthermore works as a dramaturge for different theatre companies. Matt Cornish is Assistant Professor of Theatre History at Ohio University. He is the author of Performing Unification: History and Nation in Germany after 1989 and the editor of Everything and Other Performance Texts from Contemporary Germany; his essays have appeared in Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, PAJ, and elsewhere. A recipient of Fulbright and DAAD fellowships, Matt holds a Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Yale School of Drama. Luk Van den Dries is Full Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Antwerp. His research deals with contemporary postdramatic theatre, representations of the body, and the dynamics between directors’ note­­­ books and rehearsal processes. He is supervisor of the research project ‘The Didascalic Imagination’ (funded by FWO – Research Foundation Flanders).

Notes on Contributors

ix

Andrew Friedman is an Assistant Professor of Theatre History at Ball State University in Indiana and received his PhD in Theatre from the CUNY Graduate Center. His essays and reviews on contemporary performance appear in Theatre Journal, Theater, European Stages and Ibsen News and Comment. He is currently completing a manuscript on Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller’s Ibsen-Saga. Andrew works as a dramaturg and is a founding member of the theatre collective Riot Group. Elinor Fuchs is the author or editor of five books, including The Death of Character, winner of the George Jean Nathan Award in Dramatic Criticism, and the family memoir Making an Exit. Her documentary play, Year One of the Empire, co-­authored with historian Joyce Antler, has been produced in New York and Los Angeles, where it won the Drama-Logue award for playwriting. Known for her numerous scholarly articles in dramatic structure and theory, as well as theatre criticism in The Village Voice, she has taught at Emory, Columbia and Harvard universities, and at the Institut für Theaterwissenschaft of the Free University of Berlin. She is presently Professor Emerita of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at the Yale School of Drama, where she taught for twenty-­three years. Stanton B. Garner, Jr. is Professor of English and Adjunct Professor of Theatre at the University of Tennessee. Author of The Absent Voice: Narrative Comprehension in the Theater, Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama and Trevor Griffith: Politics, Drama, History, he has written extensively on theatre and performance. His book Kinesthetic Spectatorship in the Theater: Phenomenology, Cognition, Movement was recently published by Palgrave Macmillan. Yvonne Hardt is a dancer, choreographer and Professor of Applied Dance Studies and Choreography at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne, Germany. Her books include Politische Körper: Ausdruckstanz, Choreographien des Protests und die Arbeiterkulturbewegung in der Weimarer Republik and Choreographie und Institution: Zeitgenössischer Tanz zwischen Ästhetik, Produktion und Vermittlung (with Martin Stern). Ryan Anthony Hatch is an Assistant Professor of English at California Polytechnic State University, where he teaches modern and contemporary drama, experimental writing, contemporary theory and psychoanalysis. He received his PhD from the Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Culture at SUNY, Buffalo. He is currently working on two book projects: Anyone Who Trembles Now, on the antitheatricality of the revolutionary event, and a monograph on Young Jean Lee.

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Notes on Contributors

Timmy De Laet is Assistant Professor of Theatre and Dance at the University of Antwerp and the Research Centre for Visual Poetics. His current research is supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), the Fulbright Commission and the Belgian American Educational Foundation (BAEF). His interests include the reiterative nature of live performance in relation to reenactment, archivization, documentation and historiography. He has published on these topics in journals as Performance Research, Tanz and Muséologies, as well as in the edited collections Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture (2013), Moments: A History of Performance in 10 Acts (2013) and The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reenactment (2017). Jasmine Mahmoud is Assistant Professor in the Department of Performing Arts and Arts Leadership at Seattle University. Her research examines relationships among contemporary performance practices, race, and policy in urban geographies. Her articles and reviews have been published in Modern Drama, Performance Research, TDR: The Drama Review, and Women & Performance. She received her PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. Nicholas Ridout is Professor of Theatre at Queen Mary University of London. He is the author of Stage Fright, Animals and Other Theatrical Problems (2006) and Passionate Amateurs: Theatre, Communism and Love (2013). A new book, Scenes from Bourgeois Life, will be published in 2020. Magda Romanska is an award-­winning writer, dramaturg and theatre and performance theorist. She has taught at Harvard University, Yale School of Drama, Cornell University and Emerson College. She is the author of five critically acclaimed theatre books, including The Post-­traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor, Reader in Comedy: An Anthology of Theory and Criticism and The Routledge Companion to Dramaturgy, a leading handbook of dramaturgy. Currently, Magda Romanska is an Associate Professor of Theatre Studies and Dramaturgy at Emerson College in Boston, MA, and the Executive Director and Editor-­in-Chief of TheTheatreTimes.com. She graduated from Stanford University and earned her PhD from Cornell University’s Department of Theatre. Her current research focuses on theatre, transmedia, new media dramaturgy and posthumanism. Philip Watkinson is an Associate Lecturer in Performing Arts at the University of Winchester. He completed his doctoral thesis at Queen Mary University of London, which examined the experiential interrelations between space and affect in postdramatic performance contexts. His

Notes on Contributors

xi

work has been published in Performance Research, Theatre Journal and Contemporary Theatre Review. Brandon Woolf is a theatre maker and Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre at New York University, where he also serves as Director of the Program in Dramatic Literature. His writing has appeared in Theatre Journal, TDR: The Drama Review, Theatre Survey, Performance Research and Postdramatic Theatre and the Political (Bloomsbury, 2013). Brandon is currently working on a monograph about contemporary performance and cultural policy in Berlin after the Cold War.

Acknowledgements We thank Mark Dudgeon, Lara Bateman and the entire editorial team at Methuen Drama for guiding us and bringing this project to print. Magda Romanska provided essential feedback on our book proposal. Adam Alston and Elyssa Livergant generously read our introduction and gave valuable notes. Finally, we are grateful to all participants and interlocutors who contributed to spirited conversations at the working sessions on postdramatic theatre we organized at conferences of the American Society for Theatre Research: in Portland in 2015, Baltimore in 2014 and Dallas in 2013. Even as these sessions did not engage explicitly with the topic of form, the discussions and debates made clear to us that this was an area that needed to be considered more substantively. Your essays, observations and criticisms helped shape this volume from inception to production.

1

Introduction: Form and Postdramatic Theatre Michael Shane Boyle, Matt Cornish and Brandon Woolf

To understand theatre, we must understand form. In fact, it is impossible to think of theatre without also thinking in terms of form. Theatre is not just a place for seeing, as its etymology suggests. Theatre is also a site of performance – a place for giving form. But what does theatre give form to? And who or what, in turn, gives form to theatre? The possible answers to these questions of formation are varied and complex. Theatre, of course, gives form to plays, and chief among those responsible for giving form to theatre are actors, directors, designers and technicians. What’s more, as some contributors to this volume demonstrate, theatre can give form to texts not originally intended for the stage, like archival documents or philosophical reflections; others show that theatre can give form to activities like long-­term care for elders, or less tangible phenomena like property markets. Meanwhile, many kinds of forces in addition to artists can give form to theatre: brick and mortar venues and international festivals, funding bodies and government agencies, rehearsal processes and marketing strategies – even time itself. And yet, we cannot separate giving form to and being formed by: theatre is a subject and an object of transformation simultaneously. To state our case most boldly: this book proposes an expanded and avowedly social understanding of theatrical form, one that requires we shake off common conceptions of form as mere ornamentation or as something that seals an artwork off from society. Form is the simultaneous entwinement of the overlapping social mediations that give shape to theatre, and which theatre shapes in turn. Postdramatic theatre – as both a set of performance practices and a scholarly discourse – is an exemplary site for studying theatre in terms of form because postdramatic theatre is concerned first and foremost with interrogating theatrical form. For Hans-Thies Lehmann, whose 1999 book Postdramatisches Theater is largely responsible for the term’s critical currency,

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Postdramatic Theatre and Form

the centrality of form is obvious: ‘That a distinct formalism is one of the stylistic traits of postdramatic theatre’, he asserts, ‘does not require extended demonstration’.1 Even for the initiated, however, just what Lehmann means by ‘formalism’ is anything but obvious. Most simply put, he conceives of postdramatic theatre as a category of performance practice that moves beyond the convention of representing on the stage some pre-­given content, such as a story or fable. Lehmann pitches postdramatic theatre as more like modernist painting; instead of entering a ‘fictive cosmos’ oriented toward a given authoritative text and organized by causality, psychological motivation and conceptual coherence, spectators encounter the theatre as just that – theatre.2 Yet postdramatic theatre is less the theatre’s belated version of the modernist commitment to medium specificity than a historical shift in theatrical form, which Lehmann tracks to the 1970s. Artists as disparate as Robert Wilson, the Wooster Group, Sarah Kane and René Pollesch are all said to be postdramatic given their shared turn from dialogue, plot, characterization and a self-­contained fictional world – elements that can distract from what makes theatre theatre, and which are also conventionally aligned with drama. The postdramatic could thus be said to signal a historical shift in theatre toward form and ‘away from’ drama.3 This distinction between form and drama is not meant to suggest that drama is without form – quite the opposite. If nothing else, drama denotes a particular form for encompassing a wide range of fictional stories, historical accounts and more. And yet, as even this brief definition makes clear, ‘drama’ indicates a specific dialectical relationship between form and content, one that emerges under particular historical conditions. Lehmann’s own understanding of drama owes primarily to the German philologist Peter Szondi, whose 1956 book Theorie des modernen Dramas (Theory of the Modern Drama) posited dialogue between characters as the essential formal component of ‘Drama’. For Szondi – who draws heavily on Hegel – drama entails a form for containing a given content; it transforms a particular story that may exist in another mode, like a folktale, into dialogue. This is the task of drama, but also its trouble, as not every content is so easily transformed in such a way. Of particular concern for Szondi was the point at which drama comes into crisis, namely when its form can no longer contain the content – the social themes and experiences – available to it. In examining plays by the likes of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, it became clear to Szondi that drama was not a timeless entity, but was rather ‘time-­bound’.4 It emerged and operated under specific conditions and constraints, beginning in seventeenth-­century Europe. Historically, dramatic form is aligned with ‘bourgeois’ experience, as Elinor Fuchs notes in her contribution to this

Introduction: Form and Postdramatic Theatre

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volume.5 Instead of monologic appeals to a higher or external authority, like gods or monarchs, drama’s dialogic form speaks to a need for, as Szondi claims, a ‘newly self-­conscious being’ to acclimate to new modes of interpersonal exchange in a nascent capitalist society.6 Nora, or the person playing her, should not reveal she knows her life is unfolding on a stage. Nothing exists outside the drama and its dialogue: ‘to be dramatic, [the Drama] must break loose from everything external. It can be conscious of nothing outside itself ’, including the theatrical apparatus, which becomes ‘subservient to the absoluteness of the Drama’.7 This is all to say that for Szondi there is a difference between dramatic form and theatrical form. When we talk about dramatic theatre, then, we are not just thinking in terms of theatrical form, but of how theatrical form serves the relationship between drama’s literary form (namely dialogue) and its content. The profound division Szondi posits between dramatic form and theatrical form leads Lehmann to break from his mentor in a number of ways.8 Lehmann outlines his own formalism through an immanent critique of Szondi – moving beyond Szondi’s definition of form, which relies on drama’s hermetic ‘absoluteness’. As Lehmann explains via Szondi, drama is organized around its content, such that: the theatrical conditions of perception, namely the aesthetic qualities of theatre as theatre, fade into the background: the eventful present, the particular semiotics of bodies, the gestures and movements of the performers, the compositional and formal structure of language as a soundscape, the qualities of the visual beyond representation, the musical and rhythmic process with its own time, etc.9

Lehmann then marks his move beyond Szondi when he writes in the next sentence: ‘These elements (the form), however, are precisely the point in many contemporary theatre works – by no means just the extreme ones – and are not employed as merely subservient means for the illustration of an action laden with suspense’.10 Thus, to say that postdramatic theatre moves toward form and away from drama signals a shift toward theatrical form and away from drama’s particular dialectic of form and content. As the very choice of terms makes clear, the postdramatic preserves a relationship to a tradition of dramatic theatre, even as it moves on from drama. This relationship is one that recognizes postdramatic theatre’s distance from dramatic theatre – be it temporal, geographic, cultural, etc. – and thus an awareness of itself and how it has been formed. The ‘post’ indicates that postdramatic theatre is not some solipsistic enquiry into theatre’s medium specificity: not just theatre for theatre’s sake, the postdramatic foregrounds its

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own conditions of production and reception. And it does so under specific social conditions. While Lehmann distinguishes postdramatic from the ‘epochal’ term postmodern, he nonetheless follows Szondi in insisting on a historical understanding of form.11 He even opens the prologue of his book by connecting the emergence of postdramatic theatre to ‘the spread and then omnipresence of the media in everyday life’,12 which he dates to the 1960s and 1970s. It is in ‘response to changed social communication under the conditions of generalized information technologies’ that theatre begins to turn towards form.13 In part, this is an economic imperative for theatre resulting from increasing competition with televisual media, chief among them film and television, which are also in the business of dramatization. What Lehmann curiously skips over is how his periodization of postdramatic theatre also corresponds to the emergence of a global division of labour brought on by deindustrialization and globalization. Several contributors to this volume take up this blindspot in Lehmann’s historicization of postdramatic form, tracking for example how postdramatic theatre’s treatment of key formal considerations like space, time and media owe much to, respectively, fluctuations in property markets, the short-­term thinking of venture capitalists and the significance of new communication technologies in post-Fordist workplaces. While ‘postdramatic theatre’ has proven a useful means of engaging a particular history of contemporary performance for both scholars and artists, given the complexity of Lehmann’s theory of form, it is no wonder that, as he has pointed out, ‘the formalism of postdramatic theatre . . . still causes perplexity’.14 Twenty years have passed since the publication of Postdramatisches Theater, and the category remains more than ever a cause for disagreement and debate. As conversations about postdramatic theatre have proliferated, so too have the term’s meanings and the practices it is presumed to describe. Marvin Carlson observes that the term ‘postdramatic’ has proven so popular and been so widely applied in recent years ‘that anything like a coherent and consistent definition . . . has become quite impossible’.15 He continues: One of the dangers attending upon any critical term is its appropriation by scholars, artists, and increasingly today by various commercial interests among them publishers, producers, and publicists, with the result that the more popular the term becomes the more difficult it becomes to find any pattern among its various usages.16

Carlson’s treatment of postdramatic theatre is proof of his very claim: in his essay, he moves between speaking of the postdramatic as a ‘critical term’,17 a

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‘concept’,18 a ‘tradition’19 and a ‘mode’20 of theatre-­making. Yet the imprecision Carlson describes and simultaneously performs is not only a result of the term’s broad diffusion; it stems, as we claim above, from the ambitious theorization that sent the term into circulation in the first place. As much as it can help clarify, the category of postdramatic theatre also obscures – not just other ways of viewing performance, but myriad traditions and histories of performance as well. In a much-­discussed review in TDR: The Drama Review, Elinor Fuchs takes issue with (among other things) the range of performance forms Lehmann suggests postdramatic theatre could cover. ‘With a single term’, she writes, ‘Lehmann re-­creates three or more generations of theatrical outliers as a movement’.21 According to Fuchs, postdramatic theatre is but the latest weapon in a ‘war of subsumption’,22 in which theatre as aggressor aspires to absorb a wide range of performance forms. Ryan Hatch’s and Yvonne Hardt’s contributions to this volume reflect on the consequences of this tendency, focusing attention on theatrical performance within galleries and the impact of postdramatic discourse on dance studies. Whereas some critique postdramatic theatre for what it tries to encompass, others target it for what it excludes. Patrice Pavis, for example, argues that the nominal connection of the term to Western forms of performance ‘make[s] it seem suspect and of little use when we are looking at non-European cultural practices, especially non-­aesthetic and non-­fictional cultural events’.23 Recently, Mary Mazzili in her study of the Chinese playwright Gao Xingjian has investigated the utility of postdramatic discourse for traditions beyond Western performance.24 In his chapter for this book on the tensions and debates around postmigrant theatre in Berlin, Matt Cornish elaborates how postdramatic practice risks privileging certain issues, experiences and perspectives, in ways that can be especially charged racially. Postdramatic theatre is therefore constrained both by what it hopes to include as well as what (and whom) it excludes. A third objection to postdramatic theatre comes from scholars who attribute to its formalism a disengagement with social issues, politics and history. Across several essays, Janelle Reinelt has argued that the ‘elliptical, affective engagement’ characterizing postdramatic performance stands in stark contrast to the ‘direct engagement with issues’ of conventional political theatre, for which dramatic form (including and inspired by Brecht) seems especially well suited.25 This strand of critique responds to Lehmann’s position that ‘questions of aesthetic form are political questions’.26 For the editors of and contributors to Postdramatic Theatre and the Political (2013), it is the turn toward form in postdramatic theatre, rather than its content, that holds political potential: be it by sparking discussion without leading audiences to

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pre-­conceived perspectives, generating alternative kinds of sociality, or even refusing to engage with the despoiled sphere of politics.27 Such thinking, however, leads Reinelt to insist that ‘this theatre form is incompatible with serious politics’.28 Birgit Haas has gone even further, suggesting that the formal play she sees as characteristic of postdramatic theatre is both ‘postpolitical’ and politically dispiriting for activists.29 These critiques maintain that a turn toward form compromises not just content, but, more crucially, the ability of postdramatic theatre to engage politically. Reinelt extends this perspective beyond postdramatic practice, describing scholars who defend the political potential of the postdramatic as espousing a new ‘anti-­political theatre view’, which casts doubt on the potential for theatre to contribute directly to public debate.30 Reinelt argues that ‘the extremely influential discourse of postdramatic theatre’ is ‘shifting attention away from any direct connection between theatre and political life outside the theatre, and turning attention inward to the processes of the theatrical apparatus itself and its internal politics’.31 The formalism of postdramatic theory and practice, she insists, skews entirely too close to theatrical narcissism, as it would seem to exclude engagement with anything outside theatre. While aware of this risk, our volume articulates how theatre is always connected in one form or another to the world beyond it, not just through its political orientation but through the various other ways it overlaps with social life. Stanton B. Garner’s contribution here, which charts the use of postdramatic theatrical forms alongside the practices and institutions of dementia care, offers a prime example of why one should not limit judgement of postdramatic theatre to categories like ‘politics’ or ‘the political’. Postdramatic Theatre and Form neither shies away from nor necessarily disputes these three critiques of what postdramatic theatre encompasses or excludes, emphasizes or obscures. Instead of rehearsing the criticisms above, this book turns attention to the foundational, and often overlooked, issue on which they hinge: form. What follows, in both this introduction and the book’s chapters, looks to better understand what postdramatic theatre is (and isn’t) as a means of understanding what theatrical form is (and isn’t). So what do we mean when we speak of form? There is little precision as to what form actually is when it comes to theatre. Definitions of form that circulate in our field are themselves clouded by debates that have lingered since the 1950s – if not much longer. In fact, it is not just what one means by form that seems up for debate today. Whether scholars and artists should even be interested in such a thing seems debatable as well. One of the essential claims in this book is that the varied critiques of postdramatic theatre have less to do with the postdramatic, than with misgivings about form

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and formalism within theatre and performance studies. By attending to the longstanding suspicion around – even allergy to – form within our field, we argue that artists and scholars would benefit from a more capacious formalist vocabulary.

Formalism in Theatre and Performance Studies Formalism is passé. As Ric Knowles explains in The Theatre of Form and the Production of Meaning, an explicit interest in form strikes many as ‘old-­ fashioned’.32 Some find formalist thinking to be not just ‘retrospective’, as Ric Alssopp gently puts it, but regressive even.33 Alan Ruiz writes: ‘Formalism is a dirty word – a bad object . . . Plagued by universalist goals of purity, autonomy, self-­reflexivity, and political indifference.’34 Yet an aversion to formalism is itself nothing new. As Raymond Williams suggests, be it in religion, politics or aesthetics, formalism has been ‘predominantly used in negative or dismissive ways’.35 In the twentieth century, few terms sparked fiercer debate across the arts, exemplified in the vitriolic exchanges between Bertolt Brecht and Georg Lukács over modernist literature in the 1930s. In a time marked by the unprecedented politicization of aesthetics under Hitler and Stalin, ‘formalist’, Yve-Alain Bois reminds us, became ‘an insult that Lukács and Brecht tossed at each other’.36 At least insofar as the term indicates a critic’s or an artist’s explicit engagement with matters relating to formal composition, formalism tends to be conflated with a disregard for the social capacities and origins of art. Formalism is presumed to culminate in a celebration of ‘art for art’s sake’ or a politically aloof preoccupation with beauty or the surface qualities of a work. Too often, however, critiques of formalism hinge on hazy or thinly-­ defined assumptions of what form is. Does form refer to inherent compositional elements, structures or patterns of an artwork? How does form relate to other aspects, like content or function? Is form simply a container or decoration? And what connection, if any, does form have to the historical and social conditions in which a work of art emerges? Our aim in this section is not to rehearse the long history of anti-­formalist thought. Instead, we are interested in tracking a particular perspective on formalism that has sedimented within Anglophone theatre and performance studies. This perspective has made it such that form – even when it is a scholar’s object of study – is rarely foregrounded as such. There are two primary charges that scholars in our field make against formalism. First, some argue that the focus on form privileges insular attention to the performance itself, precluding an understanding of context: be it the history behind the work, the material conditions of its production

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and reception, or how it speaks to broader social experiences of race, gender, sexuality, class or disability. Related to this first charge is a second: that scholars or artists chiefly interested in form inevitably tend toward resigned apoliticism or elitist escapism. While tensions over form reach back in Western aesthetic thought to at least Plato and Aristotle,37 we are interested in how these two particular indictments derive from the more recent development of theatre and performance studies as a discipline. It is common sense in our field that form is, if not a distraction from, then certainly an aside to, the real business of what scholars should study: the social (especially the political) and the historical aspects of performance. Suspicions against formalism owe much to the legacy of New Criticism in theatre and performance studies. As a school of thought, the New Critics emerged in the United States in the 1930s with ties to a strain of Christian conservatism committed to defending Southern agrarian values.38 Their method, which was associated with movements in the United Kingdom, became most influential during the Second World War and the years following. At the heart of the New Critics’ project was an emphasis on ‘close reading’ a literary text, a method that treated a work as having objective meaning, regardless of context or authorial intent. Likewise, any affective response elicited in readers by literature was also seen to be beyond the task of close reading. Focus on the irreducible form of a text would generate a rigorous and exhaustive analysis of the work itself. New Criticism’s method of hermetic reading and defence of the literary canon became, as Stephen Cohen notes, ‘synonymous’ with formalism.39 New Criticism began to go out of favour at the very time theatre studies was developing as a discipline in its own right, in 1950s America and 1960s Britain. This coincidence is essential, signalling how the legacy of New Criticism informed the common-­sense anti-­formalism of theatre and performance studies. As Shannon Jackson and W. B. Worthen have both argued, it was primarily against the New Critics that theatre scholars found themselves pushing back, since the emergence of theatre studies hinged, in part, on distinguishing the inherently heteronomous practices of the theatre from its ostensibly autonomous literary siblings.40 In their own influential studies of dramatic literature, New Critics like Cleanth Brooks and Robert Heilman sought to ‘incorporate drama, particularly modern drama, to the canons of literary study’,41 or, more explicitly, ‘the quintessentially literary conception of the poem’.42 The task of New Criticism was to identity the ‘purely literary character of drama’, which required above all distinguishing ‘the literary drama from theatre’.43 The New Critics helped to bring the study of drama into the academy, but they did so by excluding much of what makes theatre theatre.

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New Criticism’s emphasis on the formal unity of the work could be said to resonate with the contemporaneous theory of ‘absolute Drama’ Peter Szondi developed in West Germany. Yet Szondi’s claim that drama excludes awareness of both author and audience was meant to describe the experience and historical function of a play; he did not seek to prescribe how a work should be studied. Szondi’s theory does share with New Criticism the emphasis on literary rather than theatrical form, as Szondi pays little attention to matters of staging, design and acting. The legacy of the New Critics could be said to have contributed broadly to an alignment of formalism with the literary in North America and the United Kingdom. However, Lehmann, who is rooted in the German field of Theaterwissenschaft, builds on Szondi’s formalism as a way to foreground the theatrical situation.44 Lehmann also cites Michael Kirby, former editor of TDR: The Drama Review, who worked to champion formalism within Anglophone theatre and performance studies in the wake of New Criticism.45 As Kirby argues in essays collected in 1987 as A Formalist Theatre, theatrical form distinguishes the study of theatre from that of literature.46 Whereas literature requires ‘meaning’ be read from the ‘content’ of a text, theatre, by contrast, is grasped through the ‘experience’ of ‘performance’.47 And performance, according to Kirby, is defined not by content but by form: ‘Every performance has form; not every performance conveys meaning’.48 At first glance, Kirby’s formalist theatre resembles Lehmann’s attention to postdramatic formalism. But while Kirby’s notion of a formalist theatre examined ‘performances – whether or not they are dramatic’, Lehmann’s emphasis on the postdramatic is crucial.49 Lehmann’s book shares a Western Marxist understanding of form as being historically shaped – thus the post. For Lehmann ‘the formalism of postdramatic theatre’, the scholarly and artistic enquiry into what makes theatre theatre, follows from the historical crisis of drama. In other words, Lehmann tracks a particular historical transformation in theatrical performance. Kirby, by contrast, offers what Martin Puchner has described as an ‘ahistorical formalism’.50 Instead of accounting for how performance forms emerge and change according to shifting social conditions, Kirby attends to performances in and of themselves. However, this leads him to compare performances that appear formally similar while disregarding their strikingly different contexts; for example, he validates contemporary performance practices according to how they resemble those of the historical avant-­garde. Our decision to pursue postdramatic formalism, rather than the whether or not of Kirby’s formalist theatre, emphasizes the enduring influence of a particular historical genealogy of theatrical thought and practice – drama – even as we imagine form in other and more expanded ways.

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This brings us to another critique of formalism in Anglo-American theatre and performance studies. By neglecting both the context and history of theatre, a focus on form risks looking past the varied social experiences and exclusions on which theatre depends. The New Critics have elicited charges that whiteness and male chauvinism underpin their method.51 These are indictments that have also been made against the formalism proposed by Kirby as well as the milieu of performance makers with whom he associated in the 1960s and 1970s, which relied at times on, as Shannon Jackson argues, ‘gendered, raced, and classed’ appropriations.52 Moreover, for Stefka Mihaylova, there is an unsettling tendency among major exemplars of formalism in the twentieth century generally to ignore race and gender. By formalism, Mihaylova has in mind both critical practices and performance practices (like Italian Futurism), which, by shifting focus from ‘social context to medium specificity’ and ‘the work itself ’, not only assumed whiteness and patriarchy as dominant social norms, but in some cases actually championed white supremacy and patriarchal authority.53 Today a number of artists deploy recognizably postdramatic practices to grapple with complex questions of identity, like Young Jean Lee and Suzan-Lori Parks. Yet within the critical discourse on postdramatic theatre there has been comparably little attention to matters of racialized and gendered difference, as well as to the assumptions that surround class and social disability. For all of these reasons, the terms ‘form’ and ‘formalism’ appear quite sporadically within the annals of our field.54 In fact, it is partly in response to the deficits of these formalisms that a range of other methodologies for studying theatre emerged, which, as Jackson puts it, ‘advocates a radically contextual and socially grounded analysis, that takes seriously feminist, anti-­ racist, and intercultural critiques of identity and globalization’.55 This bent towards the ‘radically contextual’ is exemplified by approaches that investigate how performance practices are deeply embedded in the material conditions of their production and reception. Typically such scholarship embraces tools and methods borrowed from the social sciences, especially fields like anthropology and sociology. This turn, which is broadly associated with the rise of performance studies, has expanded both how and what scholars research.Yet in foregrounding questions of history and society in relation to performance, our field has increasingly left behind what it means to think of such things in terms of form. This leads us to ask: What has been lost? Must there be a divorce between form and the radically contextual, between the aesthetic and the social? Does a return to matters of form necessarily entail a backlash against historical enquiry? A lack of exclusive attention to form in theatre and performance studies has left us wanting for this lexicon – form as shared language – for examining how theatre and the social world overlap. In what follows, then, we turn outside the

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field, returning to literary studies of all places, to expand our understanding of theatrical form in all its social complexity.

New Form(alism)s As the conversation around form within theatre and performance studies has stagnated, there has been resurgent interest in re-­theorizing form in other fields, particularly literary studies. A prominent strand of these recent formalisms seeks to revive the central tenets of New Criticism, rejecting contextualist approaches and concentrating once again on the lost pleasures of ‘surface reading’.56 However, in the face of these ‘backlash’ formalisms, as Marjorie Levinson labels them, there have also been sustained attempts at reinventing the study of form so that it foregrounds society, politics, economics and history.57 Of particular interest for theatre and performance studies are two new strands of formalism, one that applies formalist thinking to social institutions and the other that examines the historical conditions of emergent forms of art. Although neither tendency on its own provides a full account of the expanded understanding of form we propose – one that historicizes the formal intersections of art and society – they offer useful models on which to build. We begin then with New Formalism,58 focusing on the much-­debated work of Caroline Levine. In her 2015 book Forms, Levine insists that ‘form’ is not exclusive to the aesthetic realms of visual art, music, literature and theatre, but, in fact, ‘belongs equally’ to other fields, from the social sciences to mathematics.59 Levine posits form expansively as the ‘ordering principles’ that organize and arrange social life.60 Whereas scholars have typically understood form as that which ‘distinguished’ art from society,61 for Levine, form is what they have in common. Forms in society, as in art, are means of giving order – such as the arrangement of desks in a primary school regulates the behaviour of children, or the separation of the working day into discrete segments of time to maximize the productivity of labour. The relation between aesthetic forms and social forms, however, is not simply one of analogy. Drawing on Michel Foucault, Levine argues that form indicates the workings of power, since the existence of form at any level – from theatre to government – is a means of ‘imposing order on the world’.62 Levine’s methodological intervention provides a corrective to the hermetic concept of form offered by New Criticism, which treats form as that which severs a work from the social world. By turning to design theory and the concept of ‘affordance’, Levine explores how different forms overlap and interact with one another:

12

Postdramatic Theatre and Form A school borrows the idea of spectators in rows from ancient theater. A novelist takes from epic poetry the narrative structure of the quest. . . . A rhythm can impose its powerful order on laboring bodies as well as odes. Binary oppositions can structure gendered workspaces as well as creation myths.63

Levine’s New Formalism is useful for its expanded understanding of form, reminding us that a key formalist task should be to articulate how art and society – aesthetic and social form – operate together, even when in tension with one another. What Levine means by the ‘social’, however, should be distinguished from how other scholars deploy the term when writing about the ‘social turn’ in recent participatory art and performance. For Claire Bishop and Shannon Jackson, social relations and systems comprise the very material of socially engaged and process-­driven performance, and are also the objects of transformation and avowal.64 While not at all opposed to Bishop and Jackson, Levine’s concept of affordance implies a less intentional or unidirectional engagement of art with society. Nonetheless, significant limits to Levine’s method become evident when it is extended to the realm of theatre. Most notably, Levine’s approach to New Formalism is primarily a ‘method for reading’.65 As such, it perpetuates a literary approach to form, even as it looks to society to expand what we understand form to encompass. Levine pays little attention to the forms that govern or impact how art – or, for that matter, society – is produced. She insists that no form, however powerful, dominates other forms – claiming a desire to evade the sort of causality she associates with her caricature of Marxism. In her effort to level the relations of power between art and society, Levine risks implying that art, in its capacity to shape the world, is on par with all other social forces, vaguely suggesting that ‘[s]ome forms dominate others at some moments and then falter or recede’.66 While elevating literary forms to the level of social forms, Levine collapses instantiations and institutions of social power – from prisons to corporations – into generic forms – like containers and networks. If taken to its extreme, this logic risks placing a rhyming couplet on the same level as a military barrack. As Seb Franklin puts it, Levine’s approach ignores the ‘preconditions’ for the emergence and interactions of the various forms she describes, which, when it comes to a formation like a prison can obscure how the ‘the labor[s] of forming’ are thoroughly racialized and gendered.67 There is immense value in embracing the unintended, unexpected and subversive potential – the affordances – of art’s collision with society, but not without offering a sense of the conditions of possibility for such encounters, that is, not without accounting for their histories. Under what conditions, then, do new forms

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like those associated with the postdramatic emerge? How might form be understood not only as determined by such conditions, but also constitutive of them? To address these questions, we turn to another recent formalist tendency, exemplified in Lauren Berlant’s and Sianne Ngai’s accounts of the historical mediation of aesthetic and social forms in late capitalist society. This recent work is in dialogue with a longer, largely Marxist tradition of critical theory, running from Georg Lukács and Theodor Adorno to Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton, which considers the form – rather than the content – of art as illuminating the historical conditions under which it was produced.68 Berlant and Ngai, however, hold at arm’s length the temptation to offer ‘symptomatic’ readings of art or treat it as a document of history, choosing instead to examine how art gives sense to one’s historical experience, putting particular emphasis on issues of queerness, racialization and social disability.69 As Joseph North suggests, their work tracks ‘with great precision the specifically aesthetic means by which subjectivities and collectivities manage to undergo and respond to the world’.70 Writing in Cruel Optimism about art and culture created since the 1980s as the welfare state was dismantled, Berlant argues that ‘new aesthetic forms’ register the affective experience of history in process, and thus are part and parcel of history itself.71 Art, for Berlant, is one way that the ‘affective impact’ of structural shifts ‘takes form, becomes mediated’.72 Aesthetic forms help constitute the terrain on which history is lived and experienced: new historical circumstances require new forms. Whereas Berlant actively describes Cruel Optimism as a ‘formalist work’,73 Ngai is more reserved in espousing an attentiveness to form, if only because she seeks to reinvigorate another suspect term often allied with form, ‘aesthetics’.74 While turning to aesthetics might strike some as a further retreat from real world concerns, Ngai examines what happens to aesthetic experience in a late capitalist society where there is an ever increasing ‘interpenetration of economy and culture’.75 In many ways Ngai’s attention to ‘the close relation between the form of the artwork and the form of the commodity’ resonates with Levine’s interest in the formal ‘affordances’ of art and society; but for Ngai, art and the commodity are not the same. Instead, she demonstrates how art and the commodity under late capitalist conditions can generate similar kinds of experiences.76 (Think of an iPhone.) Like Berlant, Ngai maps how aesthetics gives sense to and shapes one’s experience of a historical moment. Both Ngai and Berlant, then, require we take seriously how new forms of art emerge in and alongside history, not simply as documents of, but active in it. Neither Berlant nor Ngai pay substantive attention to theatre. In many ways, however, theatre makes even clearer Berlant’s and Ngai’s arguments

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about the co-­imbrication of aesthetic form and historical transformation. Moreover, their approach could be said to resonate with Levine’s ‘reading practice’,77 in that their emphasis on affect and experience leads them to examine works of art from the side of consumption, that is from the perspective of spectators and readers. While Berlant and Ngai are both interested in, for instance, how art relates to changes in the labour process under deindustrialization, they do not extend their formal analysis to how art actually gets made. They read a film about the tolls of emotional labour on workers (like The Cable Guy) as shaping how workers experience and make sense of their working lives, but neither scholar looks into how forms of artistic production change alongside broader shifts in economic production. The material conditions of theatre are more difficult to ignore than in other artistic mediums, because it is a site of performance in which production and consumption typically occur simultaneously. As Lehmann writes: Unlike other forms of artistic practice [theatre] is marked by the especially heavy weight of its resources and materials. Compared to the poet’s pen and paper, or the painter’s oils and canvas, it requires a lot: the continuous activity of living people; the maintenance of theatre spaces; organizations, administrations and crafts; in addition to the material demands of all the arts themselves that are united in the theatre.78

Yet many kinds of theatre are defined formally by the attempt to obscure their material conditions. Dramatic theatre strives for a kind of hermetic ‘absoluteness’ in which, as soon as the lights dim, we are asked to overlook the fact that we are actually in a theatre: watching people work. Postdramatic theatre, by contrast, is formally distinguished by the insistent appearance of its own theatreness. One could also say this of Brechtian theatre, which highlights its material conditions in order to generate critical reflection on how the situation on stage came to be and thus might be changed. But postdramatic artists use theatrical production and reception as formal material for performance itself. They do not necessarily create an ‘outside’ position of critical knowing, though some directors and ensembles do do that.79 Postdramatic theatre operates with regard to history in a way that does not try to hide its being with and part of that history. As Berlant might say, postdramatic theatre is a form of experiencing the ‘contemporary moment from within that moment’80 – even if it strives to interrupt and transgress. Since postdramatic theatre is just that, theatre, the kind of formal analysis Berlant and Ngai encourage must be extended to theatre’s own materiality. This means expanding formal analysis even further to encompass forms of ‘maintenance’, ‘organization’ and ‘administration’, forms that a theatre

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requires but which might not appear as such or be immediately reflected in the performance. Here Levine’s theory of ‘affordances’ gives licence to think these material and social processes in terms of form. For her, form provides a language for considering the intimate interrelations between what seem, at first glance, profoundly disparate processes. What, for example, are the relations between the organizational structures of a funding agency and the expressive languages (aural, visual, olfactory, etc.) that appear onstage? And yet, expanding on Berlant and Ngai, we must keep in mind that funding agencies do not operate in a historical vacuum, but are themselves shaped by external political and economic forces; so too could the priorities and practices of arts funders be said to hinge on the aesthetic proclivities and formal tendencies of the very arts they support. Formal analysis of the sort we propose must ask: how are such affordances always also mediated by history?

Postdramatic Formalism Form, in our definition, is integral rather than incidental to theatre, originating theatre rather than ornamenting it. Instead of sealing theatre off from society, form is what theatre and society share. Form names more than just practices of representation and meaning making within the theatre; it also encompasses the modes of production, consumption and circulation that give shape to and are shaped by theatre. Paying attention to matters of form does not mean ignoring how theatre can be political; at the same time, however, formalism requires considering how theatre engages with the reproduction of social life beyond the specific sphere of politics. In their own ways, each of the essays presented here explores this expanded understanding of form, though none should be read as conforming to it. Instead, the formalist language we offer has been shaped by the contributions themselves. The structure of this volume performs the formalism we propose, foregrounding what it means to think aesthetic form and social form together, without collapsing one into the other. The first section, ‘Formal Aspects’, revisits Lehmann’s own account of the essential aesthetic principles that distinguish postdramatic formalism – text, space, time, body and media. These contributions reconceive rather than rehash Lehmann’s schema; echoing Berlant and Ngai, they pay special attention to how the aesthetics that seem to define postdramatic theatre are themselves inseparable from the social conditions within which they emerge. This first section complements the second, ‘Social Formations’, which, like Levine, turns a formalist eye to matters not conventionally thought of in terms of form: the organizational structures of ensembles and festivals, the modes of labour and spectatorship that postdramatic theatre requires, the

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interrelations between social services and theatre, and even the discourses of academic research and criticism. Each essay in ‘Formal Aspects’ offers a new perspective on one of the aspects charted by Lehmann in Postdramatic Theatre, informed by developments in theatre practice and theory since 1999. Edith Cassiers, Timmy De Laet and Luk Van den Dries, for instance, contribute to debates over text in postdramatic theatre by changing the terms of the conversation. Instead of scripts or other source material for performance, they focus on the director’s notebook, which for them includes the various written, digital and intermedial working documents directors today have at their disposal for generating performance. By using a ‘genetic method’ to examine the notebooks of directors Romeo Castellucci and Guy Cassiers, they argue that far from disposing of text, postdramatic theatre actually gives it heightened significance as a means for creating theatre. As with Berlant’s and Ngai’s theories of formalism, contributors to this first section also seek to historicize treatments of postdramatic aspects as being more than mere revisions to previous theatrical forms, noting how their novelty owes to structural transformations in society itself. For Cassiers, De Laet and Van den Dries, the new generative uses of text for performance become possible when emergent technologies are brought into the rehearsal room. Jasmine Mahmoud and Philip Watkinson go further by engaging explicitly with how postdramatic treatments of space and time respectively derive from and comprise the peculiar spatial and temporal experiences inherent to late capitalist society. In her essay, Mahmoud tracks how the collapse of Seattle’s property market during the 2007–2008 financial crisis shaped the aesthetic practices of the performance ensemble Implied Violence. By developing a notion of ‘postdramatic geography’, Mahmoud injects what she calls a more ‘sociological’ method than Lehmann deploys when studying postdramatic theatre,81 arguing that broader economic conditions can determine the kinds of spaces available to artists, thereby shaping their postdramatic styles. Where Mahmoud examines the impact of financial crisis on theatre’s spatial form, Watkinson studies how the experience of postdramatic theatre both resonates and breaks with the venture capitalist temporal logic of ‘disruptive innovation’, which places a premium on short-­term thinking for gains in the present moment. His essay on work by Deborah Pearson and by the performance group De Stijle, Want, responds to critiques of postdramatic theatre’s supposed apolitical presentism, arguing instead that postdramatic time is saturated by conflicting temporalities of history and futurity. In addition to updating how we situate particular aspects of postdramatic theatre in relation to very recent historical transformations, the final two

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contributors in this section mobilize formalist thinking to revise the origins of the postdramatic paradigm. Magda Romanska’s look at Tadeusz Kantor’s posthuman theatre interrogates the form that the body can take after Auschwitz in postdramatic theatre. She details how prevailing performance practice, including performance art, operates under an anthropocentric understanding of the body, pinning to the body assumptions of truth, authenticity, subjectivity and agency. Posthuman representations found throughout Kantor’s work, by contrast, empty the body of its humanness, leaving it to function as mere ‘thing’. The possibility of the posthuman body on stage, Romanska argues, points to a relation between ethical and theatrical forms beyond the postdramatic. Nicholas Ridout closes this section by rethinking Lehmann’s claim that postdramatic theatre emerged as a result of the rise of new media and communication technologies in the 1960s and 1970s, insisting that this emergence cannot be separated from the contemporaneous global restructuring of industrial production and consumption. Turning to Fredric Jameson’s theory of ‘total flow’ to analyse video art by Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin, Ridout explains that the spectator experience generated by the ubiquity of video in postdramatic performance mirrors formally the social relations of work and leisure in late capitalist society. As each of these chapters makes clear in their own way, the shifts that formally define postdramatic theatre owe to broader social transformations, be it with regard to financial markets, technological advancements or even concepts of the human. The formal aspects of a given work of postdramatic theatre emerge neither in a historical vacuum nor solely on a particular stage, but in relation to other ‘forms’ – be they aesthetic, social or (inevitably) both. Essays in the second section, ‘Social Formations’, expand upon but also complicate ongoing debates about the political stakes of the postdramatic by arguing that aesthetic forms are always already bound up with broader societal forces, from public agencies to private enterprises. Like the essays in ‘Formal Aspects’, the contributions to this next section ask how the formation of postdramatic theatre owes to, affords and even shapes other aesthetic and social forms. The first two essays in this section consider how postdramatic performance practices engage with and are constrained by influential art institutions like the festival and the gallery. Andrew Friedman, in his consideration of the controversy surrounding Ann Liv Young’s disruption of a performance by Rebecca Patek at American Realness in 2014, foregrounds the tendency of festivals to become a marketplace for experimental performance, defanging the avant-­garde impulses of postdramatic artists. He tracks how the festival form has given rise to a contradiction in which curators are required to

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present work that is both ‘cutting edge and market ready’.82 Contemporary festivals entice audiences and producers with the promise of avant-­garde disruption without actually challenging the institutional marketability of performance commodities. Ryan Hatch considers what happens to theatrical form when it moves out of theatres and into galleries. Focusing on David Levine’s eight-­hour performance Habit, Hatch argues that the appeal of theatre for contemporary visual artists is its promise to provide the ‘real’. Hatch turns to Lacanian psychoanalysis to insist that what may seem like the ‘real’ in performance – such as actors smoking or eating – is only to be understood as ‘real’ because it unfolds in an attempt, however faulty, at semblance. For Hatch, the move of drama into the gallery reveals a key error at the heart of how postdramatic form has been theorized: what appears as the irruption of the real in theatre is simply an appearance of ‘the Real’. The processes of making theatre – training, design, rehearsal – are themselves complex social formations that draw upon the institutional resources and requirements of other disciplines. In her contribution, Kate Bredeson uses Bruno Tackels’ theory of l’écriture de plateau, or ‘set writing’, to evaluate the limits and exclusions of postdramatic theatre as a label for contemporary performance in France. By turning to the work of designer-­directors like Philippe Quesne and the pair Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort, Bredeson considers how artists without conventional theatrical training are challenging key institutional dynamics that have long dominated French theatres. These artists, Bredeson argues, offer a metatheatrical approach that calls attention to the interdisciplinary qualities inherent to the theatrical process. Yvonne Hardt examines the prominence of narration in contemporary dance, focusing on how artists like Jérôme Bel, Martin Nachbar and Eszter Salamon incorporate into their work critical reflection on how they create choreography. Such self-­reflexive narration, Hardt argues, allows these artists to address dance history while also garnering disciplinary legitimacy for Dance Studies and support from funding bodies and academic institutions. Incorporating narration into work like this, Hardt insists, deconstructs the body/discourse binary so prominent in postdramatic treatments of dance, showing how the moving body cannot be reduced to what Lehmann calls ‘pure gesture’.83 The final two essays in this section push us to consider ways in which important and often contested social issues bear upon postdramatic formalism. Focusing on ‘postmigrant’ performance at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater, Matt Cornish’s essay asks readers to consider how theatrical form relates to racial exclusion and migration in Germany. He distinguishes ‘postmigrant’ from ‘postdramatic’, examining what is at stake when critics

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classify a performance as one or the other. His essay extends understandings of the politics of form beyond what appears on stage, using the language of form to examine as well the Gorki’s governance structures, marketing strategies and the composition of its ensemble. Making use of a phenomenological method, Stanton B. Garner, in the collection’s final chapter, posits how postdramatic theatre presents new possibilities for expression that are especially suited to engaging with the lived experience of dementia. His analysis of the ways dementia is performed in the puppetry of Sandglass Theatre expands Lehmann’s theory of postdramatic subjectivity. Garner calls attention to how diverse inter-­institutional formations, such as nursing homes and government health programmes, sustain and inform postdramatic performance. The two-­part structure of this collection is not meant to imply that the formal aspects and social formations of postdramatic theatre are separate and distinct. Indeed, the authors view them as contributing to a multi-­faceted understanding that challenges entrenched notions of form. Many of the essays in the second section could be reframed to fit in the first. Cornish’s essay on migration, for instance, is also about the body; Garner’s essay on dementia is also an essay about time. And the essays in the first section are about social formations of their own: Ridout’s essay about media is also an essay about galleries; Mahmoud’s essay on space is also about financial crisis. Before turning to these wide-­ranging studies of postdramatic formalism, however, it is important to consider drama more substantively. Often, discussions of postdramatic form gloss over questions of dramatic form – and the relation between the two. In so doing, they confuse, as we have argued above, a more literary dramatic form with a more performative theatrical form. What follows this introductory essay, then, is a chapter from Elinor Fuchs providing essential context for the formalist approach that undergirds Lehmann’s theory of postdramatic theatre. Turning back to the work of Peter Szondi, on which so much of Lehmann’s formalism depends, Fuchs argues that what struck Szondi as a moment of crisis for drama is actually for Lehmann a ‘liberation’ for theatrical form. But Fuchs goes on to argue that the rupture between dramatic and postdramatic form might be even more profound than Lehmann indicates, leading her to call for a reexamination of both the historical and social roots of postdramatic theatre – a challenge the subsequent chapters take up. This volume thus proposes a formalism that requires us to expand our understanding of form. We seek to forge a shared language that recognizes postdramatic theatre as a processual and historically contingent site where aesthetic and social forms intersect, overlap and collide. Athens (OH), London, New York, 2018

2

Drama: The Szondi Connection Elinor Fuchs

In March 1944, Hitler’s troops invaded Hungary. SS Officer Adolf Eichmann, on orders from Hitler, immediately set about organizing Hungary’s roughly half a million village and rural Jews into ghettos for transport to Auschwitz. Soon 12,000 Jews were being sent by rail to their immediate deaths each day. Approximately another 400,000 Jews remained in Budapest. Despite Hungary’s harsh anti-Semitic wartime laws, the deportation of Budapest Jews had been stalled because of a silent struggle between Hitler and his quondam Hungarian ally, Admiral Miklos Horthy. Some historians believe that Horthy’s delay of roundups was intended to keep the city’s economy from collapsing (a quarter of the city’s population was Jewish); others say that Horthy had been warned by Allied powers that with Hitler losing the war, massive deportations would lead to his own trial as a war criminal. From Horthy’s point of view, with the Russian army closing in on Budapest, the issue would soon be moot. In fact, that spring Horthy made unsuccessful efforts to switch Hungary’s war allegiance to the Allies. There was a curious small exception to this hellish indeterminacy in the spring of 1944: the case of the so-­called Kasztner train, organized by the Hungarian lawyer, journalist and Zionist, Rudolf (Resző) Kasztner, a leader who had been active during the war in helping many western European Jews find refuge in Hungary, where for the time being they were thought to be safe. After Hitler’s occupation of Hungary in the spring of 1944, Kasztner and his Aid and Rescue Committee partner Joel Brand began negotiating directly with Eichmann and his deputies to stop the already launched deportation of the rural and village Hungarian Jews. The germ of an exchange proposal may have come from Eichmann, who seemed to encourage the idea of a ‘buyout’ of Jews in exchange for trucks for the German war effort. As the terms of the deal constantly shifted, Kasztner and Brand began raising funds from foreign sources headquartered in neutral countries. Eventually, the scheme boiled down to a plan to move about 1,700 Hungarian Jews, at about $1,000 a head, from both Budapest and the hinterland, by train and then by ship, to safety in

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Palestine. The group would include not only affluent and accomplished professionals, but rabbis, opera singers, industrialists, civil servants, farmers, housewives and orphaned children. Kasztner claimed that the train would be a kind of Noah’s Ark of Hungarian Jewry. The train departed from Budapest on 30 June 1944, its passenger list and even its destination uncertain, as ports in Spain and Portugal had recently closed. It ended up in Bergen-Belsen, amidst assurances that the passengers would soon move on. After several harrowing months in the camp, the Kasztner passengers were sent onto Switzerland. Much of this story has been subject to dispute, turning on the character of Kasztner himself. Was he a saviour – a kind of Oskar Schindler? Or a self-­ serving Nazi collaborator who saved his own family but did nothing to warn the Jewish community about the exterminations at Auschwitz? Kasztner was one of the few thought to be aware of the Vrba-Wetzler Report, named for the two Auschwitz escapees who, in the spring of 1944, brought their eye witness accounts of the construction of the gas chambers and crematoria to the Allied powers and Jewish rescue groups. After the war, Kasztner moved to Israel and worked for the Israeli government. In 1954, he was charged with collaboration with the Nazis and was defended by the Israeli government in an eighteen-­month libel trial. Kasztner was found guilty, accused by the judge of having ‘sold his soul to the devil’.1 While the court’s verdict was being appealed, a right-­wing activist group assassinated Kasztner. Four months after his death, Kasztner was exonerated by the Supreme Court of Israel. Among the Kasztner train’s passengers were Dr Leopold Szondi, a renowned Hungarian psychoanalyst, his wife and his son, Peter, then barely fifteen years old. Remaining in Switzerland after the war, Peter Szondi completed his doctorate in German literature in Zurich in 1956, writing a dissertation on modern drama, published that same year with the title Theorie des modernen Dramas (Theory of the Modern Drama). He was appointed a professor at Berlin’s Freie Universität (FU) in 1961, where he became the dissertation adviser of Hans-Thies Lehmann. In 1965, he was named chair of the FU’s Institute for General and Comparative Literature. Peter Szondi became the most noted postwar theorist of modern drama in West Germany, as well as the abiding intellectual influence of Lehmann’s career. It is through Szondi that one can see how thoroughly Lehmann represents the continuation of a classicist European critical tradition, and it is through Lehmann that we may finally grasp the merging of the European and American ‘avant-­garde’. On 9 November 1971, while working on a book about his friend, the poet and Holocaust survivor, Paul Celan, who had drowned himself in the Seine

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six months earlier, Szondi committed suicide. He was forty-­two. The shock to his young student, Lehmann, can scarcely be imagined. The following essay traces close similarities between Szondi’s and Lehmann’s theories of dramatic form, and the implications of their differences.

Szondi In the opening pages of her English translation of Postdramatic Theatre, Karen-Jürs Munby writes that ‘Lehmann’s theory of postdramatic theatre is in part a response to Peter Szondi’s seminal Theory of the Modern Drama’.2 In his own ‘Prologue’ that follows, Lehmann offers a somewhat convoluted tribute to his mentor, yet opens a significant space between his own project and Szondi’s theorization of drama: ‘On the one hand, following Peter Szondi, I want to read the realized artistic constructions and forms of practice as answers to artistic questions,’ he writes. ‘On the other hand, I will claim here a certain (controlled) trust in a personal . . . reaction.’3 Lehmann implies – an implication only to be teased out at the end of his book and by familiarity with Szondi – that he intends to rely at least as much on his own personal responses to theatrical practice as on traditional analyses of the dramatic theatre that are ‘subordinated to the primacy of the text’, an approach for which Szondi has been criticized.4 Szondi’s drama criticism was not published in English until 1987, appearing finally in Michael Hays’s translation as Volume 29 of the University of Minnesota Press’s now discontinued Theory and History of Literature series. For years before that, Hays was notably impatient with the pace at which Szondi was being introduced to English-­speaking readers. In 1983, in an introduction to a special issue of the journal boundary 2 dedicated to articles on Szondi, Hays grumbled that: ‘Translations of his works have appeared in French, Italian, Polish, Swedish, and, no doubt, other languages as well, other, that is, than English.’5 Almost none of Szondi’s work had by then been made available to the world of Anglo-American criticism and literary theory, an absence Hays lamented as ‘surprising and unfortunate’.6 Hays should not have been surprised. It is hard to break into a discourse dominated for centuries by Aristotle, and even harder to convince a British or American student of theatre that Shakespeare – of all playwrights! – didn’t write ‘drama’. Entire economies are built on the opposing premise. Szondi, however, was raised in the school of Hegel. The historicization of the dramatic form was a natural extension of his theoretical training. Like Hegel in his three-­part theory of the dialectic – thesis, antithesis and synthesis – or his three-­part adventure of the ethical ‘collision’ as it evolved from the Greeks

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to the Romantics, Szondi proposes a tripartite unfolding of the dramatic form over time. While he does not actually resort to the prepositions pre- and post-, as does Lehmann, it is clear that his understanding of drama relies on such an evolutionary model. Pre-­drama, in Szondi’s terms, would include all scripted stage works that were created and performed before the advent of true ‘drama’ in seventeenth-­ century France. These works included various rhetorical forms that slowly disappeared during and after the Renaissance: the chorus was already gone; following it went the prologue, the epilogue, the aside and, more slowly, the monologue. After Shakespeare, what Szondi calls the ‘absolute’ drama begins to appear: drama written entirely in dialogue. ‘It was the result of a bold intellectual effort made by a newly self-­conscious being,’ Szondi writes, who, after the collapse of the medieval worldview, sought to create an artistic reality within which he could fix and mirror himself on the basis of interpersonal relationships alone. . . . The verbal medium for this world of the interpersonal was the dialogue. . . . The absolute dominance of dialogue – that is, of interpersonal communication, reflects the fact that the Drama [now] consists only of the reproduction of interpersonal relations, is only cognizant of what shines forth within this sphere.7

The word ‘absolute’ dominates Szondi’s argument. ‘The Drama is absolute,’ he writes. ‘To be purely relational – that is, to be dramatic, it must break loose from everything external.’8 Among the rejected external temptations (my word, not his – though in fact Szondi’s ‘drama’ does suggest the discipline of abstinence) are the dramatist, the spectator, the physical ‘house’, the bare physical stage (as against the illusion), the actor (as against the character) and even the past itself. The drama can be ‘conscious of nothing outside itself ’.9 Szondi was influenced by George Lukács’s The Theory of the Novel. In addition to the almost identical titles of their books, both men theorized a modern literary form and brought back into current critical discourse Aristotle’s counter-­term to tragedy, epic. While Lukács sees the novel as the modern form of the epic, however, Szondi is concerned about the novelization of drama. It is interesting that Szondi does not name the dialogic form of drama ‘bourgeois’. Yet he implies that this new dramatic form contains all that is now necessary to the explication of this emergent class. Gone are God, heaven, hell and royalty. Only that which interpersonal conversation will contain – issues of family, livelihood, community and love – is now essential to the depiction of the human.

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Yet to Szondi, writing in the 1950s, modern drama, that is the drama of his own past half-­century or more, has entered a crisis, caused by the outbreak of suppressed epic material. In all (then) contemporary playwriting – from Ibsen to Arthur Miller – he finds the eruption of the past or future into the seamless present of dialogue. Every major playwright from Ibsen forward struggles with this problem, Szondi argues. He goes on to trace a number of ‘tentative solutions’ to this crisis of form.10 The way forward is shown in the methods of contemporary playwrights, their deliberate opening up the absolute present of dialogical drama by wandering away from interpersonal conversation that dialogue presupposes, back into the past (Ibsen’s unearthing of family secrets) or into the future (Chekhov’s utopian dreams about a better future) through flashbacks or dream scenes (Arthur Miller), and other methods that bring the expanded time frame of the epic into the dialogic form. Though it is especially in the Anglo-American tradition that the bourgeois drama theorized by Szondi continues to flourish, his theorization never caught on in the United States as it has in Europe. In 2009, the scholar Peter Höyng wrote that Theory of the Modern Drama was in its twenty-­sixth edition and had sold more than 100,000 copies in German alone, making it a ‘justifiable classic’.11 That has hardly been its fate on the list of the University of Minnesota Press, where it has been out of print since 1999. I suspect that today’s students of dramatic theory and criticism are still in the stage of knowledge I myself was in as a graduate student at the Graduate Center, when my professor Andrzej Wirth, newly hired from Berlin, came to class one evening having the night before witnessed a Robert Wilson production in downtown Manhattan. Excited, he announced that he had just seen his first work of ‘postdialogic’ theatre. Wirth’s insight very likely derived directly from the general European acceptance of Peter Szondi’s dramatic theories.

The Logic of Three? My principal graduate school mentor, the late Dr Daniel Gerould, took delight in teaching what he called the minor genres. Among these was the ‘Fairytale Play’. ‘Why’, he asked, when teaching this form, ‘does everything come in threes?’ Three brothers, three caskets, three suitors, three little pigs, three bears. ‘Why three?’, he asked. In the silence, we all thought seriously about the Trinity. ‘Because three is enough’, he replied to his own question, getting a laugh. Philosophical criticism resorts frequently to patterns of threes. Szondi and Lehmann continue the tradition. We recall that Aristotle says that all

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tragedies need a beginning, a middle and an end, and that the plot of tragedy has three ‘parts’ – reversal, recognition and suffering. Aristotle no doubt encountered the pattern in Plato, for instance in the Parable of the Cave, in which the cave dweller undergoes a three-­stage insight into reality, from shadows on a screen, to manipulators creating those shadows, to the brilliance of the true light of the sun outside the cave. Skipping forward two millennia, the triadic thought pattern was elaborated by Hegel into a universal dialectical theory of history, governed by thesis, antithesis and synthesis. It repeated itself in his evolutionary theory of the dramatic ‘collision’, in which two external ethical principles come into conflict, as in Antigone; when an internal and an external principle (such as love and honour) collide in Le Cid; and when, in the period of the ‘infinite interiorization’ of the Spirit, two internal principles conflict, as in Hamlet. In each instance, the third part of the three-­part pattern functions as a kind of resolution, as used in tonal composition. The musical resolution is usually the third move in a three-­chord progression that ‘resolves’ from an unstable, or anticipatory, sound, to a stable or complete one. The need or even the desire for a chord to resolve is somewhat historically and stylistically governed, one should add, as the listener demands resolution more or less in proportion to her ear’s acceptance of atonality. In Postdramatic Theatre, Lehmann seems to accord unquestioning acceptance to Szondi’s three-­part theorization of the dramatic form, and especially to its central premise. ‘Ancient tragedy, Racine’s dramas and Robert Wilson’s visual dramaturgy are all forms of theatre’, he writes. ‘Yet, assuming the modern understanding of drama, one can say that the former is “predramatic”, that Racine’s plays are undoubtedly dramatic theatre, and that Wilson’s “operas” have to be called “postdramatic” ’.12 The second leg – drama, without a ‘pre’ or ‘post’ – here takes its place in what Lehmann acknowledges as the ‘modern understanding’ of the dramatic form, an understanding that can no longer be debated as a theory because it is ‘undoubtedly’ true and has become a fact. I want to linger over Lehmann’s continuation of Szondi’s three-­part theorization of the evolution of drama, as well as Lehmann’s assertion that the dialogic stage must be understood as the ‘undoubted’, core structure of the modern dramatic form. The logic of historicization supplies the reason that phase two, the phase of pure dialogue, is ‘undoubtedly’ the new definition of drama. Lehmann, and Szondi before him, comes out of a critical tradition in which, with, and since Herder and Hegel, and on through Marx to Brecht, historicization is essential. Thus his phase two, Drama, is not only the core constituent of an historicized paradigm, but in itself emerges from the evolution of Western class relations

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over several centuries. In ‘Drama’, in Lessing’s mid-­eighteenth-century plays, for instance, servants begin to speak to their masters as their near equals, and sometimes as their moral superiors, such as Norton, servant to Mellefont in Miss Sara Sampson. Both Szondi and Lehmann continue the traditional progress-­of-three even as the first dramatic phase crumples into the second, while the third phase no longer plays a resolving role. For Szondi, this third phase signals not a resolution, but a ‘crisis’ of literary form, a rupture; while for Lehmann, the third phase radically positions itself as able to re-­accept all banished forms of speech and action, permitting all the theatrical gaiety, illogic and recklessness tamed by the ‘absolute’ to return. One might therefore question why Lehmann does not simply propound a two-­phase theory: one dramatic, including the long evolution from the Greeks into the bourgeois dialogic form, and the second performative, in which all the playfulness dismissed by the ‘absolute’ comes flooding back onto the stage and into the theatre itself. Lehmann does not question the criteria by which Szondi separates pre-­ drama from drama, or his own acceptance of these first two stages of the dramatic form (pre-­drama and drama) as distinct from each other. Since both stages – in Szondi – are defined by their acceptance or rejection of certain forms of language, and Lehmann’s third stage constitutes a radical break with such linguistic and scholarly formalism, one can wonder why Lehmann doesn’t simply propound a two-­stage theory, the first a narrowing of theatre to an abstemious ‘absolute,’ and the second – the reaction or rebound – to an undoing of this same dialogic absolute, in which all that has been rejected is welcomed back, and all that is retained is discarded. If Lehmann endorses and follows Szondi in the first two phases of his definition of Drama, he radically departs from Szondi in his third, ‘postdramatic’ phase. While following Szondi’s commitment to periodization, he also corrects his mentor’s deficiencies, seeing clearly that Szondi’s vision is limited by its classicist devotion to the dominance of the dramatic text. Drama and theatre have long been on a trajectory of uncoupling, Lehmann points out. In the postdramatic phase, theatre finally shakes off the control of the text and declares its independence. ‘Postdramatic theatre . . . wants the stage to be a beginning and a point of departure,’ he writes, ‘not a site of transcription/copying. . . . [I]t seems it is exactly the omission of an originary source/agency of discourse combined with the pluralization of sending agencies/sources onstage, that lead to new modes of perception’.13 Instead Lehmann sees the new theatre, postdramatic theatre, as embracing the ‘theatre situation’, meaning the real existing relationship of stage to house, and actor to spectator. ‘In postdramatic theatre . . . the theatre situation as

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such becomes a matrix within whose energy lines the elements of the scenic fictions inscribe themselves. Theatre is emphasized as a situation, not as a fiction’.14 This ‘situation’ is the ‘real’ that Lehmann talks about, within which anything vital and alive can erupt. One could argue that the postdramatic describes a new kind of realism.15

The Logic of Two One may ask at this point of analysis, why it is self-­evident that the dialogic form should be the ‘undoubted’ form of modern drama. While drama’s precursor, as described by Szondi, bears an intimate developmental relationship to dialogue, its successor, the postdramatic, frees the theatre from drama to ‘do its own thing’. The postdramatic is permitted to re-­embrace every form of discourse banished by dialogue, as well as reach out across the divide between stage and house to make direct contact with the spectator. It is obvious to Lehmann that once the interpersonal conversation is no longer the mandatory glue of the dramatic form, Szondi’s ‘epic’ is no longer a sufficient gateway for the stage’s new freedoms: ‘This answer can no longer suffice’, he writes.16 Rather, Lehmann seems to suggest, Szondi’s recourse to the classical, Aristotelian opposition of epic and dramatic (encouraged no doubt by Lukács) is more an artifact of the classical lineage of Szondi’s training, which ‘has led to outright blocks in perception and an overly hasty agreement about what matters in “modern” theatre’.17 To summarize where this discussion has led us, we can see that Hegel’s reliance on arguments-­of-three – ending with the stable ‘synthesis’, which once more launches the pattern – seems to have led to Szondi’s argument-­ofthree, ending with the ‘crisis’ that also offers ‘solutions’. This Three – it can be argued – in turn appears to lead to Lehmann’s pre- and post- argument-­ofthree, with pre-­drama, and the crucial term ‘drama’, unchanged in meaning from mentor Szondi to student Lehmann. The third, ‘post’ phase for Szondi abandons the classic shape of the pattern, and suggests decay, while the ‘post’ phase for Lehmann suggests a liberation, and even a starting over. Yet what Hans-Thies Lehmann calls ‘post’ has two opposing logics, one developmental and historical, as in Szondi’s attempt at a linked pattern, and the other ‘post’ in the sense of ‘beyond’. In this latter sense, postdrama can keep or reject its link to drama: it is rudderless. It is not necessarily even linked to drama, and it doesn’t need the classicist logic-­of-three. Having abandoned its connection to drama, especially dialogic drama as both Szondi and Lehmann define drama, it can go in any direction. But abandoning the rudder is to also abandon the classicist model of three that we have been

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following since Aristotle. In truth, even Szondi did not exactly complete the model, as his epic third phase is to him more of a problem than a resolution. So did Lehmann complete Szondi’s project? It is here, at this point of independence from Szondi – perhaps somewhat puzzling given Lehmann’s simultaneous ‘undoubted’ dependence – that Lehmann has made such a wide and startling impact on the world of theatre scholarship. Lehmann’s very naming of the theatre groups, and their locations on both sides of the Atlantic, that inspired his work finally allowed scholars to find a unifying principle and a name for the widely diverse new theatrical forms since the 1970s, as well as a critical language in which to describe this work. Translated into twenty-­six languages, already a ‘justifiable classic’, as Peter Höyng says of Szondi, Postdramatic Theatre has in twenty years become an established successor to the best-­known work of Lehmann’s mentor. A sigh of critical relief has been almost audible, as scholars and students alike, struggling with the difference between the new forms and drama, have been released from the myriad choices available to describe the new theatre (performance, performance art, art performance, performance piece, avant-­ garde theatre and many others) and have been able to connect it to drama. In this way, Hans-Thies Lehmann’s third stage of drama, postdrama, while far from finding a ‘resolution’ as in classical theory or tonal practice, nevertheless plays the same role, for it offers a vision of a completed journey of the beloved form of drama. It is like a map. It tells us where we came from and where we’ve arrived. There remains a nagging scruple, and it is the same cloud of a doubt that circles over Szondi’s own clarification and re-­naming. Even on encounter today, more than half a century after its publication in English, the first two parts of the tripartite theory adumbrated in Theory of the Modern Drama have a seamless appeal. Everything hangs together around the theme of the ineluctable progress of the dialogic form. One must wonder, nevertheless: is there any other way to theorize the evolution of the dramatic form that would still allow Shakespeare to have written ‘drama’? And what about Sophocles? Similarly, with postdrama, it would take major re-­consideration to reenter the wide and varied terrain of the new theatre, and ask whether there is any other way to theorize and name it that is as satisfying as the ‘postdramatic’, even if much of it is not dramatic. I can think of one other avenue, which I propose not as a conclusion or decision, but an approach to this question. It is an historicization of the new theatre not through ‘drama’, but through the revival, dissemination and normalization of the pre-­war European avant-­gardes. Futurism, Dada, Surrealism and Constructivism all had performance flanges that were interrupted by the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s and finally by the war.

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They were marked by such avant-­garde discoveries as cubist composition, collage, montage, mixed media and ‘paroles libres’. American performance groups revived these forms, combining and modernizing them. In the wave of what is now being embraced as the ‘postdramatic’, a new international style of performance theatre is recognized. Americans take the lead – Robert Wilson, Mabou Mines, Richard Foreman, Richard Schechner, the Wooster Group and Meredith Monk. But this story progresses by a logic-­of-two, not of three. The dialogic form is taught in every course on playwriting. These two constitute separate theatre cultures, either ‘drama’ in Szondi’s sense, or performance theatre in Lehmann’s postdramatic sense. The two have different design interests, performance techniques, audiences and physical theatres. They even stake out different zones in urban centers. New Yorkers do not expect to see what are known as ‘straight plays’ at the Performing Garage on Wooster Street, nor did they see them at the St Mark’s Church-in-­the-Bowery in the years when Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theatre was in residence there. Two different theatre cultures, two different parts of the city, with some overlap in such catholic venues as the Public Theater. Broadway remains largely the domain of the dialogic. If contemporary theatre history were to abandon the tripartite histories that have long been with us, and were to promote the study of two theatre traditions and not one, the story of dramatic and theatrical form would be increasingly interesting and complex as the two strands attempt to accommodate each other. Without capitulating to drama, the performance tradition has reached out to embrace drama for years (for instance, the Wooster Group’s interest in O’Neill, Eliot, Racine and Shakespeare), while drama increasingly permits itself intermezzi of performance riffs, such as choral effects in the plays of Sarah Ruhl, the dancing in the Elevator Repair Service’s The Sound and the Fury or – long ago now – the tap dancing ‘knee plays’ Robert Wilson inserted into his production of Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken. A logic of two is what we have been increasingly seeing in contemporary theatre training. Versions of performance theatre have emerged from the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, where Hans-Thies Lehmann taught alongside Wirth, and where several prominent European performance groups – for instance Rimini Protokoll, She She Pop and Gob Squad – were formed. In Postdramatic Theatre, Hans-Thies Lehmann honours his former mentor by accepting Szondi’s developmental analysis of Western text-­based drama, comprising two stages, running from the Greeks to the seventeenth century, and from the seventeenth century into modern bourgeois theatre, two

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movements of his three-part evolution. He then puts Szondi aside, disregarding his ‘solution’ of the Epic, and anatomizes contemporary theatre into its many ‘aspects’. Postdrama represents a sharp break from drama, while predrama, which is characterized by the deployment of non-dialogic forms of speech, such as the chorus or the prologue, would seem, by comparison, to lack sufficient definition to be thus separated from the second stage, drama. But wait! We have only just now composed ourselves into the relief, or, in musical terms, the ‘resolution’ offered by the postdramatic. We are still explaining to non-theatre professionals that the word is ‘postdramatic’, not ‘post-traumatic’. Isn’t it too early to rethink a formula that has finally offered us such clarity? On close examination, Lehmann really describes only two phases of the dramatic form, not three as the ‘pre’ and ‘post’ suggest. These are the textbased and the performance-based. This begins to sound very much like the old Battle of the Ancients and the Moderns of dramatic theory textbooks. In some tellings, it is a battle between the French and the English. Shakespeare was the contended object of that competition. And slowly, we recall, it was Shakespeare, with his mixture of comedy and tragedy, his low classes and nobility, his wild jokes and even his occasional dog, who won over the wavering German Romantics, the Spanish Golden Agers and even, on occasion, the French themselves. So Lehmann does not so much complete Szondi’s project as mark the end of drama’s two-century-long dialogic phase and then goes on to theorize a kind of variety theatre – the postdramatic.

Part One

Formal Aspects

3

Text: The Director’s Notebook Edith Cassiers, Timmy De Laet and Luk Van den Dries

More than anything else, Hans-Thies Lehmann’s seminal identification of a postdramatic theatre is steered by the radical displacement – if not the ultimate dethronement – of the dramatic text, in favour of other theatrical parameters, such as body, space, sound or image. In the course of Lehmann’s book, however, text continues to re-­emerge as the nagging spectre that seems to attenuate the allegedly innovative aspirations of postdramatic theatre, compelling him to characterize postdrama rather ambiguously as both a rupture with and a continuation of traditional drama.1 In this respect, text seems to constitute the turning point where dramatic and postdramatic theatre are at once most closely related and most different: whereas the medium of the written word is of vital importance to both traditions, it is primarily the manner in which text is used that grounds their difference. Opposing drama’s penchant for totalizing narratives and the transparent communication of meaning, postdrama experiments with textual fragmentation and the deficit of discursive interpretation. Especially in the wake of the English translation of Lehmann’s Postdramatic Theatre in 2006, scholars have continued to explore the renewed function of text in Western theatre from the 1960s onwards. Most of this research, however, focuses solely on the script in its finished form and/or its actualization in performance.2 What these accounts fail to address is not only the classical function of text, but also how its material forms have profoundly changed in the postdramatic era. No longer restricted to the size of the page, postdramatic text writing has become strikingly intermedial as it assumes a great variety of formats and techniques. Next to the continued interest in the expressive possibilities of the written word, numerous other modes of representations (such as drawings, sketches, videos, lists, Dropbox files, scores, annotations, diagrams, etc.) have become, arguably more than ever, vital means of theatrical creation. In this chapter, we aim to shed light on the expanded forms postdramatic writing by analyzing a largely overlooked aspect of theatrical practice, that is, the creative process and how it is charted – whether consciously or not – in

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the multifarious ‘writings’ that are produced along the way. Looking beyond the script in its finalized stage and beyond the actual staging of the text, we want to delve into how working documents offer illuminating insights into postdramatic stagings, precisely because they contain the seeds of the formal aesthetics for particular performances. Insofar as various forms of writing correlate to whatever form postdramatic theatre might take on stage, it is necessary to look more closely at these traces of creative labour, which often escape attention as they remain only latently present in the eventual work. Theatre scholars have only recently begun inquiring into the genesis of performance, adapting the considerably well-­established tradition of genetic research in literary studies to their own field.3 Yet, despite the increased importance of drawings, pictures, digital resources and other media in postdramatic creative processes, genetic theatre research largely restricts its focus to textual or written resources.4 Strangely enough, by privileging script, narrative or even the chronology of theatrical creation, genetic studies on theatre continue to cling to characteristics that are foundational of classical drama, forsaking the expanded aesthetics that typify postdrama. Against this essentially drama-­driven orientation of genetic research, we choose to follow the path laid out by Josette Féral in her programmatic text ‘Towards a Genetic Study of Performance – Take Two’. Distinguishing between ‘textual’ and ‘scenic drafts’, Féral argues that genetic research should not only focus on ‘everything that relates to the text proper’, but also include ‘all the written, visual and aural documents related to the rehearsal work itself ’.5 Even though Féral acknowledges that ‘the genetic analysis of performance can never be exhaustive’, it does allow one to single out certain ‘preliminary steps leading to the definitive choices that characterize the final stage event’.6 Amidst the vast realm of working documents that instantiate new forms of writing in postdramatic theatre, we will focus in this chapter on one specific category: the director’s notebook – or, as it is called in German, das Regiebuch. Director’s notebooks traditionally contain the dramatic text, accompanied by notes written in the margins of the script. The position of these notes poignantly illustrates their status: literally situated at the side, they are mere amendments to the text, which retains its primordial importance. A canonical example is Max Reinhardt’s notebook for Macbeth (1916), with the printed text on the left side and annotations, drawings and comments related to Reinhardt’s directorial choices on the right. By contrast, the notebooks of directors commonly aligned with postdrama (such as Jan Fabre, Heiner Goebbels and Robert Wilson)7 strikingly prefigure the increased emphasis on visuality, musicality and corporeality by expanding the primarily textual modes of writing to the graphical qualities of text, the

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35

production of imagery or the inclusion of technological media that – strictly speaking – exceed the boundaries of what we commonly understand by a ‘notebook’. Our discussion here will centre on two leading directors, Romeo Castellucci and Guy Cassiers, each of whom has been instrumental to the development of postdramatic theatre, despite profound differences between their respective approaches. Juxtaposing their notebooks will therefore not only bring into relief the specific characteristics of their postdramatic practice, but also – and most importantly – how these distinct aesthetics germinate in the working documents.

Creating Constellations out of Chaos: The Notebooks of Romeo Castellucci Italian director Romeo Castellucci (born 1960) and his company Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio are known for presenting an enigmatic and sometimes dark universe on stage, challenging spectators to yield to a world in which actions seem to have no reasonable cause and human figures are only faintly reminiscent, if at all, of theatrical personages.8 A quick look at the titles of some of the most important productions that established Castellucci’s reputation, such as Amleto (1992), Oresteia (1995) or Giulio Cesare (1997), readily shows that his infamous iconoclastic poetics explicitly inscribes itself onto the dramatic canon, albeit to create distance from it. For Castellucci, these foundational texts are more of a starting point than a final aim in themselves, but the connection he draws between the classical tradition of theatre and his own work should not be overlooked. The manifest absence of a coherent narrative in Castellucci’s theatre masks the fact that language continues to play a key role in his theatrical imagination, as can been seen by examining his creative process. In contrast to the visual dramaturgy or the concrete and often shocking corporeality for which Castellucci’s work is known, the written word actually plays a key role in his artistic research. Practically all his performances originate, genetically, in small notebooks in which he writes down ideas, observations, remarks and comments. These notes gradually grow into a loose assemblage of private thoughts that might, or might not, be present on stage in the eventual works. As Castellucci himself once explained in a conversation with Michelle Kokosowski: When I prepare a work, I start with a small book of notes I have collected day by day. It’s a daily exercise. On these pages, I jot down all the sensations that the day brings. The book is full of notes, sensations, ideas,

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Postdramatic Theatre and Form and constitutes the raw material for the work to follow. Leafing through it, one immediately sees that it is chaotic, a collection of scraps, something just thrown on to paper.9

Not coincidentally, Castellucci calls these notebooks his ‘books of chaos’.10 However, when one puts together Castellucci’s various notebooks,11 it becomes apparent that his scribbling down of observations and ideas always follows the same pattern: rather than extensive texts, his notes are always brief, often containing only one or a few words, which he writes down one after the other, as if he wants to make a list of themes, topics or images that should be kept in mind while creating the piece. For example, in the notebook for Purgatorio,12 a piece he made in 2008, Castellucci included the following list: l l l l l l l l l l l l l

Fuga Theft 1920 Discotheca Solitude, Palace in a big city Isolation in a house in the mountains racecourse brothelhouse, 1920 club of fetishists fetishist of rubber a story of an old woman in a city a story of. . . torture not visible, television is on

These notes show the artistic imagination at work, which follows an associative logic centred on crafting place, time and atmosphere, instead of building a story with a clear beginning, climax and end. Obviously, these basic lists are only the beginning of what eventually amounts to a more elaborate and complex structure of theatrical creation. This is acknowledged by Castellucci, who says there is a second stage, in which: I reread the notebook several times and I discover that certain things begin to surface more strongly than others. Through a process of parthenogenesis lines and constellations are created. I simply have to follow this constellation.13

Castellucci’s reference to the idea of ‘constellation’ as a guiding principle in the reworking of his notes resonates with Walter Benjamin’s peculiar

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characterization of the image as ‘that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation’.14 This kind of ‘flash’, which ought to be understood as an illuminating recognition of a meaningful conjuncture among a number of apparently unrelated elements, appears to be the next step in Castellucci’s creative process. Yet, again, this second stage happens solely within the confined space of his notebooks. It only emerges while rereading the ‘notebook of scraps and rubbish’15, which he restructures by adding coloured lines, numbers or symbols. Still working on a purely textual basis, Castellucci ‘groups’ his ideas into thematic clusters, bringing together words and utterances that were scattered throughout his notebook by using additional annotations to connect them.16 According to Castellucci and other key members of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, these initial stages of making notes and adding annotations constitute the most vital steps in the creative process. Besides being the most important part of the creative process, it is also by far the longest one, since the moment when the preconceived ideas are tried out on stage is, in fact, only the ultimate test. Quite remarkably, then, in the case of Castellucci and the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, the written word is neither prescriptive nor restrictive, but elevates the function of text to a level it has arguably never reached in the dramatic tradition. Words, notes and annotations serve instead a primarily instrumental function that helps to activate the artistic imagination, even beyond the constraints of the stage. Notwithstanding the importance of the written word for the work of Castellucci and his company, the director himself claims to have a rather ambivalent relation to speech and language: ‘The spoken word is always outside me. It has no more contact with my body. Speaking is not a happy experience and has never been. Words always express a detachment, a coldness. While I speak, I am not myself. It is not my place.’17 Even though Castellucci seems to voice a negative attitude towards language by stressing the disembodiment it allegedly effectuates, the very idea that there is a certain ‘detachment’ or ‘coldness’ at the heart of words is also what allows him to discover constellations of meaning within the myriad notes he jots down on paper. The fact that he describes his quest for these constellations as ‘a deeply impersonal technique’ suggests that words establish the distance necessary for transitioning from the virtually unlimited realm of ideas to the start of theatrical creation. Moreover, the sense of detachment that, in Castellucci’s view, belongs to the world of words can be linked to another key principle at the heart of his poetics, which can also be traced back in his notebooks. In the archive of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, one can find a notebook that bears no title and is marked only by a red Japanese stamp, and which has been catalogued under the entry ‘The Minister’s Black Veil’. While this

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particular notebook could easily slip into the cracks of the extensive archive, it contains a document that demands our attention. Clipped inside the notebook, there is a tiny article cut from an Italian newspaper that reviews a literary novel and features an abundance of annotations, added by Castellucci. The manner in which Castellucci reworked the article while reading it is immediately striking: appropriating the text to his own needs, he underlined different parts in blue and red, while a thicker red line underscoring the word ‘tsimtsum’ indicates what interests him the most. Tsimtsum appears to be a notion introduced by Isaac Luria, a Hebrew mystic of the sixteenth century, and stands for the idea that God vacated a region within himself in order to create the world. Through this act of ‘shrinking’, ‘withdrawal’ or ‘contraction’ (the literal meaning of tsimtsum), God brought into being a vacuum in which to create something other than Himself. We could regard tsimtsum therefore as a kind of void within the infinite light.18 It is telling that exactly the term tsimtsum attracts Castellucci’s attention, who considered the small article in which he encountered the term important enough to include it in one of his notebooks. The dynamics of ‘shrinking’ or ‘contraction’ reoccur in nearly all Castelluci’s notebooks. To name just one example, in one of his notes for Inferno (2008), which is the first part of a trilogy based on Dante’s La Divina Commedia, Castellucci sketches out his ideas for the costumes by marking what should be left out: ‘No suits. No black. No t-­shirt. No bright colours’. We could call this a process of elimination, insofar as the eventual form is only reached through the elimination of possibilities, rather than through a more affirmative exploration of what, in this case, the costumes could be. As Castellucci turns the primarily negative elimination of ideas into a constructive working principle, his creative process can be regarded as a quest for what Georges Bataille describes as ‘l’informe’, the formless – a notion Bataille developed very briefly as an entry for his Critical Dictionary. In Bataille’s view, l’informe does not designate the absence of form, but rather constitutes its performative underside, revealing itself through the undoing or dismantling of form: ‘a term that serves to bring things down in the world’.19 According to Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind E. Kraus, Bataille’s notion of the formless is what they call an ‘operatio’: ‘It is not so much a stable motif to which we can refer, a symbolizable theme, a given quality, as it is a term allowing one to operate a declassification, in the double sense of lowering and of taxonomic disorder.’20 Theatre scholar Konstantina Georgelou adds that ‘the formless is a dynamic concept that becomes perceived only through an experience of “touching the limits” of form, and through that touch form is transformed’.21 This paradoxical operation, in which form cannot exist without the undoing of form – or what we could also describe as its

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‘contraction’ – appears central to Castellucci’s artistic imagination, but it also begs the question as to how this process might proceed. The search for form within the unformed or contracted can be usefully aligned with what the French theatre scholar Lydie Parisse terms the ‘via negativa’ of theatrical practices. According to Parisse, this via negativa entails a literal reversal of the relationship between subject and object: instead of directing the material, in the sense of enforcing one’s autonomous will onto it, artists allow themselves to be formed by the material, thereby opening their body to the unformed energy of the whole.22 Somewhat counterintuitively, then, the first step to giving shape and meaning to the creative material that is always already, albeit sleepily, present, is to withdraw oneself. This view, which runs counter to the typically Romantic idea that art is the expression of the artist’s individual genius, is what Castellucci seems to have in mind when he says of his creative process, ‘this does not involve my personality’,23 or when he claims that ‘my creations do not actually belong to me at all. I bid them farewell, as I watch them move away.’24 Language seems to aid the detachment Castellucci is seeking in both his creative process and the eventual work. In Castellucci’s theatrical universe, every creative act sprouts from words, as his notebooks clearly demonstrate. His reliance on language as a means of creation, however, is informed by the detachment that words are said to instigate, a kind of detachment that we link to notions of the formless, via negativa and emptiness. Likewise, in his performances, words tend not to refer to any specific meaning but rather incline to transform into obsolete matter. The artistic strategy Castellucci adopts most often in his use of language on stage is precisely the process of negativity, which is closely linked to this ambivalence of matter versus meaning. Because language detaches words from their creative force, their meaning should be inverted – or, perhaps, perveted – in a theatrical fashion. This negative inversion of language takes on many forms in the work of Castellucci, including reducing the rhetorical quality of language to its physical roots, as he did with his performance of Shakespeare’s Giulio Cesare (1997), which starts with an actor inserting an endoscopic camera into his throat to reveal the vocal cords; or, in another scene, when Castellucci presents the character of Anthony played by an actor with a tracheotomy. In both examples, speech becomes a Fremdkörper (foreign body) in the body of the actor and disrupts the spectator’s perception. Another inversion strategy is to bring language down to the level of unknown, incomprehensible matter, as he did in BR.#04 (the fourth episode of the Tragedia Endogonidia, created in Brussels in 2003), in which he confronted an infant with the authority of the alphabet. In Castellucci’s notebooks, one can find echoes of this obsession with the materiality of language, as he seems to transform words into purely graphic

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Figure 3.1  Page from Romeo Castellucci’s Inferno notebook. This illustration from the notebooks of Castellucci is part of the digitalization Project ARCH: Archival Research and Cultural Heritage: The Theatre Archive of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, University of Athens – Aristeia II supervised by Eleni Papalexiou. Notice the graphic quality of the language on this page and how the list is structured with pluses and minuses. (Used with the permission of Project ARCH.)

design. Words become a form, a set of lines and colours: the more you look at them, the more they become meaningless, a code without a key, a series of dots and lines, a repetitive stammering. This theatrical inversion of language is also used very literally: words are turned around, used in their negative form, mirrored, negated – as, for instance, in the use of the inverted neon letters of ‘INFERNO’. Castellucci’s obsession with the materiality and graphic qualities of language can be interpreted as a kind of tracing of negativity, writing emptiness. Castellucci’s theatre operates through signs of absence, from everything that exists or has been created. Theatrical presence resides in the void and emerges, paradoxically, through the ruination of form.25 It is here, in the negative, where the creative act starts and imagination takes shape.

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Postdrama as Palimpsest: The Pencil of Guy Cassiers Internationally acclaimed artist Guy Cassiers (born 1960) is best known for his intermedial theatre performances. Through a remarkable blend of theatre, video, visual art and literature, his performances generate a dialogue between different media in order to challenge the senses of the audience.26 Cassiers expands the possibilities of the theatrical medium by means of live and pre-performance video and audio recording, as well as video projection, including close-­ups and voice distortion of his actors, live editing of corresponding or contrasting images, and more.27 Guy Cassiers consciously chooses novels and literary texts for his adaptations, such as Hiroshima Mon Amour by Marguerite Duras (1996), Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1999), Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (2011), Orlando by Virginia Woolf (2013), and Caligula by Albert Camus (2015).28 His work is a case example for how postdramatic theatre draws on a broad range of source material: in addition to dramatic texts, pre-­texts for a production can include diaries, letters, essays, screenplays, poetry and novels. This broadened perspective on the functions of text in postdramatic theatre brings to mind French literary theorist Gérard Genette’s concept of the ‘palimpsest’. In his influential book Palimpsests, Genette uses the term palimpsest to describe ‘literature in the second degree’,29 including texts that have been reworked, adapted, modified, elaborated or reduced – in short: transformed. The often fascinating choreography of montage, reference and superimposition leads to a ‘hypertext’, which discloses an underlying ‘hypotext’ that, through the very gesture of retelling, creates a palimpsest and – most importantly – a ‘conversation of time’.30 According to literature scholar Günther Martens, many theatre directors are indeed attracted by the typically modernist fascination with representing as well as rethinking temporality. For these theatre directors, such as Guy Cassiers, a modernist novel no longer functions as an autonomous score or prescription. It rather becomes a ‘workshop’, a ‘work-­in-progress’ wherein a text and a (newly found) author can meet. The result will always be a ‘recompilation’, a rewriting, a palimpsest that always already brings back the modernist legacy to mind.31 In rewriting the requirements, function, use and status of text within a theatrical performance, the process of adapting or modifying a source text in preparation for the stage plays a crucial role. Strangely enough, Lehmann gives little attention to these processes in his book.32 It is safe to assume, however, that these artistic methods of adaptive writing are intertwined with the use of new media. Not only theatre aesthetics, but also creative processes have been profoundly influenced by developments in new media. Partly because of the decreasing importance of the dramatic text (and in that sense

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the implied medial carrier of notes and text and language), and partly because of the increasing number of multi- and intermedial procedures within postdramatic theatre, the mediality and materiality of a director’s ‘writing’ fundamentally changes. In addition to notes and conceptual reflections in the margins of a script, directors introduce a diversity of formats, often borrowing from other artistic fields (films, video, music, the visual arts). The Belgian director Luk Perceval, for example, does not make any notes during rehearsals, but captures everything with his camera. After rehearsal, he edits his video material, only to share and discuss these ‘videographic notes’ with his team the next day.33 In contrast, even though video constitutes a crucial element of the performance poetics of Guy Cassiers, his creative process is strikingly non-­digital, as he does nearly all of his writing on paper. During rehearsal, he makes annotations in pencil in the margins of the script, in order to remember instructions on acting, light, costumes, etc. After giving these comments to his team, he erases all his notes. This idea of erasure is closely linked to the ‘via negativa’ discussed above, the transformation of negative elimination of ideas into a constructive working principle. Although Cassiers erases his notes, he does this ‘in such a way that I can still read them’.34 Cassiers describes it as follows: My scripts are layers of erased comments. This I cannot do with the computer. Perhaps it has also to do with my need for physical contact. Theatre for me is in the first place a physical dialogue, though all my performances themselves seem to contradict this.35

Indeed, when we look at Cassiers’ theatre scripts, we recognize a landscape of lines and layers. As this multilayered collection of both visible and invisible notes accumulates, the idea of Bataille’s ‘formless’ emerges again: these notes are unstable, unstructured, undone. Cassiers also alternates each day between sides of the paper, so he can keep track of comments up until three days back. As he says: ‘The erased comments are unreadable – except for me. . . . All the history remains behind them. Everything that at one point mattered resides. . . . Everything that disappears stays within me, stays alive.’36 The eraser hides a long prehistory. Cassiers calls his erased notes ‘very dear’ to him, because they represent an entire creative process.37 What reveals itself is a paper palimpsest. In his study on the history of the written word, Matthew Battles argues that writing is intrinsically linked to the theoretical concept of the ‘palimpsest’.38 Writing and rewriting, noting and annotating ultimately serve to mark and map a thinking process. Creating is editing, while the actual working documents resulting from this process make time visible and even tangible. Just like Castellucci’s notebooks, there is a strong physical quality to

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Cassiers’ piles of continually revised scripts and papers. These are not director’s notes in a classical sense – also known as ‘didascalia’;39 Cassiers’ annotations genuinely play with time. Contrary to what Cassiers states above, it would be possible to do something similar with a text editor program on a computer. Yet, it is true that the physical and thus performative quality of this way of writing would be irretrievably lost. As is the case with the ‘formless’ materiality, according to scholar Georgelou, the ability to touch, to both materialize and immaterialize at the same time, seems crucial. Even though Cassiers’ personal methods of annotation and writing suggest otherwise, his creative process turns out to be deeply intermedial. When using texts from novels as the source material for a theatrical performance, a transformation across medial borders is always necessary. One could argue that

Figure 3.2  A photo of one of the pages from Guy Cassiers’ theatre script for his performance Hamlet vs. Hamlet (2014). The annotations are all made in pencil and partially erased, showing how Cassiers made different comments at different moments. (Used with the permission of Guy Cassiers.)

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Cassiers’ notable preference for non-­dramatic texts can be explained as a desire to approach the theatrical medium from an outsider’s perspective. Through word (in the form of literary texts) and image (in the form of new media such as video projection), he tries to redefine the borders of the theatrical medium. In an interview with his dramaturg Erwin Jans, Cassiers states that he needs all the technology at his disposal, from pencil to video camera, to adapt literary texts for the theatrical stage.40 He describes how one cannot read literary texts such as Proust’s novels as traditional theatre texts. Only through visual technology can a script like that receive its meaning.41 In our own interview with Cassiers, he further elaborates on this statement, explaining that by using these technologies, he can shift between different locations and different forms of narration: Technology makes it possible to translate a novel to theatre. Some codes to represent or narrate something can also be used in the theatre. In that way, we are no longer dependent on classical theatre conventions, such as limited times and locations. Through the combination of theatre, film and prose, we can (re)create a flashback on the stage, or switch between dialogues and inner monologues.42

When adapting a text for the stage, Cassiers first creates a framework, ‘a kind of direction, a possible way of telling the story’.43 Technology proves crucial in finding this form of narration. Indeed, the result is that Cassiers brings elements to the stage that were typically part of literary or filmic narration, such as point of view or perspective, jumping in time, editing, different narrators, a large number of characters and locations, zooming in and out, and close-­ups. Cassiers speaks about a double bind: not only does he look at other art forms to develop his theatre aesthetics, but the novelistic texts themselves also need theatre. ‘It is the sensibility of theatre that is necessary to get to language, to reach the essence of the content of a text’.44 In a way, through the negation of the dramatic text, Cassiers actually confirms the power and potential of writing and text within (postdramatic) theatre. This idea of the negative as constructive within the creative process keeps ghosting postdramatic theatre. In her recent book Writing and the Modern Stage, Julia Jarcho makes a similar claim. She identifies a ‘negative theatrics’ in modernist and especially postdramatic theatre texts. Theatre as a medium with a heightened exposure to the present is equally ‘a site for the contestation of the present’.45 Certain writings, such as those by Gertrude Stein and Samuel Beckett, constitute an alternative platform that undermines the totality of performance’s here-­and-now. In these texts, theatricality stands in a negative relation to the actual, by prioritizing formal experimentation over suspenseful

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storytelling. Jarcho identifies the postdramatic as a theatre that actually rejects presentness, with text given a heightened (instead of diminished) importance. In Cassiers’ theatre, text indeed plays an important role. Furthermore, by mixing both live and previously filmed footage, Cassiers thematizes – or even theatricalizes – (the (im)possibility of) presentness. For the technical side, Cassiers relies entirely on his artistic and technical team. During the creative process, Cassiers is surrounded by various technicians, video artists (Peter Missotten and Arjen Klerkx), lighting designers (Enrico Bagnoli), sound designers and composers (Diederik De Cock).46 His dramaturg, Erwin Jans, compares Cassiers to Kaspar Hauser: in spite of his elaborate intermedial performances, Cassiers is techno-­illiterate. He might be able to name the possibilities of the technological tools at hand, but hardly anything more. Jans suggests that this attitude might be a conscious artistic strategy.47 Indeed, Cassiers does continue to emphasize the importance of erasing, omitting and deconstructing within his creative process48 – of which his erased comments are the clearest example. By remaining a passive outsider within the technological machinery, he can easily select, remove and purify. Nevertheless, even this process can never be completely controlled by the director. As Battles writes: ‘The palimpsest is evidence that there is no true erasure. Some remnant trace will always escape the grasp of the author-­eraser.’49 The influence of new media on theatre aesthetics has been amply studied;50 how technology has transformed the creative process, however, has been hitherto little researched. Even though Lehmann calls the emerging media society one of the most decisive contexts for postdramatic theatre, he is less concrete on how these intermedial tendencies materialize within the new theatrical practices that fall under this label.51 Irina Rajewsky’s three categories of intermedial relations can be of help when analysing Cassiers’ use of intermediality on and behind the stage.52 As most of his performances contain video projection, they are clear examples of ‘media combination’, which occurs when mixing ‘at least two conventionally distinct media or medial forms of articulation’ within a certain text.53 In doing so, his work also fits the category of ‘intermedial reference’, which Rajewsky defines as follows: ‘in intermedial references a text of one medium evokes or imitates an individual work produced in another medium, a specific medial subsystem (such as a certain film genre) or generic qualities of another medium’.54 The net result of intermedial reference through media combination is what Rajewsky calls an ‘illusion-­forming quality’. This quality is inherent to the techniques of a certain medium, but now emerges through a form of intertextuality between media. This becomes clear in Cassiers’ highly appraised performance Under the Volcano (2009), where an illusion of

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close-­ups is created through film: at one point, the main character, Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul, indicates he wants a drink. One of the projection screens shows a close-­up of a shot being poured and a hand grabbing the glass. The actor does not move, but when the screen shows the glass being emptied, his acting demonstrates how the alcohol enters and influences his body. By disconnecting the movement of the actor and the presentation of the action on screen, a sphere of uncanniness, instability and detachment is created – resembling the inside of an alcoholic’s head as well as emphasizing the aspired cross-­over between the theatrical and the filmic medium. In the words of Irina Rajewsky: ‘the spectator is constantly reminded of the “source-­text” ’.55 The audience is watching not only theatre, but also a theatrical version of a book or film. The medial layering or palimpsest that emerges accentuates the boundaries of the theatrical medium. In this manner, the work of Cassiers reflects Regina Schober’s concept of ‘intermedial translation’.56 She writes that within an intermedial exchange the boundaries of a medium are challenged and, at the same time, the essence of a medium is emphasized, creating a self-­reflexive focus on the medial nature. By pushing the boundaries of the theatrical medium, Cassiers paradoxically also affirms it by isolating its ontological qualities. Echoing Rajewsky’s notion of the ‘illusion-­forming quality’, Schober states that within an intermedial translation a reproduction of the medium is not possible, but the reproduction of the effects of a medium is: ‘Not the medium itself, but an “imagined” version of the medium, realized by means of another medium, is the outcome of the intermedial translation process’.57 However, not only the medium of the source material is ‘imagined’, but also the medial status of the theatre performance. Cassiers realizes he cannot turn a novel into theatre, but he can bring the effects of the literary genre on stage, while the flipside of this operation is that he emphasizes the theatrical medium. Hans-Thies Lehmann names ‘palimpsestuous intertextuality and intratextuality’ a significant characteristic of much postdramatic theatre.58 In the work of Cassiers we can see how this palimpsestic structure becomes concrete. If the very term palimpsest points to a process of ‘letters overlaying letters’, postdramatic theatre effectuates this through rewriting and editing (classical) texts, combining different materials in a montage or collage. We move beyond drama by writing palimpsests: compiling and assembling words above, beneath and next to each other. Moreover, the medial hybridity of both the source material and working documents prefigures an intermedial transformation. The result is an often highly visual, musical and corporeal theatrical performance that, as a result of its medial layering, emphasizes constitutive characteristics of the theatrical medium.

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Conclusion By closely examining the notebooks of Romeo Castellucci and Guy Cassiers, we can trace these carefully constructed constellations and palimpsests back to the simple pencil lines with which they began. These working documents contain the seeds of the formal aesthetics of particular performances, and, thus, offer deeper insights into the actual staging of postdramatic theatre. Furthermore, even though they represent how dramatic conventions are challenged, they often do so by means of the very same instruments wherein dramatic theatre is rooted: by writing in notebooks, placing pen or pencil on paper. These seemingly paradoxical processes bring forth the premise – or is it the promise? – of postdramatic theatre: a new form of theatre that does not simply come chronologically ‘after’ drama, and thus ‘forgets’ and ‘moves away’ from this dramatic past. Rather, postdramatic theatre goes ‘beyond’ dramatic theatre by still referencing and remembering it. Karen Jürs-Munby calls postdramatic theatre an ‘anamnesis’ of dramatic theatre.59 Indeed, this Platonic philosophical concept perfectly describes the postdramatic creative process. Anamnesis refers to the rediscovering of knowledge already inside us, the re-­emerging of knowledge generated during past incarnations. Benjamin’s idea of the constellation that lights up in a momentary flash as well as Genette’s theorization of the palimpsest as a hypertextuality that connects different times through various layerings of texts evoke the intermedial dynamics we have been tracing in this chapter. In both instances, past, present and future meet, breaking through the boundaries of form to reveal a new (re)incarnation and (re)presentation of knowledge. In Phaedo, Plato suggests methods to reach this anamnestic state. One of these methods is the katharsis, in Greek literally ‘cleansing’ or ‘purification’. Both Castellucci’s and Cassiers’ creative processes resemble this cathartic cleansing: by erasing or selecting (un)wanted material in their notebooks, they sift and distill, refine and reveal. These acts of elimination and destruction prove to be a fertile ground for creation. As such, they accomplish one of Lehmann’s most vivid descriptions of postdramatic theatre’s aesthetic core: ‘the unfolding and blossoming of a potential of disintegration, dismantling and deconstruction within drama itself ’.60

4

Space: Postdramatic Geography in Post-Collapse Seattle Jasmine Mahmoud

A tuft of grass sits centre stage; four vertical poles, each headed by a round light bulb, surround and illuminate the tuft’s rich greenness. Just feet away, another yard-­length knot of grass with straws of barley rises two feet tall, as if it had been plucked from a field of grains. Also dotting the space is a herd of horses – about a dozen four-­legged animals with cartoon-­like features made of papier-mâché. Collectively, these objects seem like artefacts from a dream. The oversized venue – a former trolley repair warehouse – only exacerbates the dream-­like state. Sunlight streams in through twenty-­foot windows that frame the expansive warehouse now used as a temporary theatre. Much is also oversized elsewhere, like the sixty industrial light domes, each eight feet in diameter, that hang low overhead. Beneath these domes are not only the set and the orchestra, but also the audience, who sit among various clumps of grass. Amidst those clusters move members of Implied Violence. In one scene, six performers, dressed in Civil War-­era outfits, repetitively enact a series of movements before moving elsewhere in the space. At the front, a performer jumps up and down several times. At the rear, one performer picks up another and holds him upside down. In the middle, two turn to each other, and one hurriedly performs a nonsensical monologue about kingdoms and trees. A sixth performer records all of this on tape, walks to the audience and replays what has just been said. In a different scene, seven performers dressed in marching band attire sternly dance to upbeat, jazz-­ tinged music; in another, live baby chickens scuttle across the floor; and later, performers gut the horses, stabbing their papier-mâché bellies. The pastiche of scenes defines this dreamlike work as aesthetically composed while also rendering it dramatically nonsensical. BarleyGirl was performed in July 2008 in South Lake Union, a neighbourhood immediately north of downtown Seattle.1 The work was part of ‘Our Sequence in Series’, a triptych staged that summer by the experimental

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Figure 4.1  The set of BarleyGirl, staged by Implied Violence in 2008 in a former trolley repair warehouse located in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighbourhood. (Photo by Implied Violence.)

collective Implied Violence. Performed during the Great Recession, BarleyGirl captured critical attention, so much so that later in the year, Implied Violence won a 2008 Genius Award from The Stranger, Seattle’s alternative weekly newspaper. BarleyGirl was, as The Stranger’s Brendan Kiley wrote,‘exhilarating and exhausting’ and ‘a big bang of carefully choreographed chaos’.2 In another review in The Stranger, Christopher Frizzelle described the area containing the warehouse as ‘the middle of that no-­man’s-­land’.3 Read together, these reviews emphasized BarleyGirl as an example of postdramatic experimentation given meaning, in part, through its location on a geographic fringe. What is the connection between BarleyGirl’s postdramatic aesthetics and its geography? How does an attention to geography and early twenty-­ first-century political economy, shaped by the Great Recession, animate the collective’s postdramatic practices? These questions guide this chapter, which considers work by Implied Violence, who made performances in Seattle from 2003 until 2010. Found objects, nature motifs and grotesque imagery marked Implied Violence’s endurance-­laden and non-­narrative postdramatic performance practices. ‘[P]ostdramatic theatre’, Hans-Thies Lehmann suggests, ‘develops – and demands – an ability to perceive which breaks away from the dramatic paradigm’.4 This chapter rereads Lehmann’s theories to analyze works by Implied Violence as examples of early twenty-­first-century postdramatic practices taking place in marginal Seattle spaces. The very spaces used by

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Implied Violence – be they huge lofts or intimate rooms – were, to draw on Lehmann’s theorization, ‘dangerous to drama’5; their use of unconventional spaces disrupted the function of dramatic signs central to dramatic theatre and thus heightened postdramatic aesthetic practices. What the performances relied upon – foul smells, disjointed texts, immense or small sets – dialogues with how Lehmann suggests that postdramatic theatre transgresses the dramatic paradigm. But if Implied Violence’s performances are only read through Lehmann’s schema, the choices made by the collective – including their use of post-­ industrial venues, non-­narrative arcs and found materials, all of which yielded a distinctive postdramatic aesthetic – appear only to have been shaped by the artists themselves. By contrast, in this chapter, I reveal how postdramatic aesthetics are also conditioned by broader geographic and political economic forces beyond artist control; in the case of Implied Violence, I explore how Seattle’s early twenty-­first-century geography and political economy shaped the collective’s postdramatic practice. Prior to the Great Recession, the political economic conditions that structured the impending collapse led to a drastic reduction of mid-­sized theatres in Seattle. The Great Recession, which first landed in 2007, was marked in Seattle most notably by the collapse of Washington Mutual and increased foreclosures and unemployment. These conditions produced cheap and temporary spaces, such as abandoned warehouses that became the fringe geographies essential to Implied Violence’s postdramatic aesthetics. Implied Violence’s postdramatic use of space, thus, was not merely a matter of creative decision – as Lehmann’s theory might imply – but rather was produced in part by the geographies of collapse in Seattle. Performance and its entanglements with geography and political economy are not a focus of Postdramatic Theatre. Lehmann himself writes: ‘This study of postdramatic theatre does not aim to trace the new theatrical modes of creation to sociologically determined causes and circumstances.’6 This omission, I argue, can lead to a misunderstanding of the causes of postdramatic aesthetics and institutions. In contrast to Lehmann’s anti-­sociological approach, this chapter attends to aesthetic practice within a particular geography and political economy. I build upon the concept of ‘performance geography’ from Sonjah Stanley Niaah, who defines it in her 2010 book Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto as ‘an integral and unexplored dimension of cultural studies and cultural geography’.7 If performances, as Elin Diamond articulates, are ‘embodied acts . . . framed in time and space’ and geography is, by its root meaning, ‘earth writing’, then performance geography situates how embodied actions write meanings on the earth and how geographic meanings frame embodied actions.8 Performance geography, also, as I’ve written elsewhere, ‘enables us to

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examine and theorize both how performance makes meaning within theatrical space and also makes meaning that exceeds theatrical space and shapes broader geographic space’.9 And if performance geography, for Stanley Niaah,‘include[s] the ways in which people living in particular locations give those locations identity through certain acts’,10 then, as I argue in this chapter, we can think about a postdramatic geography as a space that makes room for aesthetics that disrupt dramatic paradigms, fragment perception and heighten the overall performance sensorium. Moreover, postdramatic geography describes how a space is given identity through postdramatic aesthetic acts. This concept of postdramatic geography – which suggests that postdramatic aesthetic practices are also geographic practices informed by political economy, and which entangles meanings made by aesthetics, political economy and space – frames my methods. In addition to drawing upon performance documentation and theatre reviews to document Implied Violence’s aesthetics, I pay particular attention to ethnographic interviews with Mandie O’Connell and Ryan Mitchell, the co-­founders of the collective, to situate how their lived and aesthetic experiences leading up to and during the Great Recession framed their artistic actions. In doing so, I suggest we can only understand Implied Violence’s postdramatic work through attention to their postdramatic geographies, that is through the spaces where (due to the collapse) geographic meanings were in flux in ways that fragmented perception and semiotics, making space for postdramatic aesthetic practices. In what follows, I first chronicle the founding of Implied Violence in 2003 and their initial work in fringe geographies. Next, I describe the political economy of the economic collapse in Seattle, before closing with a study of how Seattle’s geography and political economy shaped how conceptions and practices of race, materiality, and venue animated the 2008 staging of BarleyGirl.

Before the Collapse Implied Violence (hereafter IV) was founded in 2003, growing out of work by Ryan Mitchell and Mandie O’Connell, then both undergraduates at the Seattle Cornish College of the Arts. IV began rehearsing in a loft in an old rubber factory in Pioneer Square. Mitchell found the loft through friends in a band and chose the space because it was cheap, ‘maybe $600 or $700 a month’.11 The loft functioned as a low-­cost alternative to the spaces available at their art school. O’Connell told me: It was really important to us that we could access that space anytime we wanted to. We would have rehearsals starting at midnight when our

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Postdramatic Theatre and Form other rehearsals for school were over, because we had to do these [sic] dumb, fucking standard Ibsen shit for school. . . . We’d have to rehearse that, and then we would get to go to our own space. It was very liberating.

The loft fuelled an intimate culture where interactions with neighbours inspired ideas. Neighbours included ‘a whole bunch of different artists who were a little bit older than us, who did really weird stuff . . . lots of butoh and very experimental music, graffiti and stuff like that and some of them ended up becoming performers or collaborators’. In the early 2000s, the loft in Pioneer Square was, according to O’Connell, in ‘a really grimy part of town . . . skid row, basically’. The space barely functioned as a residence. It had, O’Connell told me, ‘no electricity, no kitchen and no amenities’. It often lacked plumbing, so members went to a gym where a friend worked ‘to take showers’. At one point even, the landlord ‘had a crack stroke and was gone for six months’. As a result, ‘no one paid rent in that building for one year’. The building, as Mitchell described it, ‘got super insane and super derelict’. He told me, ‘we lived controlling the entire floor. . . . We ended up creating culture and making a lot of work’. To O’Connell there was ‘a sort of lawless feeling’ in the building with ‘all sorts of crazy things happening’. That and the gritty location ‘unified’ the ensemble. She recalled: It was an experience of just walking through the neighbourhood to get to our loft, and then our loft also had no heat. . . . It was very dirty. There were drug dealers. . . . There were prostitutes. . . . It was quite extreme, and . . . it matched up that the work that we were doing at the time was quite extreme as well. Our lifestyle and our environment supported the work we were doing. . . . A homeless guy would be singing a beautiful song, and you’d come to rehearsal and say, ‘Gosh, I saw this weird stuff ’, and somehow it would end up in the production.

Their early work included a workshop production of 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane. In 2005, IV presented Everything Without Exception, an adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. Steve Wiecking reviewed the performance in the Seattle Weekly, connecting the trek to the ‘dauntingly remote’ studio to the cluttered set design, which included ‘dangling from the ceiling . . . old shoes, cassette tapes, toys’. This attention to meanings made by the location of the performance, he suggested, realized new meanings in ‘the tattered anguish buried in . . . O’Neill’s bruised family recollection’. For Wieckling ‘[t]he piece’s adamant oddness, its insistence on rattling you with half-­sentences and off-­kilter pas de quatre, ha[d] a striking braveness’.12

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As Ryan Mitchell explained, near the end of 2005, after IV had produced four shows, they ‘started experiencing trouble with the landlord’.13 O’Connell told me: The building got sold and a new landlord came and was trying to clean the place up. . . . They wanted to cut [the studios] up into smaller pieces and charge really high rents because the neighbourhood was starting to be renovated and classied up. They wanted what they called legitimate artists . . . like painters. . . . They didn’t want performers, they didn’t want musicians, they didn’t want any of that shit.

Although IV ‘took the company to court’ and won, they were still evicted. They received ‘relocation money’, O’Connell said, ‘which we put towards our next space that we found . . . a loft warehouse space in SoDo. We took what we needed, left a huge amount of stuff, trashed the place a little bit, and left’. In 2006, members of IV moved to the space in SoDo, a mostly industrial neighbourhood directly south of Pioneer Square. Where the Pioneer Loft was, according to O’Connell, ‘neutral and raw’ with ‘red brick everywhere’, the SoDo warehouse resembled ‘a living room or office’; their space was ‘smaller’ and ‘more cozy’, with carpet. Character-­driven work flowed from the space, including the air is peopled with cruel and fearsome birds (2006). Brendan Kiley of The Stranger described a 2007 version of the performance as ‘Implied Violence’s homage to 1920s German Expressionism, vaudeville, and Gertrude Stein’, with his review emphasizing banality, fragmentation, and a transmission of energy – rather than structured narrative – as characteristics of IV’s work.14 In 2007, IV was kicked out of the space in SoDo. O’Connell suggested the reasons were similar to their first eviction. The landlord ‘didn’t want performers in there’, she told me: ‘He didn’t want people to be presenting performance.’ At the time of the eviction, IV was slated to perform a newer version of air is peopled with cruel and fearsome birds at the 2007 Northwest New Works Festival, part of On the Boards – the presenting house formed in 1978 that, by the early twenty-­first century, had become the main venue for experimental performance in Seattle. Because of the eviction, IV lacked a steady rehearsal space. Mitchell, who worked during the day delivering produce, found a vacant warehouse in the International District, a predominately Asian-American neighbourhood wedged between Pioneer Square and SoDo. It was ‘called Brothers Express’, O’Connell told me, ‘and it was an old cannery or leather factory’. She continued: ‘It was next door to an Asian produce store. We broke into it, and we held rehearsals there for the show that we were doing at On The Boards.’ These spaces – cheap lofts and

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illegally occupied vacant factories – were necessary to the work IV produced. The International District/Chinatown was shaped in the twentieth century by geographic violence sanctioned by the state against mostly AsianAmerican residents, which included internment and the construction of the I-5 interstate highway that cut through the neighbourhood. This historical racialized violence, I want to suggest, also laid conditions that permitted the illegal occupation by the predominately white group. Writing for The Seattle Times, Brangien Davis described air is people as ‘combin[ing] shattered cake plates, an armada of windup toys, and a pie in the face – what your company picnic might look like if organized by Samuel Beckett’.15 Christopher Frizzelle of The Stranger wrote: Their piece . . . originally began with text by Stein – some of which is tattooed on the arm of Implied Violence’s Mandie O’Connell – but none of Stein’s text survives in the current version. What has survived: vivid, emphatic scenarios that repeat with slight variations, each variation giving you a slightly fuller idea of the scenario while yielding little of the overall story. Very Stein. Plus, pies, cakes, a bullhorn, toys, an orchestra, and other random objects. Also very Stein. And then it just sort of ends. I loved it.16

These reviews suggest the show generated postdramatic aesthetics, such as by fragmenting perception with seemingly random props and by avoiding reference to a source text. When I asked O’Connell why IV seemed to always produce shows in nontraditional spaces, she explained: We were very clear that we were working outside of the normal traditional theatre world, dance world, music world . . . as well as the fine art world. . . . Site specificity is more interesting and challenging.

Whether from landlords or the political economy of neighbourhoods, each space posed site-­specific challenges that nevertheless tied into the type of work that IV produced. Through illegal occupation that relied on both poor economic conditions and IV’s own ingenuity, the group continued to find space to experiment and rehearse. Each of the venues – an abandoned rubber factory in Pioneer Square, a loft in SoDo, an illegally occupied leather factory in the International District – was, in O’Connell’s words, ‘a weird different place’ that the audience had ‘never been before’. Each venue in its cheapness supported the poor economies of IV’s work; each venue in its misuse beyond the venue’s original industrial function supported experimentation; each venue in its location

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near but on the edges of downtown heightened the audience’s sensorial relationship to that experimentation. I theorize postdramatic geography as both a space given meaning by postdramatic aesthetic acts and as space where, due to collapse or other political economic conditions, geographic meanings are in flux in ways that fragment perception and semiotics providing space especially suitable for postdramatic practices. Despite Lehmann’s reticence to sociologically frame postdramatic theatre, the concept of postdramatic geography does dialogue with several of his theorizations. First, he suggests that postdramatic theatre enacts a collective time and space that connects performance with reception, the aesthetic with the quotidian. He writes, ‘Theatre is the site not only of “heavy” bodies but also of a real gathering, a place where a unique intersection of aesthetically organized and everyday real life takes place.’17 Second, Lehmann maintains that aesthetic performance practices that do not prefer a ‘ “medium” space’, and instead use a ‘huge space’ or ‘very intimate space’ can be ‘[t]endentially dangerous to drama’. With non-­ medium spaces, ‘the structure of the mirroring is jeopardized’.18 Most venues staging work by IV were not medium spaces; instead, they were, in Lehmann’s theorization, huge or intimate spaces that jeopardized mirroring, allowing for performance dangerous to the structures of drama. Finally, Lehmann theorizes how postdramatic theatre ‘dedicates itself to the tragedy of transgression’ and, as such, it ‘must risk touching something – painfully, embarrassingly, frighteningly and disturbingly – which has been forgotten and repressed and no longer reaches the surface of consciousness’.19 The concept of postdramatic geography, then, not only frames how aesthetics (including transgressive acts that link the aesthetic and quotidian) give meaning to non-­medium venues; it also reveals how those venues have been developed by particular political economies. In 2007, IV presented a string of shows at more non-­medium spaces, where the borders (or spatial conceptions for theatre) were overstepped: a ‘roof of an apartment building in the middle of the night before it was razed for development’, and a motel room before the motel was razed as part of Motel #1.20

Motel #1 The buzz on Motel #1 had grown so loud that, even before the event opened on 15 September 2007, it seemed as if a discursive roar preceded the performances and installations that would take place at the Bridge Motel. Before the event, DK Pan, the curator, wrote:

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Postdramatic Theatre and Form Originally a place frequented by tourists and traveling salesmen, the Bridge Motel has over time become more a place for those living from paycheck to paycheck, and whose lives involve drug use, prostitution. . . . For one night, its last night of existence, the Bridge Motel will be dressed up and called to shine and dance. . . . Numerous installation/performance artists have been given full rein the week prior, to transform each dilapidated pocket into whatever they could imagine. The opening evening will reveal the Bridge’s final blossom before its inevitable razing. . . . This night is not to be missed.21

Pan connected three factors: the motel’s own poor economies (with guests who often lived ‘paycheck to paycheck’); the motel’s disreputable character; and the potential of performance artists to heighten these poor economies and this repugnant character, transmogrifying the motel into a space full of, as Pan also wrote, ‘the animation and energy of truly ephemeral art’.22 It was as if the motel’s previous uses provided the best stage for performance art marked by experimentation and ephemerality. An Asian-American performance artist, Pan grew up in Seattle motels managed by his parents. A year before Motel #1, Pan had moved into the Bridge Motel after ‘friends bought the property (with plans to tear it down) and offered him the job’. Pan accepted the job with one condition: ‘that, before it was demolished, he could turn the entire motel over to artists for a night of installation and performance art’.23 Among the performers were Ryan Mitchell and Mandie O’Connell of IV. They took over a motel room and drenched it in gold and red.24 Their outfits matched the walls: both were spray-­painted in gold and, eventually, covered in blotches of red liquid. At one moment during the five-­hour performance Come to My Center You Enter the Winter, Mitchell stands pouring a blood-­ like red liquid into his mouth; as he talks the liquid spills onto and saturates his gold costume. Later, O’Connell lies on the stained and soiled carpet as Mitchell pours a brown substance over her chest. Jen Graves described the odour from the performance as ‘a mysterious metallic-­sweet smell coming, reportedly, from a series of microwaves “cooking a bunch of shit” ’. Graves also described the ‘psychotic’ performance as being ‘most at home’ in the motel.25 The grotesque effect of IV’s performance resonates with how Lehmann describes the way intimate space jeopardizes the role of drama in theatre. Through ‘physical and physiological proximity (breath, sweat, panting, movement of the musculature, cramp, gaze)’, Lehmann suggests, intimate performance spaces disrupt the theatre as a space where theatrical signs are transmitted from the stage to spectators, instead allowing for performance to emphasize ‘shared energies’.26 Closeness to dirt, spilled liquid, and the smell of

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Figure 4.2  Ryan Mitchell and Mandie O’Connell of Implied Violence in Come to My Center You Enter the Winter, part of Motel #1 curated by D. K. Pan in 2007 at the now-­demolished Bridge Motel in Seattle. (Photo by Keith Johnson.)

‘shit’ imbued the performance – staged in a small motel room – with a shared energy of sadness. That perhaps was the point. But the broader economic conditions in Seattle also provided the conditions for how the venue structured aesthetics. In an interview advertising the performance, Mitchell said: ‘Our performance will be fun, but it’ll also be wrought with sadness. Seattle’s at the brink of destroying itself. It’s saying, “We love the art, but we hate the artists”. All the empty space, all the affordable, accessible spaces are being turned into condos.’27 The sensorial affect produced in the small room, which was marked by dirtiness and smelliness, commented on both the motel’s imminent destruction and the impending changes to much of Seattle’s geography, slated for more expensive apartments. Moreover, the affective space created by Mitchell and O’Connell effected sadness about the changing political economy in Seattle and its effect on geographic spaces and artists. ‘Seattle’s at the brink of destroying itself ’. Mitchell suggested that marginal spaces like Motel #1 would soon cease to exist because of neoliberal development. The reputation of Bridge Motel allowed for a geographic underbelly that, during this event, supported poor economies and the ephemerality of performance art. By contrast, the motel’s destruction would, many predicated, immediately make way for condos to be sold according to the market-­rate neoliberal political economy.

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But something else happened first. Three months later, in December 2007, the Great Recession began. A year later, Washington Mutual folded. The economy in Seattle, and across the United States, was collapsing.

The Great Recession and Seattle’s Geographies of Collapse In September 2008, Washington Mutual (WaMu) folded. The bank was founded right ‘after Seattle’s devastating fire in 1889’, and was ‘dedicated to helping Seattle rebuild,’ growing to become the ‘largest savings-­and-loan in the nation’. In the 2000s, ‘powered by a boom in housing prices and home loans’, WaMu ‘became the country’s largest mortgage originator and the country’s largest savings-­and-loan bank’.28 But the bank’s policies that sparked its growth in the early 2000s – such as subprime loans and adjustable rate mortgages – also sparked its demise. Also part of that demise was ‘greed, fraud and toxic incentives . . . including the infamous no-­documentation loans’.29 In September 2008, WaMu’s ‘[d]epositors quietly and methodically withdrew $16.7 billion in deposits in just over a week’ which ‘created what the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) called “severe liquidity pressure” . . . the bank ran out of money’.30 After federal regulators seized the bank in September 2008, JP Morgan Chase bought WaMu for $1.9 billion from the government. WaMu’s then-­unimaginable closure increased unemployment in Seattle; this unemployment along with a growing number of foreclosures contributed to drastically increased poverty levels across Washington State. In April 2008, the unemployment rate in Seattle was 2.5 per cent; by September 2009 it was 8.7 per cent.31 This rising inequality and loss of space also hit the theatre scene. When, in interviews with Seattle theatre makers and arts administrators, I asked, ‘how did the recession affect your work?’, there was a common refrain in the answers.32 Pamala Mijatov of Annex Theatre told me, ‘The biggest and most crucial change I see is the loss of the mid-­size theatres’. Charlie Rathbun of 4Culture said, ‘we still have a pretty large and small problem. We have big, giant organizations and then we have a lot of grassroots organizations, and we don’t have a lot of in between.’ Similarly, Randy Engstrom, director of Seattle’s Office of Arts & Culture told me, ‘middle-­size organizations . . . don’t have access to some of the really big resources but they’re too big to depend on the resources the tiny organizations can rely on so they were squeezed’. The Great Recession contributed to the loss of the mid-­sized venue. Engstrom suggested that the mid-­sized theatres closed because they were neither small enough to manoeuvre through crisis nor large enough to accumulate

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resources to ride out the crisis. If mid-­size theatre institutions made space for dramatic practices, then the loss of the medium theatre, read through Lehman, entailed a loss of geographies for dramatic theatre. But spaces suited to postdramatic performance during the economic collapse were produced not only by how the Great Recession reduced mid-­ sized theatre spaces, but also by how the Great Recession produced new geographies in Seattle. Titles of newspaper articles in The Stranger included ‘Condo Collapse’ and ‘Nobody’s Home’; the latter citing a report that found that ‘3,878 condos in Seattle (including new condos and condo conversions) remained unsold in 2008’.33 During the Great Recession, Seattle was marked by empty, unrented, or foreclosed spaces. The loss of mid-­sized theatres and the geographies created by the Great Recession, therefore, created pockets for experimental aesthetic practices: abandoned buildings and other spaces made marginal by the economic collapse. When used for art making, these spaces had a short lifespan as they were redeveloped once development resumed in 2009. But their geography, however temporary, revealed how the crisis of capitalism produced space that, for a time, could be used by groups not committed to capitalist growth, groups like IV. And even though IV sought a stable residency, the performance group was forced to constantly move from venue to venue in the 2000s. IV’s itinerancy was, O’Connell suggests, a manifestation of the impending Great Recession: ‘I guess the recession . . . was also why we got displaced from our first performance space’, she told me. ‘They wanted to make more money . . . trying to grasp the last possible opportunity to make money, seeing that the crash was going to come’. According to O’Connell, it was also in movement and temporality that IV found space incompatible with neoliberal economies where they could experiment. One of those spaces was a former trolley repair warehouse used by IV to stage BarleyGirl.

BarleyGirl Five performers stand upstage centre, in front of a three-­foot-tall grassy mound that extends much of the length of upstage. In the back are two white men dressed in Civil War-­era soldier costumes. In front of them are two white women: one (BarleyGirl) wears a barley sack as a dress; the other, played by O’Connell, wears a white lace dress. In front of them is another woman; she wears a grey Civil War-­era soldier costume, with a series of horizontal golden bars. Elsewhere in the space is a sixth performer. She, Lily Nguyen, wears red tights and an oversized, navy blue, Civil War-­era army top on which golden fringe hangs from one arm.

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The orchestra plays; the musicians are dressed mostly in black and include a trombonist, trumpeter, several violinists, a cellist, drummer and an oboist. The ambient music includes jazz-­infused horns and high-­pitched string sounds. To this music, the five performers slowly walk downstage in a vertical line as if in a trance. At one point, the taller man in the back of the procession picks up the other man and holds him upstage. The woman in front jumps up and down. And BarleyGirl turns to the woman in white and says, ‘I’m the greatest BarleyGirl in the kingdom, I’m there, I’m the being, I’m the falling tree, do you believe me don’t you? Fuck you!’34 Nguyen, now standing downstage, plays a recording of some of what was just said; on tape, the audience rehears BarleyGirl saying ‘I’m there, I’m the being, I’m the falling tree, do you believe me don’t you’, while the five others stand centre stage in a semi-­circle that centres Nguyen. All of a sudden, BarleyGirl begins to yell. Her yell is rhythmic and loud; it almost sounds as if she is laughing. ‘HAA HA! HAA HA HA!’ she howls over and over again, ‘HAA HA! HAA HA, HA!’ To these sounds, seven performers dressed in red and white marching band outfits enter the stage and walk hurriedly, weaving through the other performers. Moments later, a man standing upstage on a mound of grass speaks to BarleyGirl. His tone is strict and ominous. He says: ‘Are you asking chick-­adee? Doesn’t sound like asking to me. Quite the opposite, actually. There is something of a command in your tone. Asking me to surrender to the plague. This little plain will be yours and yours alone to rule and command as a king slash queen. Is there no please in your asking?’ Moments later, the performers begin to yell ‘chick-­a-dee-­dee-­dee! chick-­a-dee-dee-dee’ and together dance a choreographed sequence that abstractly evokes the movements of a chicken. The above description suggests the difficulty of writing about BarleyGirl. The performance strings together a series of evocative, often nonsensical but nevertheless affective scenes. The difficulty also implies that BarleyGirl lacks a coherent dramatic structure, even as it contains an excess of aesthetic structures. This lack of dramatic structure evokes the breakdown in meaning that took place during the Great Recession, as economic structures broke down for many. Lehmann offers another way to make sense of BarleyGirl’s structure – this breakdown in meaning reveals the artificiality of representation. He writes: ‘Even though this kind of theatre may investigate human relationships – and therefore prove dramatic – it is never “natural”, much less naturalistic. Instead, the spectator is offered a kinaesthetic, gestic and mimic repertoire to “read.” Freed from their naturalizing fusion . . . speaking and gesture are registered in new ways.’35 In BarleyGirl, the nonsensical succession of scenes,

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and the nonsensical language spoken, allowed for the audience to read the performance with an attention to gestures, senses and affect, instead of narrative or drama. Lehmann also suggests that postdramatic performance includes performative moments – what he calls the ‘theatre of the speech act’ – in which spoken words enact meanings and doings into space.36 BarleyGirl was performative as the seemingly nonsensical utterances about kingdoms and chickens incited meanings and actions in the trolley repair factory, disrupting discursive ideas of language and allowing for postdramatic reading – a reading attentive to gesture and presence – in the space. Much of that meaning also came from how Seattle’s political economy structured racial dynamics, materiality, and the venue. First, the cast was mostly white except for Lily Nguyen, an Asian-American woman, Rachael Ferguson, an African-American woman, and several Asian-American members of the orchestra. The presence of non-­white performers in BarleyGirl only exacerbated aesthetic fragmentation. In fact, Mitchell told me: ‘I think that it’s sad and surprising that Implied Violence . . . [was] one of the most diverse companies’, suggesting that racial diversity is rare among performance companies in Seattle. He continued: We want it to be and it’s important to us, but I think diverse without being like, ‘Oh, and now, this is a black play, and this is this play.’ We were making this effort to be diversified, ‘Well, Paul is just beautiful onstage, and he is going to do these things that are not about [race] . . . that are like art, like real-­life talking, like friends.’

Mitchell suggests that he values non-­white performers but does so through colourblindness. His articulation recalls debates about nontraditional casting, especially what Angela Pao calls the ‘cultural pluralist’ view articulated by Joseph Papp of New York’s Public Theatre, who said: ‘I was thinking of ways to eliminate color as a factor in casting, but be on the other hand . . . very aware of color on stage’.37 This idea contrasts with that of African-American playwright August Wilson who, in his 1996 speech ‘The Ground on Which I Stand’, rejected colourblind casting by arguing: Colorblind casting is an aberrant idea that has never had any validity other than as a tool of the Cultural Imperialists who view American culture, rooted in the icons of European culture, as beyond reproach in its perfection. They refuse to recognize black conduct and manners as part of a system that is fueled by its own philosophy, mythology, history, creative motif, social organization and ethos.38

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Read against Wilson, Mitchell’s positioning of raced bodies as merely aesthetic refuses to recognize ‘conduct and manners’ and the histories of people of colour. Those racial erasures are perhaps fitting in Seattle, where a logic of geographic development has long erased non-­white people.39 In BarleyGirl, then, the use of racialized bodies as merely aesthetic broke down racialized meanings made on and of artist bodies. These meanings, I want to suggest, indexed broader trends in Seattle’s histories and practices of racialization.40 This includes twentieth-­century redlining efforts that denied communities of colour first-­rate loans and segregated them into certain neighbourhoods marked as less valuable, leading to persistent but often-­ignored segregation in the early twenty-­first century and contributing to the Great Recession, as banks targeted non-­white communities with subprime loans – an issue often ignored in discourses about the collapse. Those geographic meanings resonated in BarleyGirl, which also sought to look past the cast’s racial signifiers. Second, BarleyGirl was also defined by its materiality: the civil war costumes, the mounds of grass on which the audience and orchestra sat, the papier-mâché horses, fake blood and real baby chickens and their excrement. Audience members felt soil underneath their feet as they experienced BarleyGirl. Lehmann writes: Theatre is not to be defined as a dramatic process, but as one that is corporeal, scenic, musical, auditory and visual – in space and time: a material process that implies its own being-­seen or participation, even as it displays a certain opacity that resists full perceptive penetration . . . just as much as it refuses complete rationalization.41

As a material process, BarleyGirl both allowed for ‘being-­seen’ and a refusal of rationalization. However, that materiality was also a marker of the Great Recession as most of the materials were found by or created by members of IV. The venue itself, an ‘old trolley-­repair-shop-­turned-City-Light-­warehouse’, was unfinished, so, according to The Stranger’s Christopher Frizzelle, the group ‘had to create everything, including a place for the audience to be. Instead of investing in tiered platforms, which is what any other theatre group in the city would do, they just sawed the legs off wooden chairs to varying heights’.42 Frizzelle suggests a link between the recession economy and the fact that the collective had to create everything themselves. Impressive to Frizzelle were not just the materials (including a ‘mountain of sod molders’, ‘crushed remains of a herd of life-­size papier-­mâché horses’, and a ‘wedding dress ruined by fake blood’), but also the space, which was produced by the Great Recession:

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‘It’s fitting that Implied Violence came about because of a housing crisis (Mitchell’s), and that the raw material for the first project was construction debris, because in the ensuing years members of the group have lived in, made theatre in, and been evicted from lots of different places people aren’t supposed to live or make theatre in.’43 The collapsing economy and occupation of poor geographies by IV broke down affective and geographic meanings and made space for new aesthetic meanings to be made. This affective/ aesthetic breakdown appears in BarleyGirl where the object-­filled work lacked coherent narrative and as such begged the audience to make meaning from its disjointed, dreamlike series of moments. Third, the venue for BarleyGirl was made possible by the Great Recession. Mitchell told me ‘the recession itself allowed me probably to live in spaces longer and create things that I wouldn’t have been able to create’. In fact, as O’Connell explained: During the recession time we also started getting a little bit more involved with [the] city council and petitioning for space. We ended up getting the space in the Denny Triangle, on Aloha, which was an old . . . tram repair workshop . . . a beautiful space [where] we presented Barley Girl. That was . . . the pinnacle of our career in Seattle.

The venue was actually obtained very cheaply – for one dollar a month. O’Connell continued: [Mitchell] noticed that it was empty, and through the years he had gotten good at tracking down who owns what spaces, because we were always looking for a space and looking for an interesting place to do performance, or a fundraiser, or whatever. Ryan found out that it was owned by the city, the transportation department or whatever, and then he came up with documents that . . . begged our case, pleaded our case for why we should have access to this building and why we should have it for free. We didn’t end up getting it for free. We got it for $1 a month, I think. Effectively it was a pittance.

To O’Connell, BarleyGirl was the pinnacle of IV’s work in Seattle; the production’s fragmented aesthetics, poor economies and venue in ‘no-­man’s-­ land’ dialogued with the broader collapsed economy that created opportunities for the group to make such grand work so cheaply. The postdramatic geographies IV sought and found were shaped by the very conditions of economic collapse that made certain spaces cheap, empty and available.

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O’Connell told me that as IV continued to produce work in nontraditional spaces, the group was noticed by the press and gained increased notoriety. ‘I think . . . as with any avant-­garde or experimental group or artist, you always start out on the fringes, and you start out as an outcast’, she told me. ‘Then suddenly there is some kind of shift, and somebody somewhere says that you are important or that . . . you should be listened to, or you are legitimate’. In 2008, IV won a Genius Award from The Stranger for ‘Best Organization’. The article for the nomination described IV, saying they: Are not afraid of using: Fake blood, live chickens, fresh produce, intimidation tactics, buildings no one else is using. Are afraid of: What’s happening to theatre all around them. Care about you: ‘At first, most of the complaints we got were that it was too cold. Because the building we were doing the shows in had no heat. So the next show, we served tea.’44

This 2008 text aligned bodily materials comprising the group’s aesthetics with the recession-­era political economy, wherein IV could only afford cold buildings. Despite IV’s success, the geography of their work in funky, marginal spaces, which was crucial to their success, also framed their fear of ‘what’s happening to theatre all around them’. Each of their spaces posed site-­ specific challenges that eventually displaced IV. And yet in each of these often empty spaces marked by the failures of capitalism, IV used material-­rich postdramatic aesthetics to fill them with shared energies.

Conclusion Across this chapter I have argued that postdramatic performance practices are also geographic practices. For IV, geographic margins (including former warehouses and buildings the groups broke into) marked by collapsing economies structured and heightened postdramatic experimentation. To close, I offer two more ways to think about the space that bounds postdramatic performance. First, I want to consider On the Boards, and its differing local, national and international resonances. IV performed the air is peopled with cruel and fearsome birds at On the Boards as part of the 2007 Northwest New Works

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Festival; Ryan Mitchell’s group Saint Genet performed Paradistical Rites at On the Boards in 2013. And yet, to Mitchell, most programming at On the Boards is not relevant to him. He said: On the Boards, because they’re the only game in town, the competition is really high, but then you get into these cycles that, if you want to be presented in the Northwest Artist Series, you actually have to go through a program, and the program begins at Twelve Minutes Max. . . . There’s some inherent problems with that system . . . because, one, it means that you’re creating for a structure that may not be facilitating your vision, right? . . . The other is that it gives a small, a select group of people determined what they do and do not like . . . and then third, is that they don’t even fund this . . . you self-­fund.

Mitchell believes that the problem at On the Boards is a problem many US venues have because ‘the institution’s agenda is actually not to support artists, the institution’s agenda is to sustain itself by way of showing art’. He continued: ‘That is apparently at odds with artists that are making experimental and difficult work, right?’ Nationally and internationally, On the Boards is often marked as the experimental venue for Seattle artists, but, within Seattle, its prominence as the experimental performance institution undoes its relevance to much postdramatic work. Second, I have suggested that political economies of collapse made room for geographies that heightened postdramatic aesthetics. But I also offer that postdramatic aesthetic practices may structure a consciousness of how political economies shape geographies. Always eventually kicked out of their venues – either as renters or presenters – IV produced performances that shocked and disorientated audiences in spaces that had been made empty or foreclosed upon, spaces that were slated for new market-­rate development in a precarious economy, or large institutional spaces such as On the Boards. In making work that put postdramatic aesthetics in dialogue with collapsed geographies, IV worked to heighten, at the very least, an aesthetic consciousness of collapse.

5

Time: Unsettling the Present Philip Watkinson

‘Will we live on the moon? Will we have phones as small as stamps? Will we still be here? The science of particle acceleration meets bizarre Dutch theatre to sweep you back to the future.’1 I glanced up from the programme and saw a spectator emerge from a small, shed-­like structure looking very joyful indeed. The structure was dressed with images of futuristic electronics and ‘TIME MACHINE’ was written in large block letters above the entrance. A nearby chalk sign stated the performance was for one person at a time and would last approximately thirty seconds. Every so often a performer announced that I was queuing for ‘an experience unlike any other on this Earth!’ What could happen in such a tiny space to make people so happy in a mere thirty seconds? I was handed a hard hat and a small swipe card, and it was my turn to enter the structure. Having stepped through a black curtain, I was met by a middle-­aged man in uniform sitting in a kiosk. ‘Good morning! How are you today?’ he enquired. I muttered a brief reply and he asked me to swipe the card in a slot on the wall. ‘08:58’ flashed on a screen next to the kiosk. I moved through another curtain, only to be met by the same man in what appeared to be a mirror image of the previous kiosk. The man was asleep in his chair, snoring loudly. When I entered he awoke abruptly and instructed me to swipe the card once more. ‘17:03’ appeared on another screen. ‘See you tomorrow’ he said as I stepped back out into the daylight. It had been a day’s work.

Unsettling the Present That was my experience of De Stijle, Want’s performance installation Time Machine, performed at the Greenwich + Docklands International Festival, London, 2014. I left the time machine feeling elated and a little unsure as to the aesthetic value of what had just happened. I began in the present (as we must always do), but with a sense of anticipation: I had been promised a transformative and wondrous experience of futurity. My naïve first impression

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had been that I was going to encounter an intense, effects-­laden, multisensory experience that would successfully simulate time travel. Despite this anticipation, common sense suggested that Time Machine’s modest structure and the limited timeframe could not deliver on such an extravagant promise. After the performance, I was proven right in this respect and quickly returned to the everyday present of a sunny afternoon in Greenwich – but I soon realized there was some truth in the initial appearance all along. A classic trait of time travel is the instantaneous return to the present; for observers, it appears as if the time travellers were gone for a few seconds, but those travelling have experienced time differently. In the case of Time Machine, this was precisely the relation between the observers who were queuing or passing by and myself as a spectator. What seemed to be a fanciful appearance masking some hidden reality (the reality behind the illusion, the thirty-­second theatrical experience behind the promise of genuine time travel) turned out to conceal the reality of the appearance itself (the reality in the illusion, the affective resonances of the theatrical time travel experience). The aesthetic experience of Time Machine centred around a return to the present, which appears fitting when describing the piece as postdramatic theatre, characterized by Hans-Thies Lehmann as ‘a theatre of the present’.2 In such theatre, attention is frequently drawn to the here-­and-now of the performance event and the shared nature of the time experienced by performers and spectators. Whereas the Aristotelian dramaturgy of time that prevails in dramatic theatre seeks ‘to prevent the appearance of time as time’, postdramatic theatre tends to seek the opposite, to present the appearance of time as time.3 But what temporal processes are at work in such an experience of the present? I begin this chapter with Time Machine as it poses a pressing question: if a performance can be regarded as postdramatic, how are we to account theoretically for its temporality and the implications of such a theatrical exploration of time for the spectator? To answer this question requires recalibrating our understanding of temporality in postdramatic theory, a task that both questions and emboldens the postdramatic’s critical traction in theatre and performance studies. In this chapter, I summarize the role of time in recent postdramatic scholarship, and argue that we need a more nuanced understanding of ‘the present’ in postdramatic aesthetics. I then subject this scholarship to a critique via analysis of two case studies, postdramatic performances that seemingly privilege the present in their respective aesthetics and framings of spectators. Along with De Stijle, Want’s Time Machine, addressed in more detail below, I examine Deborah Pearson’s The Future Show (2012), in which Pearson presented her own future as a tenuous narrative of personal history continually rewritten for

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each performance. I claim that when postdramatic theatre seemingly places an emphasis on the present, what is in fact emphasized is an unsettling of the present, where historical events and explorations of futurity are shown to be constitutive of a contradictory present that holds conflicting temporalities together in the here-­and-now. For time to be experienced as unsettled in any significant sense, the context that frames time must also become unstable. In the theatre, spectators experience a tension between the time of the performance and the time of broader social, political and economic processes. Whilst this tension is inherent to all modes of theatrical performance, its self-­reflexive use is crucial in the spectatorial experience of postdramatic time, where the present moment is formally emphasized as the dominant temporality and also disturbed by contradictory temporalities. Through this process of unsettling, postdramatic time renders visible the tensions between the formal staging of a performance and the socio-­political conditions that surround and constitute it. Drawing on the work of philosopher Catherine Malabou, I claim that postdramatic time is characterized by a dialectical interplay of ‘necessity and surprise’, where the states of being certain and uncertain about the future coexist simultaneously.4 As a means of addressing the limitations of postdramatic time, I explore the correlation between the use of time in my two examples and the hegemonic, socio-­political condition of capitalist time, and point to how postdramatic time might respond to capital’s temporal processes. I conclude with a brief examination of how postdramatic temporality differs from the temporality of a closely related form, epic theatre.

Postdramatic Time In a study examining the re-­emergence of mise en scène as a theatrical concept and practice, Patrice Pavis claims that postdramatic theory suffers from a ‘presentism’. Surprisingly, Pavis does not relate this presentism to the aesthetic present that postdramatic practices so often privilege, but to the conceptual desire ‘to allude to what comes after without tackling what or why.’5 He argues that the postdramatic ‘label’ results in a theoretical process unable to grasp progress effectively, ‘as if history was frozen . . . as if there were no dialectics left’.6 Pavis sees this misapprehension of dialectics as part of a broader ‘cult of the present’ taking hold in contemporary society, where ‘the advance towards technological and commercial profit, the lack of awareness of past experience and its devaluation and decline’ have led to a ‘suspicion of the past’.7 With regard to theatre, Pavis clearly frames the postdramatic as a key manifestation of this presentism, worrying that postdramatic theory

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elides the historical and political aspects of theatrical processes. Pavis finds such elision unsatisfactory, maintaining that ‘[p]resentism will not last forever. The postdramatic is surely just a passing moment’, thereby implying that the inability of postdramatic theory to break out of the present moment will eventually be its conceptual downfall.8 But what exactly does postdramatic time consist of and how might it be defined?9 Notable scholarly contributions from Rachel Fensham and David Barnett address this question directly. Fensham maintains that in postdramatic theatre ‘[a]ll time is “shared” by the performers and audience as a process, based on the principle of an open structure for the sequence of beginning, middle and end’.10 Thus, regardless of whether time is sped up, prolonged or disjointed, the performers and audience both ‘endure the live quality of time as the same reality’.11 This shared temporality means that time is made an ‘object of direct experience’ for the spectator, and the present moment becomes the space and time where aesthetic and political experience primarily takes place. Due to the prominence of repetition and objects that ‘store time’ (such as an hour glass, a set which steadily disintegrates, or De Stijle, Want’s time machine) in postdramatic aesthetics, Fensham claims that a ‘continuous present’ characterizes the spectator’s experience of time.12 In terms of staging, then, ‘the management of time [in postdramatic theatre] is not for illusion but a constant reminder of the collective limits of the experience’.13 Fensham’s reference to collective limits and emphasis on the present implies the ‘presence over representation’ relation used by Lehmann to characterize the postdramatic, where self-­reflexive attention is drawn to the constructed nature of the theatrical situation and the contingency of signifying processes.14 Still, despite her conceptual clarity, Fensham does not take into account the contradictory nature of the postdramatic present. Consider, for example, De Stijle, Want’s Time Machine, a postdramatic performance that explicitly aimed to make time an ‘object of direct experience’ for spectators. The piece focused on the material and conceptual aspects of time, but time was not shared by the performers and audience. The performers’ work centred exclusively on the creation of a different time for spectators, on the curation of an experience of time travel which they themselves did not partake in. The relatively instantaneous (i.e. after thirty seconds) emergence of the spectator from the machine was positioned so that it could be seen on each occasion by those in the queue for the performance. As I noted earlier, this immediate return to the present is a trope from science fiction; the time travellers enter the time machine, the machine briefly flickers and whirrs, and they immediately step out again, usually to accusations that ‘nothing has happened’ from those observing. De Stijle, Want emphasized the present as a

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kind of ‘proof ’ that time travel into the future had taken place, and not just as a reminder of the collective limits of the experience. In other words, the spectator’s experience of the future was constituted by an emphasis on the present. Furthermore, the simulated journey of Time Machine was infused with a different temporality, that of nostalgia. The structure contained clear references to popular tropes from historical science fiction, most notably to George Pal’s The Time Machine (1960), through the presence of a large disc similar to the one built into the time machine from the film.15 Thus my supposed journey into the future, which in fact consisted of an immediate return to the present, was also facilitated by the fictional history of the medium through which performance functioned (time travel). Although Fensham clears the path for a more nuanced account of postdramatic time, her analysis does not adequately account for the role of futurity and nostalgia in the spectator’s experience of such performance. In his writing on the topic, Barnett notes how postdramatic practices often elide such dramatic mainstays as ‘structured time . . . plotting, development and tension’ in order to ‘present an atmosphere in which nothing actually changes’.16 He cites Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953) and Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis (2000) as examples, where the experience of time ‘is more akin to Traumzeit (time in a dream) as opposed to Alltagszeit (time in everyday life)’.17 In his insightful analysis of René Pollesch’s theatre, Barnett makes clear the interconnections between postdramatic aesthetics and socio-­ political processes such as globalization and postmodernity. Barnett’s analysis falls short in not adequately attending to the temporal implications for spectatorship. For example, Barnett links the continuous present in Pollesch’s works, where ‘nothing actually changes’, to free-­market capitalism, where ‘despite surface changes through time’ the underlying system remains the same.18 He does not, however, reflect this temporal relation back into the aesthetic sphere to modify (as Fensham seeks to do) our understanding of postdramatic spectatorship. Barnett argues that Pollesch’s works create ‘a dynamic in the auditorium that may challenge the present [capitalist] system’, but his analysis of postdramatic temporality goes no further than noting the implications of the aesthetic present created by Pollesch.19 By complicating the aesthetic present, I can extend Barnett’s analysis, not only ‘demonstrating that any given situation is the product of socio-­political processes’, but also examining how spectators become embroiled in contradictory temporalities that span aesthetic and socio-­political contexts.20 Crucially, my analysis also evaluates the capacity of spectators to respond to these socio-­political situations via their temporal engagement.

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The Instantaneous Present in Time Machine De Stijle, Want explored a specific socio-­political process in Time Machine: work, or more specifically, the working day. Their use of ‘08:58’ and ‘17:03’ as the times at which the spectators clocked in and clocked out related the performance to both the eight-­hour-day movement, which had its origins in Britain during the industrial revolution, and the more recent ‘Working Time Directive of the European Union’. In addition to the content of the performance, the context of Greenwich (the location of Greenwich Mean Time) framed the event as a material exploration of time. In other words, De Stijle, Want did not explore time abstractly but rather in relation to the daily processes which mediate and dictate spectators’ experience of time. The measure of time under capitalism is, as Marxist geographer David Harvey outlines, ‘flexible, it can be stretched out and manipulated for social purposes’.21 De Stijle, Want manipulated time, distilling an entire working day to a single moment. In Capital, Karl Marx quotes a factory inspector’s report from 1860 that addresses just such a temporal manipulation: ‘Moments are the elements of profit.’22 Marx’s concise formulation underlines the importance of each moment in the capitalist labour process. As Harvey explains, ‘[c]apitalists do not simply buy a worker’s labor-­power for twelve hours; they have to make sure every moment of those twelve hours is used at maximum intensity.’23 Harvey’s claim allows us to ascertain what is at stake in the spectator’s experience of a working day in Time Machine. By condensing a working day to a moment, De Stijle, Want left out the work itself. The performance dealt not so much with the act of labour but the temporal experience of labour, with how it can be ‘stretched out and manipulated’ by capitalist processes. In fact, Time Machine could be thought of as a literal staging of the quote from Marx’s inspector, giving the spectator an impression of how a moment may be experienced when it becomes embroiled with capital. Time Machine prompted me to reflect on my own varying experiences of working days, as well as how the performance took place outside of the working hours it depicted, which in turn encouraged a consideration of the relationship between leisure time and labour time. However, it is crucial to note that these relations with socio-­political processes were not developed or explored by the performance but were instead immediately mapped back on to the spectator. The realization that De Stijle, Want had equated the effects of a time machine to the experience of a working day coincided with the end of the performance and my leaving the performance space. We should modify our conceptions of postdramatic spectatorship accordingly. Time Machine shows how, for the spectator, the experience of time as an ‘object of direct

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experience’ need not rely on performer and audience experiencing a shared time, extended repetitions or other such typical postdramatic temporal processes. Time may be made an ‘object of direct experience’ via an instantaneous (rather than a continuous) present imbued with specific histories and futures. The present of postdramatic theatre is far from straightforward. Rather than being experienced as an ahistorical present, it is in fact an unsettled present, fraught with contradictory temporalities. Pavis makes a methodological error by claiming that postdramatic theory succumbs to presentism, overlooking the aesthetic practices of this ‘theatre of the present’. Through examining the aesthetic present, I claim that a performance’s postdramatic character does not necessarily obscure history and politics; in fact, postdramatic works formally engage these topics in precisely the ‘concrete terms’ Pavis advocates.24 I will now turn my attention to The Future Show to examine in greater detail how an experience of the present can be unsettled, as well as how postdramatic form and socio-­political context interact.

Making the Future Present In The Future Show, Deborah Pearson performed an account of what was going to happen to her between the end of that evening’s performance and her death. Before each performance, she rewrote the script, removing what had become irrelevant and inserting her latest predictions. The Future Show was scenographically simple. Pearson sat at a desk, leaned in close to the microphone and read steadily from a three-­ring binder containing the evening’s script, along with all the preceding scripts. Placing herself in what she terms ‘the tension between retrospection and hypotheticality’, Pearson explored perception, memory and habit through an extended repetition of the same act.25 The content of each performance varied, but its structure and staging remained largely unchanged, as can be seen in the detailed performance score Pearson published for those who wish to recreate The Future Show.26 The performance may be described as a continual rearticulation of personal histories that have yet to happen, where the formal aspects of the piece remain more or less static. Pearson’s exploration of prediction and memory used postdramatic form as a theatrical tool of experimentation, where a tendency to privilege the present was brought into contact with an autobiographical past and future. A characteristic formal trait of postdramatic theatre is an emphasis on narration over narrative. The spectators’ attention is directed towards the present, on the act and moment of delivery rather than on the content. Such

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an emphasis on narration was evident in The Future Show, where Pearson’s use of theatrical devices to embellish the narrative was minimal. However, the central role of narrative in the performance cannot be overlooked; indeed, The Future Show consisted of nothing but Pearson proposing a hypothetical narrative of the remainder of her life. In this tension between narration and narrative, there was an attempt to reconcile the present as it existed then with another time frame as it may exist or may have existed. The future Pearson proposed had never existed except as narrative, yet she made the future present through the act of narration, giving the narrative a material, theatrical existence in the present of the performance space. Alongside the repeated, inevitable failure of reconciling different temporalities (the present Pearson narrating her future and the future Pearson who lives those events can never be conclusively experienced by the spectator), each repetition was nonetheless an active attempt at reconciliation. Pearson’s hypothetical narrative existed as a ‘potentiality’ in José Esteban Muñoz’s understanding of the term, as a mode of nonbeing that is present but does not actually exist in the present.27 Postdramatic form allowed Pearson to place herself in ‘the tension between retrospection and hypotheticality’. As Pearson outlines in her score, there is always a section where a woman with a short black bob wearing a trench coat approaches me and says, ‘So, you think you know about the future?’ She goes on to open the trench coat, I worry that she is getting a gun, and then she shows me that she has a small animal in her left breast pocket. In every script this is a different small animal, usually specific to the local climate. In Austin it was a bat, for example, while at the BAC [Battersea Arts Centre] it was a pigeon, and in Vancouver it was a squirrel. The animal always has the same name, which is ‘Ricky’ . . . and she says something to the effect of, ‘I bet you didn’t predict Ricky’, at which point I remind the audience that I am predicting Ricky right now.28

Pearson, through repetition, placed herself in the temporal tension she posits. While most theatre involves repetition to a certain extent (not least in the repetition of the same performance throughout the duration of a production’s run), postdramatic theatre frequently makes repetition an explicit aspect of its aesthetic and uses it to modify spectators’ experience of time. Pearson’s interaction with the woman and Ricky remained hypothetical; so long as it was being predicted by Pearson, this event never passed from potentiality to actuality. However, this interaction also involved retrospection: it functioned as a memory of past events, as a continual remainder of and reference to previous performances in which the same interaction was predicted. Thus,

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Pearson’s encounter with the woman and Ricky privileged the present through its formal mode of presentation, but this present was constituted by the tension between retrospection and hypotheticality. Repetition in The Future Show also engaged directly with nostalgia, rendering visible the latter’s contradictory nature, which resides in an irresolvable tension between two different time frames. Through the act of repeating, Pearson addressed the perception of nostalgia as a fiction as well as how this fiction relates to the way reality is understood. Susan Stewart conceives of nostalgia as ‘sadness without an object’, where the past being sought ‘has never existed except as narrative, and hence, always absent, that past continually threatens to reproduce itself as a felt lack’.29 Stewart implicitly distinguishes between ‘object’ and ‘narrative’, designating the former as something objective and actual, and the latter as something subjective and fictional. The Future Show unsettled this object–­narrative binary by making the ‘narrative’ being sought the ‘object’ of the performance. Given the repeated nature of the piece, it was as if Pearson had acknowledged the ‘threat’ Stewart identifies and sought to repeatedly reproduce it. In other words, rather than featuring a narrative which was nostalgic, The Future Show formally enacted and rendered visible the process of nostalgia. Pearson’s frequent references to obsessive-­compulsive disorder in her predictions underlined the stakes of such a hypothetical engagement with personal narrative. For example, during a performance in Lisbon, Pearson predicted the following: On October 15th I will take the train to my university and worry that someone on the panel will ask me about Phenomenology of the Spirit [sic] in detail. I will decide that no one will do this if I sit in the very last seat on the very last carriage all the way there. I will not sit in the very last carriage, but I will sit in the very last seat of the most convenient carriage, and this will feel like a good compromise.30

Moments such as this, which were not dwelt on but mentioned in passing, made it clear that the very act of mapping out one’s future in meticulous detail is a distinctly obsessive-­compulsive act. The process of prediction allows for preparation: an act that appears to look forward and exercise control over the future actually functions as a remedy to present anxieties. As Tim Etchells states in his introduction to Pearson’s text: ‘The act of prediction, of seeking knowledge ahead of time, of articulating or claiming knowledge in advance of events puts the subject above or outside the constraints in which humans are usually expected or burdened to operate.’31 Thus the act of prediction not only shapes the present but also renders visible the

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contradictory relations between these temporalities, as the subject is both ‘above or outside’ their current space-­time whilst self-­reflexively working from within it. To explain these contradictory relations further, it is useful to consider again the act of repetition. In his discussion of trauma, Slavoj Žižek suggests that ‘what we are unable to repeat, we are haunted with and are compelled to memorize. The way to get rid of a past trauma is not to rememorize it, but to fully repeat it in the Kierkegaardian sense.’32 Here Žižek refers to the autobiographical narrator in Søren Kierkegaard’s Repetition, who tries and fails to repeat a past experience in all its original intensity. Žižek draws attention to the positive potential of such failed repetition, as ‘fully repeating’ a past experience allows the subject to come to terms with the temporal split between past and present that is inherent in the act of repeating.33 In Žižek’s reading, this temporal split is read as constitutive of trauma rather than a result of it, and so the act of ‘fully repeating’ formally addresses traumatic processes rather than addressing their content. The contradictory stakes of ‘fully repeating’ become clear when we note that the object into which Pearson introduced a temporal dialectic was herself; indeed, the content of the performance consisted of the tension between her present and future self. Despite the confidence with which Pearson presented her predictions, prefacing each with the phrase ‘I will’ – as opposed to the more tentative speculation involved in the phrases ‘I might’ or ‘I could’ – the two temporalities were never resolved for the audience. As a spectator of a particular performance, I was never able to see whether the predictions came true. Even when I went to see the performance for a second time, I was presented with just another modified set of predictions. Pearson’s rewriting rendered visible the possibility of repeating an experience of impossibility.

‘To See (What Is) Coming’ To theoretically connect the postdramatic experience of time and the socio-­ political contexts this work engages with, I turn to the philosophy of Catherine Malabou. She describes the temporal experience of reading Hegel as an interplay of ‘teleological necessity and surprise’, where the reader is certain and uncertain about the future simultaneously.34 According to Malabou, the reader is able ‘to see (what is) coming’, and this subjective position ‘denotes at once the visibility and the invisibility of whatever comes’.35 The reader waits for what is to come (due to the linear logic of reading a text), while also presupposing that the outcome has already arrived (due to the circular nature of Hegel’s philosophy). Malabou’s formulation usefully

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describes the subjective experience of time in postdramatic theatre, where an analogous interplay of ‘necessity and surprise’ characterizes the form of such work. For example, in Time Machine the spectator experienced an immediate return to the present which, on the one hand, was foreseeable and could be known conclusively before experiencing it, but which, on the other hand, entailed the surprising unsettling of this present through its connection to capitalist time structures and specific temporal histories. The presentism of the performance was thus unsettled by its socio-­political context, which in turn was shown to be inherent to the spectatorial experience of this present. Pearson’s temporal position in The Future Show can also be understood through reference to Malabou. When elaborating on the subjective experience of ‘to see (what is) coming’, Malabou claims ‘the process that unfolds is both retrospective and prospective.’36 There is a notable similarity with Pearson’s claim that, through performing The Future Show, she placed herself in ‘the tension between retrospection and hypotheticality’.37 In the many narratives that Pearson produced, her present self knew exactly what would happen to her future self, and yet her artistic process remained open to contingent events that could not be predicted through the continuous rewrites it entailed. Things become even more interesting when we realize that ‘to see (what is) coming’ also accounts for the postdramatic form of the piece. The mode of delivery, Pearson’s postdramatic use of narration, presented spectators with the ‘continuous present’ to which Fensham refers, where ‘time is “shared” by the performers and audience as a process’.38 The hypothetical narrative arrived at the spectator through a visually still and aurally unmodulated aesthetic. This certainty rubbed up against uncertainty, insofar as the spectator could have no certain knowledge of what they were about to hear next as Pearson jumped forward through times and topics, at seemingly random intervals, until her sudden death. The postdramatic staging of the performance placed the spectator in a dialectical interplay of ‘teleological necessity and surprise’; the present Pearson (the narrator) was experienced in a ‘continuous present’, whilst the future Pearson (the narrated) was experienced as an uncertainty that continually intervened in the present. Pearson’s predictions were presented with certainty in each iteration of the performance, and yet the very fact that they were continually rewritten, that there were iterations rather than one definitive iteration, places the experience of time for the spectators between certainty and uncertainty. The repetition in The Future Show did not simply draw attention to the present (to the conditions of performance rather than what was being performed), but formally foregrounded the subjective processes of nostalgia and obsessive-­ compulsive disorder. Again, the ‘continuous present’ of the performance

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aesthetic was unsettled by the unpredictability of an individual’s social and political life, and this unpredictability was made constitutive of the experience of a ‘continuous present’. Reading postdramatic work in this way reveals the extent to which the emphasis on an aesthetic present in no way entails a presentism as Pavis understands the term. Rather, the artists’ use of time simultaneously emphasized and unsettled the aesthetic and political manifestations of what spectators experienced as the present.

Does Postdramatic Time Equal Capitalist Time? Working with ‘to see (what is) coming’ allows me to examine the relation between postdramatic time and capitalist time. There is a notable equivalence between these two temporalities. The postdramatic temporality in Time Machine and The Future Show could be said to reproduce the venture capitalist emphasis on hypothetical futures, a focus that dominates our present economic and historical moment. I will take a specific example, that of ‘disruptive innovation’, as an emblematic mode of capitalist temporality. Developed by neoliberal thinkers such as Joseph Schumpeter and Clayton Christensen, disruptive practices hold that long-­term plans based on a knowledge of the past will fail due to new innovations disrupting the markets and networks that the practices function within. As Benjamin H. Snyder summarises, ‘[r]ather than wait for the inevitable crisis, the [disruptive] narrative goes, one should proactively dismantle what is fixed and constantly reinvent’.39 The reach of disruptive practices is not limited to financial settings but, as Jill Lepore notes, now permeates higher education, healthcare and media outlets.40 Disruptive innovation characterizes the incessant capitalist focus on the short-term future, a focus that continually places importance on ruptures with the past and so remains, paradoxically, obsessed with the present. Here we see an example of the ‘suspicion of the past’ that Pavis associates with ‘the advance towards technological and commercial profit’.41 The dubious consequence of short-term, future-­oriented practices is that they not only predict the future but shape it. As Lepore observes, disruptive innovation in the financial services industry, in the form of selling subprime mortgages and collateralized debt obligations, resulted in the 2008 financial crisis. However, rather than serving as an indictment of disruptive innovation, the crisis bolstered its success, as these questionable financial products ‘contributed to the panic on which the theory of disruption thrives’.42 The temporality of disruptive innovation resonates with the temporality of the performances I have addressed in this chapter. The Future Show consisted of a continual focus on and reinvention of its creator’s future life,

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meaning that the present moment of the performance space could be thought of as existing purely as a short-term, hypothetical future. Similarly, Time Machine condensed a present moment to an experience of the future, and furthermore equated the spectatorial experience of this moment with the experience of labour time. In other words, an unsettling of the present characterizes both postdramatic temporality and disruptive innovation; any future development might at any point disrupt (or unsettle) the stability of the present moment. As Malabou writes, in a passage that reads as a description of disruptive and capitalist temporalities, ‘[s]uch a future is both beautiful and terrible. Beautiful because everything can still happen. Terrible, because everything has already happened.’43 If extrapolated to what Michael Shane Boyle terms postdramatic theatre’s ‘social function’, one might argue that Time Machine and The Future Show offered spectators an opportunity to become accustomed to (and thus less likely to resist) the disruptive conditions of a capitalist society.44 As Boyle states succinctly, ‘[a]ny new form theatre takes is shaped by and also shapes the conditions capital sets for it’.45 As such, unless the reproduction of capitalist relations and conditions is addressed directly by a theatrical form, the form may be political in a reductive way that reproduces the processes of capital. From this perspective, theatrical engagement with temporalities that are analogous to capitalist temporalities may normalize the problematic aspects of the latter. However, the full implications of ‘to see (what is) coming’ unsettle such a straightforward reading. Malabou argues that ‘[i]nterpretation is a production that presupposes the accident which gave it birth, which by the same token accepts that it cannot be definitive.’46 In other words, the connection between the contingency of an event (that the future is uncertain and cannot be known beforehand) and the constitutive role the subject’s involvement plays in producing an event renders visible the possibility of an alternative event, or more radically, an alternative system that determines how an event is defined. As Malabou states in relation to interpreting Hegel, ‘[h]aving become experienced through the speculative ordeal of a shared speech, the reader is from now on able to respond to the reading.’47 If ‘reader’ is replaced with ‘spectator’, this thinking speaks to the potential of the postdramatic to engage with theatre’s social function. Both The Future Show and Time Machine rendered visible the constitutive role of the spectator in the creation of postdramatic (and thus capitalist) time. This is a commonly identified feature of postdramatic theatre, where spectators take on an expanded role in the meaning-­making process.48 The dialectical twist that Malabou enables us to recognize is that, if postdramatic time does correlate to capitalist time through its formal modes of staging, then this correlation also entails the spectator’s potential to modify this time. In Time Machine, the spectator’s

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instantaneous return to the present and capital’s emphasis on the continuous present via short-term futures depended on the spectator’s participation in the performance. The very mode of participation entailed an unsettling of the present, a rendering visible of the contradictory temporalities that any present consists of. Similarly, The Future Show emphasized the split between a continuous present and hypothetical futures, underlining how such a split characterizes the subjective experience of daily life (in this case, Pearson’s). Put simply, the act of ‘seeing (what is) coming’ in Time Machine and The Future Show facilitated a spectatorial experience of time’s social function, where the temporal processes at work in capital were both reproduced and unsettled.

The Role of Time in Postdramatic and Epic Theatre Despite the useful prompt to consider what the concept of the postdramatic hides, Pavis fails to acknowledge the dialectical nature of postdramatic time in his charge of presentism. Although the present is without a doubt the temporal dimension that postdramatic theatre most frequently privileges, this present does not become fetishized but is unsettled by being subject to investigation and critique. By way of conclusion, and to frame this unsettling of the present further, I will briefly examine the relationship between postdramatic time and how time is configured in the closely related form of epic theatre. Barnett has critiqued Lehmann’s designation of postdramatic theatre as a ‘post-Brechtian theatre’, arguing instead for ‘a more holistic definition’ of the latter that underlines its political import and diminishes the political potential of the former.49 In a revealing piece of analysis, Barnett contrasts Einar Schleef’s post-Brechtian production of Brecht’s Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti) with Michael Thalheimer’s postdramatic production of the same play. Although Barnett sees ‘the tragedy in [Schleef’s] production is an epiphenomenon of a particular type of society’, he reads Thalheimer’s production as a ‘postdramatic Puntila outside history’.50 In other words, Barnett argues that Schleef’s post-Brechtian theatre renders specific socio-­political histories visible via theatrical means, whereas Thalheimer’s postdramatic theatre transforms these concerns into an ahistorical ‘atmosphere of menace and despair’.51 Barnett makes this point again in his analysis of a small detail of Thalheimer’s production: ‘Brecht preferred to historicize the Bible in his works; Thalheimer views Brecht’s Bible references unironically as a source of information about “the human condition” ’.52 But as I have shown through my study of Time Machine and The Future Show, through rendering time an ‘object

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of direct experience’, postdramatic theatre is in fact able to attend to specific socio-­political histories through dialectical and formal means. In the epic theatrical form (by which I refer to theatre that features a Brechtian impulse, and so include both Brechtian and post-Brechtian practices), the temporal emphasis is primarily on the process of historicization; that is, on making visible the contingent and dialectical historical processes through which specific situations came into being. As Sarah Bryant-Bertail states, the spectators’ experience of meaning-­making in epic theatre ‘is always dialectical, with every sign pointing in two contradictory directions: the way taken and the way not taken’.53 Rather than primarily being concerned with a critical approach to historicization, the spectatorial experience of time in postdramatic theatre is characterized by the interplay of Malabou’s ‘to see (what is) coming’. Here the experience of the spectator is concerned, echoing Bryant-Bertail’s terms, with the way taken, the way not taken and the way that could be taken. Instead of making visible the contingent historical processes through which specific situations came into being, as in the epic form, postdramatic form investigates how specific historical processes constitute experiences and understandings of futurity in the present. The performances I have examined in this chapter, while remaining a ‘theatre of the present’, involve an exploration of time in its social and historical manifestations, an exploration that places the spectator at the heart of this process. Barnett argues that formal epic elements such as Verfremdung and Gestus aim ‘to reveal the truth behind the veneer: the dialectic. . . . The epic drives a wedge between the experience of the event and a reflection on it.’54 I argue that, as well as revealing ‘the truth behind the veneer’, postdramatic form can render visible the contradictory relationship between the ‘truth’ and the ‘veneer’. For example, Time Machine not only revealed that our daily experience of time conceals processes of capital, but also utilized the fictional pretence of time travel to explore how our experience of time is constitutive of capitalist time. In other words, the performance both exposed a ‘truth’ behind a ‘veneer’ and formally explored the constitutive relationship between these two categories. Thus spectators gain a sense of how the situation came into being as well as participate in an exploration of how the situation could be in the future. Similarly, The Future Show not only revealed the ultimate contingency of future events, but also emphasized the dialectical interplay between the (spectator and Pearson’s) experience of the present and historically-­grounded processes of futurity. Again, the performance opened for exploration what we consider this ‘truth’ to be. In contrast to the ahistorical present that Pavis and Barnett claim postdramatic theatre tends to stage, postdramatic form can be more accurately regarded as privileging an unsettling of the present, where the here-­and-now of the aesthetic experience is emphasized only insofar as it is questioned.

6

Body: Tadeusz Kantor and the Posthuman Stage Magda Romanska

The Postdramatic and the Posthuman: What is the Difference? In Postdramatic Theatre, Hans-Thies Lehmann positions Tadeusz Kantor’s work as one of the central signposts of postdramatic theory and practice. Unravelling the traditional models of dramatic structure, character, plot and the very notion of stage presence, Kantor challenged both the definition of dramatic theatre as well as devised work that specifically responded to and captured – in both form and content – the postmodern condition. As Lehmann argues, ‘the postdramatic theatre of a Tadeusz Kantor with its mysterious, animistically animated objects and apparatus [is] crucial for understanding the most recent theatre’.1 However, what makes Kantor’s dramaturgy even more essential for understanding contemporary theatre is that, in addition to being classified as postdramatic, it can also be classified as posthuman. Using Kantor’s theatre as a case study, I illustrate how the two critical and aesthetic paradigms – the posthuman and the postdramatic – differ in their representation and understanding of the human body, agency and subjectivity within and outside of the limits of dramatic and performance theory. In my exploration of this difference, I work to answer the following questions: What is the position of postdramatic theatre in the posthuman, anti-Kantian flat world of speculative realism, which ‘denies that all reality is grounded in the human-­world relation’, and ‘in which any thing, sensu stricto, is equivalent to another thing’?2 Can the analysis of this difference help us delineate the historical and theoretical boundaries of postdramatic theatre – and post-­postdramatic theatre? With its focus on the authenticity of the body in performance, the legacy of the performance theory of the 1960s continues to spark fascination with quasi-­ religious, pretextual and predramatic performance rituals, seen as the original, authentic source of theatrical experience. This anthropocentric approach,

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which developed in conjunction with J. L. Austin’s theory of performativity, has focused on the presence of the marked body as the source of theatrical and performative truth, and performative signification.3 These ‘human-­centered social “performances” ’ operate through dramatic emplotment4 – rearranging aleatory historical events into Aristotelian dramatic structure – of the histrionic body. On the posthuman stage, however, the performative epis­temology of the body, which dominates dramatic, predramatic and much of the postdramatic theatre and performance, has been unravelled by the technological progress altering our very (anthropological) perceptions of what is and isn’t a ‘human’ body and even questioning the very need for such a category, along with the anthropocentric model and its hierarchy.5 Lehmann argues that the unravelling of a body-­centred epistemology is one of the central pillars of postdramatic theatre: the body no longer serves as a central (and centralized) semantic field of a coherent human subject. However, the body serves as a signpost for a broader signifying landscape in which the potentiality for such a subject still exists. As Lehmann suggests: ‘The dramatic process occurred between the bodies; the postdramatic process occurs with/on/to the body.’6 On the posthuman stage, however, the human body as a source of humanist ethics disappears. In The Politics of New Media Theatre: Life®TM, Gabriella Giannachi describes the posthuman body as a site of ontologically unstable semiotic constructs: A space of discourse and materiality, the post-­human body continuously reconstitutes itself between dichotomous discourses. No longer ontologically stable, it is a body that must always express itself through performance. . . . This means the post-­human body is no longer fixed, unchangeable, but rather that it can be rewritten like a blank canvas. Both signifiers and genes can be altered. The post-­human body is scarred. Not only is it modifiable semiotically but also medically. Unquestionably, at once terrifying and sublime, the post-­human body is already the most crucial and controversial site of aesthetic, biopolitical, ethical and economic dispute in the twenty-­first century.7

The posthuman body thus crosses the boundaries at the very foundations of Western man’s self-­perception, like a palimpsest on which the centuries of our culture have etched their forces and tensions. For theatre and performance scholars, the issues involved in defining the posthuman body on the posthuman stage must necessarily be also connected with Lehmann’s concept of the postdramatic theatre – comparative study of both can help us delineate their historical and theoretical boundaries as well as help us clarify the nuances surrounding the controversial (and unclear) relationship between the body,

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text and performance in postdramatic theatre. What is the difference between the postdramatic and the posthuman body, and, for that matter, between postdramatic and posthuman (and thus also post-­performative) theatre? In ‘Posthuman Perspectives and Postdramatic Theatre’, Louise Lepage suggests that postdramatic theatre ‘is a necessary response to the modern mediatized world. . . . The form of postdramatic theatre shares with posthumanism a more chaotic and emergent structure than is known by either drama or humanism’.8 Juxtaposing Peter Szondi’s Theory of the Modern Drama and Lehmann’s Postdramatic Theatre with N. Katherine Hayles’s How We Became Posthuman, Lepage draws a parallel between Drama as a historical form that emerged in the seventeenth century as an Enlightenment expression and repository of humanist ethics and aesthetics, and humanism as an historical category that emerged at the same time as an expression and repository of ‘human’ – also ‘a historically specific construction’.9 Just as the ‘human’ is now ‘giving way to a different construction called the posthuman’,10 Lepage suggests that Drama – starting in the early twentieth century – has been giving way to the postdramatic. Since ‘Drama’ as a historical category is dependent on the ‘human’ as a stable construct (Drama is dialogic; hence, there can be no Drama without humans), posthuman theatre can be thought of as always already also postdramatic. Drawing on Lepage, we can conclude that the process of unravelling the concepts of ‘human’ and ‘Drama’ is therefore codependent (even if that codependency doesn’t imply causality). Although we can argue that all posthuman theatre is postdramatic, not all postdramatic theatre is automatically posthuman. In the postdramatic performance space, the body is no longer a site of performative epistemology but merely one component of the theatrical landscape. As Peter M. Boenisch reminds us, ‘postdramatic theatre, at its very heart, challenged the earlier paradigmatic aim for synthesis, coherence, and closure’.11 This includes the concept of the human body as a stable signifier. Postdramatic theatre, Cathy Turner argues, encourages us ‘to encompass processual and open-­ended structures, admitting the aleatory, entropic and chaotic, examining the potential for multiple narratives, frames and forms of textuality, and including non-­hierarchical consideration of both subjects and objects’.12 The contemporary, globalized dramaturgical process, Turner writes elsewhere, requires an awareness of interconnectivity – between ‘materials, words, bodies, sounds, spaces, times, concepts, audiences, socio-­political context, subjects, objects, ideologies [and] aesthetics’.13 Or, as Robin Nelson puts it: ‘[P]aralleling the displacement from centre stage of “Man as the measure of all things”, the actor’s agency and centrality are further diminished by her demotion from the apex of the hierarchy of stage signs. The performer today is just one of many signifiers in a complex, multi-­layered event’.14

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The posthuman stage, however, resists any sort of historical and bodily dramatic or postdramatic emplotment, any narrativization of aleatory signs and events that could suggest the existence of a coherent human subject. Postdramatic theatre unravels the concepts of Drama, plot, character and even the human body, but posthuman theatre unravels the very notion of human agency and subjectivity. Analysing Tadeusz Kantor’s theatre can help us illustrate this difference. When Kantor’s work is juxtaposed with Jerzy Grotowski’s, for example, both Grotowski’s and Kantor’s ‘poor theatres’ can be thought of as postdramatic (both resist the dramatic form’s impulse to unfold according to Hegel’s historical model), but only Kantor’s theatre can be also thought of as posthuman. If in Grotowski’s theatre dramatic texts and objects disappear under the weight of the performer’s human body (which is present and presented as a central site of the performance event and an epistemological source of theatrical experience), in Kantor’s theatre the performer’s human body disappears under the weight of texts and objects. If in Grotowski’s work the performer’s body is still a human body inasmuch as it’s always connected to the human subject that feels or enacts the emotions it is asked to perform, in Kantor’s theatre actors’ bodies are posthuman bodies inasmuch as they’re always connected to and equivalent to an object – performing gestures and movements disconnected from any stable emotions with no localized source.15

The Posthuman and its Discontents The postmodern philosophical concept of the ‘posthuman’16 developed in the late 1990s and early 2000s in the poststructuralist lineage, and in response to the traditional Renaissance-­era humanist ethics and aesthetics, which presupposed a coherent vision of the human being imbued with certain essential characteristics (i.e. ‘soul’ and ‘human nature’) and visually represented by the intact body. The notion of the ‘posthuman’ refers to the technological disruption of that paradigm, but the concept itself questions the validity of the previously established categories of ‘human’ – and, most important, ‘subhuman’ – thus also questioning other definitions: of human rights, life and death. Giorgio Agamben, for example, invented the concept of ‘bare life’ to demarcate the ethical perimeters of the living body.17 The posthumanist vision of the future (as envisioned by modern philosophers and science fiction writers and filmmakers) often entails a nightmarish landscape populated by creatures of undefined origins and ruled by the relativist ethics of a flat world where lines of life and death are no longer drawn according to a hitherto established anthropocentric hierarchy, and where monsters, cyborgs and mutant animal-­men destroy humans and their

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civilization. Hayles argues that ‘at the inaugural moment of the computer age, the erasure of embodiment is performed so that “intelligence” becomes a property of the formal manipulation of symbols rather than enaction in the human life-­world’.18 If ‘machines can become the repository of human consciousness’, Hayles continues, ‘[then they] can become human beings. You are the cyborg and the cyborg is you.’19 By destabilizing the category of what is and isn’t ‘human’, the concept of ‘posthuman’ also provides a destabilized and destabilizing view of the human body, its capacities and its status in the hierarchical order of things. Historically, anything not shaped as ‘human’ was typically deemed monstrous (from hybrid mythological creatures to severely disabled ‘elephant men’). In a sense, the stage has always served as a place where we’ve enacted, defined, and seen our humanity vis-à-vis all other ‘nonhuman’ and ‘subhuman’ others. The main characteristic of posthuman aesthetics, then, is the dissociation between the body and human consciousness. Pramod K. Nayar defines posthumanism as ‘an ontological condition’ in which humans live with ‘technologically modified bodies and/or in close conjunction with machines’.20 Nayar argues that postmodern, posthuman art works: emphasize the blurring of bodily borders, identities (gender, species, race) and even consciousness, in which isolating the ‘human’ from a human-­machine assemblage, cadavers or another form of life is impossible. Critical posthumanism . . . is the radical decentring of the traditional, coherent and autonomous human in order to demonstrate how the human is always already evolving with, constituted by and constitutive of multiple forms of life and machines.21

Essential for this new construction of the posthuman is the connection between the human body and its various inorganic prosthetic extensions. Hayles notes that ‘[t]he posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born’.22 Thus, the posthuman body is always already a bionic body prepared to integrate with, to be augmented or impaired by, the organic and inorganic matter surrounding it. Theatre has also always been intrigued by the permeability of the boundaries between the human and the nonhuman, the living and the material worlds. Tadeusz Kantor’s visual ‘manipulations of symbols’, his bio-­ objects and stage-­objects, are some of the most complex interrogations of this process. Analysing Kantor’s theatre can help us understand the difference between posthuman and the postdramatic bodies.23

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By creating BIO-OBJECTS, theatrical forms that join the living actor with inanimate objects, Kantor formed the first quasi-­bionic theatrical bodies.24 As he writes: ‘BIO-OBJECTS were not props which the actors used. They were not “decorations” in which you “act”. They made indivisible wholes with the actors. They exuded their own autonomous “lives”, not related to the FICTION (content) of the play.’25 Estranged from their theatrical roles, Kantor’s actors ‘act as if automatically, out of habit; we have even the impression that they ostentatiously refuse to own up to these roles, as if they were only repeating somebody else’s sentences and actions, tossing them off with facility and without scruples; these roles break down every now and then as if badly learnt’.26 The actors do not live their roles; they don’t perform them or enact them in any way. They wear them temporarily, as if by accident, repeating lines and gestures like broken, discarded machines, programmed to mimic human subjects, playing the characters like a musical instrument.27 Many contemporary critics, including Kenneth J. Gergen, have argued that the postmodern self is caught in ‘a continuous state of construction and reconstruction’, where ‘each reality of self gives way to reflexive questioning, irony and ultimately the playful probing of yet another reality’. In that context, ‘the center fails to hold’.28 Kantor’s postmodern actors structure their roles within roles as if playing themselves playing someone else. The centre doesn’t hold because there is no centre, only words, gestures and movements, independent of one another and the actor who performs them: ‘The very condition of BEING ESTRANGED, which places [the actors] on a par with the condition of an OBJECT, removes biological, organic, and natural­ istic [expressions of] life.’29 Lehmann elaborates on the antinaturalistic mechanism behind Kantor’s actors/objects within the decentred hierarchy of stage signs: In Kantor’s theatre, however, the human actors appear under the spell of objects. The hierarchy vital for drama vanishes, a hierarchy in which everything (and every thing) revolves around human action, the things being mere props. We can speak of a distinct thematic of the object, which further de-­dramatizes the elements of action if they still exist. Things in Kantor’s lyrical-­ceremonial theatre appear as reminiscent of the epic spirit of memory and its preference for things.30

By disrupting the hierarchy between humans and objects, Kantor’s theatre foreshadows the posthuman stage in which the body belongs no longer to the character but to the interconnected landscape of mapped signs and symbols. In Kantor’s theatre, the body is no longer a site of performative truth. On the contrary, Kantor’s stage is posthuman insofar as the human subject disappears

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into the materiality of his body, which, in turn, disappears into the materiality of the stage-­object. As Kantor himself wrote: The image of a human being, which up till then was regarded as the only truth-­telling representation, disappears. Instead, there gradually emerge biological forms of a lower kind, almost animals, with few remaining traces of their past ‘humanity’ or, perhaps, a few traces foreshadowing their humanity.31

By deconstructing the human body, Kantor seems to want to deconstruct the very image of humanity itself. Without agency, meaning and intention, he reduces humanity to ‘bare life’. The prototype of the BIO-OBJECT was an idea of ‘human emballage’ developed during the earliest stage of Cricot 2, the Informal Theatre. In the 1960s, Kantor organized a series of happenings during which ‘living human insides’ were packaged, individually or together, in rolls of paper or other materials. The point of an emballage was to transform a human body so that it would lose all of its natural abilities. Up until the premiere of the Dead Class in 1975, each of Kantor’s performances assembled a ‘Human Nature Preserve’, a gallery of BIO-OBJECTS. Figures such as the Man with a Suitcase, Man with a Sack and its Unknown Contents, the Woman Drowned in a Bathtub, the Man with his Door, the Helpless Man with a Table and Man with a Chair would reappear time after time in subsequent productions. Describing one of his BIO-OBJECTS, The Man with Two Bicycle Wheels Grown Into His Legs, Kantor writes: [he] is completely separated from reality of a different kind and is enclosed in an inhuman, but at least for him natural, feeling for speed and motion that can be realized with the help of his legs, with the consciousness of vehicle.32

Mutating the actor’s body, the wheels transform his sense of reality and of himself. Kantor wrote about another BIO-OBJECT, the Man with a Wooden Plank on His Back: on the borderline of madness [he] demonstrates

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There is also A Man with Two Additional Legs, whose additional pair of legs transform his ethical and ontological condition: unfolds in front of the dumbfounded crowd the whole spectrum of completely new and unknown benefits, advantages, privileges, and possibilities of nature’s whimsical generosity, of expanded psychological processes, and even moral consequences, side effects, and surprises.34

These three examples of Kantorian BIO-OBJECTS illuminate the posthuman aspect of Kantor’s theatre. In the posthuman condition, as Nayar emphasizes, ‘previously taken-­for-granted categories of the human/non-­ human are now subject to sustained, controversial examination’.35 By connecting an actor to an object, Kantor’s BIO-OBJECTS offer such an examination of the boundaries between organic and nonorganic matter. In the BIO-OBJECT, Kantor wrote: ‘The actors became its live parts, organs. They were, one could say, genetically joined to it. . . . [They tried] to adjust to it physically, “relate” to it, “find measure”, get in touch with it’.36 Both the actor and the character they play become estranged from their bodies and enclosed within their own space, inaccessible for either fiction or reality: neither human, animal nor object. ‘The demonstration and manifestation of the “life” of the BIO-OBJECT was not tantamount to representing some kind of set-­up existing outside it. It was autonomous, and therefore real!’, Kantor wrote. Or, as Michal Kobialka puts it: [The actors’] bodies could be treated as an intricate field of interplay between two parallel systems, that is, the illusion of being another character and the actor’s own Self. Because illusion ‘was merely a reflection, / just like a moonlight, / a dead surface’, actors in this system

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needed to eliminate dependence on the arrangement that existed outside them and to gain autonomy by exposing only themselves, rather themselves than their characters.37

Kantor’s theatrical experiments suspended his actors in a liminal space between fiction and reality, which, as Giannachi points out, is the ontological predicament of the posthuman condition: ‘As post-­humans, we are at once in social reality and in fiction – in the real and in the world of the “spectacle”.’38 Kantor forces his actors into the posthuman space ‘where the human confronts itself with and indeed incorporates the other-­than-human’.39 His theatrical system of symbolic signs functions within the landscape of posthuman ‘representations of corporeal-­physiological fluidity, ontological liminality and identity-­morphing’.40 It is the ambivalence of representation that creates the borderline state between reality and fiction; it is also ‘the materiality of the body, not only or exclusively its abstract and metaphoric meanings’, that brings forth the question of what is and isn’t human.41 What, then, is the difference between postdramatic and posthuman subject as represented on the postmodern stage? According to Hayles, ‘[t]he posthuman subject is an amalgam, a collection of heterogeneous components, a material-­informational entity whose boundaries undergo continuous construction and reconstruction’.42 Likewise, when talking about the posthuman semiotics of the self, Sadeq Sahimi asks us to imagine a system of meaning wherein the act of self-­identification (as traditionally done by humans) is unfeasible, [because of] a constant state of flux, a seamless ocean of meaning, a state traditionally considered pathological and diagnosed schizoid: a ‘smooth space’, which is ‘in principle infinite, open, and unlimited in every direction’; and which ‘has neither top nor bottom nor centre’.43

The posthuman self is decentred, unstable and undefined: it is entangled in the web of signs and things – itself both a sign and thing. If the dramatic self is a character (the human self), and the postdramatic self is an abstract figure (and not a character, as Elinor Fuchs notes), the posthuman self is a sign (neither character nor figure). To elaborate: in The Death of Character, Fuchs characterizes postmodern theatre as populated by characters who are no longer characters as such (as understood in the dramatic sense) but who, like Samuel Beckett’s Didi and Gogo, are abstract figurations, ‘decentered figures’ staring blankly at ‘a vanished world’.44 According to Lehmann, Beckett marks a breaking point between Drama and postdramatic theatre (mostly because Beckett’s plays resist Hegel’s theological impulse to see history as

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drama).45 Although Kantor’s ‘characters’ share some of the decentring of Beckett’s ‘figures’, they are fundamentally different: unlike Didi and Gogo, the members of Kantor’s ‘Human Nature Preserve’ do not speak to each other; they don’t engage in a dialogue of any kind but speak at and past each other towards something and someone somewhere else. Their true interlocutors are either the dead, or memories or never existed in the first place. They acknowledge one another’s existence only as material presence: there is no awareness of either the self or the other. In this sense, Kantor’s figures – unlike Beckett’s – are not just postdramatic but also posthuman. They are an amalgam of metaphors, symbols and textual and visual references that create a secondary layer of meaning – above and beyond the mere limits of a dialogic exchange. They don’t just exist on equal footing with things and objects surrounding them; they exist in a world where agency, intentionality and interrelationality are no longer relevant. They are a mere foci of signs. Following Szondi’s theory of Drama, which he defines as both dialogic (it ‘consists only of the reproduction of interpersonal relations’) and absolute (it is ‘conscious of nothing outside itself ’),46 Lehmann defines postdramatic theatre first and foremost as post-­dialogic: it no longer reproduces the social and personal relations between character or between audience and performers. Since Didi and Gogo are abstract figurations, their exchange is no longer grounded in the subjective relationship with the world that surrounds them. Yet, Didi and Gogo still speak to each other, and their dialogue, though circular, still advances the resolution of the plot, even if that resolution is their very realization of its circularity and lack of resolution (Godot will not come, but they will keep on waiting). Kantor’s ‘characters’, however, have no discernible purpose or intentionality; thus, their actions can have no resolution of any kind. There is no plot that we can speak of: only movements, gestures and words. Writing about Kantor’s visual language, which defines his productions’ structure, Lehmann poignantly notes: Kantor’s scenes manifest the refusal of a dramatic representation of the all too ‘dramatic’ events that are the subject of his theatre – torture, prison, war and death – in favour of a pictural poetry of the stage. The ‘sequences of images, often as from a slapstick movie, “dead funny” and at the same time immensely sad’, always move towards scenes that could occur in a grotesque drama. But the dramatic disappears in favour of moving images through repetitive rhythms, tableau-­like arrangements and a certain de-­realization of the figures, who by means of their jerky movements resemble mannequins.47

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Kantor’s theatrical language creates a ‘seamless ocean of meaning’ with moving images framed within the object-­stage where aleatory signs and gestures become the very essence of the form. For Kantor, language and gesture are material tools that serve to unravel the anthropocentric hierarchy of the Enlightenment by dehumanizing his characters with cyclical, robot-­like repetitions. In Wielopole, Wielopole (1981), family members brought back to life do not carry any objects, yet their repetitive, robot-­like movements make them a different kind of BIOOBJECT. They are connected to their function within the family just as the pupils from the Dead Class are connected to their objects. The two uncles, Karol and Olek, argue cyclically about the arrangements of the room (‘busy making certain intriguing calculations: measuring distances by paces, or with utmost precision lining up three chairs next to one another’); Aunt Manka ‘periodically goes through a religious crisis’, mindlessly quoting passages from the Gospels; Grandma, ‘doing her morning exercise stretched out on the bed [with numb oblivion] . . . pauses for a moment, then gets carried away again to the point of sheer exhaustion’.48 In Today Is My Birthday (1990), the status of the work as a non-­play becomes even more evident as Kantor includes elements from his real life: ‘The Priest-­actor listened to the voice of the real Priest and repeated some of those phrases. The Cleaning-­woman prompted the missing words. The birthday celebration resumed. The Mother and the Father interminably kept repeating the gestures registered on the family photograph’.49 Through this stubborn ‘REPETITION OF ACTION’, Kantor places his characters on the border between life and death, living being and marionette, object and subject. ‘They will keep repeating those banal, / elementary, and aimless activities / with the same expression on their faces, / concentrating on the same gesture, / until boredom strikes’, Kantor wrote.50 In Let the Artists Die (1985), all of the inhabitants of the common room hold on to the one thing that defines them. As Pleśniarowicz describes them, [t]he ‘Comedians’ present typical Kantorian Bio-Objects of the lowest rank: a Pimp Gambler with a ‘speakeasy stool’, a Hanged Man ‘with his gallows, which has grown together with the site of his suicide, a filthy drain, into a single whole’, an individual washing his dirty feet in ‘his vulgar bucket’, a Bigot ‘with her prie-­dieu rosary’, a Dishwasher ‘with her sink in which she constantly scrubs dirty pots and plates’.51

Simultaneously, the scene of the author’s death repeats itself with regularity over and over again until the final reunion of the author and his double. Endlessly performing the same activity, each character becomes identified

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with it completely; all the rest of their personalities dissipate in the absurdity of movements they chose to repeat with mechanical oblivion. During the final scene, the actors, separated from their objects, are pilloried on the strange machines. Tortured, they congeal in ‘the convulsive poses, turning into the living sculptures of Mariacki Altar’.52

‘The Thingness of the Thing That Has Been Forgotten’ In almost all the productions of the Theater of Death, Kantor creates a collection of characters who form a lookalike homogeneous group. In the Dead Class, it is the students dressed in their black uniforms; in Today Is My Birthday, it is a group of war cripples dressed in the same white gowns; and in Wielopole, Wielopole, Let the Artists Die, I Shall Never Return (1989) as well as Today Is My Birthday, it is a marching group of soldiers. The uniforms, like objects, entrap actors in a particular identity, implying a certain pattern of behaviour and thinking. In the director’s notes to Wielopole, Wielopole, Kantor wrote: Army. Mass. One does not know if it’s alive or mechanical, with hundreds of the same heads, hundreds of the same legs, hundreds of the same hands. In rows, columns, diagonals regularly attached heads, legs, hands, arms, shoes, buttons, eyes, lips, rifles. Identically performed movement by hundreds of identical individuals, hundreds of organs, of this monstrous trained geometry.53

Dressed alike, the actors naturally become the generic clones of each other. The actor becomes ‘reduced to an external being, to an object, to the DEAD’.54 Kantor’s theatre disturbs classification of subjects as human and nonhuman as well as the very concept of the ‘human’ and the historical context in which it developed. Historically, the human body, as represented and defined on stage and in art, has maintained a strictly defined visual integrity. The category of the ‘human’ was used to circumscribe the boundaries of belonging and the categories of valuation: groups that were racialized as ‘subhuman’ at different historical moments were so designated for the purposes of commodification or extinction. The category of the ‘human’ was a protective category marked by visual signposts. In Western culture’s anthropocentric worldview, the human body has always been given a central position; it has been imbued with special rights and privileges, both human and divine. When placed outside the category of the ‘human’, one loses agency,

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the right to self-­determination and often the right to life itself. The concept of the ‘posthuman condition’ disturbs this classification, and, most importantly, it disturbs the hierarchy of valuation that it establishes. In Kantor’s theatre, the interrogation of this hierarchy was prompted by the experience of the Second World War. In one of his short essays, Kantor poignantly writes about how war had transformed his relationship to European culture and its anthropocentric foundations. As Kantor notes, the ideological context of Nazi genocide – its elevation of ‘human’ over ‘subhuman’ species – was firmly rooted in Western humanism and its peremptory glorification of the ‘human’ subject: The time of war and the time of the ‘lords of the world’ made me lose my trust in the old image, which had been perfectly formed, raised above all other, apparently lower, species. It was a discovery! Behind the sacred icon, a beast was hiding. . . . This was the explanation I offered in the postwar period. I still remember the dislike and indifference I felt towards all those human images, which populated museum walls, staring at me innocently, as if nothing had happened, while they were playing, dancing, feasting, and posting. . . . A distrust of the allegedly ‘higher forms’ of the human species and civilization was steadily growing in me.55

Thus, by blurring the boundaries between ‘human’ and ‘nonhuman’, subject and object, Kantor makes explicit the reduction of ‘subhumans’ to things. The ideological and historical ramifications of Kantor’s aesthetic gesture, however, have theoretical underpinnings as well. In postdramatic theatre there are objects and subjects; on the posthuman stage there are only things. Kantor’s theatre is thus proto-­posthuman in the literal sense: it responds to that moment in history when the ‘human’ could no longer assert its supremacy. If any group can be arbitrarily designated ‘subhuman,’ then, the category of ‘human’ has lost all validity; it no longer has meaning. The distinction between postdramatic and posthuman in Kantor’s theatre parallels the philosophical distinction between an object and a thing, one existing in a relationship with other objects, other existing in-­itself – (as postdramatic figures and posthuman signs). In his first essay on thing theory, Bill Brown points out that ‘object’ always exists in relationship to ‘subject’, whereas ‘thing’ exists outside this boundary. The object always has the potential to regain its lost subjectivity; the thing does not. An object becomes a thing when it breaks, and when it loses its usefulness, its utilitarian value. Brown writes:

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Postdramatic Theatre and Form We begin to confront the thingness of objects when they stop working for us: when the drill breaks, when the car stalls, when the windows get filthy, when their flow within the circuits of production and distribution, consumption and exhibition, has been arrested, however momentarily.56

In Signéponge/Signsponge, Derrida makes a similar point, asserting that the ‘thing is not an object [and] cannot become one’.57 For Baudrillard, likewise, the object exists only as the ‘alienated, accursed part of the subject’ – the ‘individual subject or collective subject, the subject of consciousness or the unconscious’.58 Following Hegelian dialectic between in – and for – itself, for Brown, Derrida and Baudrillard, the thing and the object have different ontological properties. Brown argues further that ‘the subject/object dialectic itself . . . has obscured patterns of circulation, transference, translation, and displacement’.59 Always connected to a subject, an object loses its thingness – its material ontology that defines its own separate inter- and intra-­relationships. Brown reminds us that ‘Latour has argued that modernity artificially made an ontological distinction between inanimate objects and human subjects. [Whereas] Benjamin makes it clear that the avant-­garde worked to make that fact known . . . modernism’s resistance to modernity is its effort to deny the distinction between subjects and objects, people and things’.60 For Kantor, one of the foremost avant-­gardists of the twentieth century, the distinction between subject and object is blurred, but the distinction between thing and object is always pronounced. In Kantor’s theatre, a thing is a discarded and broken object; it belongs to the ‘Degraded Reality’ or ‘Reality of the Lowest Rank’. An object, on the other hand, is suspended ‘between garbage and eternity’.61 An object is attached to a human being in a dialectical relationship (as in BIO-OBJECTS); but an object becomes a thing when – like in the Dead Class, for example – it is discarded and it loses its usefulness. They are then both the postdramatic figures and posthuman signs. The discarded objects of BIO-OBJECTS, the discarded child mannequins in the Dead Class, the ragdoll of a mother left like rubbish after the rape in Wielopole, Wielopole – these are all things. They are turned into things by the violence of the gesture – thrown away like trash. In Wielopole, Wielopole, the actress playing the mother is replaced by the ragdoll during the rape – literally, the rape turns her into a thing. In the posthuman theatre, things are signs with meaning disconnected from their signifiers and signified. In the postdramatic theatre, objects are, to use Fuchs’s words, ‘decentered figures’. The dialectic between object and subject defines postdramatic theatre; even when the subject is reduced to an object, their dialectical relationship makes the disappearance of the subject visible. On the posthuman stage, however, that dialectic becomes irrelevant as both objects and subjects are

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turned into things, a transition that, as Derrida notes, is irreversible. In What Is Posthumanism? Cary Wolfe points out that the concept of the posthuman can mean both the reduction of the human subject to an object and the human subject’s transcendence of its material body (its objectness). In that second sense, Wolfe notes, one becomes more ‘human’ by becoming posthuman (i.e. by leaving the human body behind): ‘ “the human” is achieved by . . . transcending the bonds of materiality and embodiment all together’.62 Wolfe’s two definitions of posthuman depend on what one assumes to constitute the ‘human’ – the body or the subjectivity. In postdramatic theatre – as in Grotowski – the two are dialectically connected: the ‘human’ is both the body and subjectivity. In posthuman theatre – such as Kantor’s – the ‘human’ is neither subject nor object, but a thing: the thing then transcends its ‘thingness’ into the realm of the posthuman. The piles of things left behind by the victims of the Holocaust emanate the absence of their owners. The piles of discarded things in Kantor’s theatre emanate their own absences, of people and their bodies. On the crossroads between postdramatic and posthuman aesthetics, Kantor’s work can help us illuminate the difference between the two, and thus it can show us the way towards post-­performative theory.

7

Media: Intermission Nicholas Ridout

Form (or Genre) Form is a relationship. When writers, painters or theatre-­makers choose, adapt or even fabricate from nothing a form for their work – a world, frame or register in which their work has its being and communicates whatever it communicates – they do so with a relationship in mind. It is when that relationship is instantiated, in the act of reading or viewing, that the form of the work is realized. Until that moment, form does not really exist. This may not be obvious in the case of a painting or a sculpture, of which it might make some kind of sense to say that the object or product, in either two or three dimensions, possesses a form in-­itself: it is just this shape or this arrangement of marks on such and such a surface of these particular dimensions that constitutes the form of the work. But in the case of theatre it seems clear that form is a relationship. Of course there are examples of theatre practice in which the performance that is the work appears, or perhaps pretends, to behave as though its spectators did not exist. But this appearance or pretence is always just that, since it is always embedded in a framing recognition that, even if it is being ignored or excluded, the audience is there and the work would not be there without them. Nor is the audience an abstract audience. Each member brings with them their own ‘content’, ranging from their ‘brain’ to their social and economic circumstances, none of which they leave in the cloakroom (see Brecht). Form, we might suppose, then, is the relationship instantiated in the performance among the actions, objects and images, the spectators, their ‘brains’ and the institutional circumstances under which all these elements are brought together. This is not simply a relationship of simultaneity, circumscribed by the ‘live’ co-­presence of all these elements, but one in which histories, memories and returns also play their part. The form may be partially achieved before the performance in question, then, in that both production choices and a larger set of historical experiences will have determined the range of possible forms that might appear in any given performance. But the

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form cannot be achieved until it is activated in its relationship with a particular historical audience. Form, like genre, then, with which, as a technical term in literary and artistic theory, it often seems interchangeable, arises out of a specific institutional and performance situation.1 As Fredric Jameson – a leading exponent of the form–­genre equivalence – writes of genre in the literary field: Genres are essentially contracts between a writer and his [sic] readers; or rather, to use the term which Claudio Guillén has so usefully revived, they are literary institutions, which like the other institutions of social life are based on tacit agreements or contracts.2

This way of thinking about genre oddly depends upon performance in the first instance, but then proceeds to exclude performance from the considerations of genre that follow. In Jameson’s account, genre comes into being as an attempt to compensate for the absence of the signals provided by tone and gesture in an everyday live speech, or ‘performing’ situation, such as in the mythic scenario of oral storytelling as the origin of literary production. In a specific performing situation of this kind, tone and gesture are socially recognizable. Consider how sarcasm or irony rely upon a high degree of mutual recognition between speaker and listener, and how such speech so often fails when speaker and listener have too little, socially, in common with one another. Literary genre, Jameson argues, following Guillén, is the effect of the work writing does to construct a sociality-­in-common between writer and reader sufficient to sustain the communicative act, or to make the absence of any communication recognizable as such, rather than as simple mutual incomprehension. What this account does not quite capture is the extent to which tone and gesture and all the other attributes of a specific ‘performing situation’ are themselves, in theatre obviously, but in all kinds of other performance as well, already constituting form or genre in their negotiation of a relationship with an audience.3 Tone and gesture are in fact markers of genre rather than precedents. In other words, a theory of genre which finds its origins in performance has a tendency to relegate performance itself to the pre-­generic. In the specific case of theatre, which, as has often been argued, is the most social, convention-­bound and institutionalized of all the artistic practices regularly considered by critics such as Jameson, this is clearly nonsense (and not what Jameson intends). There is more form to the most conventional bourgeois drama (almost by definition) than in almost any other instance of contemporary cultural production. Indeed, this may start to explain why Jameson, whose essay on genre aims to restore a consideration of genre to literary history in the face of an ‘ideological modernism’ that insists

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instead upon the ‘singularity’ of each individual work (as though each work were its own unique form), neglects theatre in this instance: it is so obviously ‘conventional’ that there is no need to rescue it from the genre-­deniers. So although he does not say so, the logic of Jameson’s argument is that form in theatre may be more thoroughly a social question than in any other field of cultural production and reception. As a ‘performing situation’ it is the proto-­ generic, and as an ‘institution’, it is the hyper-­generic. Form (or genre) is a relationship, and in the theatre that relationship is social, historical and unfolding. To continue to think of this relationship as genre (at the risk of appearing to embrace an outmoded academicism) avoids the ahistoricism in which each artistic form is somehow sui generis, and, at the same time, insists upon the social dimensions of the relationship, which extend far beyond the field of ‘art’ and into all the byways of culture inhabited by the obviously generic genres, above which the term art (and its attendant ‘form’) seeks to raise its referents. For the present purposes – which will eventually reveal themselves as having to do with an early twenty-­firstcentury video installation by Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin – to think about genre is one way of facilitating a discussion in which the ‘art’ of postdramatic theatre and questions of its ‘form’ can accommodate material so low and so trashy that it has always been considered in terms of genre.

Lehmann (or Jameson) One general consequence of the historical emergence of the theatre and performance practices presented and theorized by Hans-Thies Lehmann in Postdramatic Theatre is a renewed critical attention to form (what we might call theatre’s theatreness) rather than content (the action on stage in the drama). Of course, only the most wilfully anti-­theatrical dramatic criticism ever failed entirely to speak of the relationship between the dramatic action on stage and the audiences and theatres that received and contained such action – the theatreness of theatre was never entirely eliminated from view – but both the work Lehmann catalogues, and the logic of his designation of that work as ‘postdramatic’, invite consideration of form (including ‘dramatic’ form) in terms of a theatrical relationship. In other words, they invite the theorization of form, in drama and theatre, in terms of the social. This involves making a move that Lehmann himself is reluctant to make, but which Fredric Jameson, were he ever to write about theatre, would be compelled to make: to enquire into the politics inherent in contemporary theatrical forms, not only within the theatres (and other institutions) in which they appear, but in the specific late capitalist relations of production

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that constitute part of their conditions of possibility. Form is a relationship to relations of production. It is not only that, but it always is, even if the relation might be oblique, obscure or even invisible. To what extent does Lehmann see form as social, and taking shape in relationship to relations or modes of production? Lehmann certainly sees the theatre practices he theorizes as arising from (or at least correlated with, if not caused by) a rupture after which it becomes possible to speak of a new kind of society. This is what he calls the ‘caesura of the media society’, whose consequences for theatre he summarizes thus: ‘the spread and omnipresence of the media in everyday life since the 1970s has brought with it a new multiform kind of theatrical discourse that is here going to be described as postdramatic theatre’.4 In this formulation, theatre is seen to be either part of or responding to a more general consolidation of a ‘media society’ in which social relations are increasingly maintained through the mediations of television, to begin with, and subsequently the internet and its attendant social media. To call such a society a ‘media society’, as Lehmann does, and to begin the book itself with an allusion to Marshall McLuhan’s ‘Gutenberg galaxy’ is to make a strong claim for both correlation and periodization. But it falls some way short of causality, let alone any kind of economic determination, and it does so as a matter of choice. For as Lehmann explains towards the end of the book, as his attention turns, in the ‘Epilogue’, to questions of politics, he is sceptical of theorization that moves too eagerly towards grand claims about a present that is still unfolding: This study of postdramatic theatre does not aim to trace the new theatrical modes of creation to sociologically determined causes and circumstances. For one thing, such deductions normally fall short, even in the case of subject matter to which scholars have more of a historical distance. They can be trusted even less when it comes to the confusing and ‘unsurveyable’ present (Habermas) in which highly contradictory – but therefore no less ambitious – large scale analyses of the state of the world are chasing each other.5

Lehmann wishes to avoid insisting upon any meaningful connection, let alone a causal or determinate relation between aesthetic form and economic ‘circumstances’ such as changes in modes or relations of production. However, while generally avoiding reference to production as such, his entire project arrives, as we have seen, framed by assumptions about the production of representations. The question that Lehmann chooses not to address is to what extent the production of representations, and any historical changes in such production (especially of the epoch-­making kind he attributes to the ‘caesura’)

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might be understood as part of broader changes in economic production. This is precisely the sort of question Jameson wants to ask. In Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Jameson is working with a very similar periodization to Lehmann’s. Like Lehmann, Jameson observes a decisive transformation in cultural production making itself available to consciousness during the 1970s. Many of the distinctive features of Jameson’s postmodern cultural production are of the same kind that Lehmann identifies with postdramatic theatre: such as narrative and subjective fragmentation, surfaces being privileged over depth, the predominance of images over language, calculated incoherence. Beyond these coincidences of timing and effect, there is a further affinity between Lehmann and Jameson which is of particular significance here. For Jameson, too, ‘media’ is the keyword: We postcontemporary people have a word for that discovery [that culture is material] – a word that has tended to displace the older language of genres and forms – and this is, of course, the word medium, and in particular its plural, media, a word which now conjoins three relatively distinct signals: that of an artistic mode or specific form of artistic production, that of a specific technology, generally organized around a central apparatus or machine; and that, finally, of a social institution.6

This observation comes at the beginning of Jameson’s chapter on video in Postmodernism. Jameson preserves here his earlier insistence upon the historicity of ‘forms and genres’, in which genres rise to and fall from cultural prominence in proportion to their capacity to function (to communicate, express or sell something) in a specific historical period, which is itself defined by its mode and relations of production. From this it follows, he proposes, that ‘the most likely candidate for cultural hegemony today’ is, of course, video.7 Video is understood here as both the globally pervasive technology of television and also the experimental artistic practice. Jameson suggests that experimental video makes visible the full scope of a medium which, in its mass communication form, does not make the fullest use of its expressive or communicative potentialities. Jameson sees the emergence, and subsequent dominance through pervasiveness – in other words, the hegemony – of media, as a defining characteristic of the postmodern, just as Lehmann does for the postdramatic. What Jameson does, though, which Lehmann does not, is to identify this ‘caesura’ or periodization with ‘sociologically determined causes and circumstances’ or, something that he might want to claim as a further, first-­order, periodization: ‘late’ capitalism. In

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other words, Jameson insists on both the possibility and the value of relating changes in aesthetic form, understood as medium and therefore also as a social relation, to changes in economic production and its relations: If we are willing to entertain the hypothesis that capitalism can be periodized by the quantum leaps or technological mutations by which it responds to its deepest systemic crises, then it may become a little clearer why and how video – so closely related to the dominant computer and information technology of the late, or third, stage of capitalism – has a powerful claim for being the art form par excellence of late capitalism.8

For Jameson, then, there is a specific relation between media and capitalism, or between the production of representations and production as such. This relation becomes apparent once the ‘materiality’ of culture is taken into account. The media for the production, distribution and consumption of representations, be they books or televisions, are themselves produced under specific historical conditions in which specific relations of production obtain. Might we imagine, then, that postdramatic theatre is theatre in the age of video’s cultural hegemony, that it is a theatrical ‘form or genre’ that understands itself as a medium, and that it bears at least some meaningful relation to responses to a systemic crisis in capitalism for which Jameson, following Ernest Mandel, uses the term ‘late capitalism’? Mandel became significant for Jameson because he thought Mandel’s work represented the first major Marxist attempt to theorize, as a revolution in capitalist production, the technological transformations wrought by the mass production of electronics in the second half of the twentieth century – a development that had hitherto received much more attention from theorists of the pro-­capitalist right, such as Daniel Bell, than it had from theorists in the Marxist tradition, who were rightly sceptical of the tendency among most such theorizations to claim that capitalism had suddenly transcended the very class conflict upon which it is in fact founded. Mandel’s periodization of this third stage of capitalism complements other work that was to follow it, such as David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity, which also sees the transformations in capitalist production commonly identified as fully under way in the 1970s as involving a response on the part of capital to a systemic crisis. In this view, developments such as factory automation, the mass production of electronics including the personal computer, as well as the reorganization of production logistics to facilitate just-­in-time fulfilment of orders and coordinated political campaigns against labour unions, were all part of an attempt to reassert the power of capital over labour and to secure for capitalism a new phase of dynamism at the expense of the social and

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political gains achieved by workers over the preceding decades of the postwar boom. The extent to which video and related digital and screen-­based technologies were part of this reorganization of capitalist production is far clearer today than it was when Jameson was writing, as these technologies have been introduced into almost every corner of most people’s working and non-­working lives in the advanced capitalist society Jameson discusses. This is an aspect of what Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello have named the ‘new spirit of capitalism’9 and will also turn out to have been responsible, as we shall see below, for the interpenetration of work and leisure under the rhetoric of participation for which Fitch and Trecartin, in the installation to which I shall shortly turn, have adopted the term ‘the audience revolution’. Even in the two decades since Lehmann’s book was first published, it has become much easier to imagine that, whatever his own reservations about such a ‘large scale analys[i]s’, Lehmann’s ‘media society’ is actually another way of describing ‘late capitalism’. This is precisely what Jameson implies in his remarks on the significance of Mandel’s work for his own project: ‘media society’ is offered, along with Bell’s ‘postindustrial society’, ‘information society’, ‘electronic society’ among the terms for which Mandel’s ‘late capitalism’ is viewed as a welcome replacement.10 If we were to follow Jameson in being ‘willing to entertain [this] hypothesis’, too, in this expanded form, might we not further suppose that the most meaningful relations a postdramatic theatre practice might entertain with late capitalism and its systemic crisis will turn out to be those relations – be they critical, affirmative or merely submissive – carried on in some sense under the sign of video, and on terms shaped, if not fully determined by, the ‘omnipresence of media’?

Theatre (or Video) Is there any evidence to support this theoretical proposition? What sort of evidence might we look for? Does postdramatic theatre exhibit the characteristics of video, for example? There’s no shortage of evidence of this kind, including numerous instances in which video is used as a significant compositional element, as well as a production tool. Video is not just integrated into public performance, but its presence within the production process has permitted the development of ways of working that had not previously been possible. More generally, it could be argued that all kinds of multimedia or intermedial production depend to some extent upon the availability of technologies such as video for their conceptualization as such, rather than merely as a medium to be used within the theatre. In other words,

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it is the fact that video is palpably a medium that enables theatremakers to conceive of theatre as a medium, or to imagine the possibilities of intermediality. At a third remove, there is much theatre that may make no use of video as a technology, but which makes use of aesthetic strategies and effects that can plausibly be attributed to the pervasiveness of video and to the resulting capacity of spectators to think and feel in response to material that shares some of video’s aesthetic features.11 Among the features of postdramatic theatre that Lehmann identifies as characteristic, those that strongly suggest a special affinity with video might include: the undoing of the voice–­body suture; scenic composition determining textual composition; tone and gesture not being subjugated to meaning or communication; montage of visual and aural elements; a preference for real over fictive time; repetition; duration; image-­time; and, perhaps most important of all, as we shall see, flow. But this is not really the point. It would be entirely reductive to seek to identify, by means, for instance, of a similar survey, to what extent this or that production exhibits features that resemble those we attribute to video, and then to propose that any correlations thrown up by such a survey amount to evidence of how theatre production is affected by the cultural hegemony of video. Much like readings of Lehmann that use what was intended as a theoretical proposition about a historical development of a form, genre or medium to conduct a kind of survey of contemporary theatrical production to determine whether this or that example qualifies as postdramatic according to some checklist of features or effects. There is no logical or theoretical reason to suppose that theatre made under conditions shaped by the cultural hegemony of video should necessarily resemble video in any way. Nor is it necessarily the case that those numerous theatre productions that make use of video technologies in a range of inventive ways are, simply by virtue of the use of the technology, either postdramatic by definition, or engaged in any meaningful way with the problematic posed to theatre production by the cultural hegemony of video, let alone the politics of late capitalism. Indeed, one of the most obvious consequences for a theatre-­maker of identifying video’s cultural hegemony might be, instead, to insist upon those aspects of theatrical production that seem to resist, negate or at least avoid replicating the appearance and effects of video. Such resistance or negation could register as evidence of theatre responding to the hegemonic power of video, perhaps much more strongly or plausibly than work that makes use of video in its composition in a carefree manner, as just one expressive tool among others. Whether theatre uses or looks like video or not, then, is not my primary concern here. Instead, what interests me is what the cultural hegemony of video in late capitalism does for the human subjects living in this historical

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moment, and, in terms of theatre specifically, what sort of spectatorship it produces. Jameson describes the primary spectatorial experience of video, in both its mass media and its experimental art registers, as ‘immersion in the total flow of the thing itself ’.12 This is effected, in part, by the way the act of viewing video locks the viewer and the video (subject and object) together in a material, machinic time: The living room, to be sure (or even the relaxed informality of the video museum), seems an unlikely place for this assimilation of human subjects to the technological: yet a voluntary attention is demanded by the total flow of the videotext in time which is scarcely relaxed at all, and rather different from the comfortable scanning of the movie screen, let alone of the cigar-­smoking detachment of the Brechtian theatregoer.13

Here the theatre, making one of its rare appearances in Jameson’s work (appearances which are nearly always Brecht) stands as some kind of antithesis to the experience of ‘total flow’. Elsewhere in his discussion of ‘total flow’, Jameson notes that it is an experience without ‘intermission’: ‘Turning the television set off has little in common with the intermission of a play or an opera . . . when the lights slowly come back on and memory begins its mysterious work.’14 He seems to be suggesting that there is something about at least some kinds of theatre and its spectatorial conventions that might resist this kind of immersion. It is worth noting briefly that since at least the second half of the nineteenth century successive phases of theatrical experimentation have sought to do away with some if not all such conventions, in what was once seen (by Adorno on Wagner, for example) as an attempt to bring theatre closer to the condition of cinema, and which might now, perhaps, be regarded as an attempt to make it more like television (without commercials, of course, and therefore not really like television at all). In any case, what these conventions of theatrical spectatorship seem in principle to offer Jameson, even if he does not pursue them through any extended consideration of theatre as such, is some possibility that ‘what used to be called “critical distance” [which] seems to be obsolete’, might somehow be restored, at least for the duration of some kind of ‘intermission’.15 Jameson’s sense of the significance – aesthetic and political – of the ‘total flow’ of the video experience has been emphatically confirmed by technological and socio-­economic developments in the decades since the publication of his Postmodernism. Today subjection to this flow is not confined to the living room or the ‘video museum’ (I am not quite sure what Jameson is thinking of here), but is extended throughout the fabric of everyday life in late capitalism. This is almost too commonplace to comment

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upon. Simply to note the range and ubiquity of video flow components in everyday urban life might involve reference, at minimum, to the screen-­time of labour (from the call-­centre to the graphic design studio), the almost seamless minute-­by-minute alternation between work, social life and entertainment afforded by internet-­enabled tablets and phones, and pervasive video-­surveillance in public, quasi-­public and privatized spaces. Sticklers for a certain brand of technological specificity might object here that many of these interactions do not involve video, per se: Instagram and WhatsApp, they might insist, are not really video at all. But their logic, and, in particular, the logic of their fluid entanglement, is the logic of video. The flow in which these technologies – finely attuned as they are, through data mining and algorithms, to the operations of the late capitalist economy – now immerse their subjects is almost oceanic. Just as, for Jameson, the logic of the ‘videotext’ renders the idea of the autonomous art-­work effectively obsolete, so the coalescence of all the various components of the immersive video environment tends to dissolve the need to make meaningful distinctions between the various apps, sites and devices across which the flow of the late capitalist spectacle is experienced. These are the conditions under which postdramatic theatre is produced, and, perhaps more importantly, they determine how it will be experienced by spectators whose lives are lived in at least partial subjection to late capitalism’s video-­flow. What kind of intermission might it make?

Video (or Theatre) An intermission comes from within. It is not an alternative to that which it interrupts or pauses. It is not a case of simply doing something else instead and imagining that one is magically freed from the power of whatever it is you are turning away from. Nor is it an exodus, a withdrawal from the noise of late capitalism or a retreat into some earlier way of being and doing. Inasmuch as it is a kind of negation – and that’s the way I want it – it goes with the flow in order to interrupt it. To take a gesture from video itself, it is the pause button. It’s used to pause and also to resume. This is why I choose as an example with which to illustrate at least one version of the intermission of late capitalist immersion, not a work of theatre, in the sense of a production presented in a theatre, or within the institutional framework of that industry, but rather a work of video art, produced, according to its author, as a ‘movie’ but presented in the institutional setting where ‘art’ versions of video production are most commonly found: the contemporary art gallery. Rather than find some theatre that might intervene

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to arrest the flow of the videotext, I choose instead to identify a passage of the videotext itself in which an intermission or interruption is directed against itself by theatrical means. The movie in question, Comma Boat, was first shown in an untitled installation as part of the 2013 Venice Biennale’s main Arsenale show, The Encyclopedic Palace (curator Massimiliano Gioni), and was subsequently remounted as Priority Innfield (and comprising, alongside Comma Boat, the movies Center Jenny, Item Falls and Junior War) at the Zabludowicz Collection in London in 2014.16 Ryan Trecartin was credited as director of the movies, but the show as a whole, in which the movies were presented in custom-­designed ‘sculptural theatres’ (about which, more shortly) was the work of Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin. While the work is not marked institutionally as theatre, it will, I think become clear in the description and analysis that follows that these theatrical viewing arrangements align it in more than merely superficial ways with the historical development of theatre to which Lehmann gave the term postdramatic. In Comma Boat, Trecartin takes centre stage as the director of a movie in mid-­shoot. The movie-­in-the making seems to involve, inter alia, a trio of singers apparently checking their own sound quality in a repeated melodic riff (‘Do I sound goo-­oo-ood?’), the launch of a boat, and the inauguration of a group of young women into their roles as various kinds of ‘Jenny’. But, of course, the actual movie being made is the movie we see on screen, directed by Trecartin, rather than any movie that Trecartin’s on-­screen director might be making. In this movie, his own movie, Trecartin, a slight and somewhat gender-­neutral figure wearing a grey sweatshirt with the logo ‘Witness’ on the front, a black bob wig and two-­tone face make-­up (white above, purple beneath) alternates to-­camera comments and self-­disclosures with instructions and harangues directed at his fellow performers and crew. Throughout the half hour of the movie he / they / this persona is urgently, even desperately concerned to be sure that ‘the camera’ – a camera that is capturing all this ‘making-­of ’ footage – should be filming them: ‘Fucking shut up right now. Why aren’t you filming me?’ (4.57) ‘I thought that was the camera’ (5.50) ‘Why isn’t anyone filming me?’ (6.13) ‘What the fuck are you not filming me for. Is your hand getting tired, motherfucker?’ (7.57) ‘Second camera, get the fucking cut-­away’ (11.59) ‘Why the hell are you not filming anything?’ (12.37) ‘Where the hell did that camera person go?’ (13.07) ‘Why the fuck weren’t you filming me?’ (17.39) ‘Why aren’t you filming me, fuckface?’ (18.17)

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‘Where the fuck is all the camera?’ (22.08) ‘Why the fuck are you filming Jenny and not me?’ (26.56) ‘Why aren’t you filming me, you fuck-­nut?’ (30.36)

This is not simply the egomania of a movie star or the dictatorial tendency of a cinema auteur, although it may be both of these things; it is also a heightened expression of a subjectivity formed under the cultural hegemony of video, whose pathologies include an acute fear of abandonment by the apparatus of the flow. Trecartin offers a clue to the historicity of this kind of subjectivity, commenting on how different the figures who appear in Junior War are from the figures in Comma Boat, Item Falls and Center Jenny. The teenagers in Junior War, which uses footage Trecartin shot in 2000 during his senior year at high school, lived at a time when people had not yet acquired, as a core dimension of their everyday consciousness, the sense that they might be on camera at any time, their entire lives documented as part of an ever-­expanding ocean of user-­generated videoflow. Fifteen years later, in a world where almost every American high school student owns a cell-­phone, a whole new generation is conscious of being always ‘on’, and it is this generation which populates the later videos. Even when they are juiced up to their ears on the flesh-­eating kool-­aid of their all-­night postwar martial-­law live-­streaming total-­confession narco-­ animation apparatus, they seem to register, from time to time, through some residual neuro-­pathways with no real purpose any more, that there was once a time before ‘the audience revolution’, and that back then, before the catastrophic fall into the immersive world of the total studio, before they learned how to act as though everyone were watching all the time, even though no one was, before the state of total social performance kicked in, there had been an ancient technology developed over thousands of years that allowed people, usually upon payment of a small fee, to get out of that feeling of being watched all the time and to become, for a short and blessed period of blissful relief, merely spectators. The name of this technology was stadium seating. Here is Trecartin’s persona introducing their desire to have it back: Because the last time we liked something as authentic as stadium seating, which, by the way, we haven’t had since the audience revolution, I remember loving how much I used to like talking in front of people, but now no one watches, I do all of this in vain. I love stadium seating. Bring back the masses. I want to see fans. I don’t want to pick them. I want them to just pick me, you know, like the Top 40 bullshit I used to be. (20.40)

Here are some fellow-­performers echoing that sentiment in a kind of chorus:

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‘Oh, shit ’n balls, I love stadium seating.’ (22.48) ‘Oh, shit ’n balls, I love stadium seating . . . I loves me some stadium seating . . . I love authentic stadium seating . . . I love it.’ (24.04) ‘I love stadium seating . . I love stadium seating . . . I love authentic, authentic stadium seating.’ (29.50)

Stadium seating refers, of course, to the seating arrangements in a stadium, but also, by extension, to those of all sorts of performing arts venues, including concert halls and theatres, in which spectators are organized into rows of seats each of which is set a little higher than the one in front of it in a configuration designed to maximize the number of spectators enjoying a good (monetizable) view of the spectacle being presented. It is a seating arrangement preferred in venues and for entertainment forms (or genres) where a performance or some other action is presented to spectators who are expected to limit their activity to spectating (watching and listening). It can accommodate various forms of limited participation ranging from applause, speaking back to or joining in with performers when invited to, or even coming on stage if forced to do so. But these are always recognized as exceptions, playful engagements with the format, not as violations or challenges to the social and spectatorial relations stadium seating is designed to encourage (or enforce). Stadium seating is an arrangement – a technology of spectatorship, even – that was not designed to facilitate immersion and flow. Its origins lie far back in time, before the cultural hegemony of video, before late capitalism, before the audience revolution. It has to do with theatre, also, rather than drama. When was the audience revolution and what happened in it? There are at least three ways of answering this question, depending on who you ask. Ask a theatre historian and expect an account of the numerous theatre-­makers who either called for it or claimed that they and their work were bringing it into being. Most versions of this list will look remarkably like the syllabus for a conventional twentieth-­century university course on modern or avant-­garde theatre – Meyerhold, Brecht, Artaud, Handke, Grotowski, Kaprow, Boal – suggesting that the audience revolution has been a defining characteristic of the theatre taken most seriously by those who, consciously or unconsciously, develop and maintain genre hierarchies and reproduce the social relations and hierarchies to which they are so intimately related, including those who have ensured that such canons continue to be dominated by white men. Most versions of this list will also resemble the compilation of prehistories to the postdramatic presented by Lehmann. As Jacques Rancière has observed, the paradigmatic examples of this audience revolution in the theatre, the proposals of those whom Rancière calls ‘reformers of theatre’, such as Brecht

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and Artaud – notwithstanding the differences between their practices – want to activate their audience into a participation that goes beyond a merely ‘passive’ spectatorship. In this sense, the audience revolution signifies a desire for the abolition of stadium seating, or, in Rancière’s language, theatre itself is revealed as ‘a mediation striving for its own abolition’.17 One of its most recent manifestations, among theatremakers, is the interest in immersion as a theatrical experience that empowers the audience by seducing or compelling them into a supposedly self-­directed navigation of an environment of theatrical actions, narratives and mises en scènes, producing experiences that, for some analysts, more closely resemble video-­based games than any other cultural form (or genre). If you were to ask a media theorist, it is more likely that the answer will have something to do with user-­generated content. This is an audience revolution that, rather than abolishing the medium in which it has its being, appears to be in the business of abolishing the audience itself, by eradicating the distinction between audience and performer. (Of course, in the case of theatre, the abolition of this distinction might amount to the same thing.) In many well-­known examples of this development in mass-­media culture, this is, of course, neither its true purpose nor its real consequence. In fact, this apparent audience revolution is all about maximizing audiences for the purposes of revenue-­generation. Reality TV, for example, presents its audience with a selection of people who are conventionally understood to be real precisely because they resemble and even in some cases represent the rest of the audience. This ‘realness’ is then leveraged to build an audience with an affective investment in imagining itself translated from the status of audience to that of TV star. In some more ‘home-­grown’ phenomena, like personal YouTube channels, the entire apparatus explicitly foregrounds, through its registration of ‘views’, the fact that it is in the business of ‘growing’ rather than abolishing the audience and the category of spectatorship. The model for success in such scenarios is that a certain amount of media control is handed over to or seized by a small selection of a mass audience, who then exploit their special status as ‘real people’ to direct large selections of the remaining mass audience (of which they are still a part of course) towards the performance or self-­presentation they offer. In the less immediately commercial sphere of news media, there are claims that audience material and user-­generated content have revolutionized the production of news. But other analyses suggest that most uses of user-­generated content remain firmly within the normative framework of broadcasting established before this supposed audience revolution.18 There are, of course, exceptions to this, models where success might be measured in other terms. There’s a long history, for instance, in which the tools of representation, with the video

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camera being one of the most significant, are taken up and used by people habitually regarded by the professional elites of late capitalism as ‘the public’ and used for counter-­hegemonic purposes. There are even theatrical performances of a postdramatic nature that have thematized aspects of this practice. But if we are considering the audience revolution in relation to the cultural hegemony of video, such work might be understood as emergent or resistant in relation to the dominance of the forms that have elsewhere contributed to the installation of a reality TV character as President of the United States. And if you were to ask Danny Iny, entrepreneur and author of The Audience Revolution, you’d learn that the audience revolution is a new approach to business, exemplified by new media corporations such as Netflix: The big idea that I teach in the book is that – unlike the traditional strategy of a lot of old-­school businesses – you don’t start by thinking of something to sell, and then looking for people who want to buy it. Instead, you start by finding the people who resonate with your message and connect with your ideas, attract them to you, and then – once the audience is there – offering them the things that will help them the most.19

In this example, too, the revolution is a change in relations between the audience (or in this case, quite clearly, the consumer) and the producer of the ‘message’ or product. In Iny’s case, the idea that this is a ‘revolution’ depends upon a dubious characterization of previous business practice: ‘thinking of something to sell, and then looking for people to buy it’ is a description of pre-­revolutionary business that is hard to square with the existence of a whole industrial sector known as market research, let alone theories of economic relations that trouble the banal notion that demand is what drives business innovation. So while Iny’s slogan may not be much more plausible than its antithesis, ‘If you build it they will come’, it does seem to refer to the experience described by Trecartin’s persona in Comma Boat, who complains, you’ll recall, that ‘I don’t want to pick them. I want them to just pick me, you know, like the Top 40 bullshit I used to be.’ What it also reveals is an at first paradoxical fact about the audience revolution: it involves a change in power relations in which those in whose name the revolution is made lose rather than gain power, even in the narrow terms offered by the discourse of consumer choice. Rather than choosing the products, messages or experiences they want, they are instead first chosen by the producers who then deliver whatever it is they are assumed to want based upon an algorithmic calculation of their desires, preferences and vulnerabilities. In this account the audience revolution looks very much like an Ideological State Apparatus 2.0.

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Inside the videotext, then, there’s someone who wants out. Is this just something that a ‘character’ in the very tightly scripted scenario of Comma Boat wants, and a desire with which a potential spectator might fleetingly identify? Is there anything else in there that might add up to an intermission from within, something that offers that critical distance that the ‘media society’, ‘late capitalism’ and the ‘audience revolution’ threaten to make obsolete, and that offers it in more than merely ideational form? In other words, what does it feel like to encounter this work? My recollections of the installation as a whole in London may as well begin with the experience of the space through which you navigate to encounter each of the individual works. The lighting is low. The walls are painted in a dark colour, purple perhaps. There’s a pervasive, almost intrusive background music. Each individual work is installed within its own ‘sculptural theatre’, each of which seems to gesture towards the condition of stadium seating, in that it provides seats, benches or ledges on which spectators can sit to watch the video. The audio for each individual video comes through headphones within the sculptural theatres. Each sculptural theatre contains within it what look like traces or remnants of material from within the mise en scène of its respective video, and each suggests a different kind of possible real-­world, suburban American environment As you move between these theatres you can sometimes be fooled into thinking there’s a passageway where there is in fact a mirror in which you foolishly catch sight of yourself heading nowhere. There are passageways, though, at least one of them painted in the kind of green associated with green screen, and which will also appear in the opening sequence of Center Jenny. In addition to the four named video works, there’s an additional screen which seemed, on my visit, to be showing extended credit sequences. This does not all become apparent at once, of course, especially if you move quite quickly to take a seat, put some headphones on and get up close with one of the videos. As I did. You can get really close to the screen. With the sound feeding directly into your ears you can make it so that the images feel like they are right in your eyes, with nothing much, like space or air, in between. You can sort of wedge yourself down one end of the screen, sitting quite comfortably, and get what feels like the visual equivalent of being right up by the speakers in a club or a concert. As though the images which explode through rapid cuts and across a spectrum of hypercolours were vibrating on a special frequency inside your body. It’s exciting and alien, even a little repellent. Someone’s talking about raising stunt chickens (this video turns out to be Item Falls). It takes a while to make any sense of it, which is not an altogether unusual experience with videos in galleries, where you are often coming in part way through, and you’ve no idea whether this is near the beginning or the end, or how long this

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thing might be. But it’s more difficult than usual on this occasion, not just because of my decision to sit so close to the screen that I just can’t get a perspective on it, but also because, as it turns out, these videos, even once you’ve seen them in their entirety, don’t feel like they have beginnings and ends. They really do flow. Eventually the language of the work starts to get a little more familiar. Images and ideas recur, and a picture of an imaginary world begins to assemble itself that promises to link the scenarios of each video in such a way that they seem to be part of the same flow, the same shoot: people seem to be animations based on partly-­remembered humans from the past, and they’re in some kind of school or audition situation in which they are trying to progress upwards from ‘Basic Jenny’ capacities to the far superior condition that is ‘Center Jenny’. It starts to be funny. The precision of the script starts to kick in. The musicality of the editing is exhilarating, in that special way that watching people trash stuff can be. I try to repeat the initial experience of Item Falls with each successive video, although not all the seating arrangements and headphone dispositions offer quite such an intense version of the experience as this first encounter. But in each case there’s something about being captured and immersed from a position in a kind of theatre that feels both distinctive and peculiar. In trying to name this feeling, I describe it as being beside myself in my own immersion. I am in it, at sea in it, even, but at the same time I can sense myself to be in an intermission. The intermission does nothing to diminish the affective impact of the flow, and the powerlessness I experience, pleasurable as it is (and perhaps because it is becoming more and more pleasurable as I learn how to enjoy it), does not go away. The intermission doesn’t put me outside anything. If I am looking in on this, it is from an outside I’ve not imagined yet, but whose conditions of possibility might be, I think later, generated by the sculptural theatres. I am in the flow and I am in the theatre. I am both before and after the audience revolution. This immersion in late capitalism is thrilling as all hell, but it knows that I know there’s something gone terribly wrong. The remedy, it seems clear to both of us, lies in some reorganization of social relations.

Part Two

Social Formations

8

Festivals: Conventional Disruption, or, Why Ann Liv Young Ruined Rebecca Patek’s Show Andrew Friedman

The Underground Theatre at Abrons Art Center is a seventy-­seven-seat, cinder-­block bunker. Entering the space, a flight of stairs leads down to the trapezoidal stage, which audiences must cross to find a chair. Everything is on view in this sunken pit; you can even hear ushers shuffle programmes across the room. So, when Ann Liv Young disrupted Rebecca Patek’s Inter(a)nal F/ear (which premiered in 2013) in the Underground Theatre, the performance ground to a halt. Dressed as her performance alter ego ‘Sherry’, Young first stalked across the stage, accosting the assembled audience: ‘All of you are dressed the same. You’re all from Williamsburg. You’re all her [Patek’s] friends. None of you question anything you’re watching.’ The insularity of experimental theatre audiences is an old gripe, but what sparked Young’s ire was the performance itself: a disquieting collage of film and dance that sardonically sends up the forms and sentiments of rape narratives. Having commandeered the room, Young now interrogated Patek, who performed in the piece: ‘Have you actually been raped? . . . I feel like you’re making fun of being raped, and I think we should question what’s happening right now.’ Ben Pryor, who programmed the show as part of his American Realness Festival in 2014, ushered Young out of the room as she responded: ‘Maybe you should be a part of this conversation since you booked this.’1 Patek and her co-­performer Sam Roeck attempted to restart the show, but Young returned from the lobby, forcibly shoving a bullhorn through the auditorium door to announce that she was willing to provide Patek with free ‘Sherapy’.2 Pryor blocked Young from reentering the room as Patek and Roeck left the stage to recompose themselves before returning to finally finish the show. Young’s disruption inspired artists, critics, curators, programmers and audience members to pen dozens of articles and hundreds of blog posts. Patek and Young offered corroborating accounts of the event while refuting each

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other’s motives. For Jay Wegman, then artistic director of the Abrons Art Center, the issue was cut and dried: he banned Young from the institution. This escalated the discourse that flooded Patek’s Facebook page, which Young repurposed for her show, Ann Liv Young in Jail (2014) – an act of self-­ imprisonment for her ‘crimes against performance’.3 The question animating these sprawling responses, was, in the words of Gia Kourlas, what ‘is and isn’t acceptable in live performance’?4 But the event raises two far more pressing questions for contemporary experimental performance: what are the formal intersections and ideological distinctions between postdramatic and avant-­garde disruptions? And how does the festival marketplace frame and shape these aesthetics within contemporary practice? I offer that Young’s disruption of Patek’s performance highlights the variable currency and ethics of disruption in postdramatic and avant-­gardist performance within the paradigm of the experimental performance marketplace. Occurring at the American Realness festival – held during the annual Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) conference in New York City – Young’s avant-­ garde disruption of Patek’s postdramatic performance is a limit case of how conventions of disruption are contextualized and marketed within the festival system. I contend that festivals invoke the legacies of avant-­garde disruption, but deliver the ameliorated disruptions of postdramatic ambiguity to satisfy a seemingly contradictory agenda of presenting works that are both cutting edge and market ready. Reading this event through postdramatic and avant-­garde lenses deliberately reframes Patek and Young’s aesthetic lineages. Both artists are choreographers working under the broad umbrella of performance, and neither identifies with the avant-­garde or the postdramatic. Moreover, I acknowledge Liz Tomlin’s caution that the term postdramatic often flattens distinctions between performance, live art and theatre – a process, I would add, similarly at work with the broad application of the avant-­garde.5 Nonetheless, Patek’s and Young’s art carries the ethos of those aesthetic forms and discourses as well as their conflicting characteristics. In differentiating avant-­garde and postdramatic practices through their suitability to the festival marketplace, I include the postdramatic in James Harding’s observation that ‘avant-­garde gestures tend to be socio-­political formulations as much as they are aesthetic formulations’.6 Both Young’s disruption and Patek’s performance are socio-­political symptoms of the festival. I do not, however, forward any blanket claims of avant-­garde (or postdramatic) anti-­institutionality. As Paul Mann and others have shown, provocative acts depend upon institutions to reject, critique or revile.7 While I largely agree with Mann’s claim that ‘art against the institution of art ends by advancing the institution’s interests’, these exchanges are not mutually beneficial.8 Responses to Young’s interruption underscore that some forms

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of provocation remain beyond the pale of contemporary sensibilities.9 Even if such behaviours accrue symbolic capital, they can result in the loss of actual income: the stuff that pays the rent. While the link between institutions and provocation may be continual, some works actually and purposefully risk the destruction of their institutional relations. The scarcity of such examples underscores Tomlin’s claim that market pressures on artistic development means ‘anything that might historically have constituted the next generation of avant-­garde practice, will be rejected by the market as it represents a threat to the predicates of the existing marketplace and those who currently benefit from it’.10 American Realness, along with other festivals aligned with APAP, constitute ‘marketplaces’ that determine artistic production. Key to this market’s preferential treatment of some performances over others is the seemingly analogous aesthetics of avant-­garde and postdramatic performance. The conflation stems from Hans-Thies Lehmann’s assertion that the postdramatic’s destabilization of drama develops out of the avant-­gardes, where ‘the conventional classical dramaturgy of unity was first disrupted’.11 Avant-­garde and postdramatic practices are bridged by this shared purview of disruption which, in contemporary performance, allows for the evocation of one aesthetic while delivering another. The commonality necessitates definitions of these forms be based on artistic intent rather than periodization or aesthetics. In my use of avant-­garde, I take up Mike Sell’s definition: ‘a minoritarian formation that challenges power in subversive, illegal, or alternative ways, usually by challenging the routines, assumptions, hierarchies and/or legitimacy of existing political and/or cultural institutions’.12 Crucial to my claims is this oppositional self-­positioning, a tact central to Young’s work. I contrast avant-­garde oppositionality with ‘indecidability’, which, according to Lehmann, is postdramatic theatre’s ‘theatrical effect’.13 Indecidability, in contrast to oppositionality, is not only endemic to Patek’s work but ultimately more suitable to the demands of the contemporary experimental performance marketplace. At its extreme, the postdramatic represents the total absorption of avant-­garde practices into the market place. The evidence for this process is embarrassingly clear. Lehmann’s foundational example for postdramatic aesthetics is experimental theatre’s most recognizable and reliable global commodity, Robert Wilson. Since 1990 alone, Wilson has directed ninety-­five different productions in twenty-­five countries.14 If Wilson is synonymous with the postdramatic, then the postdramatic is equivalent to an experimental theatre that not only survives but thrives within a global marketplace. In this regard, Lehmann’s articulation of an aesthetic of parataxis – the multiplicity of sensory input that relegates text to one of many components – is a move towards a theatrical universalism suitable to the festival market’s desire to cross cultural borders.

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The Festival Market Disruption is predicated on challenging convention. The newest norm in United States experimental performance is the festival. The US – and New York City in particular – has experienced a rapid increase in experimental theatre and performance festivals over the past twelve years. In 2005, Mark Russell began New York City’s Under the Radar Festival to showcase experimental works to industry professionals. Today, in 2017, eleven festivals have joined the January fray, presenting over a hundred productions each winter.15 The location and timing of these festivals is designed to correspond with the annual APAP conference held in New York each January. Mario Garcia Durham, the organization’s CEO, estimates that APAP is ‘the largest gathering of performing-­arts curators and administrators in the country, possibly in the world’.16 This delegation of nearly four thousand includes international professionals, characterized by critic Helen Shaw as ‘Scandi-­ glam presenters shopping for their European seasons’.17 Elizabeth Zimmer, perhaps more accurately, sees these presenters as ‘the venture capitalists of the performing-­arts world, investing in new collaborations and assembling tours to defray high costs’.18 By virtue of their selectivity, festivals – touting their rosters as the best, most innovative, or most topical – offer prestige and access to presenters and producers, conduits to larger regional and global marketplaces. For early and mid-­career experimental artists in the US and abroad, these festivals are a critical opportunity to tap those markets. Audiences, artists and cultural tourists benefit from these offerings, but the rush of consumable culture assembled for the performing arts industry results in what The New York Times calls a ‘Jamboree and Meat Market’.19 To simply bemoan this reality is to ignore the opportunities and material benefits these structures can provide artists who ‘really are small-­business people’, according to Jonah Bokaer.20 Nonetheless, the centrality of these festivals to the livelihood of artists means that they now significantly determine the experimental performance aesthetics of our given moment. It is therefore imperative to ask: how does the paradigm of the festival marketplace shape avant-­garde and postdramatic aesthetics in US performance? Scholars of the historical avant-­gardes have documented the synergy between experimental practice, institutions and marketplaces. Paul Mann dubbed this reciprocal relationship ‘perpetual institutionality’.21 More recently, the collusion between provocation and artistic notoriety results in what Richard Schechner calls the ‘conservative’ avant-­garde, an experimental theatre that apes rather than attacks institutional limits and values.22 What is notable about the experimental festival marketplace then is the extent to which the relationship between institution and art is foregrounded. As

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artist and curator Trajal Harrell explains, the American Realness Festival is successful because the ‘curatorial approach and the branding are a perfect marriage: it works because it is transparent’.23 If avant-­garde disruption depends upon an anti-­institutional agenda – no matter how feigned – then what constitutes avant-­garde performance within such transactions? And what role does postdramatic aesthetics play in facilitating the transparency of the festival? Answering these questions requires parsing the distinctions between the conventions of avant-­garde and postdramatic disruptions.

Conventions of Disruption The historical avant-­gardes’ legacy of provoking and performing disruptions is central to Lehmann’s conception of the postdramatic. Avant-­garde provocations initiate the ‘shift from work to event’24 that postdramatic theatre reprises by emphasizing reality as fiction’s ‘co-­player’.25 Despite sharing these foundations, conflicting ideological aims underlie their disruptive aesthetics. For postdramatic theatre, foregrounding reality within fiction renders the boundary between the two categories porous, producing a sense of uncertainty in spectators, Lehmann’s ‘indecidability’.26 In contrast, avant-­ gardism’s ‘minoritarian’ oppositionality suggests that the integration of reality and theatrical fiction distinguishes an artwork from social conventions and institutional power.27 Postdramatic and avant-­garde theatres’ disruptions are, therefore, discernible through their contrasting intentions rather than their analogous aesthetics. Lehmann sees this split – pace Michael Kirby – emerging from the postdramatic theatre’s ties to the ‘hermetic’, rather than ‘antagonistic’ modes of avant-­gardism.28 The hermetic strain of the avant-­ gardes – namely the Symbolists – offered a rejoinder to the centrality of ‘dramatic plot and story’ while abandoning overtly antagonistic tones and behaviours.29 The antagonistic avant-­gardes earned their descriptor from their forced erosion of the boundaries between art and reality. The Italian Futurists are perhaps the clearest example. The group’s variety-­theatre-inspired serates aimed to infuriate and activate audiences. F. T. Marinetti’s instructions were to ‘offer free tickets to men or women who are known to be a bit off their heads, irascible, or eccentric, and who are likely to provoke a scene with their obscene gestures, their nipping of women’s bottoms, or other objectionable behavior’.30 The mere title of the Russian Futurist 1912 manifesto, ‘A Slap In the Face of Public Taste’, decrees the antagonistic position these artists took towards their publics.31 What these writings announce is not only a new art, but a new ethics for art’s evaluation. Only under a revised ethics could André

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Breton surmise that, ‘The simplest Surrealist act consists of dashing down the street, pistol in hand, and firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd.’32 The new standard for the antagonistic wing of the avant-­garde is summarized by Alain Badiou as ‘a passion for the real’, manifest through ‘the provocative intervention of the group, which alone ensures the salvation of the instant and the ephemeral against the instituted and established’.33 Disrupting ethical boundaries and artistic convention is rationalized for its supposed ability to reclaim experience from routinization. Within postdramatic theatre, avant-­garde disruption is replaced with ambiguity. Here the borders between fiction and reality are supplanted by a refocused attention to the totality of the theatrical ‘event/situation’.34 Postdramatic works foreground their own processes through a host of aesthetic signs enabling the theatre’s ‘capacity to be not only an exceptional kind of event but a provocative situation for all participants’.35 A common means of highlighting the co-­construction of the event is to destabilize the drama’s fiction through the ‘irruption of the real’.36 The cultivation of the real as an aesthetic instrument constitutes the critical shift from the dramatic to the postdramatic. The aim, Lehmann explains, is ‘the unsettling that occurs through the indecidability whether one is dealing with reality or fiction’.37 As a result, audiences ‘wonder whether they should react to the events on stage as fiction (i.e. aesthetically) or as reality (for example, morally)’, bringing the certainty of the spectatorial practice into question.38 Postdramatic theatre produces an ambivalent reflection on the real rather than an avant-­garde ‘passion’ for it. The dependency of disruptive aims on audience responses makes the distinction tenuous, but all the more crucial. Under the broad parameters of disruption, specific intentions – that is to say politics itself – are easily elided.

Conventional Disruptions Young’s disruption of Patek’s Ineter(a)nal F/ear reveals the slippage between postdramatic and avant-­garde intentions. Since 2008, Patek has created four large-­scale live performances and over a dozen works for video. Patek’s art fits the American Realness festival’s interdisciplinary purview as, according to the artist, it ‘synthesizes dance, theatre and comedy’ and primarily employs satire to ‘incorporate the marginalized facets of performance’, most notably, ‘inter-­relational dynamics both onstage and between performer and audience’.39 Key to Patek’s production of ambiguity is the use of sexual content to trouble divisions between reality and fantasy. This is also a source of sustained conflict for her work, which is often censored due to its allegedly

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pornographic nature. Patek’s Art, Anxiety, and Censorship at MoMA PS1: A Panel (2016) was planned as a staged pornography shoot with Patek having intercourse with a male escort, before Mark Beasely, curator of MoMA PS1’s Sunday Sessions, nixed the concept. Meanwhile, a performance film of Patek masturbating, which she uploaded to the pornography site PornHub, was deleted because menstrual blood appears in the video. The website’s administrator (bafflingly) noted that ‘menstrual blood is not part of sex’, rendering the content inadmissible.40 Patek cites this censorship as evidence of the projects’ successful transgressions of unarticulated cultural boundaries within varying institutional contexts. This is a result of Patek’s ability to elicit the ambiguity Lehmann proffers as central to postdramatic works in which audiences are forced to question whether they should understand the work as fictional or real. Ineter(a)nal F/ear is emblematic of how Patek’s postdramatic ambiguity operates within the festival context. The performance featured Patek and Sam Roeck in a series of skits, choreography, and films linked by satirical treatment of rape, sexual violence, and HIV. One segment, for example, is a faux-French documentary chronicling how Patek’s rape impacted her artistic ambitions. Complete with subtitles and accented voiceover narration, the film satirized how re-­enactments shuffle between minutia and hyperbole to humanize their subjects. The purring French voice comically noted Patek’s struggles to make art while ‘living on the undergrowth of the urban jungle [while she] finds small oasis of solace in the local organic bodegas and the scattered yoga studios’. The rape itself is undercut by detailed narration of Patek’s favourite food. Correspondences between Patek’s life and the character (their names, occupations and residences) clash with the stylized inauthenticity of the documentary, bringing the veracity of the film’s seemingly autobiographical subject into question. Patek’s deadpan commentary in the films is equally disorienting. Patek explained that if she were to encounter her assailant again, she would ‘probably just want to give him a hug; say it’s OK’. The calm reflection seemingly ameliorates if not condones the criminal act. The show’s ambiguity is compounded by a parallel narrative of Sam Roeck’s rape, from which he contracted HIV. This section is parodically intercut with the song ‘No Day But Today’ from the musical Rent (1994). Following her co-­star’s story, Patek sat in the audience and questioned the felicity of Roeck’s narrative, bolstering suspicion of the account. These elisions between fact and fiction are prepared for at the performance’s outset, when Patek and Roeck distributed comment cards to the audience, thanking those in attendance for their ‘feedback’ and promising to incorporate any suggestions into future shows. Given Patek’s ironic tone, dance critic Siobhan Burke reflects that the show, ‘ “deals with” [rape], I mean satirizes. Or was it

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satire? That’s the thing: you couldn’t really tell. I couldn’t, at least.’41 In satirizing the ‘popular semantic[s]’ of rape, Patek produced a postdramatic indecidability.42 It was at this early stage of the performance that Patek’s gesture was tested by Young, who recounts: [F]irst I reprimanded the audience. I was like, ‘All of you are dressed the same. You’re all from Williamsburg. You’re all her friends. None of you question anything you’re watching,’ and then I looked at [Patek] and said, ‘Have you actually been raped?’ She was really clearly thrown. She said, ‘You’re really fucked up’ or ‘fuck you’ or something like that, and I was like, ‘I am just telling you that what I have just seen, I don’t feel like you’ve been raped. I feel like you’re making fun of being raped, and I think we should question what’s happening right now. You handed me a piece of paper saying you want to know how I feel about what I’m watching – I’m telling you how I feel.’43

Patek’s irreverence towards the boundaries of reality and fiction instigated Young’s disruption. The uncertainty Patek conjured is not simply over the authenticity of the events depicted, but also the interactive structure that presumably invited feedback. Young’s rebuttal – or at least the initial one – would seem to be the result of that participatory license. That is, of course, only true if we believe Young’s behaviour to be sincere. Young’s return to the theatre with a megaphone strains the idea that her actions were a spontaneous reaction but, rather, as Patek and others have suggested, an opportunistic hijacking of a (rival) performer’s performance. If Patek’s ambiguity was the seed of Young’s response, Young’s avant-­garde performance ethos offers some explanation. A survey of Young’s thirteen-­ year catalogue of performances attests to how discomforting her work can be. Despite their blunt depictions of sexuality and violence, Young’s early works, Melissa is a Bitch (2004), Michael (2005) and Solo (2006) are notable for the imprint of her dance training from Hollins University. Inspired by popular culture, especially dance and music, Young’s choreography recreates the tropes of femininity in confrontational and explicit productions. Young’s early works largely remained sealed behind the fourth wall, their intensity felt by proxy. Subsequent performances, Snow White (2006) and The Bagwell in Me (2008), engaged audiences more directly with live sex acts and excreta, which often elicited audience responses. Young’s real-­time interactions with often-­unhappy spectators increasingly became part of the shows. The character of Sherry distils the confrontational aspects of Young’s work into a singular figure. Beginning with Sherry Show (2009), the character

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operates as a litmus test for the institutional contexts in which she performs. Young explains: ‘Sherry’ is a tool that I made when I was pregnant. I thought, ‘How am I going to make art and support a child?’ I decided that if I made something indestructible then I could do it. And it really is working, which is amazing. Sherry is indestructible. Her show cannot be ruined. There’s this idea in theatre that we have to impress the journalists and that people have to like the performance. And Sherry’s just like, ‘Fuck all of you. This is my show.’44

Young extrapolates that the persona was designed to withstand the variability of international touring. By basing each performance on the reactions of audiences, Young confronts and thus frees herself from the architectural, technological and financial inconsistencies of venues, as well as the fatigue of touring. As a result, the performances make explicit how institutions shape artistic production, through their regulations, material conditions and audience demographics. What a Sherry performance produces, therefore, is a grotesque reflection of the frames that comprise theatrical production and consumption. A cross between a Disney princess and a Real Housewife, Sherry is identifiable by her flowing, platinum-­blonde wig, high-­necked gowns, pearl necklaces, long-­sleeved gloves, occasional Tierra and colour palette of treacly pastels. The songs, skits and dances in Sherry’s performances give pretext for her interactions with audiences or venue staff. Sherry searches her audiences for signs of resistance, annoyance and discomfort. When these responses are not forthcoming, Young derails her own performance by demanding that the sound be adjusted or restarted, enabling her to be more present to her performance. Whether these adjustments – which also include the direction of her co-­stars – are technically necessary is difficult to discern. Frequently, the theatre’s staff or administrators are (unfairly?) challenged or berated for (perceived?) technical inadequacies. These disruptions tend to unsettle and irritate audiences and employees unaccustomed to Young’s work. The antagonism and amateurism of these digressions thwarts expectations of theatre as an audience-­centred entertainment. The disjuncture between spectator expectations and the theatrical event provides openings for Sherry to confront the institutional contexts and cultural conventions that produce those assumptions and desires. Common among all of Sherry’s performances is her demand that audience members be available and honest. When called upon, spectators are expected to answer questions or perform tasks. This plays to one of Young’s chief talents: the ability to sniff out pretence in her own audience members. The

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shows centre on Sherry’s efforts to question and reveal the fraudulence of others’ affectations through Young’s own phony persona. These encounters begin with Sherry asking audience members innocuous questions and quickly proceed towards invasive lines of inquiry, including one’s relationships, sexuality, or – equally troubling – thoughts about the show itself or art in general. Young summarizes Sherry’s method as ‘clear and direct. She acts like a mirror to whoever she’s looking at and she wakes people up.’45 Young’s desire to forcibly engage her audiences echoes the assaultive language and methods of the antagonistic avant-­gardes. Young’s authority to challenge her audiences stems from Sherry’s self-­assigned outsiderhood. Like Patek’s characters, Sherry is vaguely autobiographical. Originally from North Carolina, Young imbues Sherry with regional and cultural affiliations like an overt Southern accent and mannerisms. Sherry’s mythology, which parallels some of Young’s own life, trades in stereotypes of Southerners as culturally unsophisticated. Sherry plays ignorant to the whole of performance art, including notable precursors in Young’s own medium like Karen Finley, Annie Sprinkle and Penny Arcade.46 Sherry explains that she previously worked in churches and community centres, but now ‘gets booked in art venues’.47 Although Sherry’s/ Young’s outsiderhood within the performance world is feigned, the conviction with which it is held is powerful. As Claudia La Rocco notes, what is ‘most intriguing about Young these days is the extent to which her onstage persona is impossible to fully separate from Sherry’.48 The assumption is that Sherry’s outsiderhood authorizes her to wake people up; in playing this character, Young is more truthful than you are in playing yourself. Young’s construction of Sherry as an outsider truth-­teller is in keeping with Sell’s contention that the avant-­garde is foremost an act of oppositional and minoritarian self-­positioning. The central opponents for Young/Sherry are the values of the art world, which is ‘full of people that think that they have the authority to say, “This is good, this is bad. This is art, this is not. This is worth fifty thousand dollars, this is worth nothing.” Sherry goes deep into those problems and tries to tear them apart.’49 Sherry’s outsiderhood affords the persona the critical distance to see and expose the duplicities of performing within the institutional context. This strategy is embedded in Sherry’s accusation that Patek’s work is enabled by the uncritical insularity of the performance and festival scenes. The allegation is that the audience, curator and festival should be held accountable for their complicity in Patek’s postdramatic ambiguity. Most objectionable to Young is accepting an aesthetic that seemingly renders sincerity impossible. Young’s instigations produced a range of responses. The debate centred on the ethics of Young’s behaviour, the institutions that support her work, the

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insularity of the American Realness Festival and the ethical, aesthetic and political make-­up of the critics, artists and audiences of this work. Andy Horwitz, founder of the popular performance blog Culturebot, took the larger community to task for cultivating a climate in which Young’s ‘bullying and brutality’ were supported.50 More specifically, he condemned, ‘how fantastically hypocritical is it that a festival purporting to support the voices of ‘transgressive’ artists . . . would allow an artist like Ann Liv Young, who exists with the support of major institutions and curators, to violate the art work and physical person of an artist possessed of none of those resources?’51 Horowitz’s suggestion – that the cliquishness of this aesthetic turf war was cover for the unequal distribution of material resources – sparked its own round of critical responses.52 The chief question raised in the responses to Horwitz’s article and Young’s behaviour was: who is responsible? Who is responsible for the artwork, its surrounding culture of audiences, critics and artists? Who is responsible for the economics of such a system? Horwitz focuses on institutions and structures, what he calls the ‘spectacularly vertically integrated closed ecosystem’ of downtown performing arts.53 Horwitz’s detractors point out the nuance and specificity within such systems. While Horwitz criticizes American Realness for its payment model of box-­ office splits and advertisement, many artists champion the festival as a vital platform for their work. No consensus emerged from the debates, but their impassioned and frequently contentious tone reflects the fact that festival engagements are high stakes marketplaces for artists. Patek also joined the debate. Her essay,‘I Wish She Were Right’, was published shortly after the confrontation with Young/Sherry on Claudia La Rocco’s blog, Performance Club.54 Patek refutes Young’s insinuations that the show was insincere by detailing her personal experience with sexual assault and referring to the show as autobiographical. Patek concedes that she ‘employ[s] provocation perhaps, but a provocation that is also in my audience’s hands: I don’t make all of it. I leave a lot out there for you to construct a reflection on how you feel’. Patek dismissed Young’s actions as ‘not the critique of a work, it was someone silencing another’, and the type of ‘bullying and harassment’ that unfortunately occurs ‘[w]hen we speak about sexual violence in an honest way’.55 According to Patek, Young parasitically co-­opted and thereby destroyed her show, a gesture in opposition to the experimental theatre’s celebration of free expression. But artists – like Young – who follow in the antagonistic line of the avant-­gardes have routinely called for the destruction of others’ art. Marinetti and Artaud’s writings are among the most notable in the long fantasy of creative destruction that looms over the history of experimental practice. Moreover, the professional critics’ confusion over Patek’s ambiguous intent and other audience members’ initial uncertainty whether Young’s

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disruption was part of the show, contradict the suggestion that anything was spoken of in ‘an honest’, that is to say, a forthright way. I do not want to trivialize Patek’s personal experience, but rather look to highlight how the truth content of the show creates an ethical roadblock to considering how postdramatic aesthetics elicit avant-­gardist ethics. Patek’s aim to destabilize the audience’s relationship to rape narratives through formal and thematic experimentation makes Young’s response difficult to pin down. Because Young was dressed as Sherry at the time of the interruption, many commenters suggested that the disruption was premeditated self-­aggrandizement. More complex, however, is Young’s claim that had she not been ‘in character’ she would have acted differently: ‘I’m a purist, in that if I’m dressed as Sherry, I am Sherry. . . . If I hadn’t been, I would have just gotten up and left.’56 What at first sounds like an excuse turns out to be harder to dismiss.57 Young addressed the outcry over her behaviour in her performance Ann Liv Young in Jail. For four hours a night on four consecutive nights, Young ‘locked’ herself in a makeshift prison cell at JACK, an arts space in Brooklyn, where she offered herself to the interrogation of the audience. Young oscillated between performing as Sherry (usually in the form of karaoke) and speaking as Young (usually in the form of conversations with audience members). Young would announce her imminent transition into Sherry, after which she gleefully enquired if we noticed the difference. The difference (or lack thereof) between the two figures became the show’s overriding theme. Young’s belief in the distinction between self and character extends to a broader division between art and life. The permissibility Young affords herself under the banner of art is the source of her many detractors and admirers. La Rocco summarizes the strength of Young’s performances as their ability to create ‘a fractious, truly public space, the sort that rarely exists within art that promises to create the very same thing’.58 To participate in these spaces requires conceding authority to Young’s ethically dubious methods, what Alastair Macaulay calls her audiences’ ‘gruesome compliance’.59 Whatever the process of buy-­in entails, the two artists use the aesthetics of disruption to different ends. Patek wants the postdramatic ambiguity of her works to register emotionally and intellectually to ‘construct a reflection on how you feel’.60 Young’s disruptions, conversely, are designed to get audiences to engage physically and verbally or, to ‘wake people up’.61

Contextual Disruptions Postdramatic and avant-­garde intentions co-­exist in the context of the festival marketplace. Started in 2010 by curator Benjamin Snapp Pryor, the American

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Realness festival represents an innovation on a burgeoning form. Unlike other festivals running concurrent with APAP’s annual conference, Realness focuses on US dance and performance. More specifically, it purports ‘to shock such quandaries [contemporary dance/performance] into the contemporary moment [with a festival that is] loud, queer, disturbing, hilarious, critically engaged, beyond post-­modern and undeniably present’.62 Its inaugural season featured works by notable US-based choreographers like Miguel Gutierrez, Jack Fever, Luciana Achugar and Trajal Harrell. Ann Liv Young was included in the Festival’s first season and each subsequent year through 2014. For his efforts, Pryor’s festival was listed as #1 in ArtForum’s ‘Best of Dance 2010’ and amassed accolades for its attention to an underserved performance community. With each year, the festival has grown, drawing international artists of similar ilk while retaining its focus on developments in US practice. In addition to its relationship to the discourses of performance studies and queer theory, the festival’s self-­description encapsulates the language of avant-­gardism and market capitalism. In fact, the festival seems to manifest Mann’s claim that ‘the attack on the institution of art made the attack itself a work of art susceptible to commodification, circulation, exchange’.63 It is in this sense that Realness’ ability to ‘shock’ – an avant-­garde buzzword if ever there was one – corresponds directly to its self-­description as ‘instigating cross-­cultural exchange, connecting experimental artists with the culture hungry audiences of New York City, and changing the landscape of the performing arts marketplace known as APAP’.64 Shock is part and parcel with ravenous consumers and a humanist agenda of cultural exchange. Nowhere is this more evident than in American Realness’ subsequent three-­ stop tour through France in the spring of 2016. Partnering with the Centre national de la danse (Pantin), Les Subsistances (Lyon) and Théâtre Garonne (Toulouse), Realness took seven of its productions abroad to ask: ‘How are we to understand this context and these works in another country with a different culture, its own social codes, aesthetic priorities and canonical histories?’65 Here the critical language of contextualization is aligned with the globalizing impulses of the broader festival market. A boon for artists promoting new works, the festival season has also been criticized for parading commercialized offerings for the global theatre trade. The initially anonymous essay ‘Shit-Show Circus on Ice’, later retracted by its author Kevin Doyle, cuts to a persistent critique of the festivals. Doyle argues that the festivals exist ‘to assist the beleaguered arts professional in their shopping choices while also commodifying [sic] and contextualizing to an extent the contemporary, experimental performing arts scene’.66 The result is the deliberate production and curation of ‘a “predictable” dramaturgy within

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“edgy” and/or “experimental” methods or language’.67 The proscribed techniques that Doyle details overlap with Lehmann’s taxonomy of postdramatic aesthetics. Doyle’s complaints capture a nostalgia for contemporary practice’s relationship to a – seemingly – greener, more politically and aesthetically radical past. This sentiment is shared by Richard Schechner, who summarizes the current landscape as populated by a ‘conservative avant-­garde’, which shed its ties to the historical and neo-­avant-­gardes in favour of a ‘style-­left’.68 Doyle and Schechner differ in that the former longs for a performance scene in line with a European formalism, while the latter yearns for a leftist politics. They agree, however, that the current market neutralizes both aesthetics and politics in favour of conventionality, what Doyle calls ‘predictability’ and Schechner sees as performance that is ‘known before it is experienced’.69 Within a UK context, Liz Tomlin diagnoses this familiarity as a new phase in the relationship between experimental performance and the market, in which performance is now ‘fertilized and incubated within the economy’s ideological predicts and structures.’70 In short, contemporary performance has lost its ability to produce the political or aesthetic disruptions that American Realness and other festivals promise to deliver. I disagree with Doyle’s and Schechner’s conclusions. The nostalgia for a European formalism or political radicalism too frequently overlooks the material conditions under which those works are made. Meanwhile, the categories of ‘shock’ and ‘newness’ are more rigorously subjected to a longer history, insuring their dismissal as passé. I agree, however, with Doyle’s, Schechner’s and Tomlin’s assessments that these trends in performance are traceable to the codification of experimental performance in the US (and UK) through the growth of festivals and other institutions that usher work into the marketplace. If the aim is to produce work for a national or international market, as the promotional copy for festivals like American Realness professes, the need for a predictable product is a foregone conclusion. Postdramatic ambiguity is, therefore, an ameliorated avant-­garde offered for the performance market. Postdramatic performance promises to destabilize sensibilities without disrupting institutional service. Despite the aesthetic similarities, the intentions of postdramatic and avant-­garde theatre are neither synonymous nor interchangeable. It is this contradiction that creates the greatest frustration for Doyle: ‘we are being marketed and hyped one art form; and yet witnessing an entirely different art form’.71 The debate over Young’s disruption of Patek’s performance became rancorous because it exposed this seeming contradiction – the marketing of innovation and the production of consistency – while gesturing to the desire for an antagonistic avant-­gardism. Critic David Velasco’s response to the event unwittingly reveals how fractured this logic becomes within the

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marketplace. Velasco writes: ‘this latest incident seems to undercut the ethics that gave [Young’s] prior actions such force. Young is most extraordinary when she uses her performances to put pressure on institutional protocols, to demonstrate (and prick) our passivity.’72 What is unacceptable to Velasco is that Young’s actions took place in the context of another artist’s show, which ‘occurred during APAP, at Patek’s expense, when presenters were in town scouting talent, [which] makes the whole thing especially contemptible’.73 While at the expense of Patek as well as herself, Young’s outburst highlights the market forces (presenters and scouts) that constrain artistic expression within experimental performance festivals. Seen in this light, Young’s disruption was a continuation of, not a departure from, her agenda to challenge ‘institutional protocols’ and ‘our passivity’. Young’s disruption foregrounded the institutional limits of simultaneously accommodating the ideals of the market (APAP) and the avant-­garde as well as the festival’s complicity in the marketplace’s divided logic of desiring the consumable and cutting edge. Whether Young had the ‘right’ to interfere with another artist’s work, however, depends on how one allocates ownership of a live event, a question that both the postdramatic and avant-­gardes deliberately render ambiguous. Young’s avant-­gardism forces one into ethical stances. In my conversations with Patek, she expressed disbelief at the fluidity of ethics within the performance scene. She questioned how anyone could think Young’s behaviour acceptable. Patek extended this suspicion to me, bluntly asking if I thought what Young did was okay. It is hard to remain theoretical while sitting across from someone whose art and reputation were steamrolled by an avant-­ garde gesture. My answer to Patek’s question has changed while writing this chapter. Young’s behaviour was a violation of the etiquette and ethics of contemporary performance. It had emotional, social and economic consequences for Patek. While Young should be – and by some measures has been – held accountable for her actions, I understand them as symptomatic of an art form’s history rather than an individual. If Young’s actions have not earned universal condemnation, it is because they fulfil a century-­old promise of experimental performance: the historically conditioned desire for performance to shock us. This desire is increasingly under attack. As Horwitz’s concludes, ‘[t]he entire construct of “transgressive”, the entire notion of “risk” in art as it exists in the context of “contemporary performance,” is a lie, a posture, a consumer identity in the closed economy and rigged system of not-­ for-profit performing arts.’74 Postdramatic theatre fills the void of transgression with no means of delivering on its promises, leaving the system rigged. But disruption, as evidenced by Young’s behaviour and Horwitz’s outrage at it, is anything but posturing. Convention aside, disruption still produces shocks.

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Whether disrupting a performance is the best means of attaining this avant-­gardist goal is questionable. Yet Young’s behaviour undeniably rattled the insular festival culture, forcing it to debate the role of provocation within it. The arguments recall Alastair Macaulay’s stubborn critique that ‘American Realness too often hunts down examples that are unoriginal and clique-­ish. Rather than enlarging the world of New York performance, it shrinks it.’75 These suspicions echo in the aftermath of the Patek/Young standoff. Even before the event spurred so much debate, Macaulay drew a parallel between Patek and Young’s work: ‘the labored cheapness of the offerings by Ms. Young, Ms. Patek and others drags the festival into the determinedly banal’.76 Macaulay correctly points to the common ground between not only Patek and Young’s work, but much contemporary experimental performance: the persistence of an avant-garde belief that the conventions of disruption are still most powerful, like ‘firing blindly, as fast as you can pull the trigger, into the crowd’.77

9

Galleries: Resituating the Postdramatic Real Ryan Anthony Hatch

So Bad, It’s Good Good art equals bad theatre. According to interdisciplinary artist David Levine, this equation functions as an important doxa across an array of contemporary visual arts practices, particularly those that involve the performing body. In his important 2006 text ‘Bad Art and Objecthood’, Levine observes, not without wonder, the extent to which contemporary art delimits itself by way of an attitude of widespread antipathy toward the theatrical medium.1 Granted, hatred of the theatre (of something about theatre) is nothing new. On the contrary, as is well known, antitheatricality is a ‘red thread’ that reaches back to Plato.2 What is new here, and what Levine is right to have us wonder at, are the specific means by which a significant number of contemporary artists express what Levine identifies as their ‘horror’ of theatre: namely, by making bad theatre. From Mike Kelley to the collaborations of Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, from Jibz Cameron to Jaimie Warren (to name just a few key examples from the United States), this antipathy finds its precise form in works made out of conspicuously poor, intentionally unconvincing performances. In such works, ‘characters’ so inconsistent and ‘plots’ so incoherent that they threaten to fall apart altogether find themselves set against shoddily constructed sets and among derelict props that combine to heighten the sense of generic failure. A consensus about theatrical form is thus borne out in practices that, by bringing the elements of theatre out of their native darkness and into the foreign and typically unforgiving conditions of visibility proper to modernist gallery space, take their object of critique from bad to worse. Bad theatre, it would seem, makes for good art. Why should this be the case? There is, we should note, nothing natural in the leap from hatred or horror of the theatre to an aesthetic strategy that engages with the ‘stuff ’ of theatre primarily in order to out-­under-perform it.

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One does not, after all, express distaste for French cooking by preparing and serving a purposefully unpalatable coq au vin. Clearly, something more ambivalent and interesting than mere negation is at play here; the sense of this strategy needs to be accounted for, and so Levine asks, ‘how did good art become a repository for bad performance’?3 Probably the more precise question to pose at this juncture would be: what specific ‘good’, proper to or constitutive of the domain of contemporary visual arts practices, does ill-­ made theatrical performance permit the artist to access? Here, good must of course be taken in all three of its senses: what is in question here is at once an ethical, aesthetic and market value. If theatre at its worst is today so highly prized, this is, Levine wagers, because it represents, or seems to represent, the royal road to the real; realness is the good to which theatre’s failure would promise a unique access. In making this wager, Levine draws a line from the ethos of the current situation back to the sensibility that governed an earlier generation of performance artists. Citing the efforts of artists like Marina Abromavić, Chris Burden and Allan Kaprow, Levine insists that, different from theatre makers, ‘all [these artists] really wanted to say is that their stuff is really real’.4 To this end, performance artists once tended to undertake forms of action that – in their unrepeatability, spontaneity and/or reliance on the active participation of the beholder – the conventions and limits of the theatre apparatus rule out. A half-­century on, artists are more likely to lampoon the conventions and techniques of theatrical artifice themselves, often by grossly misperforming or failing extravagantly to master them. These two procedures only seem to oppose one another. In fact, they converge in bearing witness to the enduring centrality of the real as a value and structuring principle of contemporary art. Whether the performance artist lays claim to a zone of the real beyond what is possible on stage, or allows the highly scripted, ‘inauthentic’ realm of theatricality itself to come apart at the seams, so that the real, as it were, shines through the cracks, we are confronted with an ideological formation that links a certain way of thinking the place of the real in aesthetic experience to a certain way of thinking the relation between theatre and the visual arts. At stake in this, Levine observes, is the allegedly ‘superior realness of performance’, which would, the argument goes, index performance art’s aesthetic superiority over theatre.5 Hans-Thies Lehmann’s seminal definition of postdramatic theatre relies on precisely the same configuration – on the greater realness it attributes to performance, and the supreme value it confers on this realness itself. His account of the form locates postdramatic theatre at ‘a common borderland’ between traditional dramatic theatre and performance art, since it involves ‘not a representation but an intentionally unmediated experience of the real’.6

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Indeed, a close reading of Postdramatic Theatre reveals that nearly all the claims through which Lehmann relays the ontological and ethical specificity of the postdramatic pivot on the question of this experience. We will have understood nothing of what is at stake in postdramatic theatre, Lehmann argues, if we fail to understand where and how the real comes in, its place and mode of action within the formal logic of the genre. What follows will critique the basic assumptions that sustain this configuration, which, in granting aesthetic and ethical privilege to a real construed in strict antithesis to theatrical illusion, yields a theory of postdramatic form rooted in a contempt for the order of semblance. I argue that Lehmann’s text suffers from an impoverished conception of the real, and that there is another way to articulate the place of the real in the work of art. This argument will proceed in two steps. First, we will turn to the thought of Jacques Lacan, where the real – central to the psychoanalytic experience articulated in his clinic – is given a more precise formulation. This excursus will allow us to determine where and to what extent Lehmann’s theory of the postdramatic real errs and how it might be rethought. Second, we will undertake a reading of David Levine’s durational performance installation Habit (2010), which, in proposing a novel permutation of theatrical, performative and sculptural logics, issues a formidable challenge to the fetishization of the real that dominates gallery performance and postdramatic theatre alike. In Habit, three trained, professional actors perform a stereotypical kitchen-­sink realist drama on a continuous loop within the confines of a fully functional home, itself set within a larger gallery space. The work’s duration is coterminous with the gallery’s hours of operation; spectators come and go as they please and take in however much or little of the work they like, from whichever and however many vantage points they choose. Conversely, the ensemble of actors-­turned-performance-­artists remains confined all day long within both the fictive ‘space’ of the dramatic text (from whose dialogue they may not deviate) and the shabbily outfitted domestic enclosure that figures as this genre’s ‘natural habitat’. Their task is not so much to perform a play, nor even to undertake the task of ‘marathon performance’, but rather to enter into a zone of ontological indistinction, to live their lives as characters, to inhabit and be inhabited by fiction long enough for this very fictiveness to begin to falter, that is to say, to fold into itself that reality which dramatic space, in order to constitute itself, designates as its outside. The work is, in a certain sense, constituted by its lack of an outside. Habit is a realization of the challenge with which ‘Bad Art and Objecthood’ concludes. ‘[I]f you’re going to critique [the theatre]’, Levine writes, ‘and if you’ve got the benefit of working in a context that can alienate anything,

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wouldn’t you want to throw the best gladiators into the arena? Wouldn’t you want to dare your spectators to be seduced?’7 Of course, the metaphor of combat at play in this passage resonates with the polemical hyperbole of Michael Fried’s seminal declaration, from the essay to which Levine’s title cheekily refers, that ‘the success, even the survival, of the arts has come increasingly to depend on their ability to defeat theatre’.8 Levine is less interested in attacking or allying with Fried’s war cry than with pointing out that, far from heralding the theatre’s defeat, performance art’s bad theatre signals that the real battle has not yet even begun. Instead of actually taking the seductive threat of theatricality seriously, artists have been guilty of ‘showing [beholders] what they already know to be false’.9 Levine’s aesthetic practice involves the kind of ‘good theatre’ that, in its commitment to fiction and the specific mode of attention that fiction solicits – seduction – most embarrasses the art world; Habit is, to remain within the framework of Fried’s war rhetoric, a Trojan horse (or Trojan house) by which the theatre’s ‘best gladiators’ – actors trained in the virtuosic techniques of dramatic realism – infiltrate the hostile terrain of the gallery and compel their enemies to enjoy, or at least share in its creator’s fascination with, the lure of theatrical semblance. If Levine’s work has something to say about or to postdramatic theatre, this is thanks to its singularly eccentric status as a work of post-­theatrical drama. In its spatial closure (its objecthood) and near-­permanence, Habit performs the becoming-­sculpture of theatre, and in this way insists on the real of semblance itself. To the extent that Levine locates the real not outside but on the side of semblance, we must approach him as a reader of Lacan and a critic of Lehmann.

Topoi of the Real For Lehmann, the difference between postdramatic theatre and the dramatic tradition it comes to subvert can best be figured in terms of the relations between aesthetic structure and its ‘other’. The being of the dramatic work constitutes itself by way of a founding exclusion: the reality of the performance event is excluded from the space of the fiction it supports. On the other hand, the postdramatic work, in opening itself to the very otherness that the first excludes, invites its own dis-­integration. Again, Lehmann is adamant that there is nothing incidental about this distinction; in the course of a gloss on Hegel’s aesthetics, he suggests that ‘what motivates the internally necessary exclusion of the real’ from the dramatic work ‘is nothing less than the [dialectical] principle of drama itself ’.10 Dramatic form is this exclusion. The pivotal section of Postdramatic Theatre, ‘Irruption of the Real’, elaborates on

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this dramatic principle and its postdramatic subversion in detail. Whereas ‘the traditional idea of theatre assumes a closed fictive cosmos, a “diegetic universe” ’, postdramatic theatre, by contrast, ‘turn[s] the level of the real explicitly into a “co-­player” . . . the irruption of the real becomes an object not just of reflection (as in Romanticism) but of the theatrical design itself ’. Welcoming or willing such an irruption, postdramatic theatre gives rise, Lehmann concludes, to ‘the experience of the real’.11 Who is the subject of this experience of the real? Though Lehmann’s reader might assume the subject in question is the spectator, we should note that the syntax of his formulation bears witness to a radical indeterminacy vis-à-vis this experience – an indeterminacy that, as we will observe, becomes particularly clear in his reading of an exemplary moment from Jan Fabre’s The Power of Theatrical Madness. The spectator’s access to the real would in fact seem to have to emerge in tandem with the spectacle’s own experience of its irruption. Would not a true instance of the real’s irruption by definition disturb the integrity of the spectacle’s fictive cosmos not only for its spectator, but also for the actors and designers who have summoned the real to be their ‘co-­player’? Would it not thereby herald an unprecedented collapse of the distinction between spectator and actor altogether, by making both positions equally vulnerable to its fundamentally traumatic intrusions? Such questions lead us to wonder whether it is possible to make the real into the object of ‘theatrical design’, that is to say of an intention (aesthetic or otherwise), at all. But we have already skipped ahead; the moment for such questions has not arrived, and will not have arrived until we attend to a simpler one, the simplest and probably most essential one: what is the real? I will not have been the first to remark on the centrality of the real to Lehmann’s critical project; its currency in subsequent work in the field of postdramatic studies bears witness to its cardinal importance.12 However, what has not yet been sufficiently examined – and this lacuna should, I think, strike us as profoundly unsettling – is that Lehmann never sufficiently defines his key term, but rather deploys it in ways that suggest his readers will intuit what he means when he claims, for instance, that ‘postdramatic theatre means: theatre of the real’.13 Without a rigorous conceptualization of what the real entails, such an equation remains meaningless. When we cease taking the signification of the postdramatic real for granted, and give Lehmann’s central concept the serious scrutiny it deserves, we discover a reductive and thus misleading approach to the position (ontological) and function (ethical) of the real in postdramatic theatre. The insufficiency of Lehmann’s conceptual model comes down to the relation it proposes between the real and the order of semblance in which any given

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theatrical event unfolds. It posits the real as standing behind and beyond the domain of semblance, that is to say, as extrinsic to the aesthetic as such, as the ‘extra-­aesthetic materiality’ that supports the play of illusion.14 This is never so clear as when, in the course of his argument, Lehmann identifies ‘the experience of the real’ with ‘the fact that no fictive illusions are created’.15 Ultimately, this orientation errs in that it conflates the work of the real with the literal reality of the work. Just as the figures depicted in an oil painting depend on their medium’s material facts – stretched canvas, pigment, oil, frame – so too is theatrical illusion obviously inconceivable apart from the hard facts of the performance event: the bodies ‘behind’ the characters, the actual spatial structure of the playing space ‘underneath’ the illusory scenic arrangement, the actually fake prop gun propping up the fake real gun one character uses to pretend to shoot another. Postdramatic theatre equals theatre of the real, we are told, insofar as these literal supports manage to burst through in their irreducible facticity and thereby disrupt the fictive surface of the stage scenario. Conceived thus, Lehmann’s real intrudes onto but, crucially, cannot be said to belong sensu stricto to the order of semblance. The naive materialism this topological model implies needs to be challenged. Resituating the concept within the theoretical context from which it has been uprooted, I suggest that the real is not a substance beyond and thus foreign to semblance, but instead a foreignness immanent to, because produced by, the order of semblance. Rather than name something, that is, it must be understood to index the structural fact that the becoming of the theatrical work inevitably generates a remainder, its own surplus, which renders the realm of semblance other to itself in an absolute sense. Approaching it in this way allows us precisely what Lehmann’s argument forecloses: a real proper to semblance, inextricably bound up with the movement of theatrical form. From this vantage point, we will come to understand that what in Lehmann’s discourse seems like a full-­throated affirmation of the fact of the real is really an attempt to escape the real of the aesthetic itself.

A Certain Materialism Although Postdramatic Theatre invokes the real throughout in ways that assume its reader will know what this term implies, it is important to recall the obvious fact that this substantive belongs neither to common usage (in English or Lehmann’s native German) nor to the lexicon of theatre studies. Rather, it is a term Lehmann inherits from the teaching of Jacques Lacan, where it names one of three interrelated ontological registers – imaginary,

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symbolic, real – in relation to which the psychoanalytic subject is situated. This psychoanalytic inheritance has not gone entirely unnoticed. In their introduction to Postdramatic Theatre and the Political, editors Jerome Carroll, Karen Jürs-Munby and Steve Giles note that ‘the fact that Lehmann . . . refers to postdramatic performance as allowing an “irruption of the real” suggests a Lacanian dimension to his thinking’.16 Given that, as Tom Eyers writes, the real ‘must be understood as the central, determining concept of Lacan’s work, early and late’, one might well expect this theoretical orientation to play an important role in Lehmann’s analysis of the postdramatic.17 Yet a careful look in the index of Postdramatic Theatre frustrates this expectation; Lacan appears explicitly only once in the text, in a superficial reference to his notion of the voice as object a (that is, as one of the partial objects of the drive). Lehmann seems to want to deploy this concept in a quasi-­intuitive sense, detaching it from the theoretical and practical contexts from which it derives its meaning. This results, unsurprisingly, in a misrecognition whose consequences play out across his theorization of the postdramatic. To grasp what is truly at stake in Lacan’s real requires that we first remark on what it is not: the real is in no way synonymous with reality. On the contrary, whereas what we refer to and experience as the reality principle is for Lacan always a matter of symbolic mediation – an effect of the subject’s being situated within the differential network of signifiers – the real involves something strictly unsymbolizable, which the symbolic order that frames and constructs our reality cannot but fail to capture. Hence, what Lacan names ‘the real’ is in no sense a part of reality; strictly speaking, it has no place there. Yet – and this is absolutely crucial – neither has it any proper place elsewhere. To speak of the real as a something-­beyond the reality principle that the signifying chain engenders is not quite right, or not quite enough. Indeed, such an approach implies a misleading notion of the real either as a primordial, presymbolic, undivided substance (‘beyond’ insofar as it is ‘before’ the signifier) or as an infinitely deferred transcendental ideal whose horizon recedes as the field of signification attempts to grasp it (‘beyond’ insofar as it is ‘after’ the signifier). Against these approaches, Lacan insists on the real as an irreducible surplus in excess of, yet immanent to the symbolic order, a kind of inassimilable waste-­ effect of the chaining of signifiers that structures experience. Now, to claim that the real is the surplus without place in the symbolic is thus also to mark it as the limit internal to the network of signifiers, that lack which renders the symbolic fundamentally incapable of closure. ‘The absolutely crucial point of . . . psychoanalytic realism’, Alenka Zupančič argues,‘is that the real is not a substance or being, but precisely its limit . . . the zone of the real is the interval within being itself, on account of which no being is “being qua being,” but can only be by being

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something else than it is.’18 Hence, what the real names in Lacan’s discourse is not some substance but rather a fundamental structural fact about the symbolic order. Split from within, this order cannot coincide with itself, insofar as it generates its own beyond-­within. This is precisely what Lorenzo Chiesa means when he insists that ‘the Real that psychoanalysis deals with is the Real-­of-theSymbolic, which is not to be confused with everyday reality and should also be clearly differentiated from what Lacan calls “the primitive Stoff,” matter unmediated by the Symbolic’.19 A seeming paradox: there is (for the subject) no beyond the field of the Symbolic; yet this field is ‘not all’. What does it mean for the real to be both immanent and inassimilable to the symbolic? To answer this question, we should return to the observation the editors of Postdramatic Theatre and the Political make in their introductory remarks concerning the seeming Lacanian resonances of Lehmann’s argument. For it is not only the frequency with which the latter avails himself of the resources of Lacan’s central term that prompts them to make this connection. Much more to the point, it is the fact that Lehmann speaks of the postdramatic real in the explicitly Lacanian terms of ‘irruption’. It is precisely the real’s irruptive force that Lacan wants to stress when, in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, he refers his audience to Aristotle’s concept of ‘tuché’. Commonly rendered as ‘luck’ or ‘fortune’, Lacan translates tuché as ‘the encounter with the real’.20 That Lacan construes the real in terms of an event bears witness first of all to psychoanalysis’s decisive rejection of a transcendental-­obscurantist approach that would situate the real beyond and thus inaccessible from within the prison house of signification. Yet it is critical we underscore that the encounter with the real is, for Lacan, a definitively missed encounter, ‘an appointment to which we are always called with a real that eludes us’.21 This missed encounter must be carefully distinguished from a missed appointment, insofar as the latter is defined by its not taking place. Paradoxical though it may sound, the encounter with the real takes place as missed, because what the subject is confronted with in this event is something that from within the symbolic field that gives consistency to her life is, strictly speaking, impossible. In Lacan’s thought, Zupančič writes, ‘the Real is impossible, and the fact that “it happens (to us)” does not refute its basic “impossibility”: the Real happens to us (we encounter it) as impossible, as “the impossible thing” that turns our symbolic universe upside down and leads to the reconfiguration of this universe’.22 We are effectively dealing with a conception of the real as the traumatic limit to the subject’s experience, the experience of this immanent limit, which introduces a split in the subject and throws into question the very coordinates of her experience. What, then, is the precise nature of Lehmann’s error? Let us turn to Lehmann’s reading of a minor, albeit key moment in Jan Fabre’s The Power of

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Theatrical Madness, through which he fleshes out the claim that the postdramatic makes the traumatic force of the real’s irruption into a ‘co-­ player’ and ‘object . . . of the theatrical design itself ’: [T]he houselights come on in the middle of the performance after an especially exhausting action by the performers (an endurance exercise à la Grotowski). Out of breath, the actors take a smoking break while looking at the audience. It remains uncertain whether their unhealthy activity is ‘really’ necessary or staged. The same holds true for the sweeping up of shards and other stage actions that are necessary and meaningful from a pragmatic point of view but which, in the light of the theatrical signs’ lack of reference to reality, are perceived on an equal footing with the more clearly staged events on stage.23

Is the smoke break real or staged? Notwithstanding the odd intrusion of the concept of necessity, the problem with such a question is that it depends on a stark distinction between, on the one hand, the realm of fiction and, on the other, the realm of reality that supports it insofar as it is characterized by its absence. It depends, that is to say, on the very division between semblance and ‘raw’ reality that the Lacanian concept of the symbolic displaces and nullifies. In his theory, the Other, the symbolic locus of the subject’s reality, is a field without an external-­transcendental guarantor; it is ontologically groundless: ‘there is’, in other words, ‘no Other of the Other’.24 To be sure, this does not imply that a Lacanian approach requires we dispense with the obvious difference between the theatrical event and our ordinary experience of reality. What it is meant to highlight is that Lehmann’s recourse to the facts behind or between the stage fiction fails to take into account the extent to which the theatrical event and our ordinary realities are not entirely different. That is to say, it requires we forget that the theatrical medium allegorizes the extent to which any given reality depends for its consistency on a symbolic framing and is thus, in a certain sense, the work of fiction. Fabre’s dramaturgy of the real yields, Lehmann contends, an ‘aesthetics of undecidability’, which he sees as unsettling the spectator’s capacity to decide ‘whether one is dealing with reality or fiction’.25 Setting aside Lacan, we can also challenge this from a less theoretical, and more ‘intuitive’ perspective. The question real or fake? gives rise to another: is it really so uncertain? Is the status of this scene any more undecidable than any other moment in which the theatre at once solicits our belief, or at least our investment, in the event it stages without ever really expecting us to forget its having been staged just so and for us? Consider that, for this moment to not have been staged, in

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order for it to truly fall outside and disrupt the frame of Fabre’s work, the actors involved would have to have met prior to the performance to plan (to stage!) an insurrection, to stop the show with their activity. If it is clear that this interval must to some degree have been staged, it is also clear that an actual cigarette break on stage would be a staged cigarette break, and a staged cigarette break will have been an actual cigarette break. Here the distance between the order of theatrical illusion and the material reality that stands behind or beneath it as its support collapses. What is in question here is thus not, as Lehmann claims, the undecidability of the action’s status, but rather the zone of indistinction to which it bears witness. ‘Real’ in a certain limited sense, its realness is ultimately enfolded and transformed by its placement within the aesthetic structure. The notion that the real could be the object of a strategy, aesthetic or otherwise, is a contradiction in terms. Lehmann’s approach implies the unproblematic partition of the postdramatic theatre artist who actively wields the traumatic force of the real (who themself irrupts the real) and the traumatized spectator who passively suffers the surprise of this force. Yet the real, defined precisely by its excess over and unavailability to any subject’s calculations, nullifies this scene of unequal distribution. In this sense, Zupančič argues, ‘the very opposition active/passive (our waiting for the Event/our exertions designed to make it occur) is misplaced. This is because the Real . . . does not have a subject (in the sense of a will that wants it), but is essentially a by-­product of the action (or inaction) of the subject – something the latter produces, but not as “hers.” ’26 One should hardly wonder, then, that when the real does irrupt in the course of the theatrical event, it takes the form of an accident; not ‘usually’, as Lehmann wants to claim, but exclusively.27 Those who wish to construe the real as a substance lying in wait just behind the veil of theatrical semblance, and would force it to the surface, inevitably find that the real thus summoned to the stage is never real enough. Lehmann contends that the experience of the real, defined as the absence of fictive illusion, ‘is often accompanied by disappointment about the reduction, the apparent “poverty” ’ of the postdramatic scenario.28 Yet the true disappointment, which might more precisely be called an anxiety, attending postdramatic theatre involves the fact that an experience of unmediated presence, from which the fictive has been eliminated – never really comes to pass. Unless, again, something goes wrong – but then, this is just as much the case in the dramatic work, indeed in any aesthetic structure. ‘The paradox of the Real . . . lies in the fact that as soon as we turn it into the direct goal of our action, we lose it.’29 Surfaced, the real cannot but lose its realness, and prompt performer and beholder alike to wonder whether there is not perhaps a more real real beyond this one. Clearly, we find ourselves caught up in a bad infinity.

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Yet there is a further and more important paradox to consider, which follows from the first and is poised to turn Lehmann’s approach to postdramatic ontology on its head. To claim to give the spectator unmediated access to the real is itself the supreme illusion, the most extreme gesture of deception. Far from subverting drama’s supposedly retrograde commitment to semblance, in staging the semblance of the irruption of the real, postdramatic theatre (as this is conceptualized by Lehmann) in fact redoubles this commitment by expanding its reach, fortifying theatrical illusion by seeming to weaken it. It is in this sense that we should read Slavoj Žižek’s polemic against the ‘return of the real’ in contemporary art. In Less Than Nothing, Žižek likens the ethics of this return to the strategy the Catholic Church devised to discourage its (male) congregants from succumbing to the temptations of the flesh. ‘[W]hen tempted by a voluptuous female body, imagine how it will look in a couple of decades – the wrinkled skin and sagging breasts. . . (better still, imagine what lurks even now beneath the skin: the raw flesh and bones, bodily fluids, half-­digested food and excrement . . .).’30 In asking the believer on the brink of giving himself over to the seductive force of beauty to remember what revolting realities teem under the skin, the priest’s position is strictly analogous to that of the postdramatic auteur who, intent on preventing his spectator from being taken in by the dazzling lure of theatrical semblances, reminds him of the mundane material that lies under the skin of the fiction. For Žižek, ‘such procedures amount to an escape from the Real, the Real which announces itself in the seductive appearance of the naked body’.31 Here we see that the Lacanian real, far from opposing the seductive force of appearances, is in fact on the side of appearances. ‘In the opposition between the spectral appearance of the sexualized body and the repulsive body in decay, it is the spectral appearance which is the Real, while the decaying body is merely reality.’32 Žižek makes the link to postdramatic theatre explicit: The same goes for contemporary art, where we encounter often brutal attempts to ‘return to the real’, to remind the spectator (or reader) that she is perceiving a fiction. . . . [I]n theatre, there are occasional brutal acts (like slaughtering a chicken onstage) which awaken us to the reality of the stage. Instead of conferring on these gestures a kind of Brechtian dignity, perceiving them as versions of [alienation], one should rather denounce them for what they are: escapes from the Real, the exact opposite of what they claim to be, desperate attempts to avoid the real of illusion itself, the Real that emerges in the guise of an illusory spectacle.33

One should, I think, see in this analogy between ecclesiastical and postdramatic recourses to (mere) reality something more than a structural

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isomorphism, insofar as it invites us to read its two terms as participating in the same moral logic, a vulgar Platonism within which semblance is always already suspect. Philippe Sollers put it best: ‘There is nothing more metaphysical, as everyone knows, than a certain materialism.’34

Figure 9.1  Installation view of David Levine, Habit, Essex Street Market, New York City. (Photo by Marsha Ginsberg.)

Figure 9.2  Detail, David Levine, Habit, Essex Street Market, New York City. (Photo by Marsha Ginsberg.)

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The Becoming-Sculpture of Theatre A collaboration of Levine, scenic designer Marsha Ginsberg and playwright Jason Grote, Habit is situated at the intersection of theatre, performance (specifically endurance performance), installation and sculpture. Singularly radical in its unembarrassed engagement with conventions of dramatic performance, the work is uniquely positioned to investigate what forms of production and perception are at stake in the making of theatrical semblance, and to determine how much or little any of this has to do with the enquiries that comprise contemporary art. Habit involves, but can in no way be reduced to, the performance of a play called The Children of Kings, a stereotypically ‘gritty’ kitchen-­sink-realist drama that Levine commissioned Grote to write in strict accordance with both the genre’s stock forms and the larger work’s unique parameters. Grote notes that when he considered trying out a minor ‘twist’ on realist drama’s typical gender breakdown, ‘David instructed me to follow the conventions. He wanted the context of the piece to defy conventions, not the script.’35 Levine submits the raw material of Grote’s drama, a compendium of realist clichés, to the institutional/perceptual conditions of the visual arts. Thus the action unfolds, not on a stage facing a stationary audience, but instead inside Ginsberg’s fully-­enclosed, fully-­functional and hyper-­realistically outfitted ranch home (equipped with working plumbing and running water, stove, refrigerator, stocked pantry and media centre). But for its lack of cladding and roofing, this domestic space is structurally complete. Real, not realist, Ginsberg’s ‘set’ is in turn installed at the centre of a large gallery space, where the tension of its double status – as both the site of a performance event and a sculptural object that, in its closure, mutely resists the spectator – is unequivocally at play. That this set is an enclosed working structure is not an extraneous gimmick; it’s what makes possible the ontological provocation at the heart of Levine’s work. A practical matter, too, this functionality is linked to the most distinctive feature of Levine’s work, namely, that its cast must perform Grote’s roughly hour-­long play continuously for the duration of the gallery or museum space’s hours of operation. Levine traps these endurance-­ actors within Habit’s fictive confines for roughly eight hours of daily, non-­ stop acting. Unable to exit the set or the script, they realize in a cannily literal way the pseudo-­psychology at the heart of American Method acting, which exhorts the actor to somehow become, to live as, the character. Spectators orbit this event-­object, cluster at windows, spy what action they can from its various, mostly restricted, vantage points. They come and go as they please, without this coming-­and-going in any way disturbing or disrupting the performance. At moments when no one is watching, the work continues on,

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as unmoved by the absence as by the presence of the beholder. In this way, Habit stages the asymptotic becoming-­sculpture of the theatrical event. It demonstrates that, taken to their limit, the conventions of dramatic performance yield, not the ‘ultimate’ theatrical spectacle, but rather a resolutely antitheatrical object, something that is, in its closure and quasi-­ permanence, a paragon of absorption. As such, Habit proposes a novel way of thinking the interplay between stage and gallery, semblance and real. As Amy Holzapfel remarked, ‘allowed to speak only their given dialogue, the actors “inhabit” the genre of contemporary realism’ itself.36 Yet while the restriction of the actor’s speech is the most obvious way in which she is constrained, the work effects the collapse of her reality into the fiction she is tasked with bringing to life in an even more profound and subtle way – namely, by dispensing altogether with blocking, stage business and stage directions. It is thus not exactly right to say that Grote’s play loops; it certainly repeats, but each playing of the drama differs from the last – in sometimes minor, sometimes drastic ways. It is left to the performers to determine, from one moment to the next, and from one iteration to the next, the relationship between its scripted necessities and the improvised contingency of their placement in and interaction with the space. This absence of staging is a direct consequence of the work’s antitheatrical organization; it is not arranged, not placed, in relation to any viewpoint whatsoever. There is no stage business because there is no stage; if Levine forgoes the perspectival illusions of the mise en scène, this is because the beholder is effectively in the presence of the very actuality (a real house) whose illusory effect this apparatus exists to produce. Habit aims to solve for x, where x equals drama minus theatre. Might x have something to do with the irruption of the real? Might not the absence of staging cede to the real the space from which, or in which, it can irrupt? To properly address such questions, we must consider how the work’s spatiality intersects and interacts with its temporality. Crucially, the extended duration of Habit means that the actors involved must address the very real exigencies of their bodies within and in relation to the space of the work. The needs to eat and drink, to relieve oneself, to wash up, even to drift, to succumb to the inevitable moment of boredom are, under the temporal circumstances of a typical theatrical performance event, easily and necessarily deferred. It is never too long until the actor is once again offstage, where she need not pretend she isn’t hungry, that her bladder isn’t full, that she doesn’t have a terrible itch that her character wouldn’t dare scratch. For the duration of Levine’s work, however, there exists absolutely no offstage where, or interval during which, the actors’ needs might be dealt with out of view, and the performance simply lasts too long to ignore them all. At some

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point in the course of the day’s work, each actor will need to ‘cross’ to the kitchen and find or prepare something to eat. The actor is satiated; her real needs are met, yet it is the character who eats. Likewise with other corporeal needs. Whatever the performers in Habit do must be done in character. Or, more precisely, whatever they do will have been done in character. The freedom the actors are granted to navigate the space of the work as they see fit in fact amounts to total retroactive capture by their roles, which of course means that, in Levine’s work, the real such as it figures in Lehmann’s text is always-­already neutralized. This is perhaps not so difficult to understand: where, at a certain level, everything is permitted to the actor, nothing the actor does can register as a transgression. If one’s only habitus is the set and text of a play, one cannot but be in character. There is, strictly speaking, no place to be out of it. Habit performs a specifically Lacanian intervention by rendering a logic central to Lacan’s thought in architectural terms. Recall that our excursus on Lehmann’s theory of the postdramatic began with the distinction he establishes between the opposing ways that theatre positions the real in relation to the order of semblance. While, for Lehmann, the fictive cosmos of the dramatic work necessitates the exclusion of the real, the postdramatic work opens itself to the shattering effects of the real’s irruption. This would appear to correlate with the crucial ontological distinction at stake in Lacan’s thinking of sexual difference (in his understanding, that is to say, of being itself as sexuated). As developed in his late work, ‘sexual difference’ names neither biological nor cultural phenomena, but rather the fact that there exist two different and irreconcilable logics by means of which the subject gets inserted into the field of being (that is, of the signifier).37 On the – masculine side, we find two formulas, or logical propositions – ∃x Φx, ∀x Φx – which together ‘say’: there exists one x that is not submitted to the phallic function; all x’s are submitted to the phallic function. The formulas on the – – – feminine side – ∃ xΦx, ∀xΦx – can be read: there is not one x that is not submitted to the phallic function; not-­all x is submitted to the phallic function.38 To do real justice to the nuances of these formulas simply will not be possible here.39 For our purposes, we will simply observe that, on what Lacan calls the masculine side of sexual difference, an all – a cosmos – indeed exists, but only insofar as something escapes and exists beyond the law of the all, insofar as there is an exception that frames and founds its rule. By contrast, on the other (feminine) side, there exists no such point beyond, no exception, no outside. And yet, in spite of this lack, or rather, precisely because of it, that which is turns out to be not-­all. Which is to say that the field of being fails to form a cosmos, but rather remains open – not to some(thing) outside, but rather (with)in itself.

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Does this ontology of sexual difference actually correlate to the distinction Lehmann seeks to establish between dramatic and postdramatic? Though, as we know, Postdramatic Theatre never directly addresses this dimension of Lacan’s thought, it seems likely that its author would read the masculine logic as isomorphic with dramatic structure, and the feminine as isomorphic with the postdramatic. However, this reading would be a serious misreading. For whether a theatrical form excludes the real from semblance or invites the real to disrupt semblance, both come down to the same thing: in both instances, the real is positioned beyond the aesthetic, in an other realm. Indeed, when it comes to the real, dramatic and postdramatic theatre (at least as Lehmann articulates them) are different only in that in the former, the real remains elsewhere, whereas in the latter, this other realm intrudes on and interrupts the work of semblance. By real contrast, Habit is one answer to the question, what would a work that refuses the vulgar materialist fetishization of the real look like? What would it look like to insist on semblance itself as the proper domain of the real? If postdramatic theatre is marked by an irruption of the real meant to tear and tear itself free from the veil of semblance, and if this event of rupture correlates with the intrusion into theatrical space of an aesthetic logic that originates in the visual arts, Habit offers us something like postdramatic theatre’s negative image. It not only does not subvert the protocols that engender theatrical illusion; crucially, it performs a hyperbolic affirmation of precisely those norms and conventions that the postdramatic most wants to undermine. Habit supplants the fictive cosmos with a real one. In a space constituted thus, there can be nowhere and no way for the so-called extraaesthetic real to irrupt. Ultimately, the work models, at the formal level, Lacan’s fundamental insight: there is no outside-­of-semblance, no beyond where the real would appear to us in its ideal purity, and that the real always emerges as an immanent and inassimilable excess from the domain of appearances that is the subject’s sole habitat.

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Process: ‘Set Writing’ in Contemporary French Theatre Kate Bredeson

In French artist Philippe Quesne’s 2008 La mélancolie des dragons, a group of rock musicians converge in a painstakingly recreated forest on a proscenium stage, and, amidst the towering trees and buoyant snow drifts, the group crafts vivid and inspiring new worlds from the materials in their onstage car and trailer. In its staging of punk theme parks and the grand visions of a group of wanderers, La mélancolie invites audiences to witness wonder through scenographic feats that unfurl in real time on the stage. French and Belgian, respectively, artists Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort’s 2013 collaboration Germinal enacts a similar creation process. In Germinal, the artists use the conventions and vocabulary of theatre to build, in front of an audience, a physical world and new language from scratch using what begins as an unadorned black box set. Germinal’s bare stage evolves into a luminous landscape where figures bask in glowing light and communal song. The dramaturgy of Quesne, Goerger and Defoort – all of whom came to theatre from the visual art world – is ‘scenographic-­led’, as Richard Allen describes Quesne’s work.1 Moreover, this dramaturgy positions each audience member in the role of what Maaike Bleeker calls the active ‘seer’, instead of passive ‘spectator’.2 Engaged participation and community, on stage and off, are key in both productions. Quesne’s, Goerger and Defoort’s scenographic-­ led worlds highlight the ways some contemporary French theatre makers rely on metatheatrical stages to draw attention to seeing, and to amplify the role of process for both the onstage and audience communities of their performances. These twenty-­first-century French artists invite scholars, students, artists and critics to both reassess and expand Hans-Thies Lehmann’s framework of postdramatic theatre, so that it can account for not only aesthetics and form on the page and stage, but also the pre-­production processes that Ric Knowles calls a part of the ‘material theatre’.3 This reassessment and expansion is at the heart of what some twenty-­first-century

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French theatre artists – and Quesne, Goerger and Defoort specifically – offer ongoing conversations about postdramatic theatre. In addition to making performance that can be categorized as postdramatic, Quesne, Goerger and Defoort work in a contemporary paradigm that some contemporary French critics call l’écriture de plateau, or ‘set writing’. Philosopher and theatre critic Bruno Tackels proposed the concept of l’écriture de plateau in 2001 to describe changes he observed in the theatre of his contemporaries, including an absence of the actor, diminished spoken text and the presence of scenic ‘writing’.4 While Tackels points to many of the same phenomenon Lehmann observes in Postdramatic Theatre, he seeks not to reiterate, but to extend the idea of the postdramatic to include contemporary French performance and theory. Indeed, Tackels published his study one year before the publication of the French translation of Lehmann’s book. In his oeuvre of l’écriture de plateau studies, Tackels investigates what French artists are doing, alongside notable artists from Italy and select other countries, in this postdramatic turn in theatre history. His national scope is of particular importance given how, even in France, the concept of the post­ dramatic has long been associated with the Germans, the Belgians, the North Americans, the Polish and the English. In Postdramatic Theatre, Lehmann addresses the work of Peter Handke, Tadeusz Kantor, Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch, the Wooster Group, Forced Entertainment, Goat Island and Jan Lauwers, among many others, and he draws frequently on a large number of French theorists from Antonin Artaud to Julia Kristeva – while largely overlooking French theatre practitioners. What Lehmann did and did not include in his book has come to define the postdramatic, and the omission of France has spilled over into even recent French studies of postdramatic theatre. In his 2013 book Le Théâtre Postdramatique: vers un chaos fécond? (Postdramatic Theatre: Towards a Fertile Chaos), for example, French theatre scholar Gérard Thiériot looks not to fellow French theatre artists, but to ‘the Germanic sphere’ as the centre of his investigation.5 In France, theories of language and space are fundamental to the longstanding and rigid sense of national identity. Since 1635 the Académie Française has dictated and shaped the French language and theatre. The famous 1637 controversy over Pierre Corneille’s Le Cid instigated a national debate about language, rules and dramatic structure. In the twentieth century, writers and theorists such as Walter Benjamin and Guy Debord studied how the urban landscape of the French capital city articulates key principles about the way French society and thought is organized. Likewise, Gaston Bachelard and Maurice Merleau-Ponty theorized space and semiotics from within a French national context. Jean Genet staged similar work in the theatre, provoking relationships between space and character in the panopticon

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world of Haute Surveilliance and the metatheatrical Le Balcon. These writers and artists made clear that space creates meaning, and that there is a difference between an abstract concept of space and space that has been directly experienced. Bachelard argued, ‘A house that has been experienced is not an inert box. Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.’6 In his theory of l’écriture de plateau, Tackels extends this space and language investigation into contemporary French theatre by looking at how scenography has emerged as a primary driver of dramatic worlds, particularly in those where traditional written dramatic text is largely absent. Tackels focuses on theatre where the scenography propels the work, hence the term ‘set writing’. His body of writing on l’écriture de plateau includes monographs on French artists Ariane Mnouchkine and François Tanguy, as well as select international artists, such as directors Romeo Castelluci, Rodrigo Garcia, Anatoli Vassiliev and Pippo Delbono, whom he invites French readers to consider in light of his theorization of scenography-­driven writing. Tackels proposes that these set writers are doing the work of ‘deconstructing’ the work of the previous century of theatre.7 The implications of his proposal are that, by extension, l’écriture de plateau challenges the rigid and omnipresent institutional categories which have long dominated and divided French theatre practice. His framework, then, is not just a theory, but a challenge to the staid institutions that continue to govern French theatre practice. French theatre translator and director Anne Monfort’s recent writing about l’écriture de plateau further expands the category of the postdramatic. In her 2009 essay, the title of which can be translated as ‘After the postdramatic: narration and fiction between set writing and neo-­dramatic theatre’, Monfort juxtaposes Tackels’ l’écriture de plateau against ‘neo-­dramatic theatre’ as one of ‘two major orientations on the European scene that can be seen as the legacy of post-­drama theatre’. In dialogue with Lehmann’s work, Monfort proposes that l’écriture de plateau: places the notion of writing (not exclusively textual) at the centre of the creative process; this type of writing uses basic forms that can be plastic, choreographic or transdisciplinary. Writing, and possibly narration, is taken on by the staging in the broad sense, that is to say, by all the media constituting the spectacle. On the other hand, the notion of ‘neo-­ dramatic theatre’ refers to a theatricality in which text, characters and fiction remain the basis of stage work, even if the text is deconstructed, character is dislocated and the fiction put in question.8

Monfort writes from the perspective of having created and carried through productions from initial idea to closing strike. From this vantage, she

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highlights how writing – whether textual or choreographic – is not just product, but also an active and extended process. She ties her comment about ‘creative process’ to a variety of options for how work is made – via plastic arts or choreography, for example. Monfort identifies l’écriture de plateau as more than just an aesthetic category, but also as an embodied manner of making work. For Monfort, l’écriture de plateau is not just a part of postdramatic theatre, it is the ‘heir’ – the continuer of the legacy – of the postdramatic.9 Monfort’s observations lead me to my argument in this essay, that Lehmann’s term ‘postdramatic theatre’ describes a fixed object or category, while Tackels’ concept of ‘set writing’ describes an action of creation. In this way, ‘set writing’ invites a reconsideration of the category of the postdramatic. Through ‘set writing’, critics and scholars encounter a new framework not just of aesthetics and onstage product, but also the way in which the work was created. ‘Set writing’ is a shift, to draw on Bachelard’s example above, from an analysis of the house as an ‘inert box’ to one that can be viewed through the experience of having inhabited it. I propose that l’écriture de plateau extends Lehmann’s ideas to recognize and include the creative process and thus offers a new way of thinking about postdramatic theatre. Philippe Quesne, Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort, all of whom live and work in France, are expanding the parameters of twenty-­first-century French theatre through their set writing projects. Their works offer clear examples of ‘set writing’ and invite new considerations of what the postdramatic is and can be. The work of Quesne, Goerger and Defoort shows how l’écriture de plateau encompasses not just product, but creation methods as well. While Quesne, Goerger and Defoort have numerous examples of works that could be analysed in terms of the postdramatic and l’écriture de plateau, in Quesne’s La mélancolie des dragons and Goerger and Defoort’s Germinal the onstage performance at the centre of each work highlights the offstage pre-­performance creation methods. Quesne, Goerger and Defoort’s projects are about innovating both the onstage product as well as the way in which the works are made. In the worlds that Quesne, Goerger and Defoort craft on stage in their productions, they enact the discovery, collaboration and the physical construction and assembly of objects that typically happen offstage, before the final stage product is presented. From the initial idea to the collaborative work with a team to make spectacle, these metatheatrical productions stage and draw attention to the very process of making theatre. In this way, these productions exemplify current theories of l’écriture de plateau and shed new light on the postdramatic.

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Philippe Quesne Stages Artistic Process and Wonder Philippe Quesne’s creation process exemplifies how l’écriture de plateau is both part of the postdramatic and also extends Lehmann’s concept. In conventional theatre-­creation methods – those taught and practiced as standard in most graduate training programs and professional theatres in France, Canada, the UK and the US – the written dramatic text comes first, as scenographers and various designers craft designs in response to the written words. In the work of Quesne, by contrast, a strong singular image propels the entire endeavour. In my interview with Quesne about La mélancolie des dragons, he reported that the starting point for the production consisted of the central images and the title: The first idea was to talk about knights and to situate the piece in the Middle Ages. And the question was, what are the quests today? Who are the knights and dragons today? What dragons are in villages that we go in and destroy? This is evident in La mélancolie with the car on stage, and the group of knights (heavy rockers) inside the car. So the birth of this project was the idea of the car, the group of knights in the car and Isabelle entering into it. It’s St. George and the Dragon. Then I bought these wigs for the actors. They became hard rockers.10

Quesne started La mélancolie with the specific image of knights, an association with a particular time period and the idea of a real car on a proscenium stage. Quesne’s postdramatic process is marked by his studies in visual arts and scenography, his refutation of theatre conservatory training as a prerequisite for making professional performance, and his obsession with making painstakingly detailed life-­size stage terrariums in which to pose sprawling philosophical questions. In both his onstage compositions and his offstage reimaginings of the material conditions of making stage work, Quesne shakes up convention. He came to theatre through work in exhibition design, music videos, audiovisual projections for events and set design for opera. His ongoing projects blend his ruminations and experiences into large-­scale performances composed of film, digital media, theatre and visual arts. His particular eye for detail marks his stage worlds, so much so that his productions look like large-­scale museum display cases. When Quesne started his company in 2003 as a way to engage in interdisciplinary research about art and life, he christened it Vivarium Studio. In a 2007 interview with Tom Sellar in Theater, Quesne reflected on his audiences: ‘You watch as if you were looking into a vivarium – like a living aquarium, with humans instead

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of insects. The public becomes voyeurs into the process of art making, seeing artists like little animals’.11 Quesne’s statement underscores his desire for his audiences to actively see artistic process. The name of Quesne’s company reflects the ways that, in his art practice, he creates enclosed worlds where human bodies and objects meet, and into which he invites others to look. In La mélancolie des dragons, Quesne amplifies the sense of voyeurism by putting on stage as a central figure Isabelle, through whom the audience members see the entire onstage world and watch artistic creation unfold. Instead of obscuring what Maaike Bleeker calls the ‘visuality in the theatre’ – as is typical of dramatic theatre – the figure of Isabelle draws attention to the audience member’s complicity in attending to the stage world. Through Isabelle, the audience members of La mélancolie discover real time stage tricks and innovations. Audiences first see Isabelle shortly after the pro­ duction’s opening. A tiny woman in a blue parka, she arrives through the spindly trees on the vast and snowy forest set with her bicycle, observes the onstage music-­blaring Volkswagen Rabbit full of male rock musicians, and crosses to the driver’s window to peer at the quartet inside. One by one, the men exit the car. Then three more men, previously unseen, emerge from the trailer. All greet Isabelle with French bises – which takes considerable time for the seven men, with two-­cheek kisses each. After one man opens the vehicle hood, he gestures helplessly at the inside of the car and implores Isabelle with a begging look. Recognizing his request for help, she peers closely at the smoking engine. She then speaks the first words, nearly a quarter of an hour after the production began: ‘No.’ With Isabelle’s arrival on the scene, the situation becomes clear: the septet is stranded in the middle of nowhere with their vehicle having broken down, and they have called their friend for help. Through Isabelle, Quesne sets up the convention of what Elinor Fuchs calls the ‘single, perspectival “point” ’ in order to subvert the idea of the central human character as focus of the production.12 Isabelle stands as a proxy for those viewing La mélancolie. She becomes the lens through which Quesne’s world is seen. Her back is frequently to the audience; instead of focusing on her facial expressions and wondering about her own experience, the audience is invited to experience awe as they observe the onstage landscape through Isabelle’s eyes. Quesne observes: ‘Isabelle is really another object in the show. It’s as if the spectator has a remote control and directs Isabelle around to investigate the stage.’ This experience is created through her repeated questions and moving through the space. After diagnosing the car engine as kaput, Isabelle wanders toward the trailer. ‘What is this?’ she asks. ‘This here? It’s a trailer’, responds one of the men. ‘It’s the first attraction of the park, the mobile park, the touring park.’ ‘A stage?’ she asks, ‘No, it’s not really a stage, it’s an installation.’ A quartet removes the trailer’s side panel, revealing seven

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rock star wigs dangling from wires. In the trailer they turn on a red light, a fog machine and loud metal music. Isabelle watches, her back to the audience, her silhouette framed by the light from the trailer; the audience is invited to watch her watching this marvellous red-­light hair museum on wheels. ‘Wow,’ Isabelle admires. Isabelle’s action of moving from wonder to wonder enacts Quesne’s creation of La mélancolie through a series of rehearsal discoveries. In crafting the work, he and his company devised unusual ways to play with quotidian objects like cars, books and garbage bags. Isabelle’s marvel at every turn stages for the audience members La mélancolie’s creation process of revelation and discovery. Isabelle is Isabelle Angotti, a former lawyer, a friend of Quesne’s, and a central figure in the company’s work since Vivarium’s inception. Her casting highlights another of Quesne’s offstage innovations that distinguishes his work and marks his postdramatic process. Since casting his mother, a philosophy teacher, in his first production, Quesne has always borrowed performers from his personal life, uninterested in traditional casting practices or acting training. What Quesne calls his ‘not much sacredness’ toward acting and dramatic text forms just one part of the way he works; he not only turns away from polished written text as a starting point, but also conservatory training and disciplinary specialty. In addition to working outside of the conventions of acting and directing training – in a country where national conservatory training remains standard in professional theatre practice – Quesne’s creation methods are marked by devising and improvization. Isabelle and her seven merry friends often look like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves as they travel around the stage in a pack, sharing great affection as they explore and encounter the rocker men’s travelling theme park. After the trailer is opened, all eight squeeze inside the foggy gallery. ‘It’s a sauna also’, one of the men states, and ‘a library’, ‘you can cook’, ‘a food cart’, ‘a factory’, ‘it can be used for many things’. The men explain that this trailer is ‘the first show we present when we arrive somewhere because it is . . . mouthwatering’. The revelation of the trailer interior surprises the audience and is the first in a series of visual revelations that form the production’s structure. Quesne’s wandering rocker knights have become stalled in the forest while on tour. The objects in their truck and car are their tools for installing pop-­up amusement parks. Their quest: to provide people with the experience of joy and awe through low-­budget means, and with genuine kindness and enthusiasm. Quesne’s distinct language is representative of his larger experiment. La mélancolie’s clipped dialogue is the opposite of the elevated, trained diction on display at the Comédie Française; performers speak with a lilting inflection, delivering the lines in staccato bursts and with a matter-­of-fact tone. Like the tempo of the whole event, the linguistic

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landscape of Quesne’s world is spare, informal and unhurried. Quesne’s research interests focus on how devoid of traditional French theatre hallmarks his large scale productions can become; in his work, he employs not just nonacting, but nontheatre language as core elements of his process and productions. The ultimate questions that Quesne presents on stage in La mélancolie are the same ones that Isabelle encounters while navigating the stage during the production: in today’s expensive, high-­tech world, what can still inspire genuine wonder? What can create community? He poses these questions to both the community he creates on stage, and those gathered in his audiences. Quesne runs his experiment to answer these questions through both the content of his productions and the way he makes them. In La mélancolie, as the rockers show their few possessions to Isabelle, they remark that they have everything they need in the world. They display their guitar, a projector, skis, a bubble machine. These objects are worn. They give her a tour of their library, which includes books about nature, dragons, philosophy and theatre theory, as well as a children’s pop-­up book. Through these books they display for the audience research subjects considered during the creation of this production. At one point, the rock musicians inflate an enormous plastic bag that takes up about one third of the stage; as they inflate and deflate it gently, the bag lilts in an undulating dance, set to a delicate piano tune. Richard Allen remarks how the objects function metatheatrically: In Quesne’s theatre, subtle inter-­animations between objects, people and contexts appear to replace dramatic structure altogether. Objects are used to expose the nature of theatre as a machine of representation, setting up the moments of breakdown and rupture that become the very things we find theatrically pleasurable. This happens through their activation within the exchange of animation.13

When six figures pick up the bag and perch it atop their extended hands, they perform what they call ‘choreography’ for Isabelle, carrying the looming inflatable around the stage above their heads. These men may look tough in their torn vests, band T-shirts and leather pants, but every one of them is enthusiastic and tender as they work together to show Isabelle the worlds they love to create. They invite her to carry the inflatable along with them. They jump atop the car and perform melodramatic scenes for her. They invite her to climb a ladder, where they shower her with fog, fake snow and movie music; this moment is her star turn in their amusement park of happiness. Isabelle is a rapt and adoring spectator, encountering every object and anecdote with patience and pure delight. ‘Wow’, she says repeatedly. ‘It’s

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incredible.’ And it is astonishing for the seer, too, that a gigantic inflatable bag can hold potential for so much awe. Ultimately, through Quesne’s meticulous construction of the stage space, La mélancolie des dragons proposes that, amidst all the detritus of contemporary life, simple human presence and creativity hold radical potential – a proposal that is enacted through Quesne’s work on and offstage as he redefines what it means to make twenty-­firstcentury French theatre. In Quesne’s core research that he returns to again and again in his work, from L’Effet de Serge (2007) to Big Bang (2010), he tests out the idea that simple pleasures, like a bubble machine or an old projector, and, most important, people gathered in community, can provide happiness even when we are lost. Quesne’s formula relies not on cynicism or consumerism. Through his postdramatic process, he argues that we can construct our own amusement parks from scratch, we can make theatre with nonactors and everyday texts, and we can keep coming together. As Quesne puts it: ‘On stage, it’s always my topic to talk about what as artists we can do with catastrophes, with problems in society. I don’t want to propose solutions through the work. But we can use the poetry and the art to try to propose new worlds. It’s a simple and big message.’ For Quesne, the way the work is made is as important to this inquiry as is the final product. La mélancolie des dragons affirms through its process that our common quest – as artists, audiences, researchers, humans – is to be and work together to experience wonder and joy.

Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort’s Real Time World Building Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort share with Quesne this thematic quest to make community and to highlight creation process as part of the onstage product. In the stage world of Germinal, they focus on staging artistic creation, while their offstage work is marked by similar postdramatic creation methods. Like Quesne, their work can be considered part of l’écriture de plateau. When beginning Germinal, Goerger notes that theatre, as a form and idea, ‘became a subject of investigation, of reflection. And that’s the very way we work. We have new interests, and we try to make them into something that is of interest for a larger audience. That is what drove us.’ He elaborates: ‘We wanted to build something that did not rely on the contract of what is usually obvious between the audience and what is happening on stage.’14 Despite their lack of theatrical experience or training, theatre was the best possible medium for Goerger and Defoort to tell the story of Germinal, partially because of the subject matter and also because of the creation

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opportunity it provided the artists. In making Germinal, and in the ruminations presented on stage during the production, Goerger and Defoort draw attention to the processes behind the aesthetic innovations of post­ dramatic theatre. Germinal is, in fact, Goerger and Defoort’s first stage creation. Both are adamant that they know nothing about theatre. These co-­creators identify primarily as visual artists who have strong solo careers, and they have collaborated on several largescale interactive installations, such as &&&&& & &&& (1999) and Les Thermes (2012). ‘Our bodies are always on the line. We love to perform, that’s where we come from,’ Goerger said in my interview with him and Defoort. The pair formed their company L’Amicale de Pro­duction to produce ‘artistic transversal objects, halfway between the realms of theatre, visual and performing arts. Born in 2010, the company defines itself as a ‘project cooperative’ trying to respond to aesthetic, technological and economic challenges related to new forms of authorship and aesthetics.’15 Through both the company’s composition and working methods, Goerger and Defoort redefine conventionally taught and practiced dramatic creation processes in contemporary French theatre. The pair’s creative work is marked by devising, discussion and exper­ imentation – hallmarks of the postdramatic process. Goerger notes that for him and Defoort, they work together as if they were making ceramics: ‘We tend to spend a lot of time talking. It’s very related to psychoanalysis. We try to make something. It’s like using a potter’s wheel. You think it’s going to be great and the clay is going to build up and then . . . shit . . . it’s bad . . . it’s falling. That’s the way we work.’ Defoort continues: To go on with this awkward metaphor, at one point this clay thing tells us how to deal with it. ‘I want to be an installation.’ So we try to become its servant. It’s not the text first – everything is put on the same level, including our bodies. So, basically, we ask ‘what do we want to work with?’ . . . In Germinal it was about having other people onstage besides us. We wanted to work with actors. And so we discovered in a way directing. . . . For Germinal it was the first time we worked as directors with actors.

They see theatre buildings too as particular sites with great potential for working with technology. Defoort notes of Germinal: ‘So on stage, first, we know how to think, then to speak, and so on, and to categorize, and to progress. So quite naturally we ended up with computer tools – the most recent ways to help us communicate.’ He continues, ‘This would be a piece that would build itself. Everything we would need to do the thing would come from the stage.’

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Germinal opens in pitch darkness. As in La mélancolie des dragons, key to Germinal is that the production takes place in a traditional proscenium theatre space, and that the audience sees the onstage space open into a series of revelations. The metatheatrical subject of artistic creation is one of the core ideas driving the work. Germinal’s initial silence is interrupted by clunky sounds reminiscent of an Atari joystick in motion. Lights flash, and through the intermittent light pools two human figures emerge, each seated on the floor and hunched over a controller. From within the opening soundscape, Goerger and Defoort begin to visually guide the audience through the phases of discovering the auditorium’s physical space, along with the elements that go into mounting a stage production. As the lights come up, Goerger, Defoort and the other two performers, Ondine Cloez and Arnaud Boulogne, are revealed to be manipulating small light boards. As they wrench the controls, more lights flash – from bright washes to colourful travelling gobo specials. When the lights come up more fully, the empty stage is revealed: a large proscenium black box with thick, dark curtains along the upstage wall, all four people sitting on the floor working with their boards. From this earliest moment, Germinal is rooted firmly in the recognizable world of the conventional theatre, revealing aspects like technical equipment and the bare stage that are not often seen by spectators. That the performers on stage are using actual boards to manipulate lights adds to the palpable energy of revelation; this sense of real-­time discovery is crucial to Goerger and Defoort’s work. Just as the audience members experience La mélancolie’s space through Isabelle’s wonder, in Germinal they see through the eyes of the four figures on stage who are playing with the technology. When, shortly after the opening, a red swirl zooms across the stage, performers and spectators audibly share a sense of wonder. From the audience’s vantage point, these opening light games look like a glimpse of a theatre technical rehearsal. Germinal’s main preoccupation is a journey through different ways of communication. As the four figures realize that they are the ones who can control light, they also discover that their thoughts can be projected on the upstage wall. The first lines of the production appear in white letters on the black wall. Each sentence spells out the inner thoughts of someone on stage and is located near the figure whose thought it is. No words are spoken aloud. Goerger and Cloez exchange the following transmission of thoughts: And what’s that? Never tried that one. Doesn’t seem to do much. What’s it assigned to? Nothing by the looks of it.

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But hang on. Hang on. Am I the one doing the . . . So every time I . . . . Goerger discovers that he is the one making the lights go. Every time I . . . It displays . . . Alright, then So I can express myself. I can go abstract. I can conceptualize Ondine, look, we can transfer thoughts outside our head.

In the world of Germinal, it is a revelation that thoughts can be made manifest and shared, a step towards dialogue and understanding. Inverting the Aristotelian imperative of dramatic theatre, Goerger articulates that he and Defoort were interested in making art that was not based in conflict: ‘Drama is overrepresented in art. The dynamics of writing conflict are easy.

Figure 10.1  The four actors of Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort’s Germinal (2013) bask in a glow of light beneath a wall of words. (Photo by Bea Rogers.)

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It’s a challenge to write something that does not go in this direction without being too hippie-­ish.’ Defoort agrees: ‘We decided to put the heat on consensus.’ In Germinal, this ‘heat’ is generated through the four figures collectively encountering and discovering the stage space, and then building new both a language and a physical world. This effect is compounded by the knowledge that, offstage, the artists making this work about discovery in the theatre are themselves making a theatre production for the first time. Revelations physically open up Germinal’s landscape, and, as in La mélancolie, they form the production’s structure. In Germinal, however, Goerger and Defoort rupture the actual confines of the stage to draw attention to the particular way theatre works as both form and working method. When Cloez grabs a pickaxe from the upstage wall and uses it to impale the floor, she opens the physical boundaries of the stage to something beyond the basic black box for the first time. In this action, and in what follows, Goerger and Defoort make clear their core aim: to use the stage to investigate community and draw attention to creative processes as a way of researching the world and how humans live in it. When Cloez extracts a microphone from under the stage floor, she helps the group gain the abilities to communicate vocally and with amplification. As the physical space cracks open, the humans move from just seeing each other to reading and speaking with each other. Later they sing and, ultimately, communicate via a discovered laptop, which they initially mistake for a ‘control manual’ for their new world: ‘But it only has two pages!’ Cloez exclaims when opening the laptop for the first time. From the microphone to the laptop, the tools used on stage in Germinal are the ones used offstage as means of making the theatre production. In the world of Germinal, language emerges as a powerful implement for investigation and analysis. The language is conversational and casual, but also technical and specific. As the group discovers and gathers tools for world-­ building, they begin – in a sort of onstage production meeting – to categorize their discoveries. Cloez asks the others: ‘What were the other communication modes we had before?’ Goerger responds: ‘Surtitles, phonation, phonatory transfer and clip-­on mics.’ They project these words onto the upstage wall. Discovering an impulse to create order, Defoort exclaims: ‘Hey, I know. Let’s make a big list. A list of everything.’ After enumerating the communication forms they’ve used so far, the quartet writes down everything else in their world: ‘Hole, pickaxe, cable, floor, mixing deck, Halory, Antoine, Ondine, rubble, Arnaud, ambiance, idea, heap, hand-­holding, corner. . .’ When Defoort asks them to circle up and join hands, they continue the list: ‘Cheerfulness, insistence, conspiracy,’ and, when Boulogne does not follow suit,‘stubbornness.’ As the wall grows too full, the group subdivides the list. Here, Germinal highlights the human impulse to categorize; what follows takes that impulse

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to an absurd level as the group arranges and rearranges the categories, changing labels and shuffling things so that the words jump around on the upstage wall. Soon everything is divided into things that go ‘poc poc’ and things that do not go ‘poc poc’ – ‘poc poc’ being the sound made when a microphone hits an object. When the ability to go ‘poc poc’ is determined by hitting things, Goerger asks whether ‘the joy of being together’ counts. After Defoort tries to tap the microphone on the air in between the group, he determines: ‘Not poc poc.’ In Germinal, the division of the world into ‘poc poc’ and ‘not poc poc’ makes perfect sense, and at the same time is a deeply funny mediation on the simultaneous delights and drawbacks that language offers humans in their efforts to communicate. In this way, Goerger and Defoort’s language echoes that of earlier theatre artists Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Suzan-Lori Parks and Tom Stoppard. Germinal enacts the discoveries that form the core of creating a theatre production. The performers start with an empty black box, discover a shared language, gather and use tools, make lists, experience conflict and, at the end, sit back and bask in what they’ve made. At Germinal’s end, the quartet sits in a glowing pool of haunting light and styrofoam packing peanuts, all the words of the evening projected on the wall above them, a retrospective of the previous ninety minutes. ‘Thanks to a little ritual. We think we managed to create a series of events. Answering to coherence criteria regarding space and time,’ the four sing, finding melody and grace in clipped and formal language. The harmony invites an awareness of time and linear progression within this large looming stage world. As Germinal’s structure barrels towards its conclusion, the pool is lit blue and then white. A wash of light engulfs the stage, then funnels down around the pool as ‘End’ comes up over the actors’ heads. Out of darkness and nothingness, this lush moment of coming together emerges after a detailed exploration of how and why we connect and make art in and outside the theatre. Germinal proposes that direct communication and innovation are the keys to creation, that theatre spaces offer powerful language and tools for community, and that all of us have the capacity to build both new ways of communicating and new worlds out of our immediate surroundings.

The Postdramatic Process Goerger, Defoort and Quesne share a deep interest in theatre making as a way of making work, and, through their productions, they stage questions about aesthetics and form. They join the loose grouping of artists including Joël Pommerat, Xavier Le Roy and Jérôme Bel who work within the paradigm of

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l’écriture de plateau. Although this assembly is distinctly multidisciplinary and draws from visual arts, performance, theatre and dance as creation tools, they are united by a shared questioning of conventional training and formal dictates. Quesne notes: ‘Finally, it’s a bigger family, of these kinds of artists, now in France.’ He credits the dance artists for not only the new aesthetic on stage, but also leading the new way of making work: ‘The choreographers in France, like Bel, came up with this nondance form, and not only the form but a new way of producing.’ As the work has changed and the family of artists grown, financial support for them has transformed too. Many of the younger directors are now taking over France’s national theatres, and Quesne himself is the current co-­artistic director of Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, one of France’s prestigious national dramatic centres. Quesne notes: ‘My aesthetic is what it is because I had no support.’ The écriture de plateau artists have moved as a group from the fringe to the mainstage, taking their aesthetic and creation innovations with them. In Quesne’s case, this means that the celebrated co-­director of a prestigious national dramatic centre not only works with untrained actors and without a script, but himself does not have conservatory training in theatre. For these reasons alone, he is challenging what it means to create theatre on the French national stage. His work, like Goerger and Defoort’s, does not just break with aesthetic and formal dramatic tradition, but with accepted creation processes. There is thus a hopeful and political promise at the heart of both La mélancolie des dragons and Germinal in terms of the onstage worlds and the offstage creation processes. Quesne, Goerger and Defoort’s on and offstage organizations of their companies and their productions extend and innovate; they create new power circulations and ways of making performance within French theatre institutions. They open up access to theatre-­making on a grand international scale, and also on a French national level, to artists to whom these levels have long been inaccessible. They make possible new working methods that are not dependent on a particular set of qualifications or adherence to traditions. Quesne spoke of his early observations of French theatre-­making methods: When I was a set designer, I worked with directors who followed a restrictive traditional method: choosing the text, choosing the actors and then bringing the set designer along as a partner who would then help to define the aesthetic. I stopped everything to work on this production, without any guaranteed commission or grant. I just started doing it without making official arrangements within the French cultural system. I began by composing little objects and scenes. At first I think there was only one actor, and finally there were ten people onstage.16

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In a country where students are rigidly tracked into professions before high school, and performing arts workers come through regimented conservatory training, Quesne’s upheaval and his ascent to the co-­artistic direction of one of the country’s prestigious dramatic centres signals a decisive rupture. In their inversion of conventional French theatre training and creation methods, Vivarium Studio and L’Amicale de Production propose and impose new orders. In this way, these artists’ creation processes and onstage productions signal a larger stakes conversation in twenty-­first-century French theatre. The stakes of the postdramatic extend outside the theatre into the politics of how the works are made. As Ric Knowles notes, this is not just about offstage creation methods, but also about the ways that institutions are structured in terms of hiring and support. A significant progression of the French postdramatic theatre – one that is evident through an analysis of l’écriture de plateau – is that of the artists working outside of conventional theatre training moving into high profile, professional, internationally-­touring theatre and performance spheres. This development – in and outside of France – destabilizes traditions of who does and does not have access to making theatre, and who is invited into what lineage and histories. And yet, in France, postdramatic theatre remains, like French dramatic theatre, a form dominated almost exclusively by white men. The postdramatic shift in French theatre holds a tremendous amount of radical potentiality, but little has yet happened on an institutional level to dismantle white male supremacy of French theatre. Through its acknowledgement of offstage process, set writing highlights the room that exists to further destabilize and open French theatre, and to carry it forward from tradition. The trajectories of Quesne, Goerger and Defoort indicate room for possibility. This is necessary work, and their accom­ plishments so far are a beginning.

11

Choreography: Performative Dance Histories Yvonne Hardt

Dance plays a crucial role in Hans-Thies Lehmann’s concept of postdramatic theatre: one could even say that dance epitomizes some of the main characteristics of postdramatic theatre, such as the absence of clear signification and the importance of the body, especially in its ‘interactions’ and sensuality that make it an ‘agent provocateur’.1 Yet, even as Lehmann cites several dance protagonists as key referents for this new form of theatre, he mostly discusses dance under the category of the ‘body’, or, what he calls (relying on Giorgio Agamben) ‘pure gesture’.2 Dance, conceived as such, embodies a potentiality for Lehmann. A similar understanding of the body, especially with regard to states of transgression, bodily becomings and de-­ figurations – which cannot be simply semantically captured – has been significant in refiguring dance studies since the end of the 1990s.3 However, these studies, which focused on a phenomenon using the contested term ‘concept dance’, also foregrounded other aspects of dance that are less present in Lehmann’s work, even though they would fit perfectly under his analytical umbrella; these include the (self-)reflective potential of dance, its challenges to concepts of knowledge, a critical impetus towards the modalities of (re)presentation and dance institutions, the inclusion of media or reflection of mediality, as well as new forms of narration and dramaturgy in contemporary dance.4 The absence of concept dance in Lehmann’s work might be due to the fact that this phenomenon only gained prominence at the end of the 1990s as Lehmann was publishing his book. Artists like Jérôme Bel, Eszter Salamon, Xavier le Roy, Isabell Schad, Mette Ingvartsen, Martin Nachbar, Vera Mantero and many more have exposed and researched the mechanisms of creating, performing and reflecting dance both with regard to the physicalities of bodies as well as their absences. Like no other dance form, this development has inspired the rise and (institutional) establishment of dance studies in the German and European context.5

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By taking a phenomenon like concept dance as a central focus, this new dance studies discourse was able to develop and test a specific theoretical framework that Constanze Schellow has identified in her recent genealogical analysis of the dance studies field Diskurs-Choreographien (Discourse Choreographies) as the productiveness of ‘no’.6 According to Schellow, establishing aspects of ‘absence’, ‘still-­act’ or ‘withholding’ as central characteristics for this new dance practice allowed critical dance scholars a double manoeuvre: it not only legitimized and gave authority to this ‘new’ or ‘unconventional’ understanding of dance and its accompanying scholarship, but it provided a point for dance studies to break from the theatre studies discourse in Germany that was shaped by Lehmann and Erika FischerLichte’s work on the performative turn. Resisting notions of ‘presence’ or ‘realness’ as a central phenomenon through categories of ‘still-­act’, ‘absence’, and ‘withholding’, dance scholars carved out a different theoretical approach that aligned dance studies – as Schellow and also Susan Manning and Lucia Ruprecht have pointed out in their anthology New German Dance Studies – to a more philosophical approach.7 This strategic positioning of dance studies is embedded in the disciplinary conflict that Kate Elswit has identified as being marked by the hegemonic tendencies of theatre (studies) to subsume other practices – especially dance.8 Accordingly, there have been only a few studies in dance studies that actively draw on Lehmann or the term postdramatic.9 As Elswit points out, this may have something to do with the fact that since modernity dance was already identified as having postdramatic characteristics; dance, in other words, has never been ‘conventionally’ dramatic.10 Thus, I would argue that how one speaks of certain phenomena of dance or postdramatic theatre depends on the strategic positions one takes both within the field and the academic discourse more broadly. With this said, my aim in this essay is not to widen the definition of the term postdramatic theatre; nor do I ponder questions directly about the relation between dance and (postdramatic) theatre. Instead, I do two things: first, I will make active use of some of Lehmann’s central notions – specifically the use of narration, the potential of self-­reflection and institutional power – as an analytical lens for researching dance forms that work to destabilize conventional borders of the field. Second, I would like to further deconstruct the binaries of discourse and body, making-­sense and sensuality, which surface not only within Lehmann’s schematic differentiation of dramatic and postdramatic theatre, but also in a tendency of dance studies that understands the body as a site of permanent becoming and resistance (e.g. to classical concepts of knowing and representing). The focus on how productions and bodies are made to appear through the use of narration and media, how different forms of bodily practice overlay each other, and how dances are

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embedded and work with forms of reflection, can render a more complex scenario that resists clear categorizations. I will focus on performances from within this extensive field of conceptually driven dance that critically appropriate and work with their self-­understanding of dance history on stage, or what I have called elsewhere a ‘performative history of dance’.11

Performing Dance History and the Dance Studies Field The past two decades of European contemporary dance has been marked by a remarkable interest in (re)construction and (re)enactment. Jérôme Bel’s Véronique Doisneau, Martin Nachbar’s Urheben Aufheben (Undertaking Uptaking), Boris Charmatz’s idea of a centre for choreography as a museum, Fabián Barba’s imaginative (re)construction of a full evening of work by Mary Wigman, and Olga de Soto’s performances based on interviews with those who watched dances decades earlier – all are exemplary of the (re)appropriation of dance history from a critical standpoint.12 Moreover, this development has considerably broadened the spectrum of what (re)construction or (re)enactment encompasses. Working with the past is no longer considered a field for highly specialized dance historians trying to reconstruct old dances based on rare and fragmentary archival sources with the aim of rendering performed dance histories as close as possible to an ostensible original. Instead, the recognition that presenting the past on stage will never be possible has allowed artists and scholars alike to foreground both the critical potential of (re)construction and artistic acts implied in this process.13 While these performances expose different modes of taking up historical dance references, they all engage a concept of history that understands itself as a construction based on the needs of the present.14 As such, this artistic practice can be placed within a context where theatre and the arts more generally have worked to explore what can be considered ‘the production of historicity’, contributing to a wider academic discourse that brings the understanding of memory and history into motion.15 In this context, (re)construction has been perceived as an ideal field for combining the seemingly incompatible realms of academic and artistic practice.16 In both scholarship and art, the past is no longer conceptualized as something static to be retrieved from the archives; instead, the process of remembering in itself is considered a performative process,‘which establishes, stages, restages, and constantly modifies its object while simultaneously creating new models and media of commemorating’.17 It is no surprise, then, that this form of ‘performative history’ has been of interest to critical scholarship in dance studies over the last decade.18 In Germany, research on

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critical forms for dealing with the past on stage has become pivotal in developing the discipline of dance studies, as scholars draw on tropes and discourses that are crucial for investigating the so-­called conceptual dance scene more generally. In Diskurs-Choreographien, Schellow pointedly described this as being marked by the ‘no’ – practices that are distinguished by notions of withholding, standing still or absence.19 I propose that this paradigmatic framing of the field has also carried over into the study of how the past is dealt with in dance performance, namely in the focus on the critical potentials of inherent failure, difference, diversion and transgression that these performances present in relation to the past. Krassimira Krushova is exemplary in this regard, as she claims that (re)enactments should be understood as a kind of reading ‘again and against’ (wieder und wider).20 While there is – ever since Mark Franko’s pivotal essay on repeatability21 – a shared understanding that one should talk about constructions rather than reconstructions, little academic attention has been paid to the construction processes of performative histories like these. Yet focusing on the productive part of ‘doing history’ may help demonstrate the link between performative dance history and critical historiography even more, not only in the sense that the past is always implicated in or the product of the present, or that different histories exist simultaneously,22 but in understanding the importance of narration and materiality in authenticating and legitimizing both historical and artistic research. Moreover, this allows for questioning of the epistemological implications and categories that postdramatic theatre has for dance, especially when theatre scholars conceptualize dance primarily as ‘pure gesture’. My focus in this essay on plots, processes of physical appropriation and (de)learning, and inherent structures of power and authentication not only will emphasize the critical potential of a highly self-­ reflective dance practice, but will also challenge the divide between narration and sensuality, and de-­mystify the essentializing assumptions that underpin some theories of the performative in regard to the body.23 Last but not least, by asking how the critical potential of bodies and plots are made to appear, this chapter focuses attention on the political, ethical and institutional questions entailed when working with the past – which Lehmann sees as a crucial aspect in defining postdramatic theatre. Despite – or because of – its critical impulse,24 the development of this approach to performing the past has become institutionalized through festivals, conferences and funding institutions that support such endeavours. For instance, the Tanzfond Erbe (Dance Heritage Fund) is one of only two federal subsidy programmes for dance in Germany, and it explicitly provides support both to state theatres and smaller projects for archiving or reflecting on the modern dance heritage of the twentieth century.25 This raises several key questions: How do these

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institutions focused on exposure, funding and research help to establish new canons, deciding what to include and exclude? How do they interact with the chosen materials, including the performance and the critical discourse that surrounds and legitimizes this practice of performing history in dance? Although the answers to such questions are beyond the scope of this essay, I do try to address them by analysing the wider implications of three performances: Jérôme Bel’s Véronique Doisneau (2004), Martin Nachbar’s Urheben Aufheben (1999–2008) and Eszter Salamon’s Magyar Táncok (Hungarian Dance, 2004). These performances may stand in for the wide range of this field and are also acknowledged as central players in this approach to working with dance history. They allow me to focus specifically on how narration, materiality and media each expose, in very different ways, (historical) strategies for authenticating how to ‘work’ with the past. Moreover, conceptualizing this dominant trend in dance (not only in regard to these categories) will reveal how dance is a complex domain in the field of postdramatic theatre, one that extends far beyond how Lehmann and others have reduced it to simply the potentiality of bodies or of ‘pure gesture’.

Recontexualizing and Emotional Narration as Strategies for Reflection: Jérôme Bel’s Véronique Doisneau Jérôme Bel is considered one of the most important players in the contemporary European dance and performance scene. While once called an enfant terrible of the scene as his work refused classical notions of dance and virtuosity, Bel has become an established figure working in varying institutional contexts and with different artists whose ‘personal’ dance histories he stages in cooperation with them. The first of these artist portraits was with Véronique Doisneau of the Paris Opera.26 This piece can be understood in terms of an ethnographic look at Western dance, as Bel foregrounds and de-­constructs – with the help of Doisneau – ballet’s representational codes and hierarchical mechanisms. Bel said that entering the Paris Opera was like entering a new world, in which everybody worked according to mysterious codes he could not decipher. To achieve his critical reading of ballet, Bel deployed devices from previous pieces in which Doisneau had performed – many marked by her own absence of movement as an ensemble member – and to which he added narration. Véronique Doisneau recounts Doisneau’s story as a dancer at the Paris Opera. She informs her audience that she is forty-­two years old and will soon

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be retiring from the Opera. Doisneau opens up about herself to the audience by revealing the choreographers she likes, including George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, those she dislikes, including Maurice Béjart, and those from whom she has learned a lot, including Merce Cunningham. While Doisneau begins the piece standing alone on the huge stage, she eventually alternates between talking and demonstrating, or sometimes doing both simultaneously. In this way, an audience that otherwise might have been unable to recognize La Bayadère by Marius Petipa or Points in Space by Cunningham gains an impression of these choreographies. Doisneau tells of her preferences for certain roles like Giselle, which she was not allowed to perform because of her status as a sujet. Being a sujet, she explains, means being situated in the ballet hierarchy between etoile, the star or prima ballerina, and the corps de ballet, the mass of dancers. Her status gave her the opportunity to dance small solo parts, but also restricted her in many sequences to the corps. Doisneau draws attention to her voice as audiences hear her being out of breath while simultaneously talking, moving on point and dancing routines that demand virtuosity. The performance looks like ballet, but one that informs the audience about its history and working structures. In the most striking and emotionally evocative scene, Doisneau performs the role of a swan in the corps de ballet of Swan Lake, in which she remains still for most of the time, only occasionally changing position. Before the demonstration, Doisneau explains that although she considers these some of the most beautiful scenes in all of ballet, at times she feels compelled to scream when dancing a part of the famous second act. Despite its beauty, the passage is ‘torture’ for performers in the corps. And in the performance that follows, this becomes emphatically clear for the audience. While Doisneau stands still on the Paris Opera’s massive stage, Tschaikovsky’s emotionally charged score mounts to a climax. Conventionally, audience attention would be directed towards the etoile dancing centre stage while framed by the thirty-­two swans of the corps. Doisneau’s stillness, turned with her back to the audience, one leg crossed behind the other, and arms neatly folded, plays with the audience’s memory since it is very likely that they can imagine how the spectacle of Swan Lake would normally look. The past is evoked as an imaginary, as a backdrop that is not present, but which informs the perception of the present. Even if one has never seen Swan Lake as a conventional production, the audience probably has an image of ballet that is not characterized by the immobility that Doisneau performs. This scene exposes not only how much ‘not dancing’ is part of classical dance, but also the hierarchies involved in that structure, which align mobility both literally and symbolically with those on the higher levels of the hierarchy. It also highlights the difference between perception and production. Citing and

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de-­contextualizing repertoire leads an audience to reflect on how ballet is produced in hierarchical structures. The sequence also changes the ostensible ‘original’ for audiences who may no longer be able to look at it in the same way as before. Following the anthropologist Nelson Goodmann, who has extensively discussed quotation as a wider cultural practice, a re-­contextualization like this can be understood as a ‘double reorganization’, as the new version not only gives a different meaning to the quoted dance material, but also changes how we see the original.27 What once might have looked like a kinesthetically interesting group dance can no longer be viewed so simply, but is troubled by an awareness of the hierarchies and immobility inscribed within it. The citation process is embedded in a double strategy wherein narration is both crucial for establishing the framing of the quoted scene and for evoking sympathy and understanding toward Doisneau. This is a rather classical storyline, one that draws the audience into having revelations through empathic involvement. If an audience member does not identify with Doisneau, they might just be annoyed or find the performance boring. Intellectual revelation in this case is tightly linked to the emotional, not as something that is embodied or expressed, but as something produced through the dramaturgical set-up that strives to draw us intimately to Doisneau. This importance of emotionality for prompting reflection and as part of the choreographic strategy challenges the understanding of conceptually driven dance as breaking with emotional identification by compelling audiences to reflect on their own viewing. Questioning representational codes and deconstructing classical narration belong to an attack on illusionist or dramatic theatre. Véronique Doisneau, however – as with most of Bel’s more entertaining pieces – stimulates reflection by involving both emotion and narration (a strategy Bertolt Brecht had already explored in his writings on epic theatre and his calls for entertainment as the basis for intellectual insight and stirring the audience to social protest). The specific use of narration in Véronique Doisneau tackles yet another element of representation: the dichotomy between fiction and reality. The emotional strategy in narration does more than make us identify with and reflect on Doisneau, as it is also embedded within fictional traditions of theatre. As such, it raises the following questions: To what extent is Doisneau’s story true? Is this a lecture? Do I learn something about Doisneau and the mechanisms of ballet and the Paris Opera? Who has chosen the examples that Doisneau performs and how did they knit together? These are not questions we necessarily anticipate when we go to a conventional theatre performance or attend a lecture. While Véronique Doisneau could be aligned with other performance contexts, such as postdramatic theatre and its

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emphasis on ‘realness’ or the ‘expert’ performing herself on stage, the piece also exposes – in its highly formalistic and reduced performative approach – how these characteristics are the product of a mise en scène. As such, the performance reflects on narration and the border between fiction and reality, especially as it relates to a broader rethinking of memory and culture. Mieke Bal, for instance, understands the dissolving boundaries between fiction and reality as an essential project of cultural analysis.28 And along similar lines, Hayden White has re-­shaped the understanding of historical writing and the relevance of narration for it. In his groundbreaking book The Content of Form, White exposed how narration is part of a political foundation for history that not only allows for historicity to appear, but which is also the compositional device that links single events to a structure. This is a structure and a symbolic meaning that is not possible without a subject and which has a social law as the point of reference at its core. As such, narration is bound up in a double strategy: Precisely insofar as the historical narrative endows sets of real events with the kinds of meaning found otherwise only in myth and literature, we are justified in regarding it as a product of allegoresis. Therefore, rather than regard every historical narrative as mythic or ideological in nature, we should regard it as allegorical, that is, as saying one thing and meaning another.29

Just as White is able to demonstrate the potential of the imaginary aspects of narration for the construction of history and for making meaning, the artists I study offer a chance to understand White’s concepts while also taking up the challenge to reflect on the function of narration on stage. Moreover, performances like Véronique Doisneau provide a performative understanding of these concepts of narration, which are the basis of my analytical lens for conceptualizing a performative aesthetic of memory. What, then, are the multiple uses and functions of narration in these performances, and how do they bring about specific points of view and sensations of the body (as historic)?

Narrating the Expert and Failure: Martin Nachbar’s Urheben Aufheben Martin Nachbar’s Urheben Aufheben has become an exemplary site in the field for a critical investigation into the possibilities of (re)construction; moreover, it demonstrates how dance artists actively rework narrative strategies while

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developing their pieces.30 Nachbar, a Berlin-­based contemporary choreographer who trained mostly in release-­based techniques at the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, has been working to appropriate Dore Hoyer’s dance cycle Affectos Humanos (Human Affections, 1962) since 1999. Dore Hoyer (1911–1967) belonged to the second generation of German expressionist dancers. Although originally influenced by the first wave of modern dance in Germany, having been taught by Gret Palucca and Mary Wigman, Hoyer also broke new ground. Her highly technical and abstract movement compositions set her apart from the empathetic and ecstatic work of Wigman, for whose company she danced. Hoyer’s interest in the precise formal structures of the dances inspired Nachbar to work with material of hers that was professionally filmed by public television in 1962. This footage has secured lasting interest in and life for Affectos Humanos in various reconstructions, most prominently in the version by Susanne Linke, which she produced to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Hoyer’s death. From the start, Nachbar was interested in exploring what happens when he worked with movements generated by someone who comes from a different tradition and is of a different gender. As he proclaimed in a lecture-­ performance framing the first versions of his appropriation: ‘Such a type of re-­enactment is, according to Elisabeth Grosz, never a reproduction of the same thing, but a driving force for something new.’31 By working with a video, Nachbar perceived himself as creating the copy of a copy. However, to be granted permission to use and perform the dances, Nachbar had to get in touch with those who held the rights to the dances, the German Dance Archive and Waltraud Luley. Nachbar embarked first on studying three of the dances – Eitelkeit (Vanity), Hass (Hatred) and Angst (Fear) – with Luley. It was the attempt to work with the material as precisely as possible that allowed for difference to appear. Nachbar’s failure to reproduce in detail the exact physical challenges posed by the tense, virtuosic and dense movements in Affectos Humanos when learning the dances hardly precluded him from gaining insights and revelations, which he shared with audiences in the lecture-­presentation, the first form that Urheben Aufheben took. In this, Nachbar frames his performing of the dances by explaining the working process and showing videos, both of Hoyer’s video version of Hass as well as his own rehearsals of the piece. In Nachbar’s narration, which includes not only stage and video work, but also accompanying publications, Luley’s contributions take on an important position. According to Nachbar, the following happened when he showed Luley his version of Hass for the first time. The dance recorded on the video of Hoyer begins by showing bent fingers and clenched hands, one of them moving rapidly up while the other moves down, as the elbows are tightly

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arrested to the torso. At first when working with Luley, Nachbar executed this movement in a rather relaxed, almost ungainly fashion, at which point Luley started attacking him verbally, shouting: ‘Mr. Nachbar this is hatred! The whole body is in tension!’32 This marked the beginning of a work process in which Nachbar attempted to embody every detail of the choreography, from the movements of his little finger to holding his head in a specific manner. It is such small details that Nachbar points out when he says Hoyer focused energy and movements on very specific areas of her body. It is this complete commitment demanded by Luley that is required by anyone who wants to learn this material. Those who think it doesn’t look that difficult and believe that ‘they can do it, too’ are, in her opinion, not motivated enough.33 Here very different perspectives are juxtaposed through the potential of working with different narrational forms. There is the form of the lecture performance, which frames the event as a process and points to the material’s historicity and the impossibility of its ‘true’ restaging. As such, the lecture performance is a site of critical distance and self-­reflection. There is also the story of Luley, which serves a double function. Luley stands in for a history that demands careful attention to the specificity of the ‘original’, which is opposed to Nachbar’s more open and reflective approach. On the one hand, including both voices gives credit to different perspectives on history – it allows a more positivistic understanding of reconstruction within the piece that departs from the performer’s perspective. On the other hand, including Luley in this way functions also as a form of authentication, as the ‘expert’ is integrated with their status as an expert put front and centre. It adds a humorous element to the narration, albeit one that sidesteps the fact that ‘expert narration’ is a constant topic and problematic for many (re)enactments in the dance scene.34 Common to many of the (re)enactments that have become iconic is the use of an expert’s narration. This trend to include ‘experts’ is also fostered by the application criteria of the Dance Heritage Fund that supports many of these projects. The Dance Heritage Fund explicitly grants money for experts and also insists on ‘copyright’ for dance works – categories that are often in tension with the very project proposals themselves. Such criteria foster a sense that dance history is best transmitted by those who have practiced it. This has led to a tendency in which the inclusion of an expert attests to the seriousness of the artist’s investigation. There exists, then, the simultaneously different historiographical understandings and practices of (re)enactment both within the field and also even within individual performances or projects. To point to the contradiction in these narrative strategies is not meant to devalue these works, but rather to encourage a more complicated perception of them and to focus attention on how sources and their narrational framing might tell a different story than

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the overarching critical narration provided by the artists and scholars reflecting on them suggests. As such, this coexistence of different historical narrations is bound to different notions of authenticating and institutionalizing historical memory. Thus, by focusing on academic reflections on the critical aspects and alternative understandings of history that are proposed by these performances, one might also consider how including multiple narrations, their contradictions and their entanglement with institutionalization and authentication processes can actually exhibit the critical potential and perspective inherent to both these performances as well as analyses of them. That the question of narration and the format of lecture performance constituted a point of debate within Nachbar’s continuous reworking of this reenactment became even more apparent when in 2007 he took on the challenge of learning the remaining two pieces, Eitelkeit and Angst. The growing interest in reflecting on the past combined with a change in Berlin’s funding policies to allow subsidies for artists reworking their pieces, enabled Nachbar to receive public support to revisit this work. The result was an evening-­long production that kept the title of the lecture performances, but dissolved the strict demarcation between lecture and dance, and, in so doing, exposed the very artificiality of these divisions. While the piece drew on the earlier lecture performances for its narration and material, it now incorporated the critical reflection into a storytelling that no longer oscillated between lecturing and dancing. Nachbar performed lecturing as he marked and charted on a blackboard in a way that looked like dancing, demonstrating how practices usually associated with intellectual reflection and bodily appropriation are, in fact, intertwined.35 The interrelatedness of learning and creating movement is also highly pertinent to memory in dance. The more of an interaction between all dimensions of dance there is – its teaching of technique and movement, language, charts, video – the more the continuity of a certain practice, or the livelihood of a piece can be ensured. This is made clear in Nachbar’s reflection upon his failure to reproduce the dances of the Affectos Humanos. The inability to easily and mimetically inhabit the movement material encourages a deeply analytical approach to the dances, which allows one to develop the tools necessary to make the movements accessible and danceable for someone trained in a different technique. This encouraged Nachbar to develop pedagogical tools and exercises for communicating these dances to other dancers of his generation. This indicates a belief in the power that reflection and analytical understanding can have as an archival tool. Moreover, this links to yet another strand of theory on memory, largely from cognitive science, which proposes that learning things through multiple approaches

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leads to more stable memory in the long term.36 In this light, then, it might not seem surprising that Luley entrusted Nachbar with rights over Hoyer’s dances, despite their different historiographical perspectives. This coexistence of the historical and the contemporary, which does not make for a single critical voice, focusing instead on the productivity of diverse ways of ‘doing’ history, could also be instructive for the academic debate about such appropriations. To acknowledge forms of knowing that do not operate in terms of failure, but in terms of inheritance, can help us appreciate how bodies achieve the status of historicity on stage while also troubling the belief that there is just ‘one’ possible form for understanding history.

Archiving and Imagining Dance Communities: Eszter Salamon’s Magyar Táncok The question of inheritance is also at stake in Eszter Salamon’s Magyar Táncok. Although it draws on the form of the lecture performance and treats archiving as something that takes place in performance, Magyar Táncok focuses on how narration structures a dancer’s identity and how this narrated identity is interlinked with political and ethical dimensions that can be brought to the surface. One could say that, like Bel, Salamon turns an ethnographic eye towards contemporary European dance by integrating a dance style considered to be local and traditional. By placing contemporary dance strategies in conversation with dance styles usually excluded from contemporary dance performances, Salamon asks us to re-­evaluate divisions between tradition and modernity, and encourages dance historians to venture into unconventional dance fields. Moreover, her work allows one to reflect on how issues of identity and historical narration are intertwined in processes of artistic identification and as part of a historical strategy. Archiving while performing informs Salamon’s Magyar Táncok, in which she (re)presents the Hungarian folk dances of her youth in the context and format of a contemporary dance and lecture performance. Salamon, who first received formal ballet training in Budapest before engaging in contemporary dance in France, aims in this production for a documentary restaging of yet another part of her dance training: the Hungarian folk dances that she learned from her mother. In her presentation, she is supported by her family and friends – both dancers and musicians – from her home village in Martonvàsàr, Hungary. Her mother, who has taught folk dance all her life, joins Salamon in this production for her first stage performance. At the same time, Salamon incorporates contemporary performance strategies and frames the dances with reflective texts that describe them and deal with

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issues of politics, regional identity, her own bodily formation, gender and cultural hybridity. As such, the performance shows and re-­works Hungarian folk dances by (re)contextualizing and questioning them. In doing so, it demonstrates a sincere interest in archiving the dances by granting them a new platform and by enhancing understanding and appreciation for them. Salamon accomplishes this by proposing a notion of archiving that does not arrest the dances in a static form but presents their questioning and re-­ working as essential to safeguard the dance form in a contemporary world. Salamon’s performance also contributes to an understanding of how dance is implicated in different historical discourses. Both contemporary dance and folk dance seem to inhabit different temporal realms. Folk dances, for instance, tend to be considered the repertoire of a local memory. They ostensibly represent custom and a culture frozen in time. Such a viewpoint denies folk dance the complexity and capacity for development typically afforded to other dance forms in the theatrical tradition. The avant-­garde in dance, by contrast, is considered in terms of ephemerality and progress. By seeing these two dance forms brought together – the traditional and the avant-­garde – the audience is asked to question the stability of such mutually exclusive characterizations. Principally, Magyar Táncok alternates between solo, duet and trio dances, accompanied by Salamon speaking, contextualizing, explaining and questioning each dance. The piece is also framed by two further contemporary interventions. In one, the audience is invited to participate in disco dancing on stage, and, in the second, Salamon concludes the dance by performing her own contemporary movement phrases that draw on the folk dance idiom performed earlier. Over the course of the show, the audience is introduced to a variety of dances including circle dances, dances for men and dances with sticks. The selection of the dances, Salamon informs us, is influenced by her own preferences for dances that require virtuosity and that are marked by fast, spontaneous and swirling movements. Salamon directs the audience’s attention towards footwork, rhythm and spacing as she circles feverishly with her partner changing directions at an amazing speed. Thus, the virtuosity of the steps and performance becomes apparent at the same time as the circling and musical accompaniment kinesthetically arouse the audience. The textual framing of these dances allows a contemporary dance audience – that might be sceptical of folk dance, for either aesthetic or political reasons – to appreciate their movement qualities. The framing moves the focus toward an aesthetic perception of folk dances. Salamon also encourages – though not actively – the audience to see parallels with the virtuosity of ballet, such as when she extensively kicks her legs or spins in circles, which is similar to dancing endless fouettés. While this aspect of the

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performance potentially destabilizes the borders between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, the ethnographic and documentary aspects keep the distinction alive. Alongside the notes in the programme, video projection of footage created by Salamon suggests a continuity with tradition in what Salamon is presenting, and contributes to a larger project of authenticating the dances and research presented. One of the most compelling scenes in regard to this tension between tradition and modernity, between creating a sense of authenticity and restaging, is evoked by film footage from Salamon’s travel to Transylvania. When commenting on the film Salamon presents herself as an ethnographer on a field trip. She conceives of herself as a visitor in a cultural setting that has been sheltered from Western culture by Cold War boundaries. Salamon approaches this situation like researchers who visited the area in the 1930 and 1940s did, bringing with her a team of dancers and a cameraman. They learn the dances from the ‘locals’ and then bring them back to teach to others. In addition, she also presents the newly learnt dances on stage. The difference between the poorly dressed locals who are filmed dancing in a muddy square in front of shabby huts and the neat stage performance could not be more striking. Salamon plays with this difference and presents herself as working in the tradition of Belà Bartok, who was crucial for initiating the preservation of folklore from this region, but who was also aware that such a task inevitably included transforming the cultural practice. Such an acknowledgement of a failure to restage dance tradition as it ostensibly was is a common trope and practice of dance (re)enactment, one we encountered also with Nachbar. In Salamon’s case, it performs the double function of authenticating and giving the aura of a self-­critical perspective. Even while questioning the material, this manoeuvre gives credibility to the author or performer in a context where the pursuit of ‘truth’ has become understood as impossible. One of the central issues in Salamon’s reflective appropriation are gender relations as they are represented in the dances, which she both exposes and alters in her version. She does this by omitting movement or re-­contextualizing it, which is a central choreographic strategy in contemporary dance. Such a re-­contextualization is obviously apparent when Salamon demonstrates, all by herself, a simple side step in a circle dance that women usually perform as a group holding hands while their male counterparts perform intricate footwork. Presenting first the film footage of the group dance and then performing the action alone on stage, barely moving, Salamon makes the simplistic and mundane nature of these steps strikingly apparent. She laments and exposes the women’s immobility caused by the dance’s gendered hierarchy. Even though Salamon does not draw this connection, one could conclude that the women dancing in a circle perform a function similar to

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that of dancers in the corps du ballet; they stand as a supporting backdrop, in this case to their male counterparts. While this re-­evaluation resonates with Véronique Doisneau, Salamon does not leave with a changed perspective. It comes as no surprise, then, that in her re-­appropriation of Hungarian folk dance, Salamon has also learned the male parts. In the act of actualization and re-­contextualization, she questions the relationships between group, individual and the performance of gender. Interestingly, there are also different narrational strategies at work in Magyar Táncok that complicate this act of appropriation. Salamon’s act of archiving draws on a discourse of folk dances as an art form outside of the contemporary mainstream and seems to re-­stabilize distinctions between tradition and modernity by taking up an identity that is marked by her own individuality. Archiving reveals the strategic, political and artistic biases and reasons behind Salamon’s choreographic choices. Nonetheless, the piece is, with its ambivalence and the ethnographic discourse on which it draws, highly interesting for understanding how history is written and performed. This is especially important because folk dance has a rather marginal status within the growing field of dance studies; the predominant realms for studying folk dancing continue to be in area studies, ethnology and anthropology.37 Salamon takes up these topics of national, local and oral-­ mimetic culture and combines them with a documentary approach. She demonstrates the competing and coexisting interpretations of Hungarian folk dances with alternating ‘imagined communities’.38 Rather than aligning Hungarian folk dances with a singular political discourse of national identity, one can detect competing nationalist and regionalist perspectives. Both, however, attribute to the dance form an ability to constitute identity and represent political positions. More specifically, while Salamon criticizes the communist appropriation of the dance form as a national project, as well as its codification and mis-­en-scène, she shares with this nationalistic view an anti-­capitalist perspective, aligning the regional identity she sees in the dance form of her childhood with a subversive move against globalization and universalism, both of which are not only the cornerstones of capitalist development, but also, for her, inherent to ballet. It almost seems surprising that Salamon is drawn to a nostalgia that positions folk dance in opposition to ballet. For Salamon, folk dances include improvization and are rooted in a locality, while ballet signifies a form of bodily training that cannot be linked to any democratic notion of the body, but is highly international. The reason for Salamon’s nostalgic view might be rooted in an attempt to imbue her performance with a personal note. Her investigation and historical presentation is in a double sense marked by a ‘vested interest’. It legitimizes preservation but also places her within a

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tradition of contemporary dance that challenges both codes of presentation and what is considered contemporary dance. The affiliation with the Hungarian folk dance tradition offers Salamon an alternative vision of social and artistic alliances. Moreover, she raises the question of how identifying with a dance form is also part of imaging one’s own dance community. As such, the narration – even when performed as an expert talking about ‘oneself ’ – is not so much about ‘realness’. Instead, presenting something as being imbued with the status of ‘realness’ and embedded in identity politics is crucial for being identified as an artist who challenges conventional norms of dance making. This is the double function of narration: it yields a specific perspective on dance and history that is aligned with questions of the political, ethical and institutional as they relate to both the practice we see and the wider academic discourses on dance and theatre.

Multiple Narrations – A Conclusion The complicated workings, strategies and functions of plot and narration that shape how dance movements are perceived or influence how both body and material are worked with in the process and presentation of dance, clearly complicate any reduction of dance to, what Lehmann calls, ‘pure gesture’. Contemporary dance is a highly reflective practice that warrants detailed analysis of how its strategies let bodies appear with what then becomes considered a historical quality. The coexistence of intermedial and often contradicting practices (bodies in action, videos and other materials, sayings and discursive framings) challenges dramatic traditions of theatre as much as an understanding of dance that is simply bound to the immediateness of the body and the effects it generates through movement (for both the dancer and the audience). The challenge then for contemporary dance performances is both to question the immediateness of the body and to situate this practice in historic, institutional, political and ethical dimensions.

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Migration: Common and Uncommon Grounds at Berlin’s Gorki Theater Matt Cornish

Postmigrant Theatre and Form The audience watches, shocked, as the teacher grabs the gun, considers it for a moment, then shakes it, terrified, at her Turkish-German students.1 They’ve been cursing and spitting, these teens, insulting one another and their teacher, in a language that barely resembles Hochdeutsch (standard German). But now, with all the focus of fear, they perform, at their teacher’s request, scenes from Friedrich Schiller’s classic eighteenth-­century plays Die Räuber (The Robbers) and Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love). The students slowly transform, sensing intuitively the Sturm und Drang emotions of the characters, becoming Ferdinand and Louise, Karl and Franz. They become, perhaps, more German. Verrücktes Blut (Crazy Blood), created by Nurkan Erpulat and Jens Hillje, constantly upsets our balance by introducing new information and new layers. It is fractured, with German folk songs interrupting the main action: a teacher, who is revealed to have Turkish roots herself, taking control of her classroom with the threat of violence, compelling her immigrant students to integrate. The actors present themselves as actors, putting on their costumes in front of us and taking off their characters’ masks, so to speak, during the songs and again at the end of the play, when they address the audience directly. They make use of their real bodies, marked to German eyes as foreign, to tell and to shatter the stories, both Schiller’s and their own. Verrücktes Blut is politically clever and emotionally jarring, incorporating Turkish-German bodies into deutsche Kultur and expanding the canon to include Turkish-German stories, while also showing the racism of canonization. With its interruptions and its sharp, multilateral critique, in thinking and writing about Verrücktes Blut I have wanted to argue that it is ‘postdramatic’. But why? What are the stakes – aesthetically, politically and historically – of such a classification?

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Verrücktes Blut premiered in 2010 in a small black box space called Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, in the Berlin neighbourhood of Kreuzberg. Though Kreuzberg has now gentrified (so many Americans live there that sometimes you need to order your coffee in English), it was, in the 1970s and 1980s, home to artists and immigrants, especially immigrants from Turkey. Established in 2006, Ballhaus Naunynstrasse calls itself postmigrantisch, ‘postmigrant’; the artists who work there have settled in Germany, are no longer completely Turkish, no longer foreign, but do not always feel completely German either. At Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, I saw many artists creating documentary theatre – telling on stage, essentially, their stories and the stories of neighbours and friends. In 2013, Shermin Langhoff, the Intendantin, or managing artistic director, of Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, departed and became co-­leader, along with dramaturg Jens Hillje, of the Maxim Gorki Theater, located across the Spree River on Unter den Linden. Unlike Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, a freies or independent theatre, the Gorki is a Stadttheater, a municipal theatre, much of its budget provided by the city of Berlin, which also owns the building. The guaranteed budget of Staats(national) and Stadttheater allows them to keep an ensemble of actors and other artists on salary, and to run their houses in true repertoire, meaning that a given production will appear only several times a month, but may stay in rep for several years. (For ease of use, I will from now on refer to Staatsand Stadttheater as state theatres.) In exchange for a reliable source of funding, the Berlin government chooses (at the recommendation of its Minister of Culture, an elected politician) the artistic leadership of its municipal theatres. The Gorki is the smallest state theatre in Berlin, residing in a Prussian building along a Prussian boulevard, neo-­classical, its façade like the entrance to a Greek temple, with pilasters above four Corinthian columns. During the division of Germany, Unter den Linden was the seat of the East German government; today, the Gorki sits next to the German Historical Museum and across from the Berlin Stadtschloss, a reconstruction of a Prussian palace scheduled to open in 2019. This is a site, in other words, deeply intertwined with German identity: Prussia, communist East Germany and the Berlin Republic. In my book Performing Unification, I closed by studying Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and Langhoff ’s first two years at the Gorki, describing how Verrücktes Blut, and productions like it, imagined the possibility of a hybrid and hyphenated Turkish-German identity. In this chapter, I return to the Gorki to address how the theatre, now in its fifth season under Langhoff, has developed. Since I wrote Performing Unification, scholars, like me, have shown a tendency to categorize Verrücktes Blut and other postmigrant productions as postdramatic. At the same time, other scholars lament

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that postmigrant theatre is not aesthetically experimental enough. A series of questions has been troubling me. Why do scholars prefer postdramatic forms and radical aesthetics in theatre made by migrants? Do we need new, postdramatic forms to address systemic racism and the denial of the lives of refugees, or can experimental forms in fact reinforce such racism? How do we account for changes at the Gorki, from an institution that imagined integration to one that, this season, commands: ‘de-­integrate yourselves!’2 To address these questions, we need to develop a deeper understanding of form: theatrical, institutional and social. Here, drawing on the formalist vocabulary developed in the introduction to this collection,3 I will explore the Gorki and its postmigrant theatre praxis as aesthetic object and as made product, shaped by society and shaping, afforded and affording.4 Postmigrant theatre wants to be political, to defend the humanity of all humans in Germany, to assert the belonging of diverse names, colours, languages, genders, gender expressions and sexual orientations in the body politic, and to proclaim the responsibility of Europeans to rescue and shelter refugees. Does postmigrant theatre become political through its form, and if so, how? By incorporating the bodies and stories of postmigrant artists into dramatic structures, as when the Turkish-German students in Verrücktes Blut performed Schiller? Or only in challenging and breaking existing systems and hierarchies, experimenting with postdramatic forms and interrupting the illusionary wholeness of drama? In asking these questions, particular to Germany in the 2010s – just after the broadening of the legal definition of German citizenship, and during the European refugee crisis – I am also exploring ideas with expansive consequences. How have race and ethnicity resonated in contemporary experimental theatre? What happens when we try to fit art and artists into an a priori category: beginning with theory and only then approaching a process, a performance, a moment? In other words, in addition to studying the theatre itself, I want to study the scholarly criticism surrounding postmigrant and postdramatic theatre, showing how the contradictions in these classifications are endemic to the form of postmigrant theatre, especially at the Gorki. After beginning with a survey of definitions of ‘migrant’ and ‘postmigrant’ theatre, I lay out the relationship between theatre made by first- and second-­ generation immigrants and postdramatic theatre – the former with its (often personal) narratives of exile, travel and belonging, the latter with its rejection of narrative. I conclude by returning to the Maxim Gorki Theater. ‘Common Ground’ is an essay about institutions, unacknowledged structures and encounters with difference in the still-­developing postmigrant theatre.

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Defining Migrant Theatre Postmigrant theatre is riven by tensions: the need for migrants to be sheltered by and accepted into European nations, and the desire that national borders be challenged, if not destroyed. While some scholars see documentary theatre – non-­fiction stories performed using the means and methods of journalism – as helping open society to migrants and refugees, while giving them voices in their new communities, others see postdramatic theatre as the best means, within the theatre, of challenging the systems that created refugee crises in the first place. More confusingly, what some scholars see as documentary, others see as postdramatic. Postmigrant theatre, a term introduced in and still specific to the German context, can be understood as a type of ‘migrant theatre’. Jacqueline Lo and Helen Gilbert, in their essay ‘Toward a Topology of Cross-Cultural Theatre Practice’, place ‘migrant theatre’ under the rubric ‘big M multicultural theatre’: ‘a counterdiscursive practice that aims to promote cultural diversity, access to cultural expression, and participation in the symbolic space of the national narrative’.5 In migrant theatre, specifically, Lo and Gilbert see ‘narratives of migration and adaptation’, aimed not just at the migrant group but also ‘wider audiences’, narratives that, through language, content and aesthetic form, emphasize ‘cultural in-­between-ness’ and ‘hybridity’.6 Immigrants make theatre to tell their own stories and assert their belonging in their new public sphere, even as they preserve, through the performances, some of the identity of their origin culture, not melting completely in the melting pot. Building off Lo and Gilbert, Emma Cox, writing in Theatre & Migration, finds that ‘[t]he episodic or vignette mode of storytelling appears frequently in theatre of migration’. In this dramaturgy, Cox sees a ‘mythopoetic envisioning of migrants’ and ‘an aggregate picture of “types”, emphasising commonality over individuality’7. Narratives that follow the form of The Odyssey are typical: episodic and mythic, not just the story of a particular person, but often the story of an entire people. These definitions of migrant theatre largely match the aesthetics of Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and now the Maxim Gorki. Postmigrant theatre distinguishes itself by adding an element of some stability to the liminality of the migrant: for the most part, these artists have immigrated permanently, or are the children of immigrants. They do sometimes tell stories of migration, but they focus on negotiating between a culture that has not quite accepted their presence and an old ‘homeland’ that may never have actually been their home. Unlike the migrant theatre described by Cox (whose research focuses on Australia), rather than creating allegorical characters, the artists of the German postmigrant theatre mostly tell stories about specific individuals, in a style similar to that of documentary theatre.

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Scholars looking at postmigrant theatre have especially focused on Schwarze Jungfrauen (Black Virgins), which premiered in 2006 at a festival curated by Langhoff, before she became Intendantin at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse. Feridun Zaimoğlu (a Turkish-German immigrant) and Günter Senkel (German) adapted Schwarze Jungfrauen from interviews with young Muslim women in Germany, using but also modifying German documentary theatre. Katrin Sieg writes that Schwarze Jungfrauen employed ‘the tropes of documentary, factual authenticity, insisting that new truths are already out there’.8 Agreeing with Sieg about the production, Lizzie Stewart, in an essay on Schwarze Jungfrauen and documentary theatre, adds, echoing Lo and Gilbert: ‘This theatre often thematizes migration and postmigrant life in Germany and aims to redress the lack of postmigrant representation on German stages by promoting postmigrant artists and perspectives.’9 Stewart finds the artists’ label of their production as ‘semi-­documentary’, fact mixed with fiction, to be apt, offering audiences a sense of the Muslim experience in Germany.10 Stewart and others see many benefits in semi-­documentary drama, which gives migrants the opportunity to share their stories with broad audiences.11 Yet Sieg expresses misgivings about the form. The primary problem Sieg identifies is that documentary drama is mimetic: it represents. ‘Are Turkish Germans,’ Sieg writes, ‘now eligible for naturalization (German citizenship), co-­opted into the logic of mimesis, reproducing therefore the exclusions and hierarchies of the cosmopolitan, European transnation’ at the expense of more recent migrants, especially refugees?12 While Lo and Gilbert find the cosmopolitan impulses of Multicultural theatre to be consistent with Homi Bhabha’s ‘hyphenated hybridity’, Sieg (who was not responding to Lo and Gilbert specifically) has strong reservations: I wonder whether that particular dramatic form, organized around the autobiographical, humanist self, fully endowed with the capacity to reason among equals and persuade without recourse to violence, as cosmopolitan thinkers in the Enlightenment tradition have envisioned it, is actually able to register conditions of living under the contemporary structures of absolute sovereignty and bare life described by [Giorgio] Agamben.13

For Agamben, human rights are something called into being by the sovereign nation state; they are not natural or universal, but, as a legal category, exist only if a state recognizes an individual’s citizenship. While Aristotle saw polis and oikos as autonomous spheres, with zoē (the mere fact of being alive) separate from bios (a way of life, like political life), Agamben worries that the

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distinction has now been eroded. He writes that ‘the entry of zoē into the sphere of the polis – the politicization of bare life as such – constitutes the decisive event of modernity and signals a radical transformation of the political-­philosophical categories of classical thought’.14 Turkish-Germans, eligible since 2005, as Sieg notes, to become naturalized citizens,15 try to create with their theatre the conditions through which others, including refugees, might also be recognized by the state. This may seem an unambiguous ethical good. But Agamben argues that the sovereign state exists only as it excludes. Refugees ipso facto belong to no state and cannot be recognized. Without bios they are also without zoē. Human rights are a contradiction in terms for the refugee: denied access to the state, they have no rights. Indeed, for our international system, they are not human. They exist as bare life (their existence is that of non-­existence) and can die or even be killed in the Mediterranean without anyone being held responsible for their deaths. In other words, Agamben argues that the short-­term gain of some few refugees, given shelter by nation states (or organizations of the nation state, like the European Union), in fact just reinforces the circumstances by which many more refugees are denied protection or even basic recognition of their lives, left to drown anonymously at sea. So where Olivia Ryan Landry sees in Telemachos, a 2013 production at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse by Greek artists, ‘engagement, reflection, and discussion – all criteria for change’,16 Sieg, drawing on Agamben, fears that the narratives and realist representation of semi-­documentary theatre reinforce (‘reproduce’) the exclusions of the European Union. She argues that artists must disrupt and transform theatrical structures: she prefers the postdramatic theatre of Elfriede Jelinek, René Pollesch and Caryl Churchill.17 Sieg is not alone in maintaining that migrant theatre requires postdramatic aesthetics. In Performing Exile, Performing Self, Yana Meerzon finds that for Eugenio Barba, an Italian director who works in Denmark, and Josef Nadj, a Hungarian-Serb theatre artist working in France, ‘the condition of exile triggers the rejection of verbal communication in preference to stage-­image and stage-­metaphor’: the aesthetics of postdramatic theatre.18 Throughout the chapters on Barba and Nadj, Meerzon sprinkles citations to Hans-Thies Lehmann’s book, and she concludes by arguing that exilic theatre ‘prefers the disjoint structures of post-­dramatic narrative’.19 But how different is this ‘exilic’ theatre from postmigrant semi-­documentary theatre? Meerzon finds in Barba and Nadj engagement with ‘the notions of “real” and “auto” ’ alongside ‘shaky fictional worlds’.20 Their productions, Meerzon argues, ‘constantly oscillate between the reality of the author’s exilic experience, memory, and trauma; and his/her need to raise this experience to the level of today’s mythology’.21

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Jonas Tinius, an anthropologist who has worked closely with German independent theatre groups, comes to a similar conclusion, though without referencing postdramatic theatre specifically, in his essay ‘Rehearsing Detachment’. Profiling the Ruhrorter theatre group, which works with refugees at the Theater an der Ruhr in Mülheim, Tinius coins the term ‘dialectical fiction’ to describe how the refugee actors cultivate ‘detachment and reappropriation of subjectivity during theatre rehearsals by building up fictional characters’.22 In other words, the artists (exiles from an array of African and Middle Eastern nations) draw on their histories in devising a performance, but use those histories to create fictional characters, distanced from their actual selves. This practice enables dialogue with audiences and creates ‘a political critique’ that offers, Tinius argues, ‘a corrective to realist documentary theatre’.23 Like Sieg, Tinius draws on Agamben, in particular Homo Sacer, to articulate this political critique: the Ruhrorter project had as its explicit goal that refugees not be ‘marked off from other subjects of the state’ and thereby ‘reduced to a merely “tolerated” precarious and bare life’.24 In the conversation I have created here between Sieg, Lo and Gilbert, Cox, Stewart, Landry, Meerzon and Tinius, a contradiction in how critics address aesthetic form and political meaning becomes apparent. The same aesthetics that Lo and Gilbert, Cox, Stewart and Landry champion in their analyses of migrant and postmigrant performances, Sieg laments as not experimental, not radical enough – while the productions Meerzon and Tinius describe as postdramatic and Agambian seem quite similar to Schwarze Jungfrauen. Critics see postmigrant theatre as advancing, or not advancing, the critics’ own politics, either through a production’s embrace of new forms, or in the failure to do so. Scholars clearly face confusion in the definition of postdramatic theatre, alongside confusion about the politics of postmigrant theatre. But the confusion goes still deeper.

Postdramatic Form and Migrant Theatre If postmigrant theatre ought to be postdramatic, the question must be raised: can postdramatic theatre address the conditions of bare life? Can it upset cosmopolitan transnationalism? Or even more basically, can it combat racism, that fear of others that inspires the building of border fences to preserve the supremacy of the people inside, keeping out those othered as undesirable, the perhaps less-­than-humans? While Agamben worries about the potential of humans to be reduced in the public sphere to zoē, ‘life as mere biological existence’, as John Lechte and Saul Newman put it, theatre, especially postdramatic theatre, celebrates bodies.25 What happens to a body

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on stage may be a representation of an action, but also, crucially, actually happens to the body. Ryan Anthony Hatch, reversing the typical equation, writes in his contribution to this book: ‘The actor is satiated; her real needs are met, yet it is the character who eats.’26 Postdramatic theatre often attempts to be a theatre of zoē, of biological existence – unlike the posthuman theatre, as Magda Romanska defines it in this volume, drawing on Agamben and with Tadeusz Kantor as her prime example, in which ‘the human subject disappears into the materiality of his body, which, in turn, disappears into the materiality of the stage-­object.’27 And it is performed in public, or for the public, or even as part of the public sphere in the case of a state theatre like the Gorki. Zoē and bios coexist. I also wonder whether there can truly be a theatre that embraces Agamben, given that Agamben’s writings resist practical implementation.28 Or whether any theatre can assume the responsibility of upsetting a global order with century old roots. Perhaps the form of postdramatic theatre is at least well suited for fighting racism? In Avant-Garde Performance and the Limits of Criticism, Mike Sell, writing about the Black Arts Movement, reminds us that ‘the avant-­garde possesses an uneasy and at times embarrassing proximity to racism’.29 This is no less true in the contemporary German context than it was in 1960s America or turn-­of-the-­century Europe, though in Germany the racism tends to be less explicit than that of the Italian Futurists, for example. There is a latent racism of exclusion at many state theatres in Germany: a lack of roles for non-­ethnic Germans (or a lack of roles that directors will cast with non-­ethnic Germans) and a paucity of productions given to plays written by non-­ethnic Germans. And there is a somewhat unintentional but nonetheless blatant racism, most obviously in the casual use of blackface by some of the most important directors working in the Regietheater tradition, including Michael Thalheimer, Nicholas Stemann and Sebastian Baumgarten. In an essay on the debate around Thalheimer’s 2012 production at the Deutsches Theater Berlin of Dea Loher’s Unschuld (Innocence), in which white actors wore minstrel-­style blackface to depict African migrants, Katrin Sieg blasted ‘the assertion [by German directors and critics] that blackfacing in German theatre, in contradistinction to other national traditions (especially the American one), serves to deconstruct racial identity and difference’.30 I also picked apart such assertions in an article for Theater der Zeit, discussing how ‘blackfacing’, rather than deconstructing racial identity, elides and denies the long history of anti-Black racism and minstrelsy in Germany, including: the 1904–1908 genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples by German colonialists in what is now Namibia; Kurt Weill’s ‘Nigger Song’ from 1927; and the persecution of Afro-Germans by the Nazis.31 In recent years, Frank Castorf, former Intendant of the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin and long-­time postdramatic innovator, has

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thematized colonialism in productions including La Cousin Bette (adapted from Honoré de Balzac’s novel, at the Volksbühne in 2013), Reise ans Ende der Nacht (Journey to the End of the Night, adapted from Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s novel, at the Munich Residenztheater in 2013), and Faust (at the Volksbühne in 2017). In these productions, Castorf has not examined racism or the legacy of colonialism in Germany; indeed, Castorf insists on using the word ‘Neger’, almost the rhetorical equivalent of the English n-­word, in interviews and on stage.32 Meanwhile, the anti-­colonialism, which appears in small moments amid the several-­hour deranged disorder of his productions, lacks depth: for instance, actors (Bernhard Schütz in La Cousin Bette, Fatima Dramé in Reise) read from Heiner Müller’s play Der Auftrag (The Task), a fractured text that interweaves stories of Jacobins sent to participate in a Jamaican slave revolt. The institutional form of the state theatre, which emphasizes the artistic vision of the (mostly male, almost entirely white) director and is thus well-­suited for postdramatic theatre, but where there are few if any people of colour in the room, has contributed to carelessness with how race functions as sign, in history and in the everyday lives of people of colour.33 We should also question, along with Liz Tomlin, ‘the premises for the postdramatic’s narrative of radicalism’.34 In her book Acts and Apparitions, Tomlin identifies ‘the most common poststructuralist charges levelled at the dramatic theatre’,35 a list that reads like an explication of Sieg’s unease in watching postmigrant theatre. A poststructuralist critique of drama argues: ‘firstly, that [drama] upholds the origin myth through its mimetic repetition of reality; secondly, that it upholds the origin myth through its dependence on a theological playwright; and, finally, that it offers an illusion of original presence that conceals its reliance on repetition and representation’.36 Tomlin argues that these concerns apply to the ‘social-­realist’ model of drama, rather than drama itself.37 Drama and mimesis, Tomlin argues, need not reproduce ‘the exclusions and hierarchies of the cosmopolitan, European transnation’,38 any more than postdramatic forms will inevitably challenge those exclusions and hierarchies. I do not want to suggest that postdramatic theatre in Germany cannot be anti-­racist. Most notable among treatments of the refugee crisis in the postdramatic German theatre is probably Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek’s playtext Die Schutzbefohlenen (Charges, first published 2013, with a series of epilogues and codas added through 2016). Unrelentingly furious, Die Schutzbefohlenen begins by asserting the humanity of its chorus, refugees who have fled to Europe, sleeping on the cold stone floors of churches: ‘We’re alive. We’re alive. The main thing is, we’re alive’.39 Throughout Jelinek’s postdramatic choral ode of suffering, displacement and loss, the refugees

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demand recognition of their being. ‘Who will take care, that we beings [Seienden, Heidegger’s term, sometimes translated entities] are also seen, and seen without disgust’.40 This chorus desires regular (even bourgeois) lives: ‘We want work, school, free time’. But while they address the audience specifically – ‘Look, Sir, yes you!, we turn to you as supplicants’ – the audience sees them only as a group: a ‘Barbarian swarm’ and ‘shockingly cursed spawn, spawn, spawn! Like animals! Foreign spawn!’ There are no autobiographical selves in Die Schutzbefohlenen – but this is its tragic experience. The chorus in Jelinek’s looping, perseverating text demands recognition over and over – as humans, as individuals – which their audience, the Austrian public, or the public for which the text is performed, refuses them. At the University of Vienna in April 2016, refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq were performing Jelinek’s text for a crowd of 700 when an extreme-­ right ‘identitarian’ group stormed the auditorium and attacked actors and audience.41 This assault illustrates how theatre functions counter to Agamben’s ideas: the performers enacted Jelinek’s text about refugees pushed out of society, and they were actually stateless, with actual bodies that were actually under attack. To paraphrase Ryan Anthony Hatch, this was an unsummoned real that got too real.42 And yet it was a real simultaneously staged. For the production was already using its performers (and the performers used themselves) to trouble divisions between the citizen and the refugee, private and public, biology and ontology. When the identitarians attacked, they were folded into an ongoing cycle of representation and real, through which the refugees became more human in the artifice of performing someone else’s words. Die Schutzbefohlenen, as a text and in production, could itself be the subject of a sustained formalist study, in the terms laid out in the introduction to this collection, an analysis of how it was written, disseminated and appropriated by community groups, directors and institutions, a process quite different from what happens at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse and the Gorki. For now, I will close this discussion by noting that Jelinek’s postdramatic text-­ landscape finds its politics in asserting the humanity of refugees.

The Maxim Gorki from Afar I would like to return now to the Maxim Gorki Theater, under the leadership of Shermin Langhoff. I no longer live in Berlin and can travel there only occasionally; rather than simply lamenting this fact, I hope that my distance from the Gorki can help me better see the full landscape of the institution, its place in Berlin and Germany, its repertoire, ensemble, advertisements and artistic statements. The tension that we noticed in the scholarship on migrant

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and postmigrant theatre – between old and new forms, humanism and Agamben – is embedded in the theatre itself, and scholars should observe the contradictions, not attempt to resolve them. By studying the form of the Gorki, we can see the essential conflicts of postmigrant theatre. In a recent interview with the radio programme Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Langhoff, alongside Jens Hillje, introduced their upcoming 2017–2018 season with a new motto (also the title of their fall arts festival): desintegriert euch,

Figure 12.1  A poster for the Maxim Gorki’s 2017 autumn arts festival, commanding: Desintegriert euch! (De-Integrate Yourselves!). (Image by Maria Jose Aquilanti.)

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de-­integrate yourselves!43 ‘[T]he “integration” rhetorical strategy’, Langhoff writes in promotional material for autumn 2017, ‘urges incorporation and homogenization’. ‘But’, she counters, ‘the question remains: integration into what? Into the outdated narrative of a nation, into a “people” or into a linguistic community?’44 The Gorki, Langhoff and Hillje said in the radio interview, will now take up the mantle of the Volksbühne Berlin. Founded by workers, who collected their pennies to erect the building, located in the former East Berlin, and with the East German Frank Castorf as Intendant since 1991, the Volksbühne refused integration into reunified, capitalist Berlin. Equally, Volksbühne artists refused to be trapped in nostalgia for the German Democratic Republic, refused to accept any specific politics, refused the gentrification that transformed their street. Refused, that is, until Castorf was replaced as Intendant at the end of the 2016–2017 season by a Belgian museum curator, Chris Dercon. The Gorki, Langhoff and Hillje have announced, will replace the Volksbühne as the Dissonansraum for Germany, a space for dissonance: all clanging tones, upsetting narrative, jarring the eyes, ears and bodies of audiences. So has the Gorki become more postdramatic? One way of addressing this question would be to examine the theatre’s repertoire as a whole. Back during the Gorki’s first two seasons, 2013–2014 and 2014–2015, the repertoire was split almost evenly between productions of classic plays, new plays and devised theatre – not dissimilar from other German state theatres, like the Deutsches Theater Berlin. At the beginning of the second season, in August 2014, the Gorki’s repertoire stood at twenty-­one, including seven productions that were scheduled to premiere before the end of December. Eight productions in the repertoire were of classic plays, or plays standard to the repertoire of German national theatres; three of the classics were heavily adapted. Six productions were devised (one based on a classic play), and eight productions were premieres of new plays, by which I mean texts written by playwrights and available for other theatres to produce after their premiere, including new adaptations of books or movies. Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard and Maxim Gorki’s Children of the Sun shared the Gorki’s mainstage with the premiere of contemporary playwright Sibylle Berg’s Es sagt mir nichts, das sogenannte Draussen (The So-Called Outside Means Nothing to Me), and re-­ mounted productions of Verrücktes Blut and Schwarze Jungfrauen. One premiere from the previous season, Yael Ronen’s Common Ground, had been invited to the prestigious Theatertreffen festival, and the Gorki had just been named ‘Theatre of the Year’ by Theater heute, a huge honour for their first season. Postmigrant artists told their own stories in new plays and devised productions, and they reimagined canonical plays to include their stories. At the Studio Я, Marianne Salzmann, curator at the time, scheduled events, such

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as book readings, discussions of politics and aesthetics, and Theater ist endlich ist Theater (Theatre is Finally is Theatre), an adaptation of the twenty-­fourhour play festival format. The overall theme of these early seasons, as I argued in my book, was captured by Common Ground, which ‘advocated a pluralistic, welcoming conception of Germanness, with good-­heartedness replacing accusation, camaraderie prevailing over antagonism’45 – though Studio Я was notably more confrontational and direct than the mainstage. Since 2014, the Gorki’s repertoire has expanded and transformed, as can be seen by examining both the repertoire itself and critical response: it seems that the Gorki has become a more postdramatic space, and its repertoire, with a heavy emphasis on new, devised and adapted work, more closely resembles that of the Volksbühne under Castorf than the stereotypical German state theatre. There are now (as of autumn 2017) forty productions in the repertoire – only four remain from the repertoire at the beginning of the 2014–2015 season – playing both on the mainstage and in Studio Я; a few more productions will be added during the 2017–2018 season, which runs from mid-September until late June. Of the forty, thirteen, or almost one-third, are devised performances, seven of which were directed by Ronen. Despite the expanded repertoire, only six productions are of classic plays; of those six, four have been changed so much by their directors that the Gorki advertises them as adaptations. (Brecht’s Im Dickicht der Städte [In the Jungle of Cities], directed by Sebastian Baumgarten, is advertised as an adaptation, the title given only as Dickicht [Jungle], but critics noted that the text itself was not adapted.46) The two classic plays left are both by Heiner Müller, who largely wrote postdramatic texts: Der Auftrag (The Task) and Zement (Cement). There are eleven new plays in the repertoire (three of which are holdovers from 2014). Seven of these new plays are by Falk Richter, Sibylle Berg and Marianna Salzmann, all of whom write texts that, while not as dissonant as those by Elfriede Jelinek, take the Verfremdung effect to an extreme, fracturing characters and narrative. The Gorki responded directly to the refugee crisis in Germany by establishing, in 2016, an ‘Exil Ensemble’, an ensemble of seven professional artists in exile, hailing from Syria, Palestine and Afghanistan. In spring 2017, the Exil Ensemble premiered Winterreise (Winter Journey), created with Ronen, and in autumn 2017 their production Skelett eines Elefanten in der Wüste (Skeleton of an Elephant in the Desert) opened in the Gorki’s studio.47 Even as it seems that dramatic theatre is being squeezed out at the Gorki, a closer look at the productions through reviews of premieres from the 2016– 2017 and 2017–2018 seasons reveals a more complex situation. Critics have noted the ‘absence of narrative hierarchies’48 in Erpulat’s Hündesohne (Sons of Dogs, an adaptation of three novels by Ágota Kristóf) and the ‘very flat

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text-­surfaces [Textfläche]’49 in Sebastian Nübling’s production of Berg’s Nach uns das All (After Us Comes Space). Gorki artists have been able to avoid clichés, even while exploring the same themes, as in Get Deutsch or Die Tryin’, a new play by Necati Öziri developed at the Gorki: ‘Though it begins like the cliché of a cynical migrant-­background story, the most recent premiere of this season at the Berlin Gorki Theater is exactly the opposite’.50 In Dickicht, Baumgarten filmed the action, which was projected in performance, and used live actors to speak Brecht’s text, a performance in ‘classic Brecht-­style’, that, according to critic Gabi Hift, introduced new Verfremdung effect methods.51 Ronen is responsible for adding one or two new productions a year, and her style has not changed since Common Ground. In Winterreise, writes Tobi Müller, ‘[t]he new-Berliners play, as before, themselves, but they also play themselves as actors’.52 Another critic, Anke Dürr, writes of Winterreise: ‘That the actors use their real names does not mean that Winterreise is documentary theatre’.53 The most recent Ronen premiere, Roma Armee (Roma Army), still generates ‘this alternation between broiling statement-­theatre and ice-­cold, emphasized joke, this percussive directness and then again boulevardesque tricks. And the tears, when a recognition hits close to the heart’.54 And Ronen is still playing with history: the actress ‘Simonida Selimović revises Walter Benjamin’s “Angel of History” and demands a collective memory-­culture for the encounter between the Roma and the “Gadje” (not-Roma).’55 This is much bigger than just the Roma, or just Roma Armee, Christian Rakow argues. ‘To tell European history through the minority perspective, and thereby inject a truly pluralistic thinking in the ruling discourse, this impulse rocks the evening – and the work at this theatre’.56 Even as the Gorki is increasingly celebrated, critics still criticize it for emphasizing politics over aesthetics (for being too postmigrant, in other words, and not postdramatic enough): in Verräter (Traitors), ‘Richter is not interested in “theatrical quality”, but rather “attitude” ’, writes André Mumot.57 Postmigrant theatre at the Gorki has become somewhat more experimental theatrically – less reliant on playtexts, less dramatic dramaturgically on stage – since the first season, but it is clear that the Gorki is not entirely, and sometimes not at all, in the postdramatic aesthetic mode of Castorf and Jelinek.58 To more fully understand the form of the Gorki, we need to widen our field of view. Much of the formal experimentation happening at the Gorki is happening at the institutional level, though it is far from the Agambian space some critics would like it to be. In order to address race and ethnicity, migration and exile, the Gorki must be a space that little resembles the old Volksbühne. Under Langhoff, the Gorki has always worked to engage a wider range of audiences than other state theatres, including people who do not

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speak German. It is the only theatre in Berlin that includes English supertitles for all performances; and when multiple languages are spoken on stage, it is done to connect with diverse audiences, not distance them with incomprehensible polyglossia.59 Their posters, displayed on the website and plastered on walls and construction sites throughout Berlin, focus on the actors and the actors’ bodies. Even the poster for Remote Mitte (created by Rimini Protokoll in 2013), an audio-­tour of central Berlin, which does not include any actors, only spectator-­participants who follow instructions given to them through headphones, puts people in the foreground.60 A focus on the individual human extends to their remarkable and intimate portraits of the actors in the ensemble, which were used as advertisements when the Gorki first opened under Langhoff and Hillje, and can still be seen on the website, in promotional materials and on a wall the audience passes by while entering the mainstage auditorium.61 The portraits focus tightly on the actors’ expressive faces, their shoulders bare, a celebration of humanity, differences in skin tone, eye colour and shape, hair, age and gender. Reduced to their ‘mere’ biology, stripped of identifiers other than their bodies, the actors become only more human. Light reflects and glints in their vivid eyes. We do not know them, but we would like to. This is decidedly not a posthuman theatre. In the same promotional material for the 2017–2018 season that I quoted above, Langhoff also talks about how they are providing educational support for the members of the Exil Ensemble, including language classes. (I am reminded of Friedrich Schiller’s ‘On the Aesthetic Education’, used extensively, though not entirely uncritically, in Verrücktes Blut.) Langhoff writes that the Gorki is thinking through how to tell stories for an increasingly diverse Germany – rejecting not narrative, but an ‘outdated narrative of a nation’ – and she proposes ‘a counter model’ to how integration is currently practiced in Germany: ‘integration into a new narrative of a truly plural democracy, a learning process for all’.62 In other words, everyone in society must continually (re)assimilate, not just the newcomers. In the 2017 festival Desintegriert euch!, held over two weeks in November, showcasing mostly contemporary fine arts, critic Claudia Wahjudi writes: ‘The open-­minded parkour of the artworks produces an essay about segregated societies in crises or even wars, arguing undemonstratively for human rights.’ Even when farthest from drama, the Gorki expresses belief in the human and human rights. The institution mixes models, incorporating elements of the independent scene. It is, as I wrote above, a municipal theatre supported by the Berlin government, with major funding also from the Federal Cultural Foundation, the Federal Foreign Office and Stiftung Mercator, a private foundation that promotes ‘mutual understanding and exchange between people of different

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Figure 12.2  The poster for Winterreise (Winter Journey), created by Yael Ronen with Exil Ensemble at the Maxim Gorki Theater in 2017. (Photo by Esra Rotthoff.)

cultures’ as well as ‘a unified Europe’.63 This funding allows it to support an ensemble and offer a repertoire – and sometimes commits the institution to the projects of its funders. Within the permanent ensemble, names, faces and birthplaces are quite diverse. Yet all but two of the nineteen actors currently in the theatre’s ensemble attended a traditional training academy in Germany, Switzerland or Austria; six actors, or nearly one-­third, studied at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin, with a curriculum grounded, for

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over fifty years, in Stanislavsky and Brecht.64 Yet the Gorki also employs performers and co-­produces performances from the independent scene (like Remote Mitte), who generally attended universities (especially the Giessen Institute for Applied Theatre Studies), not professional training academies. The scene tends more toward the postdramatic, with productions created by groups in rehearsal. Within the security afforded it as a state theatre, the Gorki tries to generate space for freedom and play as well. Like Agamben, artists at the Gorki mistrust the sovereign state, which will always regulate individuals in the name of safety. But they react against ‘absolute sovereignty’ pragmatically, with bodies, with new narratives and with dissonance. Uncertainty and belief in change; postdramatic events and semi-­ documentary theatre; de-­integration and German language classes for refugee-­artists: this grinding of aesthetic and institutional forms, constantly under revision, generates friction. While the institution experiments with the form of the German state theatre, much of what is performed on the mainstage is still in the semi-­documentary mode praised by some, condemned by others. In an interview with Theater der Zeit, Langhoff mentions recent talks given at the Gorki by Hélène Cixous and Jean-Luc Nancy, and she says: ‘We’re always stumbling across this dialectic of order and disorder’.65 De-­ integration for the Gorki does not actually mean separation from society, or outright rejection of the European Union, or an attempt to generate a new politics of the non-­political. Postmigrant theatre at the Gorki means engagement and reengagement over common and uncommon grounds. It means concrete social actions followed by disorder and discord, then a new play or a text by Heiner Müller, or a reimagined Brecht, then returning again to social action. It means hiring people, on permanent contracts, who would not otherwise find employment at state theatres – while also producing wild, playful events with freelance artists. It is not by accident, no coincidence or misfortune, that scholars and critics find in postmigrant theatre their proclivities reflected: all these forms are there, coinciding and colliding, both the tide that covers and exposes, and the pebbles the water jostles about. The conflict we observed in the critical engagement with postmigrant theatre, the push and pull of new and old forms, of institution, society and aesthetics, that conflict, that pull and push, that is the form of postmigrant theatre.

13

Elder Care: Performing Dementia – Toward a Postdramatic Subjectivity Stanton B. Garner, Jr.

Dementia and the Postdramatic Among its many contributions to our understanding of contemporary theatre and performance, Hans-Thies Lehmann’s Postdramatic Theatre provides a framework for thinking about this theatre’s engagement with subjectivity, consciousness and narrative. By setting the postdramatic in dialogue with the dramatic model it supersedes, Lehmann challenges the matrix of character, plot, fiction and dialogue that has conventionally oriented the perception of subjectivity in theatrical performance toward the singular, coherent individual. He further undermines this unitary notion of subjectivity by displacing the dramatic actor and distributing agency within a decentered scenic field. As Lehmann insists, however, the rejection of unitary subjectivity in its singularity and depth does not entail an abandonment of the human subject altogether. Addressing what Gerda Poschmann called the ‘autonomization of language’ in contemporary theatre works – which is directed against the principles of depth and mimesis – he writes, ‘Is it not rather a matter of a changed per­ spective on human subjectivity? . . . [R]ather than bemoan the lack of an already defined image of the human being in postdramatically organized texts, it is necessary to explore the new possibilities of thinking and repre­ senting the individual human subject sketched in these texts.’1 In order to explore these ‘new possibilities of thinking and representing’, one has to read beyond – and sometimes against – Lehmann’s limited theorization of postdramatic subjectivity. Louise LePage observes, ‘[W]here postdramatic theatre locates film and voice-­altering techniques in juxtaposed and equal roles with the live presence of the performer on stage in ways that hybridize and reformulate the (post)human subject, the question arises as to what, precisely, are the new ontological formulations being conceived?’2 Postdramatic Theatre’s relative neglect of this and related questions con­ cerning subjectivity limits its theoretical generalizations and its otherwise

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provocative observations on specific texts and productions. The present essay’s contribution to understanding what we might mean when we think about subjectivity in a postdramatic context is twofold. On one hand, it will consider the experiential or ‘lived’ dimension of a performance subjectivity unmoored from its traditional grounding in personal consciousness. Whereas Lehmann claims that post-­epic narration is about ‘the foregrounding of the personal’ and ‘the closeness within distance’, he offers little account of what the personal consists of in this new theatre.3 Similarly, when he points out that Peter Brook’s production The Man Who . . .? ‘presented examples of pathological dysfunctions of perception’, the notion of perception he refers to seems restricted to basic cognitive operations.4 What I propose to do is bring a phenomenological sensibility to the non-­unitary field of consciousness that Postdramatic Theatre gestures toward but fails to theorize with the nuance it merits. Understanding the experiential contours and operations of post­ dramatic subjectivity clarifies the perceptual stakes in Lehmann’s theoretical project, and it underscores the opportunities that contemporary performance presents to phenomenological accounts of consciousness, particularly those recent accounts that interrogate this tradition and its conceptions of subjectivity, perception, presence and embodiment in light of contemporary theory, new performance practices and an increasingly technologized/ mediatized world.5 On the other hand, if Postdramatic Theatre has little to say about the experiential and perceptual dynamics of the decentered subjectivity it alludes to, it is also silent on the social and institutional structures in which subjectivity manifests itself and through which it circulates. While this contextual dimension may seem different from the experiential givenness of subjectivity, the two are intimately related. An infant becomes aware of itself as a subject through intersubjective entanglements with those around it and through the position it occupies in a network of social relationships and institutional backdrops (nursery, home, school, medical institutions and consumer infrastructures). What may appear entirely personal in the lens of experience, in other words, is also a product of subjectivity’s social context. Indeed, while Lehmann’s notion of the ‘postdramatic’ pays relatively little attention to this dimension of the personal, the fragmentary and dispersed subjectivity he discerns in the postdramatic lends itself to materialist and sociological forms of analysis. Understanding the contours and operations of postdramatic subjectivity not only clarifies the perceptual stakes in Lehmann’s theoretical project; it opens the door for a more socially-­situated understanding of postdramatic theatrical form and the institutional practices that produce it. As a way of accepting Lehmann’s invitation ‘to explore the new possibilities of thinking and representing the individual human subject’ offered by

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postdramatic texts, I will consider the perceptual and interactive dynamics of Sandglass Theatre’s 2012 production, D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks. Sandglass, an award-­winning Vermont puppet theatre company, devised this theatre work using stories collected through workshops with individuals suffering from dementia. While this production employs features and devices that Lehmann would call ‘dramatic’ – its actions follow a linear sequence, and it proceeds from a recognizable conception of character – its use of the puppet theatre form and its narrative/theatrical staging of dementia con­ sciousness offers postdramatic openings in its otherwise dramatic matrix. Puppet theatre and dementia performance extend Lehmann’s theory of the ‘postdramatic’ into phenomenological, institutional and ethical areas largely undeveloped in Postdramatic Theatre. By foregrounding the interaction of artists and performing objects, puppet theatre offers an intricate exploration of animation, subjectivity and their distribution across agencies. Puppet handlers animate crafted objects that carry an imagined subjectivity in their painted faces and eyes. When puppets move and speak, they do so with borrowed gestures and words, drawing kinetic and verbal agency from the human figure that manipulates them while also asserting themselves as quasi-­autonomous subjects as a result of this transfer. Subjectivity crosses subjects, one animate and one animated, in an ontological ambiguity that signals one and two points of consciousness at the same time.6 Dementia performance has a similar effect of expanding the postdramatic and clarifying its implications. For one thing, the phenomenological insight that D-Generation and similar works provide into the embodiedness of subjectivity underscores the place of disability – particularly, neurological disability – in postdramatic theatre. On the whole, disability occupies a troubling place in Postdramatic Theatre. When Lehmann mentions disabled bodies, he focuses on their deviance and irregularity. An example of his theory’s unacknowledged normativism can be found in his discussion of the body’s physicality in postdramatic theatre: ‘In addition, there is often the presence of the deviant body, which through illness, disability or deformation deviates from the norm and causes an “amoral” fascination, unease or fear.’7 The subjectivity of those with physical or cognitive disabilities and the impact of non-­normative experiences and representations on theatrical form seem not to concern him.8 This is a surprising omission given that neuroatypicality, in particular, maps well onto the postdramatic’s concern with divergent subjectivities. Robert Wilson’s collaborations in the 1970s with autistic poet Christopher Knowles are an example of this affinity, as is Jérôme Bel’s 2012 performance piece Disabled Theatre, which was created in collaboration with cognitively impaired actors from Zürich’s Theatre HORA. The discon­­­ tinuous mental landscape of dementia presents particular challenges and

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opportunities for contemporary theatre practice, as attested to by the proliferating field of performances for, about and with Alzheimer’s individuals and those with other forms of dementia. Much of this work originates in care facilities in addition to, or instead of theatres, and includes individuals with dementia as well as their caregivers. Often multimedia in nature, dementia theatre tends to be intensely collaborative, and it engages an inter-­institutional infrastructure including care and treatment facilities, therapeutic regimens, arts organizations, medical funding agencies and media outlets as well as theatrical institutions. In 2010, for example, the London-­based company Spare Tyre developed a series of participatory workshops entitled Once Upon a Time at a London residential care facility for people with dementia. These workshops engaged participants in interactive and multisensory storytelling through the use of coloured lights, music and multimedia projections that responded to clapping and voice. Residents who had previously shown little expressive capacity were able to tell stories in a range of performance modalities. Once Upon a Time was subsequently conducted at other dementia care facilities and centres across the UK.9 Spare Tyre describes itself as a ‘participatory arts charity’ rather than a theatre or performance group,10 and the difference in terminology may suggest why its work and the work of community-­engaged organizations like it have largely been neglected in more formally and aesthetically grounded theatrical models such as Lehmann’s. The participants in Once Upon a Time do not perform in a public theatre space, nor do actors stand in for them in a performance based on their experience. But their creative engagement is performative nonetheless, and it shares aesthetic principles that postdramatic theatre defines itself by: the retreat from synthesis, simultaneity, irruption of the real, impulse and improvisation, intermediality. With Once Upon a Time and other socially-­situated performance work, these principles manifest themselves at the meeting point of theatrical and non-­theatrical institutions and practices. As D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks illustrates, the institutional contexts of dementia performance remain in place when it migrates from the activity room of a care facility to more public stages. The final section of this essay will explore this inter-­institutional dimension of postdramatic subjectivity.

D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks D-Generation was developed in 2012 by Sandglass Theatre’s Eric Bass, Ines Zeller Bass and Kirk Murphy. The production was based on stories generated by people with late-­stage dementia and the collaborative interaction that was

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used to elicit them. Bass, Zeller Bass and Murphy gathered these stories at a number of care facilities in Vermont using a creative-­storytelling method called TimeSlips, which was developed by Anne Basting in 1996 and is now practiced by trained facilitators throughout the world. As part of this method, circles of people with dementia are shown a picture and asked to share what they think is going on in it. Anything they say is acceptable, and every statement they contribute becomes part of the collaborative story. Facilitators prompt them by asking questions and write down what they say in response. The purpose of this activity, which involves residents and staff as well as certified trainers, is to direct attention away from the narratives the individ­ uals with dementia can no longer remember and engage their resources of imagination and creativity.11 The term ‘timeslip’ refers to a temporal dis­ location, often in fantasy or science fiction, through which a person finds herself travelling between different points of time; it can also refer to the bringing together of different points of time so that the events of one time can be experienced at another time. The relevance of a process bearing this name to individuals who have undergone severe memory and cognitive impairment is apparent. In 2008, Sandglass was approached by Parapro­ fessional Healthcare Institute (PHI), a New York-­based nonprofit that works to improve services for long-­term care for elders and those who care for them, to see if they were interested in creating a theatre piece based on the TimeSlips technique. As Renya Larson of PHI observed: There’s sort of a double nature with TimeSlips stories. You have the experience of the facilitator with the participants who are creating the stories, and there’s this other reality, the make-­believe reality of the stories themselves. And because Sandglass works with puppets, there’s this lovely opportunity to have multiple layers of reality functioning at the same time.12

Members of the company worked with TimeSlips facilitators for ten weeks at two Vermont nursing homes and developed D-Generation based on their experiences. D-Generation recreated a residential care setting and the TimeSlips creative interaction with puppets standing in for the residents. The play’s residents – Henry, Rose, Mary, Elwood and Florence – were rod puppets, approximately two feet in length and realistically detailed to resemble elderly people. For most of the play they sat in raised chairs, which were wheeled around by the three puppeteers. In addition to operating the puppets and delivering their lines, Bass, Zeller Bass and Murphy played caregivers to these dementia-­care residents. The play’s action, which consisted of interactions

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between the caregivers and the residents and sequences focused on individual residents, was organized around two creative storytelling sessions and the collaborative narratives produced in them. Framed by mobile curtain screens that were rearranged in changing relation to each other, the play’s interactions were supplemented by brief scenes or tableaux involving the puppet operators and the residents, animated video sequences projected on a large background screen, and a sound score featuring music and the occasional voices of unseen family members trying to communicate with the residents.13 At one point in the middle of the play, the residents were shown a toy-­theatre stage on which Murphy and Zeller Bass presented the story they had just created using simple stick puppets and cardboard-­and-paper props. At several other points during the production, one or more of the puppeteers stepped forward to talk about Alzheimer’s disease and those who have it. In her discussion of applied performance and dementia by contemporary groups such as Spare Tyre, Magic Me and Entelachy Arts, Nicola Shaughnessy points out the ability of trauma and dementia (which she considers a form of trauma) to destabilize identity constructions.14 While the physical coordinates of time, space and action in D-Generation were conventionally delineated – the residents and their caregivers occupied a scene that was externally identifiable and coherent – the subjective dimension of this dramatic world was radically destabilized by the dementia that formed its subject. In contrast to the three

Figure 13.1  Kirk Murphy and puppet Rose in Sandglass Theatre’s D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks, 2012. (Photo by Laura Bliss.)

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caregivers, who maintained coherent dramatic selves despite the fact that they stepped out of these roles to address the audience, the inner world of the dementia residents was fragmentary and often inaccessible – an ‘empty hole’, as the puppeteer/caretakers characterize it.15 The residents often spoke in non-­ sequiturs, repeated themselves, or withdrew into inaccessibility. Any sense of coherent subjectivity was splintered apart in a neurodivergent landscape of unpredictability, discontinuity and absence. With memory and recognition impaired, subjectivity was cast adrift, and all that seemed apparent were its residua. Some of the residents provided suggestions about the lives they led before entering the care facility: Rose’s father, she claims, built a sawmill and paid for her dance lessons; Henry seems to have been a painter; Florence speaks about having travelled the world. The precise outlines of these experiences were hard to determine, and even the most articulate recollection (such as Florence’s in the play’s closing moments) felt oddly detached from the present. The dynamic of this detachment shifted when the residents participated in the group storytelling sessions. Because they were invited to create story details concerning the pictures they were shown, the focus shifted to their collaborative exercise of imagination. Some of the details they pro­ vided were clearly autobiographical, memories transmuted into fiction; other glimpses of their former lives – the song line ‘I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places’, for example – came out of nowhere, or (perhaps more accurately) from untraceable areas of their experience. The narratives that resulted from this process were disjointed, funny, surreal – like this story, which they collaboratively generated in response to a photo of a dancing couple: He is going to kidnap her. They are dancing on the roof. On the railroad tracks. Look at her shoe, up in the air! The music is coming from the building behind them. I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places that this heart of mine embraces all day through . . . They’ve taken off, to the airport. They want to go to Paris. They are going to a dance. They’re behaving themselves. They just got married. They’re celebrating, but they’re still stuck on the rail. This will be the end of them. The air feels wonderful. They’re on the balcony, overlooking the city. Hello and goodbye, he says. Watch your step on the roof.

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I love you, my dear. Let’s have a cup of tea when we’re done. If she doesn’t watch her step, she’ll fall down and go gooey. Can we have another drink? They’re going to Paris to go shopping and to see the Mona Lisa. Shopping for a tux and something bright and different. They have cocktails. Gin and bourbon. Whaaa. He’s a dance teacher (or a doctor). Maybe with a circus. She works in a bakery. He went into the bakery and ordered a croissant. Want a donut, Honey? Hello. It’s elevating really quick. She is Rose. He’s not worth a name. Find a room. Jack and the rabbit came together.16

Rose’s dance lessons and Florence’s time in Paris found meaning in this new pastiche, which was open to additions and transformation. The narrative was further transformed as it moved from the residents’ separate contributions to a collaborated narration and then was converted into its own staged puppet play. The concept of narrative engaged in this exercise suggests another important contribution of dementia theatre to Lehmann’s theory of the postdramatic. In a brief section of his chapter ‘Panorama of Postdramatic Theatre’, Lehmann lists narration as ‘an essential trait’ of postdramatic theatre. ‘Lost in the world of media’, he writes, ‘narration finds a new site in theatre’.17 Taking several theatre works where narration foregrounds itself in the performance field as examples, Lehmann argues for a postdramatic practice different from that of Brecht’s epic theatre. Rather than distancing the events of the stage, as epic theatre seeks to do through the technique of narrativization, postdramatic narration asserts presence over representation, and personal encounter over mediatized distance. The presence that narration brings to a mediatized performance space is evident in a 1997 performance that Lehmann refers to in which the Danish company Von Heiduck explored the subject of eros using dance, Hollywood film music, scenic design and provocative erotic gestures. At one point during the production in question, a man took the stage and retold Hans Christian Andersen’s tale ‘The Metal Pig’ for thirty minutes in

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an undramatic voice. In this and similar performances that Lehmann refers to by Societas Raffaello Sanzio and Bernhard Minetti, the moment of narration ‘returns to the stage and asserts itself against the fascination of bodies and of media’.18 Aristotle’s opposition of tragic drama and narration is undone, in Lehmann’s account, and the latter becomes a vehicle for the intimate in theatrical performance. The contrast with Brecht is important: [W]hile epic theatre changes the representation of the fictive events represented, distancing the spectators in order to turn them into assessors, experts and political judges, the post-­epic forms of narration are about the foregrounding of the personal, not the demonstrating presence of the narrator, about the self-­referential intensity of this contact: about the closeness within distance, not the distancing of that which is close.19

Postdramatic narration, in the examples Lehmann uses, is associated with speakers who transform the stage into the site of a narrative act; while there may be interspersed episodes of dialogue, ‘the main things are the description and the interest in the particular act of the personal memory/narration of the actors’.20 But the personal – in this section and elsewhere in Postdramatic Theatre – is not necessarily the same as the individual, the autobiographical, or even the subjective. In WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), a 1989 theatre project directed by Renate Lorenz and Jochen Becker, German students documented their daily lives (going shopping, meeting with friends and other activities) through a variety of forms and media (pictures, films, photos, performed dialogue). While this performance offered a mediatized presentation of its performers’ lives, Lehmann suggests it achieved an ‘anti-­ media-effect’ through the actors’ presence, which keeps theatre ‘in the pro­ ximity of personal encounter’. By transforming objective documentation into self-­narration, in other words, the actors endowed WYSIWYG with a subjective intimacy not present in ‘the arbitrary exhibitions of biographical “realities” ’ in confessional TV shows.21 While it is anchored in the performing subject, though, the act of narration produced by performances such as this is not merely personal in the sense of a direct communication between speaker and audience. Refracted through its media and human formats, collective rather than singular in its overall presentation, the subjectivity at play here is multi-­channelled and multi-­referential. The personal, in such an environment, becomes a matter of orientation rather than one of origin, expression or singular subjectivity. What happens when we consider Lehmann’s concept of narration in the context of dementia subjectivity and the storytelling method of TimeSlips?

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What happens when dementia narrative takes the stage as performance? An obvious first step toward answering these questions is to recognize that the cognitive conditions associated with dementia, particularly memory loss, complicate any simple notion of the personal or the subjective. As D-Generation reminds us, dementia dismantles the narrative through which selfhood constitutes itself in time. The narratives we tell ourselves about ourselves establish our place in a community of parallel and intersecting stories; they constitute a point of intersection between the personal and the public, the subjective and the intersubjective. When these narratives are robbed of their detail and coherence, a radical disjunction occurs between the individual, the past and one’s established community. Individuals with dementia retain memories, but these are fragmentary and discontinuous, and the line between memory and other forms of mental content (imagination, non-­personal events) is precarious or non-­existent. Thomas DeBaggio, who wrote about the onset of his dementia, observed at one point during the progression of his disease, ‘I now lack enough mental security to be sure I remember memories of actual events; they might belong to someone else and I have stolen them for the moment, unknowingly.’22 Reflecting later in the same book on the dissociation he often felt from himself, he wrote: ‘Clouded memories flit through my brain, wandering moments in a jumble of events only half-­remembered. Faces smiling and sullen rise through a mist of years. Is any of this true? Can memory lie? It is too late for me to judge. Days are numb with forgetfulness and verbal stumbling.’23 For a besieged subjectivity such as DeBaggio’s, the ‘personal memory/narration of the actors’ that Lehmann identifies with the postdramatic exists entirely and ambiguously in the slash mark that separates these terms. As noted earlier, the group exercise developed by TimeSlips redirects attention from personal memory loss to the collective creativity of those freed from the need to make individual sense out of what they produce. By replacing inability with play, this shift allows individuals with dementia to free-­associate in response to a photographic image and the responses of others without worrying about the referentiality of what they say to the personal history they have limited access to. The result, as D-Generation demonstrated, is a pastiche of the remembered and the imagined, the relevant and the random. The two stories that the puppet residents collectively authored included details that clearly came from their personal lives but also included fabulous realities, abrupt exclamations and observations that came from who knows where. The aleatory narrative that resulted from their contributions was richly subjective, but the subjectivity it brought into play was fragmentary and collective rather than coherent or bound to a unitary subject. It offered a hybridized field that gestured toward individual

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consciousness while recognizing that consciousness under the shadow of dementia is characterized by indeterminacy and inaccessibility. D-Generation and the therapeutic process behind it demonstrate that the dismantled landscape of dementia narrative offers new possibilities for storytelling, expression and community. If Lehmann’s ‘dramatic theatre’ is predicated on traditional notions of coherence, then dementia narrative opens a recognizable subjective space within postdramatic theatre – a theatre, as Lehmann writes, that ‘renounces the long-­incontestable criteria of unity and synthesis and abandons itself to the chance (and risk) of trusting individual impulses, fragments and microstructures of texts in order to become a new kind of practice’.24 By trusting these impulses, fragments and microstructures, D-Generation gestures toward more experimental versions of the postdramatic that have used dementia and other neurological disorders in their development of innovative theatrical works: Brook’s The Man Who . . .?, Robert Wilson’s work with Christopher Knowles, and Melanie Wilson’s Autobiographer, for example. Autobiographer, which was first performed in 2011, exemplifies the postdramatic possibilities of dementia performance, and its immersive strategies provide a useful counterpoint to Sandglass Theatre’s puppet aesthetic. Wilson – a London-­based writer, sound artist and performer – was drawn to dementia because of its connection with notions of identity: ‘My interest in dementia stems from the very particular way that stories and narratives are picked away at and unraveled by the disease, creating a constantly shifting and illusive understanding and retention of the self.’25 Autobiographer, the outcome of her research on this disease, explored the consciousness of a woman in her late seventies named Flora. Performed by four actors who played Flora at different stages of her life, Wilson’s play staged a disintegrated subjectivity peopled by separate selves and voices. Memory fragments, recurring words and images were voiced by different performers as they walked around and sat down largely unaware of each other. Their words and sentences followed each other in shifting and ambiguous relationship. Sometimes the Floras spoke of seemingly different things as if they were different personalities; other times they repeated words or parallelled each other as if they spoke to or for each other. The play’s richly poetic text, as a result, hovered uneasily between dialogue, monologue and parallel monologue, refusing to demarcate the subjectivity it sought to express. The experiential registers of this subjectivity – what it felt like to be Flora, wandering lost in her psyche – were conveyed through Wilson’s use of immersive technologies. Hanging light bulbs throbbed, flickered, went on and went off during the performance like synapses firing and failing to fire; at certain points they went off entirely, subjecting performers and spectators to momentary blackouts. In keeping with Wilson’s interest in ‘the use of sound as a distinct and

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subjective agency’, the play’s soundscape played an important role in this cognitive and visceral immersion.26 Speakers, positioned behind the curtains that enclosed the playing space, produced an environmental base line of sonic effects, unworldly in their acoustic synthesis, sometimes frightening in their intensity. At times voices could be heard, oscillating on the edges of compre­ hensibility. One of the play’s reviewers noted, ‘Voices whisper and mutter as though they may be solely in your head and there are snippets of dialogue which you can’t quite catch. It’s a haunting recreation of being mentally detached, but connected to your own inner world.’27 In Part Four of Autobiographer, the space succumbs to ‘an overwhelming auditory environment of real world sounds, like a shopping centre, supermarket or public space. Augmented by fragments of other sounds. Familiar sounds becoming alien’.28 As the performers engaged in repetitive, agitated movements, the audience underwent a version of the disorientation that caused their distress.

Animacy and Subjectivity Whereas Autobiographer used the resources of multiple casting, fractured discourse and immersive staging to probe the contours of dementia subjectivity, D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks engaged the question of how, or whether, one can ever know this terrain from the outside. As I have already suggested, the interior world of D-Generation’s dementia care residents was largely impenetrable, available in glimpses but otherwise inaccessible. This aspect of dementia subjectivity was foregrounded through the play of animation intrinsic to puppet theatre. When the play began, Zeller Bass wheeled out the puppet named Mary and handed her a doll that was lying on the floor. While a video played on the screen, Mary began to move under Zeller Bass’s guidance, stroking the doll, looking around, slowly rocking, then holding her head. Unlike the doll she held, which remained inert throughout the production, Mary and the other puppets were performing objects that acquired life and imagined subjectivity when animated by the puppeteer’s manipulations through the process of what Jiří Veltruský termed ‘vivification’.29 But even the liveliest of puppets remains an object; its life, when it comes to life, is a borrowed one. When puppets cease to be manipulated, their thingness, or object-­status, threatens to take over their aliveness; when this happens, puppets become partially or fully desubjectivized. Phenome­ nologically, this dynamic involves the presencing and de-­presencing of a consciousness imagined into the object-­brought-to-­life. The objectness of puppets taken out of aliveness acquires different meanings when the subjectivity in question is conditioned by dementia.

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When the puppets of D-Generation were left on their own or were otherwise still, they did not necessarily exit the characterological field. Instead, they were there and not there at the same time. As the puppets remained seated in their chairs on the stage of D-Generation, their inanimate stares suggested the inaccessibility that frames and often overtakes dementia subjectivity. Their motionless impenetrability was poignantly intensified when the voices of family members addressed them without receiving responses or signs of recognition (‘Florence, where are your pearls? You’re not wearing them. Did you forget them? Hi Dad, it’s me, Frank, your son. Don’t you remember me? I’m your son. See, we’re in the picture together.’30). At one point in the play, the human performers brought the question of animation and subjectivity directly to the audience. Before Murphy put on his separate puppet show for the resident puppets dramatizing their first collective story, the puppets were placed on spectators’ laps where they could watch the makeshift production. As the puppet-­show-within-­a-puppet-­show went on, some spectators in the performances I observed sat awkwardly with their puppets; others moved them as a way of animating them. In these different states of movement and non-­movement, the puppets appeared alternatingly conscious and unconscious of what was being acted out in front of them. In another sequence, a curtain was moved aside to reveal a tableau of Murphy standing with a piece of cake on a plate between Elwood and Florence, who were seated in their wheelchairs. All three wore party hats. Elwood and Florence stared forward with unseeing eyes, and the force of their inanimacy threatened to subsume Murphy as he joined them in immobility. Animacy, in this case, implies subjectivity: not to move, not to see bespeaks a vacancy at the seat of agency and identity. In his phenomenologically-­ insightful study of puppets, Kenneth Gross notes this uneasy association between humans and things: ‘[Puppet theatre] may also remind us that we do not yet know what it means to be inanimate, that we do not know fully the different kinds of death that humans own, or the shapes of the lives that can be lived by inanimate things.’31 D-Generation employed additional means to question what we can know about the puppet residents we observe. At three points during the play, videos were projected onto the viewing screen while individual residents were alone on stage. While these videos, which consisted of figural and abstract painterly sequences, were clearly related to the figures they accompanied, the nature of this relation was unclear. Did the videos represent the difficult-­to-articulate subjective world of each resident (as when the screen turned black when the resident Mary became agitated), or did they represent an external viewpoint on the characters? At a later point when Henry was alone on stage with Zeller Bass and Murphy manipulating his body, Henry painted an imaginary painting in the air in front of him.

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Images appeared on the screen behind him that initially represented the painting he was executing, but when he dropped his brush the video proceeded on its own. A figure resembling him, paint brush in hand, climbed a ladder on the screen but started to fall at the point when Henry rose in his seat. The unclear relationship between figure and moving image marked the uneasy boundary between the internal and external products of Henry’s mind. Was what we were seeing a representation of Henry’s thoughts, an independent meditation on his character by the production’s video composer Michel Moyse, or some hybrid of the two? Like the stories that were fashioned from the residents’ scattered contributions, the subjectivities we glimpsed were collaborative – the result of external fashioning as well as individual expression – and they took the form of pastiche, mixed with other products of an intersubjective creative process. Through its combination of puppet theatre, multimedia presentation and storytelling with material gathered in clinical settings, D-Generation demon­ strated that aesthetic fragmentation has a subjective register, whether the subjectivity in question is located in a consciousness that produces its elements or the consciousness that works to make sense of it. Throughout the Sandglass production, the products of consciousness fell apart, reconstituted themselves in new ways, and refracted themselves through different sites and media. The audience’s perceptual role in processing D-Generation’s divergent materials was phenomenologically complicated by the production’s unwillingness to reduce the residents’ inner worlds to anything but a provisional narrative cohesion and by its desire to destabilize the spectators’ access to the residents’ imagined interiority. Dementia presents its own phenomenologies to those who live its dislocations, those who care for them, and those who witness its expressive representations. What results – here as in other works we might locate within Lehmann’s ‘postdramatic’ category – is an elusive, non-­unitary subjectivity that fits squarely within the postdramatic paradigm. In the end, the narrativity intrinsic to this subjectivity provides continuity and important disjunctions between postdramatic theatre and the dramatic model against which it defines itself. If narrative is the process by which the human subject constitutes itself in time, it is also the medium through which subjectivity breaks apart, bares its gaps and joins its voice with others not its own.

Practices, Institutions, Disciplines In the final analysis, this ‘not its own’ may be one of the most important contributions of D-Generation – and similar productions – to our under­ standing of postdramatic theatre. The personal, this production makes clear, is

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also public, and its performance inside and outside the theatre is enabled and conditioned by institutional frameworks. As noted earlier, the blurring of institutional boundaries between theatre, clinic, research facilities and funding agencies is particularly evident in performance work being conducted around dementia, autism and other forms of neuroatypicality. Anne Bastings’s TimeSlips project, which earned her a MacArthur Fellowship in 2016, was developed almost by accident when she tried to get residents involved in improv games as a volunteer in a nursing home.32 Similar activities that engage the experiences of dementia have been aimed at caregivers as well as residents. Tanya Myers’s Inside Out of Mind, which premiered at Nottingham’s Lakeside Arts Centre in 2013 and subsequently toured England, recreated the experience of living and working with dementia. Drawing upon field work conducted by researchers at the University of Nottingham and oscillating between the disorienting perspective of dementia sufferers and the differently disorienting perspective of their caregivers, the play was performed for audiences that included dementia professionals. Some National Health Service (NHS) trusts purchased tickets for their care assistants and ran workshops for their staff in connection with the performance.33 Sponsors of the production included the Nottingham Institute of Mental Health and IDEA (Improving Dementia Education and Awareness), which provides information and accredited courses for people living with dementia and their caregivers. Tracking the collaborations, funding streams, venues and audiences of productions like Once Upon a Time, Autobiographer, Inside Out of Mind and D-Generation suggests a different provenance of the postdramatic and its engagements with subjectivity. Rather than defining the postdramatic performance field in terms of the theatrical models it seeks to displace, this perspective considers its aesthetic within a broader infrastructure of practices, institutions and disciplines. That these non-­theatrical fields generate ‘individual impulses, fragments and microstructures of texts’ from their own engagements with neuroatypicality suggests that postdramatic subjectivity is much more institutionally diverse than we have allowed. The British company Sound & Fury’s 2005 show Ether Frolics, which explored the history, contemporary practice and experience of anaesthesia using postdramatic and immersive performance techniques, was funded by the Wellcome Trust, which funds projects connected with medical science and by BOC Medical, one of Britain’s leading providers of medical gas products. D-Generation’s narrative framework came from therapeutic exercises conducted in a nursing home. Dementia and its performances, I propose, are particularly suited to unsettling the boundary between the personal and the institutional, the subjective and its social manifestations. That the postdramatic also exists in, depends on, and orients this inter-­institutional space is one of its under-­told stories.

Notes Chapter 1 1 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, p. 114. 2 Ibid., p. 22. 3 Ibid., p. 27. 4 Peter Szondi, Theory of the Modern Drama, trans. Michael Hays, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987, p. 5. 5 Elinor Fuchs, ‘Drama: The Szondi Connection’, in this volume, 2019, pp. 20–30, here p. 23. 6 Szondi, Theory of the Modern Drama, p. 7. 7 Ibid., p. 8. 8 For one, Lehmann enlarges the tent of drama to include a range of figures Szondi excludes. Chief among them is Bertolt Brecht, whose work, Lehmann argues, still culminated in a ‘fictive cosmos’. See: Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 22, emphasis in original. 9 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, pp. 34–35, emphasis in original. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 21. 12 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 22, emphasis in original. 13 Ibid., p. 23. 14 Ibid., p. 95. 15 Marvin Carlson, ‘Postdramatic Theatre and Postdramatic Performance’, Revista Brasileira Estudos da Presença 5.3 (2015), pp. 577–595, here p. 578. 16 Ibid., p. 583. 17 Ibid., p. 578. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid., p. 590. 20 Ibid., p. 579. 21 Elinor Fuchs, ‘Postdramatic Theatre (Review)’, TDR: The Drama Review 52.2 (2008), pp. 178–183, here p. 179. 22 Ibid., p. 181. 23 Patrice Pavis, The Routledge Dictionary of Performance and Contemporary Theatre, trans. Andrew Bowen, London and New York: Routledge, 2016, p. 189. 24 Mary Mazzilli, Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays: Transnationalism and Postdramatic Theatre, London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015. 25 Janelle Reinelt, ‘Generational Shifts’, Theatre Research International 35.3 (2010), pp. 288–300, here p. 290.

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26 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Karen Jürs-Munby and Elinor Fuchs, ‘Lost in Translation?’, TDR: The Drama Review 52.4 (2008), pp. 13–20, here p. 16, emphasis in original. 27 See: Karen Jürs-Munby, Jerome Carroll and Steve Giles (eds), Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspective on Contemporary Performance, London: Bloomsbury Methuen, 2013. In this collection, see especially: Karen Jürs-Munby, Jerome Carroll and Steve Giles, ‘Introduction: Postdramatic Theatre and the Political’, pp. 1–30; and Brandon Woolf, ‘Towards a Paradoxically Parallaxical Postdramatic Politics?’, pp. 31–46. 28 Janelle Reinelt, ‘Review of Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance’, Theatre Research International 40.2 (2015), pp. 201–203, here p. 201, emphasis added. 29 Birgit Haas, Plädoyer für ein dramatisches Drama, Vienna: Passagen, 2007, p. 31. All translations are by the authors unless otherwise noted. 30 Janelle Reinelt, ‘“What I Came to Say”: Raymond Williams, the Sociology of Culture and the Politics of (Performance) Scholarship’, Theatre Research International 40.3 (2015), pp. 235–249, here p. 242. 31 Janelle Reinelt, ‘Performance at the Crossroads of Citizenship’, in Shirin M. Rai and Janelle Reinelt (eds), The Grammar of Politics and Performance, Abingdon: Routledge, 2015, pp. 34–50, here p. 35. 32 Ric Knowles, The Theatre of Form and the Production of Meaning: Contemporary Canadian Dramaturgies, Montreal: ECW, 1999, p. 15. 33 Ric Alssopp, ‘On Form/Yet to Come’, Performance Research 10.2 (2005), pp. 1–4, here p. 1. 34 Alan Ruiz, ‘Radical Formalism’, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 26.2–3 (2016), pp. 233–240, here p. 233. 35 Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, New York: Oxford University Press, 1983, p. 138. 36 Yves-Alain Bois, ‘Formalism and Structuralism,’ in Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh (eds), Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004, pp. 32–39, here p. 33. For further background and analysis on this debate from within theatre studies, see: Janelle Reinelt, ‘A feminist reconsideration of the Brecht/Lukács debates’, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 7.1 (1994), pp. 122–139; Fredric Jameson, ‘Reflections in Conclusion,’ in Aesthetics and Politics, trans. and ed. Ronald Taylor, London: Verso, 1980, pp. 196–213. 37 For a useful overview of key debates specifically in literature, from Aristotle to the Russian Formalists and beyond, see: Stephen Cohen, ‘Form and Formalism in Western Literature and Theory’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, 2017, available at: http://literature.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/ acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-127 (accessed 1 March 2018), archived at https://perma.cc/TMN8-KYU8. For a concise and sweeping intellectual history of ‘form’ since Immanuel Kant, see: Angela

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39 40

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Leighton, On Form: Poetry, Aestheticism, and the Legacy of a Word, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 1–29. On the history and legacy of New Criticism in literary studies, see: Cohen, ‘Form and Formalism’; Joseph North, Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017, pp. 21–55; Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson and Peter Brooker, A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2005, pp. 15–28. Cohen, ‘Form and Formalism’. See: Shannon Jackson, Professing Performance: Theatre in the Academy from Philology to Performativity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004; W.B. Worthen, Drama: Between Poetry and Performance, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Worthen, Drama, p. 37. Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 37. As Elin Diamond writes, it was ‘impossible, in the case of drama scholarship, not to “go outside the text”. Performance is that messy, historicizing moment that interrupts the integrity of the written document’. See: Elin Diamond, ‘Modern Drama/Modernity’s Drama’, in Ric Knowles, Joanne Tompkins and W.B. Worthen (eds), Modern Drama: Defining the Field, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003, pp. 3–14, here p. 4, emphasis in original. As Marvin Carlson explains, the theoretical investments of German Theaterwissenschaft can be traced back to longstanding conversations in European aesthetic theory, which focus on the centrality of aesthetic experience. See: Marvin Carlson, ‘Perspectives on Performance: Germany and America’, in Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2008, pp. 1–10. This claim is bolstered by the fact that one of the central methodologies and introductory courses in German theatre studies is ‘Performance Analysis’ (Aufführungsanalyse), which focuses almost exclusively on ‘staging’ or ‘mise en scène’ and, in contrast to Anglo-American departments, is not much interested in the ‘manifold non-­aesthetic dynamics at play during a performance’. See: Christopher B. Balme, The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Studies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 132. Michael Kirby, A Formalist Theatre, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987. Today, scholars would be justified to dispute the strict separations Kirby drew between terms like theatre and literature, not least because, as Julia Jarcho reminds us, this division too casually ignores much of what such terms have in common formally. See: Julia Jarcho, Writing and the Modern Stage: Theater Beyond Drama, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017, pp. 3–22.

214 47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54

55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64

65

Notes Kirby, A Formalist Theatre, p. ix Ibid., p. x. Ibid. Martin Puchner, Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, p. 257. The irony of the critique of New Criticism for its apoliticism is that it was a deeply conscious political project. Cleanth Brooks and others used formalism to defend a very particular canon and the right of certain men to determine that canon, and thereby determine social and political values. Jackson, Professing Performance, p. 132. Stefka Mihaylova, ‘The Radical Formalism of Suzan-Lori Parks and Sarah Kane’, Theatre Survey 56.2 (2015), pp. 213–231, here p. 219. There are, of course, exceptions to this, most notably Ric Knowles’ The Theatre of Form and the Production of Meaning: Contemporary Canadian Dramaturgies, quoted above. Yet Knowles’ approach to form remains rooted in a semiotic tradition concerned primarily with how dramaturgical form shapes meaning creation on stage. As we explain below, our understanding of form in relation to theatre is not limited to how meaning is produced in an interpretive community, but focuses more on how forms in theatre overlap and intersect with social forms more generally. Jackson, Professing Performance, pp. 80–81. See: Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus, ‘Surface Reading: An Introduction’, Representations 108.1 (2009), pp. 1–21. Marjorie Levinson, ‘What Is New Formalism?’, PMLA 122.2 (2007), pp. 558–569, here p. 559. For helpful critical overviews of ‘New Formalism’, see: Cohen, ‘Form and Formalism’; Tom Eyers, Speculative Formalism: Literature, Theory, and the Critical Present, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2017, pp. 21–28; Seb Franklin, ‘The Contexts of Forms’, world picture 11 (2016), available at: http://www.worldpicturejournal.com/WP_11/pdfs/Franklin_WP_11.pdf (accessed 1 March 2018), archived at https://perma.cc/X6WA-T5SK; Carolyn Lesjak, ‘Reading Dialectically’, Criticism 55.2 (2013), pp. 233–277; North, Literary Criticism, pp. 140–147. Caroline Levine, Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015, p. 2. Ibid., p. x. Ibid., p. xi, emphasis in original. Ibid., p. x. Ibid., p. 7. See: Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London and New York: Verso, 2012; Shannon Jackson, Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics, London and New York: Routledge, 2011. Caroline Levine, ‘Strategic Formalism: Toward a New Method in Cultural Studies’, Victorian Studies 48.4 (2006), pp. 625–657, here p. 627.

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66 Levine, Forms, p. xii 67 Franklin, ‘The Contexts of Form’, emphasis in original. 68 See, for instance, Fredric Jameson’s classic works Marxism and Form, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971, and The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983. 69 For Berlant’s treatment of this tradition, see: Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2011, pp. 63–69. 70 North, Literary Criticism, p. 176 71 Berlant, Cruel Optimism, p. 7. 72 Ibid., p. 10. 73 Ibid., p. 13. 74 The following account of Ngai’s work owes to a reading of several recent essays, as well as the book Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. 75 Sianne Ngai, ‘Our Aesthetic Categories’, PMLA 125.4 (October 2010), pp. 948–958, here p. 951. 76 Ibid., 949. 77 Levine, Forms, p. 21. 78 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, pp. 16–17. 79 For more on the difference between postdramatic theatre and Brechtian theatre, see: David Barnett, ‘Performing dialectics in an age of uncertainty, or: Why post-Brechtian ≠ postdramatic’, in Postdramatic Theatre and the Political, pp. 47–66. 80 Berlant, Cruel Optimism, p. 4. 81 Jasmine Mahmoud, ‘Space: Postdramatic Geography in Post-Collapse Seattle’, in this volume, pp. 48–65, here p. 48. 82 Andrew Friedman, ‘Festivals: Conventional Disruption, or, Why Ann Liv Young Ruined Rebecca Patek’s Show’, in this volume, pp. 115–130, here p. 116. 83 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 164, emphasis in original.

Chapter 2 1 Anna Porter, Kasztner’s Train, New York: Walker & Company, 2007, p. 348. 2 Karen Jürs-Munby, ‘Introduction’, in Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, pp. 1–15, here p. 2. 3 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 21. 4 Ibid. 5 Michael Hays, ‘Introduction’, boundary 2 2.3 (1983), pp. 1–5, here p. 1. 6 Ibid.

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7 Peter Szondi, Theory of Modern Drama, ed. and trans. Michael Hays, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987, pp. 7–8. 8 Ibid., p. 8. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid., p. 63. 11 Peter Höyng, ‘Peter Szondi’s Theorie des modernen Dramas (1956/63): From Absolute Drama to Absolute Theory’, Monatshefte 101.3 (2009), pp. 314–322, here p. 314. 12 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 34. 13 Ibid., p. 32, emphasis in original. 14 Ibid., p. 128. 15 For this insight into the possibility that Lehmann’s theatrical ‘real’ might represent a new kind of realism, I am indebted to the DFA dissertation of my Yale Drama School student Ilinca Todorut, on the robust revival of the realist tradition in contemporary theatre. 16 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 29 17 Ibid. 18 I am indebted to Yale Drama School DFA candidate Ilya Khdosh for research assistance with this article.

Chapter 3 1 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, p. 44. 2 See: David Barnett ‘When is a Play not a Drama: Two Examples of Postdramatic Theatre’, New Theatre Quarterly, 24.1 (2008), pp.14–23; Karen Jürs-Munby, ‘The Resistant Text in Postdramatic Theatre: Performing Elfriede Jeline’s Sprachflächen’, Performance Research 14.1 (2009), pp. 46–56; Claire Swyzen and Kurt Vanhoutte (eds), Het statuut van de tekst in het postdramatisch theater, Brussels: ASP, 2011; Luule Epner, ‘Theatre in the Postdramatic Text: A Phenomenological Approach’, Nordic Theatre Studies 24 (2012), pp. 66–75; Matt Cornish, ‘Kinetic Texts: From Poetry to Performance’, Modern Drama 58.3 (2015), pp. 302–323. 3 Genetic criticism is often somewhat loosely defined as ‘research into the dynamics of writing processes’. See: Dirk Van Hulle, De Kladbewaarders, Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2007, p. 7 (translation by the authors). Or it is the study of what is called ‘the “avant-­texte”: a critical gathering of a writer’s notes, sketches, drafts, manuscripts, typescripts, proofs, and correspondence’. See: Jed Deppman, Daniel Ferrer and Michael Groden (eds), Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant-Textes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. See also: Josette Féral, ‘Towards a Genetic Study of Performance – Take 2’, Theatre Research International 33.3 (2008), pp. 223–233; Almuth Grésillon, Marie-Madeleine Mervant-Roux and Dominique Budor (eds), Genèses Théâtrales, Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2010.

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4 See Almuth Grésillon and Jean-Marie Thomasseau, ‘Scènes de Genèses Théâtrales’, Genesis: Manuscrits, Recherche, Invention 26, Special Issue ‘Theâtre’ (2005), pp. 19–34; Julia Bernard, ‘“Un drame est ce que je nomme un drame”. Heiner Müller: Quelques brouillons de Bildbeschreibung’, in Almuth Grésillon and Nathalie Léger (eds), Genesis: Manuscrits, Recherche, Invention 26, Special Issue ‘Theâtre’ (2005), pp. 141–143; and Michel Contat, ‘La genèse sociale des Séquestrés d’Altona de Jean-Paul Sartre’, in Grésillon and Leger (eds), Genesis: Manuscrits, Recherche, Invention 26, pp. 91–100. 5 Féral, ‘Towards a Genetic Study of Performance – Take 2’, p. 224 and p. 226. 6 Ibid., p. 229. 7 These directors also constitute the corpus of the interuniversity research project The Didascalic Imagination: Contemporary Theatrical Notebooks as Genetic Documents of the Artistic Process, from which the present chapter derives. This project started in January 2013 under the supervision of Luk Van den Dries (University of Antwerp), and aims to trace the heritage of the Regiebuch in contemporary postdramatic theatre. For more information, see the website of the project: http://dighum.uantwerpen.be/didascimagination (accessed 12 September 2018), archived at https://perma.cc/3P3B-YQ8C. 8 In his essay ‘The Iconoclasm of the Stage and the Return of the Body’, Romeo Castellucci elucidates how ‘the return of the body’ in his theatre is intended as ‘an objective act of truth that puts an end to the chatter of comedy’, and allows ‘turning the “as if ” of theatre, its fictional essence, into an ambivalent or amphibio-­logical dimension’. Romeo Castellucci, ‘The Iconoclasm of the Stage and the Return of the Body: the Carnal Power of Theater’, Theater 37.3 (2007), pp. 37–45, here p. 38. 9 Michelle Kokosowski, ‘Pilgrims of Matter. Romeo Castellucci in his own Words’, Janus (June 2000), pp. 25–28, here p. 26. 10 Claudia Castellucci, Romeo Castellucci, Chiara Guidi, Joe Kelleher and Nicholas Ridout, The Theatre of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, London and New York: Routledge, 2007, pp. 235–236. 11 The archive of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio is in the process of being digitized and catalogued by Prof. Eline Papalexiou (academic advisor, curator), Dr Avra Xepapadakou (documentation advisor, curator) and their team within the European project ARCH: Archival Research and Cultural Heritage Aristeia II. Our own research on Castellucci’s notebooks has benefited greatly from the archival work done by Papalexiou and her team. We wish to express our gratitude for granting us access to this documentary material. For more information, see the website of the ARCH research project: http://www.arch-­srs.com (accessed 12 September 2018), archived at https://perma.cc/JC46-URNE. 12 This notebook is numbered 123_01_05_038 and is part of the digitalization project ARCH: Archival Research and Cultural Heritage: The Theatre Archive of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio.

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13 Kokowski, ‘Pilgrims of Matter’, p. 26. ‘Parthenogenesis’ is a form of asexual reproduction that can be found in some species, such as amphibians and reptiles. Castellucci’s reference to this term indicates that he is searching to draw connections between seemingly incommensurable categories (such as the animate and the inanimate) in order to compose his own idiosyncratic theatrical universe. 14 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 463. It is perhaps meaningful that Benjamin provides this definition of the ‘image’ in what has come to be known as his ‘Notebook N (On the Theory of Knowledge, Theory of Progress)’, which is included in The Arcades Project. For an insightful discussion of Notebook N and specifically the idea of the image Benjamin proposes here, see Samuel Weber, Benjamin’s Abilities, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. 15 Kokowski, ‘Pilgrims of Matter’, p. 26. 16 For a more extensive analysis of the function of annotation in director’s notebooks and creative processes, see Timmy De Laet, Edith Cassiers and Luk Van den Dries, ‘Creating by Annotating: The Director’s Notebooks of Jan Fabre and Jan Lauwers’, Performance Research 20.6 (2015), pp. 43–52. 17 Kokosowski, ‘Pilgrims of Matter’, p. 28. 18 On the notion of contraction within Isaac Luria’s philosophy, see: Daphne Freedman, Man and the Theogony in the Lurianic Cabala, New York: Gorgias Press, 2006, pp. 27–30. 19 Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess. Selected Writings, 1927–1931, ed. Allan Stoekl, trans. Allan Stoekl, Carl R. Lovitt and Donald M. Leslie Jr., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985. 20 Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind E. Kraus, Formless: A User’s Guide, New York: Zone Books, 1997, p. 18. 21 Konstantina Georgelou, Performless: The Operation of l’informe in Postdramatic Theatre, dissertation, Utrecht University, 2011, available at: https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/212939 (accessed 27 March, 2018), p. 41, emphasis in original. 22 Lydie Parisse, La ‘Parole Trouée’: Beckett, Tardieu, Novarina, Caen: Lettres modernes Minard, 2008. 23 Kokosowski, ‘Pilgrims of Matter’, p. 26. 24 Ibid. 25 Timmy De Laet and Edith Cassiers, ‘The Regenerative Ruination of Romeo Castellucci’, Performance Research 20.3 (2015), pp. 18–28, here p. 20. 26 Guy Cassiers was one of the crucial figures of the well-­known ‘Flemish Wave’ – a fruitful period during the 1980s characterized by a generation of Flemish directors, choreographers, actors and dancers who developed a unique artistic stage language based on breaking through any purist boundaries of theatre, dance, visual and performance art. See: Christian Biet and Josette Féral (eds), La vague flamande: mythe ou réalité? Théâtre/Public 211 (2014); Lourdes Orozco and Peter M. Boenisch, ‘Editorial: Border

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Collisions – Contemporary Flemish Theatre’, Contemporary Theatre Review 20.4 (2010), pp. 397–404. Cassiers’ intermedial theatre was one of the emerging forms of performing arts, next to the experiments of, amongst others, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Wim Vandekeybus, Jan Fabre, Jan Lauwers, Jan Decorte, Luk Perceval, Ivo van Hove and Alain Platel. Some of Cassiers’ most noteworthy productions include: the Proust performance-­ cycle (2002–2004), a triptych based on Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (2010–2012), Blood and Roses. The Song of Gilles and Jeanne (2011), MCBTH (2013), Hamlet vs Hamlet (2014), Caligula (2015), Borderline (2017). He also staged the complete cycle of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in Berlin and Milan (2010–2013). See: Sigrid Merx, ‘Swann’s Way: Video and Theatre as an Intermedial Stage for the Representation of Time’, in Frieda Chapple and Chiel Kattenbelt (eds), Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 2006, pp. 67–80; Sigrid Merx, ‘Theater, Video en Kristallisering van de Tijd’, in Maaike Bleeker, Lucia van Heteren, Chiel Kattenbelt and Rob van der Zalm (eds), Theater Topics 4 – Concepten en Objecten, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009, pp. 61–70. Guy Cassiers is not alone in his preference for novelistic texts as the textual basis for his performances. Other postdramatic directors are also inclined to choose a novel to adapt for the stage, such as Klaus Michael Grüber (adapting, for instance, the novella Rudi by Bernard von Brentano) and Romeo Castellucci (adapting Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit). It should also be noted that Cassiers sometimes stages a classical theatre text, such as Hamlet vs. Hamlet and MCBTH. For the adaptations of these theatre texts he often engages a playwright, such as Tom Lanoye, or reworks the texts himself with the aid of his dramaturge, Erwin Jans. Gérard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky, Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Sayyed Ali Mirenayat and Elaheh Soofastaei, ‘Gerard Genette and the Categorization of Textual Transcendence’, Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 6.5 (2015), pp. 533–537, here p. 536. See: Günther Martens, ‘Palimpsest en hercompilatie: Alexander Kluge, de “laatste modernist”? Alexander Kluges herschrijving van het modernisme (Mann, Proust, Joyce en Musil)’, in Jan Baetens, Sjef Houppermans, Arthur Langeveld and Peter Liebregts (eds), De erfenis van het modernisme, Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers, 2010, pp. 219–235. See Thomas Crombez and Edith Cassiers, ‘Postdramatic Methods of Adaptation in the Age of Digital Collaborative Writing’, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities Journal 32.1 (2017), pp. 17–35. See: Zoë Svendsen, ‘Luk Perceval – Platonov (2006) – Rules for a Theatre of Contemporary Contemplation’, in Jen Harvie and Andy Lavender (eds), Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010, pp. 222–241; Crombez and

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35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50

Notes Cassiers, ‘Postdramatic Methods of Adaptation in the Age of Digital Collaborative Writing’; and Frederik Le Roy, Edith Cassiers, Thomas Crombez and Luk Van den Dries, ‘Tracing Creation: The Director’s Notebook as Genetic Document of the Postdramatic Creative Process’, Contemporary Theatre Review 26.4 (2016), pp. 468–484. Erwin Jans, interview with Guy Cassiers, ‘De i-Pad van Kaspar: gesprek met regisseur Guy Cassiers en video-­ontwerper Arjen Klerkx’, De Witte Raaf 153 (2011), available at: http://www.dewitteraaf.be/artikel/detail/nl/3686 (accessed 13 March 2013), archived at https://perma.cc/K5TA-Q6C8. Translations by the authors unless otherwise noted. Ibid. Edith Cassiers, Frederik Le Roy and Luk Van den Dries, interview with Guy Cassiers, 5 December 2013, Toneelhuis, Antwerp. Ibid. Matthew Battles, Palimpsest: A History of the Written Word, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015. Patrice Pavis, Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis, trans. Christine Shantz, Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1998, p. 267. Two revolutionary objects that Cassiers’ collaborators have developed for his intermedial theatre are the so-­called mediaserver and hippotizer. Cassiers has been using the mediaserver since 2008 and calls it a kind of ‘photoshop program for video’. This computer program can play and edit live images (cropping, changing colours, distorting effects, etc.) on three screens. The hippotizer was used for MCBTH and makes it possible for video images to follow actor’s movements – creating shadows and other light effects. Cassiers et al., interview with Guy Cassiers. See also: Jans, ‘De i-Pad van Kaspar’. Jans, ‘De i-Pad van Kaspar’. Cassiers et al., interview with Guy Cassiers. Ibid. Ibid. Julia Jarcho, Writing and the Modern Stage: Theater beyond Drama, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 30. Most of the work is done in advance of the rehearsals, the so-­called pre-­production process, around the table with the director, dramaturg and technical crew. Scenography (decor, light, costumes and video projection) is designed in advance, so the actors can start the first day of rehearsal in a technical ‘playground’. Cassiers et al., interview with Guy Cassiers. Jans, ‘De i-Pad van Kaspar’. Cassiers et al., interview with Guy Cassiers. See: Battles, Palimpsest, p. 18. See: Peter M. Boenisch, ‘coMEDIA electrONica: Performing Intermediality in Contemporary Theatre’, Theatre Research International 28.1 (2003), pp. 34–45; Chiel Kattenbelt, ‘Intermediality in Theatre and Performance: Definitions, Perceptions and Medial Relationships’, Cultura, Lenguaje y

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Representación/Culture, Language and Representation 6 (2008), pp. 19–29; and Sarah Bay-Cheng, Chiel Kattenbelt, Andy Lavender and Robin Nelson (eds), Mapping Intermediality in Performance, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 22. See: Irina O. Rajewsky, ‘Intermediality, Intertextuality and Remediation: A Literary Perspective on Intermediality’, Intermédialités: histoire et théorie des arts, des lettres et des techniques / Intermediality : History and Theory of the Arts, Literature and Technologies 6 (2005), pp. 43–64. Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid. See: Regina Schober, ‘Translating Sounds: Intermedial Exchanges in Amy Lowell’s “Stravinsky’s Three Pieces ‘Grotesques’, for String Quartet” ’, in Lars Elleström (ed.), Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 163–174. Schober, p. 166. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 7. Karen Jürs-Munby, ‘Introduction’, in Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, pp. 1–15, here p. 2. Ibid., 44.

Chapter 4 1 The description for this performance is drawn from online video footage: Implied Violence, Barley Girl (2010), available at: https://vimeo. com/9291839 (accessed 2 February 2016) 2 Brandon Kiley, ‘Heavy-Metal Theatre’, The Stranger, 14 August 2008, available at: https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/theatre-­news/Content?oid=643682 (accessed 2 February 2016), archived at https://perma.cc/Q8DE-BEV7. 3 Christopher Frizzelle, ‘Implied Violence,’ The Stranger, 11 September 2008, available at: https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/implied-­violence/ Content?oid=668965 (accessed 2 February 2016), archived at https://perma.cc/FV29-X7TH 4 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, p. 31. 5 Ibid., p. 150. 6 Ibid., p. 175. 7 Sonjah Stanley Niaah, DanceHall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2010, p. 32. 8 Elin Diamond, ‘Introduction’, in Elin Diamond (ed.), Performance and Cultural Politics, London and New York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 1–12, here p. 1. 9 Jasmine Mahmoud, ‘Brooklyn’s Experimental Frontiers: A Performance Geography’, TDR: The Drama Review 58:3 (2014), pp. 97–123, here p. 104.

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10 Stanley Niaah, DanceHall, p. 32. 11 Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Mandie O’Connell are from an interview with the author conducted in 2014. 12 Steve Wiecking, ‘Everything Without Exception’, Seattle Weekly, 9 October 2006, np. 13 Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Ryan Mitchell are from an interview with the author conducted in 2014. 14 Brendan Kiley, ‘The First Week: Halfway Through Northwest New Works,’ The Stranger, 14 June 2007, available at: https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/ the-­first-week/Content?oid=242745 (accessed 2 February 2016), archived at https://perma.cc/8RHK-GCDJ. 15 Brangien Davis, ‘Northwest New Works | Performance, parody and pie’, The Seattle Times, 19 June 2007, available at: https://www.seattletimes.com/ entertainment/northwest-­new-works-­performance-parody-­and-pie/ (accessed 2 February 2016). 16 Christopher Frizzelle, ‘Nightstand’, The Stranger, 14 June 2007, available at: https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/nightstand/Content?oid=242641 (accessed 2 February 2016), archived at https://perma.cc/NVX4-CFGQ. 17 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 17, emphasis in original. 18 Ibid., p. 150, emphasis in original. 19 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre, trans. Erik Butler, Abingdon: Routledge, 2014, p. 429. 20 Frizzelle, ‘Implied Violence.’ 21 DK Pan, ‘Motel #1’, 2007, available at: http://www.motelmotelmotel.com/ bridge.html (accessed 2 February 2016). 22 Ibid. 23 Brendan Kiley, ‘Motel #1’, The Stranger, 13 September 2007, available at: https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=316770 (accessed 2 February 2016), archived at https://perma.cc/BEW8-VK8X. 24 The description for this performance is drawn from online video footage: Derrick Mitchell, ‘Implied Violence: Come to My Center, You Enter the Winter’, 25 January 2008, available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=EJjB3DcCexw (accessed 2 February 2016). 25 Jen Graves, ‘What’s that Smell?’, The Stranger, 17 September 2007, available at: https://slog.thestranger.com/2007/09/whats_that_smell (accessed 4 June 2015). 26 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 150, emphasis in original. 27 Mitchell quoted in Haley Edwards, ‘Artists bid farewell to a seedy city landmark’, The Seattle Times, 15 September 2007, available at: https://www. seattletimes.com/seattle-­news/artists-­bid-farewell-­to-a-­seedy-city-­landmark (accessed 2 February 2016). 28 Jim Kershner, ‘Washington Mutual (WaMu)’, Historylink.org, 21 October 2008, available at: http://www.historylink.org/File/8821 (accessed 2 February 2016), archived at https://perma.cc/PGM4-CBNW.

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29 Jon Talton, ‘Five years later, WaMu’s collapse remains an outrage’, The Seattle Times, 25 September 2013, available at: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/ jontalton/2013/09/25/five-­years-later-­wamus-collapse-­remains-an-­outrage/ (accessed 2 February 2016). 30 Kershner, ‘Washington Mutual (WaMu)’. 31 See https://usaunemploymentrate.com/us-­unemployment-rate-­seattle-city-­ wa-u-­from-2008-to-2017 (accessed 17 April 2018), archived at https:// perma.cc/3Z3F-9DJS. 32 All quotations from Pamala Mijatov (18 March 2014), Charlie Rathbun (24 April 2014) and Randy Engstrom (21 May 2014) are from interviews conducted by the author. 33 Dominic Holden, ‘Nobody’s Home’, The Stranger, 19 March 2009, available at: https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/nobodys-­home/Content?oid=1177409 (accessed 2 February 2016), archived at https://perma.cc/R7VR-H5WA. 34 These lines are from video footage of a recording of the performance, available at: https://vimeo.com/9291839 (accessed 2 February 2016). 35 Lehmann, Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre, p. 425. 36 Ibid., p. 426. 37 Joseph Papp quoted in Angela Pao, No Safe Spaces: Re-­casting Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality in American Theatre, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010, p. 46. 38 August Wilson also said: ‘The idea of colorblind casting is the same idea of assimilation that black Americans have been rejecting for the past 380 years. For the record, we reject it again. We reject any attempt to blot us out, to reinvent history and ignore our presence or to maim our spiritual product. . . . We will not deny our history, and we will not allow it to be made to be of little consequence, to be ignored or misinterpreted.’ August Wilson, ‘The Ground on Which I Stand’, Speech at Theatre Communications Group Conference, 26 June 1996, available at: https://www.americantheatre. org/2016/06/20/the-­ground-on-­which-i-­stand (accessed 4 April 2018), archived at https://perma.cc/GS7F-TFG8. 39 Historian Matthew Klingle argues that, by the end of the nineteenth century, an influx of newcomers and the Panic of 1893 prompted a change in the role of Native Americans ‘from vital laborers to nostalgic symbols even as many continued to work and live hidden in plain sight’. Matthew Klingle, ‘Frontier Ghosts Along the Urban Pacific Slope,’ in Jay Gitlin, Barbara Berglund and Adam Arenson (eds), Frontier Cities: Encounters at the Crossroads of the Empire, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013, pp. 121–146, here p. 126. Early twentieth-­century urban development also furthered racial segregation. Downtown Seattle was full of steep hills, making transportation difficult. In 1907, R. H. Thomson, a city engineer, led Seattle to complete the Denny regrade, a process that levelled Denny Hill, a hill in downtown that was too steep for traffic. This and other regrades contributed to displacement and racially segregated geographies in Seattle. See also ibid., p. 141.

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40 See, among other articles and resources: Jamala Henderson, ‘Why is Seattle so racially segregated?’, KUOW News and Information, 20 September 2016, available at: http://kuow.org/post/why-­seattle-so-­racially-segregated (accessed 4 April 2018), archived at https://perma.cc/E9XZ-LLBK. 41 Lehmann, Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre, p. 424. 42 Frizzelle, ‘Implied Violence’. 43 Ibid. 44 Christopher Frizzelle, ‘2008 Stranger Organization Genius,’ The Stranger, 2008, available at: https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Special/Genius? view=geniuses&oid=668965 (accessed 2 February 2016), archived at https://perma.cc/E8XZ-MLBJ.

Chapter 5 1 ‘Time Machine’, Greenwich + Docklands International Festival, available at: http://www.festival.org/whatson/108/time-­machine (accessed 12 April 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/LG6H-PF9P. 2 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, p. 143. 3 Ibid., p. 161. 4 Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic, trans. Lisabeth During, Abingdon: Routledge, 2005, p. 13. 5 Patrice Pavis, Contemporary Mise en Scène: Staging Theatre Today, trans. Joel Anderson, Abingdon: Routledge, 2013, p. 305. 6 Ibid., p. 240; pp. 305–306. 7 Ibid., p. 212. 8 Ibid., p. 240. 9 Aside from the research I discuss in this section, the role of time in postdramatic staging is a topic that recent surveys of the field have overlooked. In Postdramatic Theatre and the Political, the first book-­length consideration of the postdramatic paradigm since Lehmann’s own study, the absence of any critical investigation of temporality in relation to spectatorship is conspicuous. The area is only addressed indirectly, via Brandon Woolf ’s explication of Lehmann’s dialectical process, for example. See Brandon Woolf, ‘Towards a Paradoxically Parallaxical Postdramatic Politics?’, in Jerome Carroll et al. (eds), Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance, London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2013, pp. 31–46. In Theatre & Time, David Wiles only mentions postdramatic theory on one occasion, and it is to emphasize how the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen prolong the experience of time ‘in order to create a kind of time sculpture’, as opposed to ‘the tendency of Aristotelian theatre to erase our experience of “time as time” ’. Wiles simply reiterates Lehmann and does not seek to add to or critique the

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11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33

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efficacy of a postdramatic theory of time. See David Wiles, Theatre & Time, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p. 62. Rachel Fensham, ‘Postdramatic Spectatorship: Participate or Else’, Critical Stages 7 (2012), available at: http://www.critical-­stages.org/7/postdramatic-­ spectatorship-participate-­or-else/ (accessed 23 March 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/4DV8-5AKX. Ibid. Ibid. Fensham, following Lehmann, is drawing on Gertrude Stein for this phrasing. See Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 63. Fensham, ‘Postdramatic Spectatorship’. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 109. The Time Machine, directed by George Pal, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1960. David Barnett, ‘Political Theatre in a Shrinking World: René Pollesch’s Postdramatic Practices on Paper and on Stage’, Contemporary Theatre Review 16.1 (2006), pp. 31–40, here p. 34. Ibid. Barnett is paraphrasing Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatisches Theater, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Autoren, 1999, p. 330. Ibid., p. 33; p. 34. Ibid., p. 40. Ibid., p. 34. David Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s Capital, London: Verso, 2010, p. 140. Reports of the Inspectors of Factories for 30 April 1860 quoted in Karl Marx, Capital: Critique of Political Economy Volume 1, trans. Ben Fowkes, London: Penguin Classics, 1990, p. 352. Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s Capital, p. 142. Pavis, Contemporary Mise en Scène, p. 240. Deborah Pearson, talk delivered at Visual Cultures Forum, School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, Queen Mary University of London, 13 October 2015. Deborah Pearson, The Future Show, London: Oberon Books, 2015. José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, New York: New York University Press, 2009, p. 9. Pearson, The Future Show, pp. 130–131. Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984, p. 23. Stewart is referring here to Vladimir Jankélévitch’s L’Irréversible et la nostalgie (Paris: Flammarion, 2011). Pearson, The Future Show, p. 70. Tim Etchells, ‘Introduction’, in Deborah Pearson, The Future Show, pp. 5–10, here p. 7. Slavoj Žižek, Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, London: Verso, 2012, p. 614. See Søren Kierkegaard, ‘Repetition’, in The Essential Kierkegaard, ed. Howard Hong and Edna Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000, pp. 102–112, here p. 108.

226 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Notes Malabou, The Future of Hegel, p. 13. Ibid., p. 184. Ibid., p. 17. Pearson, Visual Cultures Forum. Fensham, ‘Postdramatic Spectatorship’. Benjamin H. Snyder, The Disrupted Workplace, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, p. 8. Jill Lepore, ‘The Disruption Machine’, The New Yorker, 23 June 2014, available at: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-­disruptionmachine (accessed 2 May 2017). Pavis, Contemporary Mise en Scène, p. 212. Lepore, ‘The Disruption Machine’. Malabou, The Future of Hegel, p. 192. Michael Shane Boyle, ‘Brecht’s Gale: Innovation and Postdramatic Theatre’, Performance Research 21.3 (2016), pp. 16–26, here p. 22. Ibid. Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 185. Ibid. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 136. David Barnett, ‘Performing Dialectics in an Age of Uncertainty, or: Why Post-Brechtian ≠ Postdramatic’, in Jerome Carroll et al. (eds), Postdramatic Theatre and the Political, pp. 47–66, here p. 47. Ibid., p. 60. Ibid., p. 61. Ibid., p. 62. Sarah Bryant-Bertail, Space and Time in Epic Theater: The Brechtian Legacy, Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 2000, p. 14, emphasis in original. Barnett, ‘Performing Dialectics in an Age of Uncertainty’, p. 50.

Chapter 6 1 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, p. 59. 2 Tristan Garcia, Form and Object: A Treatise on Things, trans. Mark Allan Ohm and Jon Cogburn, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014, p. 5. 3 Both Victor Turner’s anthropology of performance and J. L. Austin’s linguistic concept of performative speech derived from human-­centered post-Kantian philosophies which are based on the anthropocentric hierarchy of meaning. See: Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance, New York: PAJ, 1986; and J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisa, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975. 4 I use this term following Hayden White, who defined emplotment as ‘the encodation of the facts contained in the chronicle as components of specific

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kinds of plot structures, in precisely the way that Frye has suggested is the case with “fictions” in general’. In other words, emplotment, as White defines it, means arranging historical events into narrative with plot. Dramatic emplotment, then, would mean arranging historical, performance and performative events into classic Aristotelian dramatic structure (which privileges plot). Historical emplotment, then, would be akin to Hegel’s dramatic concept of world history, which happens as if ‘in the theatre’. Postdramatic emplotment, on the other hand, would mean arranging historical, performance and performative events into postdramatic form (i.e. nonlinear, nonchronological structure). In that sense, we can propose that there can be no posthuman emplotment, but rather posthuman deplotment, as posthuman aesthetics decentres all narrative historical, dramaturgical and ontological models. See: Hayden White, ‘The Historical Text as Literary Artifact’, in Geoffrey Roberts (ed.), The History and Narrative Reader, London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 221–236, here p. 223. 5 Hans-Thies Lehmann notes that the hegemonic trope of the performing body, which has long dominated Western culture and performance, is undergoing a dramatic shift: Images of the body are a dominant feature of mass media in neoliberal Western societies. The human body is praised as a value in itself, however manipulated, trained, gendered, and over-­sexed, advertised as a product for consumption and abused as a battleground of ideologies, sacrificed for economic profit and for religious or political ideas of every kind. In the age of technical and scientific progress, the ideology of perfected bodies has its counterpart in the elaboration of more and more effective ways to destroy and extinguish the physical existence of whole populations. The very distinction between human beings and animals or machines, an essential precondition of humanist ethics and aesthetics, is radically questioned by the logic of technical progress itself. 6 7 8 9 10 11

Hans-Thies Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi, ‘Dramaturgy on Shifting Grounds’, Performance Research 14.3 (2009), pp. 3–6, here p. 5. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 163. Gabriella Giannachi, The Politics of New Media Theatre: Life®TM, New York: Routledge, 2006, p. 63. Louise Lepage, ‘Posthuman Perspectives and Postdramatic Theatre: The Theory and Practice of Hybrid Ontology in Katie Mitchell’s The Waves’, Culture, Language and Representation 6 (2008), pp. 137–149, here p. 138. Ibid. N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, p. 2. Peter M. Boenisch, ‘Towards a Theatre of Encounter and Experience: Reflexive Dramaturgies and Classic Texts’, Contemporary Theatre Review 20.2 (2010), pp. 162–172, here p. 162.

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12 Cathy Turner, ‘Mis-Guidance and Spatial Planning: Dramaturgies of Public Space’, Contemporary Theatre Review 20.2 (2010), pp. 149–161, here p. 150. 13 Quoted in Peter Eckersall, Paul Monaghan and Melanie Beddie, ‘Dramaturgy as Ecology: A Report from the Dramaturgies Project’, in Katalin Trencsényi and Bernadette Cochrane (eds), New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice, New York: Bloomsbury Methuen, 2014, pp. 18–35, here p. 21. 14 Robin Nelson, ‘Prospective Mapping’, in Sarah Bay-Cheng, Chiel Kattenbelt, Andy Lavender and Robin Nelson (eds), Mapping Intermediality in Performance, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010, pp. 13–23, here p. 23. 15 See also: Teemu Paavolainen, Theatre/Ecology/Cognition: Theorizing Performer-Object Interaction in Grotowski, Kantor, and Meyerhold, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. 16 The concept of the posthuman was first introduced in The New International Encyclopedia (published in 1905 in New York) in the context of gods (superhuman) and the dead / ghosts (as posthuman). It was, however, first conceptualized in the modern sense by Ihab Hassan, a literary critic, who wrote in his 1977 article ‘Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Posthumanist Culture’: We need first to understand that the human form – including human desire and all its external representations – may be changing radically, and thus must be revisioned. We need to understand that five hundred years of humanism may be coming to an end, as humanism transforms itself into something that we must helplessly call posthumanism. 17

18 19 20 21 22 23

Ihab Hassan, ‘Prometheus as Performer: Toward a Posthumanist Culture?’, The Georgia Review 31.4 (1977), pp. 830–850, here p. 843. Defining his concept of ‘bare life’, Agamben describes a ‘zone of indistinction and continuous transition between man and beast’. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 109. Elsewhere, Agamben writes about ‘bare life’ as that which belongs only to those excluded from the ‘human’ race: ‘In Western politics, bare life has the peculiar privilege of being that whose exclusions found the city of men’. Ibid., p. 7. Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. xi. Ibid. Pramod K. Nayar, Posthumanism, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2014, p. 4. Ibid., p. 2. Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, pp. 2–3. In performance theory, one of the first authors to grapple with the ‘end of human’ was Richard Schechner in his 1992 collection of essays The End of Humanism. Although Schechner acknowledges that rethinking humanism

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provokes a conceptual shift, he doesn’t engage with the theoretical nuances between performance art, postdramatic theatre and posthuman theatre (nor the difference between posthuman and posthumanist). For Schechner, all modern avant-­garde by its very nature is ‘posthumanist’. Richard Schechner, The End of Humanism: Writings on Performance, New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982. Although Oscar Schlemmer’s experiments with geometric costumes that both constrained and augmented the human body preceded Kantor’s work with bio-­objects, Kantor was the first to specifically address the unique relationship between human body and objects. Tadeusz Kantor, ‘Further Development: The Object,’ trans. William Brand, unpublished manuscript in Cricoteka – the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor. Tadeusz Kantor, Cricot 2 and the Theatre of Death, Peter Hulton (ed.), Devon, England: Darlington College of Arts Department of Theatre, 1978. The contemporary Bulgarian director Galin Stoev wrote of his own postdramatic actor that he’s ‘not to play the character, but “play upon the character” in the same manner as a musician “plays upon his instrument” ’. Quoted in Joseph Danan, ‘Dramaturgy in “Postdramatic” Times’, in Trencsényi and Cochrane (eds), New Dramaturgy, pp. 3–17, here p. 14. Kenneth J. Gergen, The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, New York: Basic Books, 1991, p. 6. Krzysztof Pleśniarowicz, The Dead Memory Machine: Tadeusz Kantor’s Theatre of Death, Cracow: Cricoteka, 1994, p. 67. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 73. Tadeusz Kantor, ‘My Work, My Journey (Excerpts)’, in Michal Kobialka (ed. and trans.), A Journey through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos, 1944– 1990, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 17–32, here p. 19. Tadeusz Kantor, ‘The Impossible Theatre (1969–1973)’, in Michal Kobialka (ed.), Further On, Nothing: Tadeusz Kantor’s Theatre, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009, pp. 174–192, here p. 188. Tadeusz Kantor, ‘The Impossible Theatre’, unpublished manuscript in Cricoteka – the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor. Translations by the author unless otherwise noted. Kantor, ‘The Impossible Theatre,’ in Further On, Nothing, p. 188. Nayar, Posthumanism, 3. Tadeusz Kantor, notes to Balladyna (1942), trans. William Brand, unpublished manuscript in Cricoteka – the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor. Michal Kobialka, ‘The Quest for the Self: Thresholds and Transformations’, in A Journey through Other Spaces, pp. 269–310, here pp. 289–290. Giannachi, Politics of New Media Theatre, p. 65. Ibid., p. 64. Nayar, Posthumanism, p. 2.

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41 Katherine Ott, David Serlin and Stephen Mihm (eds), Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics, New York: New York University Press, 2002, p. 5. 42 Hayles, How We Became Posthuman, p. 4. 43 Sadeq Rahimi, ‘Identities without a Reference: Towards a Theory of Posthuman Identity’, M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.3 (2000), available at: http://journal.media-­culture.org.au/0006/identity.php (accessed 17 February 2015), archived at https://perma.cc/DG3V-EDPK. 44 Elinor Fuchs, The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theater after Modernism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996, p. 96. 45 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 39. 46 Peter Szondi, Theory of the Modern Drama, trans. Michael Hays, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987, p. 8. 47 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 72. Lehmann is quoting Georg Hensel’s review in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 15 June 1995. 48 Tadeusz Kantor, ‘To Save from Oblivion (1988)’, in A Journey through Other Spaces, pp. 166–171, here p. 166. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 51 Pleśniarowicz, Dead Memory Machine, p. 76. 52 Kantor, ‘To Save from Oblivion’, p. 170. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Kantor, ‘My Work – My Journey’, in A Journey through Other Spaces, p. 19. 56 Bill Brown, ‘Thing Theory’, Critical Inquiry 28.1 (2001), pp. 1–22, here pp. 4–5. 57 Jacques Derrida, Signéponge/Signsponge, trans. Richard Rand, New York: Columbia University Press, 1984, p. 14. 58 Jean Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies, trans. Philip Beitchman and W. G. J. Niesluchowski, ed. Jim Fleming, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990, p. 111. 59 Brown, ‘Thing Theory’, 12. 60 Ibid. 61 Kantor, ‘My Work – My Journey’, in A Journey through Other Spaces, p. 19. 62 Cary Wolfe, What Is Posthumanism?, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, p. xv.

Chapter 7 1 Consideration of recent literary scholarship yields numerous examples of the practical equivalence of form and genre. This, from the second edition of a standard textbook on genre: ‘What these two radically different readings reflect, of course, is the significance of literary form or genre’, Heather

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Dubrow, Genre, London and New York: Routledge, 1982 (2014), p. 2. Two, from recent scholarly essays: ‘The more standardized the literary form or genre, the easier it travels’, Andreas Hedberg, ‘The Knife in the Lemon: Nordic Noir and the Glocalization of Crime Fiction’, in Louise Nilsson, David Damrosch and Theo D’haen (eds), Crime Fiction as World Literature, London: Bloomsbury, 2017, pp. 13–22, here p. 21; ‘The resulting question of the proper role of literary form or genre in a postcolonial state is of interest principally because it situates literature coming from former European colonies in a larger global discussion of the evolution of form in literary studies and the proper place for aesthetics in nation-­building’, John C. Hawley, ‘Postcolonial Modernism: Shame and National Form’, in Anna Bernard, Ziad Elmarsafy and Stuart Murray (eds), What Postcolonial Theory Doesn’t Say, London and New York: Routledge, 2015, pp. 67–86, here p. 71. Another, from a recent book on an emergent literary genre offers a clue as to the possible origin, within the scholarly literature, for this equivalence: ‘[Fredric] Jameson was the first theorist to link postmodernism not to a particular form or genre, but to socio-­political circumstances, or history’, Megan L. Musgrave, Digital Citizenship in Twenty-First Century Young Adult Literature, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, p. xx. Finally, in texts spanning the period 1991–2016, here are some examples of Jameson himself doing it: ‘The content of the Utopian form will emerge from that other form or genre which is the fairy tale’, Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future, London and New York: Verso, 2005, p. 85; ‘But perhaps two deeper theoretical trends need to be mentioned in any discussion of this much-­ maligned form or genre called “universal history,” to which Karatani makes so interesting a new contribution here’, Fredric Jameson, ‘Ancient Society and the New Politics: From Kant to Modes of Production’, Criticism 58.2 (2016), pp. 327–339, here p. 330; and, most appropriately, as will soon be evident, in the opening sentence of the chapter entitled ‘Video’ in Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, ‘It has often been said that every age is dominated by a privileged form, or genre, which seems by its structure the fittest to express its secret truths’, London and New York: Verso, 1991, p. 67. Fredric Jameson, ‘Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre’, New Literary History 7.1 (1975), pp. 135–163, here p. 135, emphasis in original. Ibid. Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, p. 22, emphasis in original. Ibid., 175. Jameson, Postmodernism, p. 67, emphasis in original. Ibid., p. 69. Ibid., p. 76. Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Gregory Elliott, London and New York: Verso, 2007. Jameson, Postmodernism, p. 3.

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11 There is now a large body of critical work, within theatre and performance studies alone, that addresses these and related questions of what is often called theatre’s ‘intermediality’. For just some of the most recent relevant interventions in this expanding field, see Andy Lavender, Performance in the 21st Century: Theatres of Engagement, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2016, especially chapters 3 (on hybridity and intermedial theatre) and 6 (on YouTube performances); Sarah Bay-Cheng, Jennifer Parker-Starbuck and David Saltz, Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015, which is especially useful for its clear survey of the state of the (changing) field; and, for work to which I owe some of the general critical disposition of the present chapter, two essays by Martin Harries: ‘Theatre and Media Before “New” Media’: Beckett’s Film and Play’, Theater 42.2 (2012), pp. 7–25; and ‘Theater after Film, or Dismediation’, ELH 58.2 (2016), pp. 345–361. A further and highly pertinent contribution is Matthew Causey’s essay, ‘Postdigital Performance’, Theatre Journal 68.3 (2016), pp. 427–441, which includes valuable analysis of work by Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin whose ‘postdigital’ nature is exemplified for Causey by the sense that their work is ‘at home in the reality of the virtual’, p. 432. For a consideration of Fitch and Trecartin’s work as ‘postcinematic’, see Lisa Åkervall, ‘Networked selves: Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch’s postcinematic aesthetics’, Screen 57.1 (2016), pp. 35–51. Clearly my consideration of their work in what follows as ‘postdramatic’ is far from original. 12 Jameson, Postmodernism, p. 78. 13 Ibid., 74. 14 Ibid., 70. 15 Ibid., 70. 16 It was at around this time that supporters of a call from Palestinian cultural and academic organizations began to work on a campaign to boycott the Zabludowicz Collection on the grounds that the Zabludowicz Art Trust, which owns the collection, is involved with Israeli companies that supply services and maintenance to the Israeli Airforce. See https:// boycottzabludowicz.wordpress.com (accessed 28 March 2018), archived at https://perma.cc/X77W-ECYP. 17 Jacques Rancière, The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott, London and New York: Verso, 2009, p. 8. 18 For a good summary of these positions and the evidence that supports them, at least in a UK context, see Andy Williams, Claire Wardle and Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, ‘ “HAVE THEY GOT NEWS FOR US?” Audience revolution or business as usual at the BBC?’, Journalism Practice 5.1 (2011), pp. 85–99. 19 Marketing material for Danny Iny, The Audience Revolution: The Smarter Way to Build a Business, Make a Difference, and Change the World, Montreal: Firepole Marketing, 2015, available at: https://www.amazon.com/AudienceRevolution-Smarter-Business-Difference-­ebook/dp/B00V14UTWI (accessed 20 September 2017).

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Chapter 8 1 Ann Liv Young, interview with Gia Kourlas, ‘Ann Liv Young goes behind bars at Jack’, Time Out New York, 23 November 2014, available at: http:// www.timeout.com/newyork/dance/ann-­liv-young-­goes-behind-­bars-at-­jack (accessed 4 September 2015), archived at https://perma.cc/7GKQ-EZL9. 2 Sherapy is an outgrowth of Young’s Sherry persona, in which the titular character offers in-­character therapy sessions. These performances/therapy sessions are offered privately and in public forums including in Young’s mobile ‘Sherapy Van’ and her appearance at the 2014 World Psychiatric Conference in Madrid. She is not a certified therapist. 3 Siobhan Burke, ‘Imprisonment for Her Transgressions, Karaoke for Her Audience’ The New York Times, 7 December 2014, available at: https://www. nytimes.com/2014/12/08/arts/dance/ann-­liv-young-­in-jail-­for-crimes-­ against-performance.html (accessed 6 January 2018). 4 Young, ‘Ann Liv Young goes behind bars at Jack’. 5 Liz Tomlin, Acts and Apparitions: Discourse on the Real in Performance Practice and Theory, 1990–2010, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013, p. 70. 6 James Harding, Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s): Exorcising Experimental Theatre and Performance, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013, p. 14. 7 Paul Mann, The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991; see also, Shannon Jackson, Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics, New York: Routledge, 2011. 8 Mann, The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde, p. 82. 9 Young, for example, received a ban from Abrons Art Centre – a highly influential venue that had presented the artist’s previous work – and lost the backing of Oslo’s Black Box Theatre, which was slated to co-­produce her next show, Elektra. And while Young undoubtedly accrued capital in some circles, this essay being one such example, there is no guarantee that such stock will retain its value. 10 Liz Tomlin, ‘The Academy and the Marketplace: Avant-Garde Performance in Neoliberal Times’, in Kimberly Jannarone (ed.), Vanguard Performance: Beyond Left and Right, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2015, pp. 264–282, here p. 277. 11 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby, New York: Routledge, 2006, p. 57. 12 Mike Sell, The Avant-Garde: Race, Religion, War, New York: Seagull Books, 2011, p. 41. 13 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 101. 14 Robert Wilson, ‘Chronology – Performing Arts’, nd, available at: http://www. robertwilson.com/chronology-­theater/ (accessed 19 July 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/SX27-CGSN.

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15 The twelve festivals that run concurrent with APAP are: American Realness, COIL, The Exponential Festival, The Fire This Time Festival, Fresh Grind Festival, Live Artery, New Ear Festival, PROTOTYPE, Special Effects, Squirts, STEM Fest, and Under the Radar. 16 Mario Garcia Durham, quoted in Elizabeth Zimmer, ‘Venture Capitalists of the Performing-Arts World Gather for One of the Year’s Most Influential Showcases’, The Village Voice, 3 January 2017, available at: https://www. villagevoice.com/2017/01/03/venture-­capitalists-of-­the-performing-­artsworld-­gather-for-­one-of-­the-years-­most-influential-­showcases (accessed 8 June 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/JA7T-BFD3. 17 Helen Shaw, ‘January Theatre Festivals Guide’, Time Out New York, 5 January 2017, available at: https://www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/january-­ theater-festivals (accessed 24 June 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/ Q2YE-TXQR. 18 Zimmer, ‘Venture Capitalists of the Performing-Arts World Gather’. 19 Siobhan Burke, ‘January Is a Dance Jamboree and Meat Market,’ The New York Times, 3 January 2017, available at: https://www.nytimes. com/2017/01/03/arts/dance/apap-­january-is-­a-dance-­jamboree-and-­meatmarket.html (accessed 3 June 2017). 20 Jonah Bokaer quoted in ‘Curating Contemporary Performance: New York in the Twenty-First Century’, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 34.1 (2012), pp. 183–197, here p. 196. 21 Mann, The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde, p. 63. 22 Richard Schechner, ‘The Conservative Avant-Garde’, New Literary History 41.4 (2010), pp. 895–913. 23 Trajal Harrell quoted in ‘Curating Contemporary Performance: New York in the Twenty-First Century’, p. 188. 24 Lehmann. Postdramatic Theatre, p. 61. 25 Ibid., p. 100. 26 Ibid., p. 101. 27 Sell, The Avant-Garde: Race, Religion, War, p. 41. 28 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 57. 29 Ibid., p. 59. 30 F. T. Marinetti, ‘The Variety Theatre’, in Günter Berghaus (ed.), F.T. Marinetti: Critical Writings, trans. Doug Thompson, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2006, pp. 185–192, here p. 190. 31 David Burliuk, Alexander Kruchenykh, Vladmir Mayakovsky and Victor Khlebnikov, ‘Slap in the Face of Public Taste’, in Anna Lawton and Herbert Eagle (eds and trans.), Russian Futurism Through its Manifestos, 1912–1928, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988, pp. 51–52. 32 André Breton, ‘Second Manifesto of Surrealism’, in Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans. Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969, pp. 119–194, here p. 125. 33 Alain Badiou, The Century, Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2007, p. 134. 34 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 104.

Notes 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52

53 54 55 56 57

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Ibid., p. 106. Ibid., p. 99. Ibid., p. 101. Ibid., p. 104. Rebecca Patek, ‘Artist Statement’, nd, available at: rebeccapatek.com/about (accessed 2 October 2015), archived at https://perma.cc/EM8E-D253. Personal email correspondence between Rebecca Patek and unnamed Pornhub Support Team member, 5 October 2015. Siobhan Burke, ‘Acting’, The Performance Club, 22 January 2014, available at: http://theperformanceclub.org/2014/01/acting (accessed 5 October 2015), archived at https://perma.cc/7GCC-XFGB. Rebecca Patek, ‘I Wish She Were Right’, The Performance Club, 7 March 2014, available at: http://theperformanceclub.org/2014/03/i-­wish-she-­were-right (accessed 29 September 2015), archived at https://perma.cc/F4AF-5S55. Young, ‘Ann Liv Young goes behind bars at Jack’. Ann Liv Young interview with Miriam Katz, ‘Ann Liv Talks About Sherry’, Artforum, 3 December 2011, available at: http://artforum.com/words/id=29687 (accessed 13 September 2016), archived at https://perma.cc/C4HS-JLP2. Young, ‘Ann Liv Talks About Sherry’. Anna Watkins Fisher, ‘Like a Girl’s Name: The Adolescent Drag of Amber Hawk Swanson, Kate Gilmore, and Ann Liv Young’, TDR: The Drama Review 56.1 (2012), pp. 48–76, here p. 64. Ann Liv Young, Ann Liv Young Interviews Sherry (2011), available at: https://vimeo.com/19985855 (accessed 6 January 2018). Claudia La Rocco, ‘Jail Bait’, ArtForum, 17 December 2014, available at: http://artforum.com/slant/id=49552 (accessed 9 October 2015), archived at https://perma.cc/PT2H-E7LZ. Young, ‘Ann Liv Talks About Sherry’. Andy Horwitz, ‘Considering Alastair, Questioning Realness’, Culturebot, 19 January 2014, available at: http://www.culturebot.org/2014/01/20493/ considering-­alastair-questioning-­realness (accessed 29 September 2015), archived at https://perma.cc/6L6J-7AE8. Ibid. See the comment section connected to Andy Horwitz’s ‘Considering Alastair, Questioning Realness’. Commenters included critics Siobhan Burke, David Velasco and Claudia La Rocco, producers Meredith L Boggia, Ben Pryor, Zvonimir Dobrovic and Vallejo Gantner, and artists such as Ishmael Houston-Jones, RoseAnne Spradlin and Keith Hennessy, among many others. Ibid. Patek, ‘I Wish She Were Right’. Ibid. Young, ‘Ann Liv Young goes behind bars at Jack’. Young was running her ‘Sherry Shop’ in the lobby of the Abrons Art Centre as part of the American Realness Festival. The Sherry Shop, run by its titular

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73 74 75

Notes character alongside other collaborators, is a pop-­up store that merges retail and therapy. The shop’s characters attempt to woo or cow customers into purchasing jewellery and clothing through small talk, pseudo-­therapy, and aggressive salesmanship. La Rocco, ‘Jail Bait’. Alastair Macaulay, ‘This Time the Trouble Isn’t Wicked Stepsisters’, New York Times, 5 September 2010, available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/ arts/dance/06cinderella.html (accessed 9 May 2017). Patek, ‘I Wish She Were Right’. Young, ‘Ann Liv Talks About Sherry’. American Realness Website Archive, ‘A R2010’, available at: http:// americanrealness.com/archive/2010-2 (accessed 1 May 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/9BKQ-VYT4. Mann, The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde, p. 62. American Realness Website Archive, ‘A R2014’, available at: http:// americanrealness.com/archive/2014-2 (accessed 3 May 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/J3SZ-9ZQW. American Realness Website Archive, ‘On Visibile Invisibility and Queer Ecstatic Futurity’, available at: http://americanrealness.com/portfolio-­type/ on-­visibile-invisibility-­and-queer-­ecstatic-futurity (accessed 10 September 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/56D5-JR6V. Kevin Doyle, ‘Shit-Show Circus on Ice’, reposted on Culturebot, 24 October 2012, available at: http://www.culturebot.org/2012/10/14867/the-­shit-show-­ circus-on-­ice (accessed 20 July 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/ YR5Y-4XQP. Kevin Doyle, ‘Retraction-January Shit-Show on Ice’, Scrib, 17 January 2013, available at: https://www.scribd.com/document/120725322/RetractionJanuary-Shit-Show-­on-Ice (accessed 18 July 2017), archived at https:// perma.cc/8C7C-R8ZY. Schechner, ‘The Conservative Avant-Garde’, p. 909. Ibid., p. 895. Tomlin, ‘The Academy and the Marketplace’, p. 264. Doyle, ‘Shit-Show Circus on Ice’, p. 13. David Velasco, comment in response to Siobhan Burke’s essay ‘Acting’, The Performance Club, 22 January 2014, available at: http://theperformanceclub. org/2014/01/acting (accessed 28 September 2015), archived at https:// perma.cc/W24H-2CPB. Ibid. Horwitz, ‘Considering Alastair, Questioning Realness’. Alastair Macaulay, ‘Magical Crockery, Pop Music Parody, a Hula Hoop and Other Experiments: American Realness Festival Begins Performances’, The New York Times, 10 January 2014, available at: https://www.nytimes. com/2014/01/11/arts/dance/american-­realness-­festival-­beginsperformances.html (accessed 4 May 2017).

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76 Alastair Macaulay, ‘A Place Where Kitsch Gets All Dressed Up in AvantGarde Clothing: At American Realness Festival, a Range of “Fringe” ’, The New York Times, 16 January 2014, available at: https://www.nytimes. com/2014/01/17/arts/dance/at-­american-realness-festival-a-­range-of-­fringe. html (accessed 4 May 2017). 77 Breton, ‘Second Manifesto of Surrealism’, p. 125.

Chapter 9 1 David Levine, ‘Bad Art and Objecthood’, Art/US 13 (2006), pp. 22–25. 2 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Tragedy and Dramatic Theatre, trans. Erik Butler, Abingdon: Routledge, 2016, p. 28. See also: Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. 3 Levine, ‘Bad Art and Objecthood’, p. 22. 4 Ibid., p. 23. 5 The guilty party Levine has in mind here is Steven Henry Madoff, whose 2005 review of the Festival d’Avignon for Artforum bears particularly vivid witness to ‘art world’ prejudices against the contemporary theatre. See: Steven Henry Madoff, ‘Mediating Circumstances’, Artforum 44.2 (2005), pp. 77–80. 6 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, p. 134. 7 Levine, ‘Bad Art and Objecthood’, p. 25, emphasis in original. 8 Michael Fried, ‘Art and Objecthood,’ in Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 148–172, here p. 163, emphasis in original. 9 Levine, ‘Bad Art and Objecthood’, p. 25 10 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 43, emphasis in original. 11 Ibid., p. 100, emphasis added. 12 See, for instance, Marvin Carlson, Shattering Hamlet’s Mirror: Theatre and Reality, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2016; Elinor Fuchs, ‘Clown Shows: Anti-Theatricalist Theatricalism in Four Twentieth-Century Plays’, in Alan Ackerman and Martin Puchner (eds), Against Theatre: Creative Destructions on the Modernist Stage, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, pp. 39–57; Julia Jarcho, Writing and the Modern Stage: Theatre beyond Drama, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017; Carol Martin, Theatre of the Real, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012; Liz Tomlin, Acts and Apparitions: Discourses on the Real in Performance Practice and Theory, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016. 13 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 103. 14 Ibid., p. 102. 15 Ibid., p. 100.

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16 Jerome Carroll, Steve Giles and Karen Jürs-Munby, ‘Introduction: Postdramatic Theatre and the Political’, in Jerome Carroll et al. (eds), Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance, London: Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 1–30, here pp. 5–6. 17 Tom Eyers, Lacan and the Concept of the ‘Real’, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, p. 1. 18 Alenka Zupančič, ‘Realism in Psychoanalysis’, in Lorenzo Chiesa (ed.), Lacan and Philosophy: The New Generation, Melbourne: re.press, 2014, pp. 21–34, here p. 28. 19 Lorenzo Chiesa, Subjectivity and Otherness: A Philosophical Reading of Lacan, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007, p. 127. 20 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Jacques-Alain Miller (ed.), trans. Alan Sheridan, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998, p. 52. 21 Ibid., p. 53. 22 Alenka Zupančič, Ethics of the Real: Kant and Lacan, Brooklyn: Verso, 2000, p. 235. 23 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 100. 24 Jacques Lacan, ‘The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious’, in Écrits: The First Complete Edition in English, trans. Bruce Fink, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006, pp. 671–702, here p. 688. 25 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 101. 26 Zupančič, Ethics of the Real, p. 238. 27 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 101. 28 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, pp. 100–101. 29 Zupančič, Ethics of the Real, p. 237. 30 Slavoj Žižek, Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, Brooklyn: Verso, 2012, pp. 31–32. 31 Ibid., p. 32. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., 32–33. 34 Phillipe Sollers, The Friendship of Roland Barthes, trans. Andrew Brown, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017, p. 43. 35 Amy Holzapfel (interview with Marsha Ginsberg, Jason Grote and David Levine), ‘The Habit of Realism’, Theatre 42.1 (2012), pp. 95–107, here pp. 96–97. 36 Ibid., p. 95. 37 We might wish to note that Lacan first presents the formulas of sexuation in his eighteenth seminar. See: Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire, Livre XVIII: D’un discours qui ne serait pas du semblant, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, Paris: Le Seuil, 2007. 38 Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XX (Encore): On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge, 1972–1973, ed. Jacques-Alain

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Miller, trans. Bruce Fink, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. See also: Joan Copjec, ‘Sex and The Euthanasia of Reason’, in Read My Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists, Brooklyn: Verso, 2015, pp. 201–236; Bruce Fink, ‘Hors Texte – Knowledge and Jouissance: A Commentary on Seminar XX’, in Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2004, pp. 141–166. 39 You will have noticed, for instance, that the masculine and feminine logics are not only irreconcilable with each other, but also within themselves, that is to say, each side constitutes a logical antimony.

Chapter 10 1 Richard Allen, ‘The Object Animates: Displacement and humility in the theatre of Philippe Quesne’, Performance Research 18.3 (2013), pp. 119–125, here p. 120. Thank you to the MIT Press and PAJ for permissions to reprint excerpts from my essay ‘Germinal’s Brave New World’, PAJ 37.3 (2015), pp. 77–84. And thanks also to Duke University Press and Theater for permissions to reprint excerpts from my essay ‘Philippe Quesne’s Modern Quest for Wonder’, Theater 46.3 (February 2017), pp. 115–121. 2 Maaike Bleeker, Visuality in the Theatre: The Locus of Looking, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p. 18. 3 Ric Knowles, Reading the Material Theatre, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 4 Bruno Tackels, Fragments d’un théâtre amoureux, Besançon: Les Solitaires intempestifs, 2001. In this essay, all translations from French are my own unless otherwise noted. 5 Gérard Thiériot, Le Théâtre Postdramatique: Vers un chaos fécond? Monts: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2013, p. 11. 6 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas, Boston: Beacon Press, 1969, p. 47. 7 Bruno Tackels, Les Écritures de plateau (état des lieux). Besançon: Les solitaires intempestifs: 2015, p. 14. 8 Ann Monfort, ‘Après le postdramatique : narration et fiction entre écriture de plateau et théâtre néo-­dramatique’, trajectoires (2009), available at: http:// journals.openedition.org/trajectoires/392#authors (accessed 19 May 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/6A4S-D7US . 9 Ibid. 10 Interview with Philippe Quesne by the author, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR, 18 September 2015. Unless otherwise noted, quotes from Quesne are drawn from this interview. 11 Philippe Quesne quoted in Thomas Sellar, ‘Flight Paths’, Theater 37.1 (2007), pp. 39–45, p. 42.

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12 Elinor Fuchs, The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theater After Modernism, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996, p. 12. 13 Allen, ‘The Object Animates’, p. 125. 14 Interview with Halory Goerger and Anotine Defoort by the author, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. Portland, OR, 19 September 2014. Subsequent quotes from Goerger and Defoort are drawn from this interview. 15 See http://www.amicaledeproduction.com/en (accessed 20 May 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/2LSK-MTAJ. 16 Quesne in Sellar, ‘Flight Paths’, pp. 39–40.

Chapter 11 1 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, p. 163. From the perspective of dance – at least ever since the beginning of modern dance at the beginning of the twentieth century – no fixed story but pure physicality as a means of expression was central to the art. As such the caesura that Lehmann establishes with postdramatic theatre needs to be reconsidered for the field of dance. 2 Ibid., p. 164. 3 See Gabriele Brandstetter and Sibylle Peters (eds), de figura. Rhetorik – Bewegung – Gestalt, Munich: Fink, 2003; Gerald Siegmund, Abwesenheit. Eine performative Ästhetik des Tanzes. William Forsythe, Jérome Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Meg Stuart, Bielefeld: transcript, 2006. 4 André Lepecki, Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement, New York: Routledge, 2006; Susanne Foellmer, Am Rand der Körper. Inventuren des Unabgeschlossenen im zeitgenössischen Tanz, Bielefeld: transcript, 2009; Christina Thurner and Julia Wehren (eds), Original und Revival: Geschichts-Schreibung im Tanz, Zurich: Chronos-Verlag, 2010; Yvonne Hardt and Martin Stern (eds), Choreographie und Institution: Zeitgenössischer Tanz zwischen Ästhetik, Produktion und Vermittlung, Bielefeld: transcript, 2011. 5 One can draw here a parallel to the combined influence that the Judson Dance Theatre and other avant-­garde dance practices of the 1970s had on the development of American dance studies. If one looks at the publications and especially the series as they appear for instance in Germany the focus is directed predominantly to this small avant-­garde which is rather marginal in regard to the number and established dance forms at the state theatre, but has a clear dominance in theoretical discourse nonetheless. 6 Constanze Schellow: Diskurs-Choreographien: Zur Produktivität des ‘Nicht’ für die zeitgenössische Tanzwissenschaft, Munich, e-­podium, 2016. 7 Ibid., p. 32; Susan Manning and Lucia Ruprecht: ‘Introduction. New Dance Studies/New German Cultural Studies’, in Susan Manning and Lucia

Notes

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10 11

12

13

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15 16

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Ruprecht (eds), New German Dance Studies, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2012, pp. 1–16, here p. 10. Kate Elswit, Theatre & Dance, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, p. 59. This can be seen, for instance, in attempts to establish theatricality and performance as the main analytical lenses for all wider social phenomena. See, for example: Peter Boenisch ‘Spectres of Subjectivity: On the Fetish of Subjectivity in (Post-)Postdramatic Choreography’, in Karen Jürs-Munby, Jerome Carroll, and Steve Giles (eds), Postdramatic Theatre and the Political, London: Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 147–164. Even Pirkko Husemann, who wrote her PhD with Hans-Thies Lehmann, does not choose to use the term postdramatic when describing the work of Le Roy under the premise of choreography as a critical practice. See Husemann, Choreographie als kritische Praxis: Arbeitsweisen bei Xavier Le Roy and Thomas Lehmen, Bielefeld: transcript, 2009. Elswit, Theatre & Dance, p. 59. Yvonne Hardt, ‘Engagement with the Past in Contemporary Dance’, in Manning and Ruprecht (eds), New German Dance Studies, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2012, pp. 217–231; Yvonne Hardt, ‘Staging the Ethnographic of Dance History: Contemporary Dance and Its Play with Tradition’, Dance Research Journal 43.1 (2011), pp. 27–42; Yvonne Hardt, ‘Pedagogic In(ter)ventions: On the potential of (re)enacting Yvonne Rainer’s Continuous Project – Altered Daily in a dance educational context’, in Mark Franko (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reenactment, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 247–265. This essay combines and reworks these articles in the light of the discussion on body and narration that seems pertinent to widening the discussion on postdramatic theatre. For further information on Boris Charmatz, see http://www. museedeladanse.org/fr (accessed 9 September 2016); Fabián Barba, A Mary Wigman Dance Evening (2009); Olga de Soto, histoire(s) (2004) and Débords: Reflections on the Green Table (2012). Mark Franko, ‘Epiloque: Repeatability, Reconstruction and Beyond’, in Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 133–152; Hardt, Staging the Ethnographic of Dance History; Hardt, ‘Engagement with the Past in Contemporary Dance’; Thurner and Wehren, Original und Revival; Timmy de Laet, ‘Wühlen in Archiven’, tanz 3.10 (2010), pp. 54–59. See Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen, Munich: C.H. Beck, 2005; Aleida Assmann, Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses, Munich: C.H. Beck, 2006. See: Rebecca Schneider, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment, London: Routledge, 2011. See, for example, Gerald Siegmund, ‘Affekt, Technik, Diskurs: Aktiv passiv sein im Angesicht der Geschichte’, in Christina Thurner and Julia Wehren

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19 20

21 22

23

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25 26

27

Notes (eds), Original und Revival. Geschichts-Schreibung im Tanz, Zurich: Chronos-Verlag, 2010, pp. 15–26. See the special issue ‘Inszenierungen des Erinnerns,’ Erika Fischer-Lichte and Gertrude Lehnert (eds), Paragrana: Internationale Zeitschrift für Historische Anthropologie 9.2 (2000), p.14. All translations from German are my own, unless noted otherwise. Mark Franko (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reenactment, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Mark Franko’s Handbook on Dance and Reenactment brings together a plethora of recent international research in the field. Schellow, Diskurs-Choreographien. While she focuses predominantly on German dance studies, this also resonates with the studies of Lepecki, Exhausting Dance. Wieder und wider (Again and Against) was a performance and lecture series at the Tanzquatier Wien, which Kruschkovoa co-­curated. She asked: ‘Ist Aneignung immer schon eine Wiederaneignung wider den Strich? (Is appropriation always already an re-­appropriation againt its grain)’. Krassimira Kruschkova, ‘Tanzgeschichte(n): wieder und wider. Re-­ enactment, Referenz, révérence’, in Christina Thurner and Julia Wehren (eds), Original und Revival. Geschichts-Schreibung im Tanz, Zürich: Chronos-Verlag, 2010, pp. 39–45, here p. 40. See Franko, ‘Epiloque’. For a wider discussion on these critical concepts of history and a broader theory of the performative, see my articles: ‘Engagement with the Past in Contemporary Dance’, ‘Staging the Ethnographic of Dance History’, and ‘Pedagogic In(ter)ventions’. This tendency to perceive the experience of the body as something that stays outside of hermeneutic understanding is, for instance, also present in Erika Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics, trans. Saskya Iris Jain, London and New York: Routledge, 2008. Mark Franko and Annette Richards speak of these practices as storing the past ‘in and as a critical performance’ (emphasis added). See ‘Actualizing Absence: The Pastness of Performance,’ in Mark Franko and Annette Richards (eds), Acting on the Past. Historical Performance Across the Disciplines, Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 2000, pp. 1–12, here p.1. tanzfond.de (accessed 15 January 2018). In addition to Doisneau, this includes, for instance, Lutz Förster (2009) – a former dancer of Pina Bausch; Cédric Andrieux (2009) – a former Cunningham dancer – and others who only performed once. Generally Bel only decides after a first performance if he wants to continue performing a piece. Nelson Goodmann, Ways of Worldmaking, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1978, p. 8.

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28 Mieke Bal (ed.), The Practice of Cultural Analysis: Exposing Interdisciplinary Interpretation (Cultural Memory in the Present), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. 29 Hayden White, The Content of the Form. Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation, Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990, p. 45. 30 On this topic, see Ramsay Burt, ‘Memory, Repetition and Critical Intervention: The Politics of Historical References in Recent European Dance Performances,’ in Performance Research 8.2 (2003), pp. 34–41; Susanne Foellmer, ‘What Remains of the Witness? Testimony as Epistemological Category: Schlepping the Traces’ in Mark Franko (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Reenactment, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 269–284; Hardt, ‘Engagement with the Past in Contemporary Dance’. 31 Martin Nachbar, ‘ReKonstrukt’, in Janine Schulze and Susanne Traub (eds), Moving Thoughts – Tanzen ist Denken, Berlin: Vorwerk 8, 2003, pp. 89–95. 32 See transcript of an interview at the Tanzkongress: ‘Yvonne Hardt: Reconstructing Dore Hoyers Affektos Humanos. Über eine Diskussion mit Waltraud Luley, Susanne Linke und Martin Nachbar’, in Sabine Gehm, Pirkko Husemann and Katharina von Wilcke (eds), Wissen in Bewegung: Perspektiven der künstlerischen und wissenschaftlichen Forschung im Tanz, Bielefeld: transcript, 2007, pp. 201–210, here p. 205. 33 Ibid. 34 In ‘What Remains of the Witness?’ Susanne Foellmer points to the specific trend of the expert under the category of ‘testimony’. 35 For a longer discussion on Nachbar see also Hardt, Engagement with the Past in Contemporary Dance. 36 Harald Welzer, Das kommunikative Gedächtnis, München: C.H. Beck, 2005. 37 For instance, in one of the most prominent and growing dance studies series in Germany published by transcript, out of the twelve volumes published within the last five years only one is minimally investigating folk dance traditions and this only in the context of a postcolonial perspective on dance in Jamaica. For an exception in the North American context that deals with folk dance in the context of American culture, see Linda Tomko, Dancing Class: Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Divides in American Dance, 1890–1920, Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999. 38 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, London: Verso, 1991.

Chapter 12 1 Special thanks to the Department of German Studies at Stanford University and the Department of Modern Languages at Ohio University, where I presented early versions of this essay; the participants in the ‘Beyond the

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5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12

13 14

Notes Postdramatic’ working session at the American Society for Theatre Research in Baltimore, 2015, organized by Shane Boyle, Brandon Woolf and myself; and the participants in the ‘(Post)Migrant Theater’ seminar at the German Studies Association in Atlanta, 2017, organized by Ela Gezen, Olivia Ryan Landry and Damani Partridge. Maxim Gorki Theater, Spielzeitheft 14 (September–November 2017), p. 32, available at: https://issuu.com/maximgorkitheater/docs/gorki_zeitung__14_ rz_pdf_x1a_wan_if (accessed 19 March 2018). See: Michael Shane Boyle, Matt Cornish and Brandon Woolf, ‘Introduction: Form and Postdramatic Theatre’, in this volume, pp. 1–19, especially p. 15. In writing about affordance in her book Forms, Caroline Levine draws on design theory: ‘Each shape or pattern, social or literary, lays claim to a limited range of potentialities. Enclosures afford containment and security, inclusion as well as exclusion. Rhyme affords repetition, anticipation, and memorization.’ See: Caroline Levine, Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015, p. 6. Drama on stage, I would add, with a strictness in form closer to a sonnet than a novel, affords conflict and resolution, as well as imaginative world-­formation (wholeness) – and the ever-­present threat of interruption. Unlike Levine, who writes an entire chapter on The Wire without mentioning HBO, I am interested in the overlapping, interpenetrating forms of institution, society, text and performance. Jacqueline Lo and Helen Gilbert, ‘Toward a Topology of Cross-Cultural Theatre Practice’, TDR: The Drama Review 46.3 (2002), pp. 31–53, here p. 34. Ibid. Emma Cox, Theatre & Migration, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p. 63. Katrin Sieg, ‘Black Virgins: Sexuality and the Democratic Body in Europe’, New German Critique 37.1 (2010), pp. 147–185, here p. 185. Lizzie Stewart, ‘Schwarze Jungfrauen’, in Seyda Ozil, Michael Hofmann and Yasemin Dayioglu-Yücel (eds), In der Welt der Proteste und Umwälzungen: Deutschland und die Türkei, Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2015, pp. 107–122, here p. 82. See ibid., p. 98. See, for example, Olivia Ryan Landry, ‘Greek Dispossession Staged, or When Street Politics Meets the Theater’, Transit 10.2 (2016), pp. 1–15, especially p. 13. Katrin Sieg, ‘Class of 1989: Who Made Good and Who Dropped Out of German History? Postmigrant Documentary Theater in Berlin’, in Marc Silberman (ed.), The German Wall: Fallout in Europe, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 165–183, here p. 173. Ibid., p. 180. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988, p. 4.

Notes

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15 German naturalization laws have become increasingly open to people with Turkish roots since 2005, and especially since 2014. 16 Landry, ‘Greek Dispossession Staged’, p. 13. 17 Sieg, ‘Class of 1989’, p. 180. 18 Yana Meerzon, Performing Exile, Performing Self: Drama, Theatre, Film, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, p. 10 19 Ibid., p. 297. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Jonas Tinius, ‘Rehearsing Detachment: Refugee Theatre and Dialectical Fiction’, Cadernos de Arte e Antropologia 5.1 (2016), pp. 21–38, here p. 21. 23 Ibid., p. 35. 24 Ibid., p. 22. 25 John Lechte and Saul Newman, Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights: Statelessness, Images, Violence, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015, p. viii. 26 Ryan Anthony Hatch, ‘Galleries: Resituating the Postdramatic Real’, in this volume, pp. 131–146, here p. 145. 27 Magda Romanska, ‘Body: Tadeusz Kantor and the Posthuman Stage’, in this volume, pp. 81–95, here pp. 86–87. 28 Lechte and Newman write, for example, of their attempt to think through Agamben’s ideas on human rights, that ‘a pragmatic, project-­oriented, means-­ends approach would be against this book’s intentions’. Lechte and Newman, Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights, p. xi. 29 Mike Sell, Avant-Garde Performance and the Limits of Criticism, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005, p. 278. 30 Katrin Sieg, ‘Race, Guilt and Innocence: Facing Blackfacing in Contemporary German Theater’, German Studies Review 38.1 (2015), pp. 117–134, here p. 119. 31 Matt Cornish, ‘Echt kein Brecht: Blackfacing ließe sich als Verfremdungseffekt nutzen – wenn der Rückgriff darauf reflektiert würde’, trans. Lilian-Astrid Geese, Theater der Zeit (October 2014), pp. 22–23. 32 For interviews, see: ‘Presseschau vom 21. Oktober 2015 – Frank Castorf im Interview mit den Stuttgarter Nachrichten und mit der Stuttgarter Zeitung über totalitäre Kunst, Bert Neumann und die Nach-Volksbühnen-Zeit’, Nachtkritik, 21 October 2015, available at: http://www.nachtkritik.de/index. php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11666:presseschau-­vom-21oktober-2015-frank-­castorf-im-­interview-mit-­den-stuttgarter-­nachrichtenueber-­totalitaere-kunst-­bert-neumann-­und-die-­nach-volksbuehnen-­zeit& catid=242:presseschau&Itemid=0 (accessed 19 March 2018), archived at https://perma.cc/HZ6B-DBBJ; and ‘Presseschau vom 6. Mai 2014 – Frank Castorf beichtet in der Bild Zeitung’, Nachtkritik, 6 May 2014, available at: http://www.nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article& id=9485:presseschau-­vom–5-mai–2014-nfrank-­castorf-beichtet-­in-der-­bildzeitung-&catid=242&Itemid=62 (accessed 19 March 2018), archived at

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34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41

42 43

44 45 46

47 48

Notes https://perma.cc/V3S9–9MJE. Actors have shouted ‘Neger’ in Reise ans Ende der Nacht, for example. There is a repetition of this carelessness or ignorance of race and performance in the discourse of German critics and theater scholars, as can be noted especially in the debate around blackfacing. Theaterwissenschaft is not currently well ­equipped to address the topic. Liz Tomlin, Acts and Apparitions: Discourses on the Real in Performance Practice and Theory, 1990–2010, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013, p. 52. Ibid., p. 54. Ibid. Ibid., p. 57. Sieg, ‘Class of 1989’, p. 173. Elfriede Jelinek, Die Schutzbefohlenen, www.elfriedejelinek.com, 2013. Translations by the author unless otherwise noted. There is a recent translation of Die Schutzbefohlenen by Gitta Honegger, published by Seagull Books – In Performance, which I am not using here. Ibid. ‘Rechtsextreme stürmen Jelinek-Aufführung in Wien’, Zeit Online, 15 April 2016, available at: http://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2016-04/ identitaere-­bewegung-wien-­theater-elfriede-­jelinek-die-­schutzbefohlenen (accessed 19 March 2018). Hatch, ‘Galleries’, p. 140. Shermin Langhoff and Jens Hilje, interview by Susanne Burkhardt, ‘Neue Spielzeit am Maxim Gorki Theater: “Desintegriert euch!” ’ Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 2 September 2017, available at: http://www.deutschlandfunkkultur. de/neue-­spielzeit-am-­maxim-­gorki-­theater-desintegriert-­euch.2159.de. html?dram:article_id=394964 (accessed 19 March 2018). Shermin Langhoff and Team, ‘3. Berliner Herbstsalon’, in Spielzeitheft 14, p. 31. Matt Cornish, Performing Unification: History and Nation in Germany after 1989, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2017, 186. See: Gabi Hift, ‘Bums’, Nachtkritik, 11 March 2017, available at: https://www.nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_content&view= article&id=13732:dickicht-­am-maxim-­gorki-­theater-­berlin-braucht-­ sebastian-baumgarten-­mit-brecht-­das-chaos-­auf&catid=52:maxim-­gorkitheater-­berlin&Itemid=100476 (accessed 19 March 2018), archived at https://perma.cc/VH3U-RDA9. An open question: How is the exilic theatre of the Exil Ensemble formally different from postmigrant theatre? Irene Bazinger, quoted in Simone Kaempf, ‘In der Einsamkeit der Baumwollwäsche’, Nachtkritik, 18 October 2017, available at: https://www. nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14529: hundesoehne-­nurkan-erpulat-­inszeniert-agota-­kristofs-romantrilogie-­ ueber-entfremdung-­und-exil-­am-maxim-­gorki-theater-­berlin&catid=

Notes

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50 51 52

53

54

55 56 57

58

59

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38&Itemid=40 (accessed 19 March 2018), archived at https://perma.cc/ G3DL-K8HG. Michael Wolf, ‘Völlig schwerelos’, Nachtkritik, 24 September 2014, available at: https://nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id= 14437:nach-­uns-das-­all-am-­berliner-maxim-­gorki-theater-­gehen-sebastian-­ nuebling-und-­sibylle-berg-­mit-einer-­science-fiction-­farce-in-­rundedrei&catid=38&Itemid=40 (accessed 19 March 2018), archived at: https:// perma.cc/4SJM-BMST. Kirsten Riesselmann, ‘Grabrede auf den Vater: Premiere von Get Deutsch or Die Tryin’, taz, 23 April 2017, available at: https://www.taz.de/!5408187 (accessed 19 March 2018). Hift, ‘Bums’. Tobi Müller, ‘Auf kultureller Klassenfahrt: Winterreise am Maxim Gorki Theater’, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 8 April 2017, available at: http://www. deutschlandfunkkultur.de/winterreise-­am-maxim-­gorki-theater-­aufkultureller.1013.de.html?dram:article_id=383440 (accessed 19 March 2018). Anke Dürr, ‘Premiere des “Exil Ensembles” in Berlin: Expedition in die neue Heimat’, Spiegel Online, 9 April 2017, available at: http://www.spiegel.de/ kultur/gesellschaft/exil-­ensemble-expedition-­in-die-­neueheimat-­a-1142557.html (accessed 19 March 2018). Christian Rakow, ‘Freigeister deluxe’, Nachtkritik, 14 September 2017, available at: https://www.nachtkritik.de/index.php?option=com_content& view=article&id=14396:roma-­armee-yael-­ronen-gelingt-­am-gorki-theatermit-­ihrem-roma-­revolutions-abend-­eine-grandios-­funkelndezumutung&catid=38&Itemid=40 (accessed 19 March 2018), archived at https://perma.cc/TPX6-G3DF. Ibid. Ibid. André Mumot, ‘Verräter – Die letzten Tage im Gorki-Theater: Lieber selbstgerecht als stumm’, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 28 April 2017, available at: http://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/verraeter-­die-letzten-­tage-im-gorkitheater-­lieber.1013.de.html?dram:article_id=384934 (accessed 19 March 2018). It would be worth considering, though I do not have the space to do so here, whether the aesthetics at the Gorki might be usefully described as postBrechtian, as defined by David Barnett: theatre after the epistemic certainty of Brecht, using a radicalized V-effect, not in order to directly inspire political action, but rather to incite social debates. See: David Barnett, ‘Performing Dialectics in an Age of Uncertainty, or: Why Post-Brechtian ≠ Postdramatic’, in Jerome Carroll et al. (eds), Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance, London: Bloomsbury Methuen, 2014, pp. 47–66. For polyglossia in postdramatic theatre, see: Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, pp. 147–148.

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60 See: http://www.gorki.de/sites/default/files/styles/large_l/public/remote. jpg?itok=uMihp4vY (accessed 19 March 2018), archived at https://perma. cc/4F48-ZZE5. 61 To see the portraits, visit: http://gorki.de/de/ensemble (accessed 19 March 2018), archived at https://perma.cc/22NY-QYKG. 62 Langhoff and Hilje, interview by Burkhardt, ‘Neue Spielzeit am Maxim Gorki Theater’. 63 See: https://www.stiftung-­mercator.de/en/our-­vision/our-­guiding-vision/ (accessed 19 March 2018), archived at https://perma.cc/48D5-E3H3. 64 Here, too, we might ask: With an acting ensemble steeped in the style of Brecht, how is the Gorki post-Brechtian? 65 Shermin Langhoff, interviewed by Gunnar Decker, ‘Die Identität an sich ist die Krise’, Theater der Zeit, April 2017, pp. 12–15, here p. 15.

Chapter 13 1 Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby, Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, p. 18. 2 Louise LePage, ‘Posthuman Perspectives and Postdramatic Theatre: The Theory and Practice of Hybrid Ontology in The Waves’, Culture, Language and Representation 6 (2008): pp. 137–149, here p. 138. 3 Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 110. 4 Ibid., p. 113. 5 Recent examples of this work include: Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, Durham: Duke University Press, 2006; Susan Kozel, Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007; George Home-Cook, Theatre and Aural Attention: Stretching Ourselves, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015; Maaike Bleeker, Jon Foley Sherman and Eirini Nedelkopoulou (eds), Performance and Phenomenology: Traditions and Transformations, New York and London: Routledge, 2015. Phenomenology, which was introduced by Edmund Husserl in the early twentieth century, considers the ways in which phenomena disclose themselves in consciousness and experience. As a method for exploring the lived dimension of phenomena, it has made important contributions to fields as diverse as psychology, anthropology, medicine and architecture. Lehmann mentions phenomenology on a couple of occasions in Postdramatic Theatre: he refers to a ‘phenomenology of postdramatic signs’ (p. 86) in his discussion of the performance text and later states that postdramatic theatre ‘realizes its own “phenomenology of perception” marked by an overcoming of the principles of mimesis and fiction’ (p. 99). Lehmann’s use of this term and the related word phenomenon seems largely restricted to the appearances of that which discloses itself to

Notes

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7 8

9

10 11 12

13

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perception without considering the subjective dimension of such appearances. For other attempts to apply phenomenology to postdramatic theatre, see: Jerome Carroll, ‘Phenomenology and the Postdramatic: A Case Study of Three Plays by Ewald Palmetshofer’, in Jerome Carroll et al. (eds), Postdramatic Theatre and the Political: International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance, London: Bloomsbury, 2013, pp. 233–254; Luule Eppner, ‘Theatre in the Postdramatic Text: A Phenomenological Approach’, Nordic Theatre Studies 24 (2012), pp. 66–75. Lehmann acknowledges this ambiguity in relation to Tadeusz Kantor’s use of mannequins: ‘In a kind of exchange with the living bodies and together with the objects, [the mannequins] change the stage into a landscape of death, in which there is a fluid transition between the human beings (often acting like puppets) and the dead puppets (appearing as if animated by children).’ Other than a brief mention of Bread and Puppet Theatre, Lehmann’s Postdramatic Theatre otherwise neglects puppet theatre as a potential medium of the postdramatic. Adding puppet theatre to this category suggests, among other things, the roots of what Lehmann considers postdramatic in popular theatre forms, many of which, of course, have pre-­dramatic origins. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 73. Ibid., p. 95. Theron Schmidt’s analysis of Back to Back Theatre’s Food Court, which employs neurodivergent and physically disabled performers, is another recent attempt to engage disability within Lehmann’s postdramatic model. See: ‘Acting, Disabled: Back to Back Theatre and the Politics of Appearance’, in Postdramatic Theatre and the Political, pp. 189–207. For more information on Once Upon a Time, see ‘Once Upon a Time’, Spare Tyre website, http://www.sparetyre.org/whats-­on/projects/once-­upon-a-­ time (accessed 18 May 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/3DTN-ULR; Nicola Shaughnessy, Applying Performance: Live Art, Socially Engaged Theatre, and Affective Practice, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 70–75. ‘Who We Are’, Spare Tyre website, http://www.sparetyre.org/about-­us/ who-­we-are (accessed 18 May 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/47ZMTYCV. For more information, see the TimeSlips website, http://www.timeslips.org (accessed 18 May 2017). Joel Brown, ‘Puppets Tell Story of Dementia in ‘D-Generation’, Boston Globe, 8 November 2012, available at: https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/theatre-­ art/2012/11/08/puppets-­tell-story-­dementia-sandglass-­theatre-generation/ uKZ1xNCaUwOvpwl8qErA5J/story.html (accessed 18 May 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/35MU-P85A. Additional information on D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks, which was directed by Robert Salomon, and a five-­minute video including excerpts from the production can be found on the Sandglass Theatre website, http:// sandglasstheatre.org/d-­generation (accessed 18 May 2017). I attended

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14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27

28 29 30 31 32

33

Notes performances of D-Generation at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta on 20 March 2015 and at the Clayton Center for the Performing Arts in Maryville, Tennessee, on 29 March 2015. Shaughnessy, Applying Performance, p. 70. Eric Bass, Ines Zeller Bass, Kirk Murphy, Roberto Salomon and Residents of Pine Heights Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation, Brattleboro, Vermont, ‘D-Generation’, unpublished typescript (dated 15 January 2013), p. 20. I would like to thank Eric Bass for providing me with a copy of this text. Ibid., pp. 2–3. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 109. Ibid. Ibid., p. 110. Ibid., p. 109. Ibid. Thomas DeBaggio, Losing My Mind: An Intimate Look at Life with Alzheimer’s, New York: Free Press, 2002, p. 85. Ibid., p. 113. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, p. 57. Wellcome Trust Blog, ‘Q&A: Melanie Wilson: Life through the Lens of Dementia’, 31 August 2011, available at: https://blog.wellcome.ac. uk/2011/08/31/melanie-­wilson-life-­through-the-­lens-of-­dementia (accessed 18 May 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/7X5M-TDLJ. Autobiographer was funded by Arts Council England and the Wellcome Trust. Melanie Wilson website (n.d.), http://www.melaniewilson.org.uk/about-­ melanie (accessed 18 May 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/83SK-W28F. Daisy Bowie-Sell, ‘Review of Autobiographer (Toynbee Studios, London)’, Telegraph, 30 April 2012, available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/ theatre/theatre-­reviews/9236310/Autobiographer-Toynbee-Studios-­review. html (accessed 18 May 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/7LSU-T8FU. I am indebted to Bowie-Sell’s review for some details of this production. A trailer with sequences from Autobiographer can be viewed at https://vimeo. com/29224448 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49okdnlXfWY (accessed 18 May 2017). Melanie Wilson, Autobiographer, London: Oberon, 2012, p. 50. Jiří Veltruský, ‘Puppetry and Acting’, Semiotica 47.1–4 (1983), pp. 69–122, here p. 88. Bass et al., ‘D-Generation’, p. 3. Kenneth Gross, Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, p. 47. Kelly McEvers, ‘Theatre Artist Anne Basting Named MacArthur Fellow’, All Things Considered, 22 September 2016, available at: http://www.npr.org/ 2016/09/22/495069555/theatre-­artist-anne-­basting-named-­macarthurfellow (accessed 18 May 2016), archived at https://perma.cc/AG3P-VHDR. Inside Out of Mind was produced by the Meeting Ground Theatre Company. For information on the production, see: Matthew Reisz, ‘Dementia Care

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Research Becomes Basis for Touring Play’, Times Higher Education, 1 March 2012, available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/dementia-­ care-research-­becomes-basis-­for-touring-­play/2018823.article (accessed 18 May 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/83PT-VQH6; and Nottingham Institute of Mental Health, ‘Inside Out of Mind’, n.d., available at: https:// exchange.nottingham.ac.uk/blog/inside-­out-of-­mind/ (accessed 18 May 2017), archived at https://perma.cc/NA5S-ZSE6.

Index Abrons Art Center 115, 116 absolute drama 9, 23 Académie Française 148 acting/actors agency and centrality of 83 American Method acting 143 audiences and 135 as objects 92 postmodern 86, 88 Acts and Apparitions 187 aesthetics aesthetic forms 11, 12, 13–14 avant-garde/postdramatic 116, 117 migrant theatre and 184 politics and 185 postdramatic 50, 70, 184 socio-political processes and 70 Affectos Humanos (Human Affections) 171 affordances, theory of 12, 13, 15 Agamben, Giorgio 84, 183–4, 185, 186, 228n.17 the air is peopled with cruel and fearsome birds 53, 54, 64–5 Allen, Richard 147, 154 Alssopp, Ric 7 ambiguity 120, 121, 125, 128 American Method acting 143 American Realness Festival 17, 115, 117, 119, 120, 125, 127, 128 L’Amicale de Production 156, 162 Amleto 35 anamnesis 47 Angotti, Isabelle 153 Angst (Fear) 171, 173 animacy, subjectivity and 208 Ann Liv Young in Jail 116, 126 anthropology, folk dance and 177 Antigone 25

Archival Research and Cultural Heritage (ARCH) project 40 archiving and imagining, of dance communities 174–8 Aristotle 23, 25, 138 Art, Anxiety, and Censorship at MoMA PS1: A Panel 121 Artaud, Antonin 109, 125 art(s) the commodity and 13 drama and 158 posthuman 85 the real and 133 society and 11, 12 theatre and 134 Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) conference 116, 118, 127, 129 The Audience Revolution 110 audiences as active seers 147 actors and 135 audience revolution 102, 108–10 challenging of 121–4 empathic involvement of 169 immersion of 109 Auschwitz 20, 21 Autobiographer 206–7 autonomization of language 196 Avant-Garde Performance and the Limits of Criticism 186 avant-garde(s) aesthetics 116, 117 conservative 128 in dance 175 disruptions 17–18, 116, 119, 120 festivals and 118–19 normalization of 28–9 racism and 186

254 Bachelard, Gaston 148–9 ‘Bad Art and Objecthood’ 131, 133 Badiou, Alain 120 The Bagwell in Me 121 Bal, Mieke 170 ballet 167–70 Ballhaus Naunynstrasse 180, 182, 184 Barba, Eugenio 184 Barba, Fabián 165 bare life 84, 87, 184, 228n.17 BarleyGirl 48–9, 59–64 Barnett, David 69, 70, 79, 80 Bartok, Belà 176 Bass, Eric 199–200 Basting, Anne 200, 210 Bataille, Georges 38 Battles, Matthew 42 Baudrillard, Jean 94 Baumgarten, Sebastian 191 Beasely, Mark 121 Becker, Jochen 204 Beckett, Samuel 70, 89–90 Bel, Jérôme 160–1, 165, 167–70, 198 Benjamin, Walter 36–7, 47, 148, 192 Berlant, Lauren 13–14 Bhabha, Homi 183 BIO-OBJECTS 86, 87–8, 91, 94 Bishop, Claire 12 Black Arts Movement 186 blackfacing 186 Bleeker, Maaike 147, 152 bodies category of the body 163 deviant 198 performative epistemology of 82 postdramatic 82, 85–6, 185–6 posthuman 17, 82, 84, 85–6, 88–9 Boenisch, Peter M. 83 Bois, Yve-Alain 7, 38 Bokaer, Jonah 118 Boltanski, Luc 102 Boulogne, Arnaud 157, 159 boundary 2 22 bourgeois drama 2–3, 24 Boyle, Michael Shane 78

Index BR.#04 39 Brand, Joel 20 Brecht, Bertolt 7, 14, 79, 108–9, 204 Bredeson, Kate 18 Breton, André 119–20 Bridge Motel, Seattle 55–6 Brook, Peter 197 Brooks, Cleanth 8 Brown, Bill 93–4 Bryant-Bertail, Sarah 80 Burke, Siobhan 121 Capital 71 capitalism aesthetic experience and 13 capitalist temporality 77, 78, 80 crisis of 59 form and 98–9 free-market 70 late 102 measure of time under 71 media and 101–2 video and 104–5 Carlson, Marvin 4–5 Carroll, Jerome 137 Cassiers, Edith 16 Cassiers, Guy 35, 41–7, 219n.28, 220n.40 Castellucci, Romeo 35–40, 47 casting colourblind 61, 223n.38 of Philippe Quesne 153 Castorf, Frank 186–7, 190 Celan, Paul 21–2 Center Jenny 111, 112 Charmatz, Boris 165 Chiapello, Eve 102 Chiesa, Lorenzo 138 The Children of Kings 143 choreographers, French 161 Christensen, Clayton 77 citizenship, Germany 181, 183–4 class drama and 23 Western class relations 25–6

Index Cloez, Ondine 157, 159 Cohen, Stephen 8 colonialism, Germany 187 colourblindness 61, 223n.38 Come to My Center You Enter the Winter 56–7 Comma Boat 106–8, 110, 111 Common Ground 190, 191 communication social 4 video and 100 computer age 85 concept dance 163 The Condition of Postmodernity 101 conflict, dramatic theatre and 158–9 constellations, idea of 36–7, 47 contemporary dance 18, 167–70, 176–7 The Content of Form 170 contraction, dynamics of 38, 39 copyright, for dance works 172 Corneille, Pierre 148 Cornish, Matt 5, 18–19 Cox, Emma 182 creative destruction 125 creative process 33–4 of Guy Cassiers 42–6 of Romeo Castellucci 35–9 Cricot 2, the Informal Theatre 87 critical historiography 166 criticism genetic 216n.3 New Criticism 8–9, 11 philosophical 24–5 Cruel Optimism 13 culture cross-cultural exchange 127 cultural production 100 materiality of 101 migrants and 182 Culturebot 125 D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks 198, 199–207

255

dance archiving and imagining of dance communities 174–8 ballet 167–70 concept dance 163 contemporary 18, 167–70, 176–7 copyright for dance works 187 Dance Heritage Fund 166, 172 dance studies 163–4, 165–7 folk dance 175, 177 gender relations in 176–7 identity and 174, 177 performing dance history 165–7 politics and 177 postdramatic theatre and 163 as pure gesture 163, 166, 178 Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto 50 Davis, Brangien 54 De Stijle, Want 16, 66, 69–70, 71 Dead Class 87, 91, 92, 94 The Death of Character 89 DeBaggio, Thomas 205 Debord, Guy 148 deconstruction 47 Defoort, Antoine 147–8, 150, 155–62 deindustrialization 4 dementia D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks 198, 199–207 dementia theatre 199, 203 identity and 206 memory and 205 postdramatic theatre and 19, 196–9 puppet theatre form and 198 subjectivity and 207–8 Dercon, Chris 190 Derrida, Jacques 94, 95 Desintegriert euch! (De-Integrate Yourselves!) 189–90, 193 Deutschlandfunk Kultur 189 dialectical fiction 185 dialogic form 27–30 Diamond, Elin 50

256 Dickicht (Jungle) 191, 192 Die Schutzbefohlenen (Charges) 187–8 director’s notebooks 34–5 of Guy Cassiers 41–7 of Romeo Castellucci 35–40, 47 disability, neurological 198 (see also dementia) Disabled Theatre 198 Diskurs-Choreographien 164, 166 disruption(s) avant-garde 17–18, 116, 119, 120 contextual disruptions 126–30 conventional 120–6 conventions of 119–20 disruptive innovation 16 disruptive practices 77 ethics and 129 in experimental performance 116–17, 129 documentary theatre 182 Doisneau, Véronique 167–70 Doyle, Kevin 127–8 drama absolute drama 9, 23 art and 158 bourgeois 2–3, 24 form and 2–3 as a historical category 83 historicization of 25 modern 24 postdrama and 27 poststructuralist critique of 187 pre-drama 23, 26 scenographic-led dramaturgy 147 theatre and 3, 26 theory of 90 theory of dramatic collision 25 time-bound nature of 2, 4 true drama 23 Durham, Mario Garcia 118 Dürr, Anke 192 l’écriture de plateau 18, 147–62 Eichmann, Adolf 20

Index Eitelkeit (Vanity) 171, 173 Elswit, Kate 164 emballage, human 87 embodiment, erasure of 85 emotionality, reflection and 169 The Encyclopedic Palace 106 engagement, audience 147 Engstrom, Randy 58 epic material 23, 24 epic theatre, role of time in 79–80 Erpulat, Nurkan 179, 191 Etchells, Tim 74 Ether Frolics 210 ethics disruption and 129 external ethical principles 25 new for art’s evaluation 119–20 ethnology, folk dance and 177 Everything Without Exception 52 exclusion dramatic form and 134 postdramatic theatre and 5 sovereign states and 184 theatre and 10 Exil Ensemble 191, 193, 194 exilic theatre 184 experimentation experimental festival marketplace 118–19 experimental performance 17, 116–17, 118, 129 On the Boards and 65 postdramatic 49, 54–5 Eyers, Tom 137 Fabre, Jan 135, 138–40 Fairytale Plays 24 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) 58 Fensham, Rachel 69, 70, 76 Féral, Josette 34 Ferguson, Rachael 61 festivals 17–18 avant-garde and 118–19

Index avant-garde disruption and 116 critique of 127–8 the festival market 118–19 fiction dialectical 185 reality and 169–70 financial crisis (2008) 16, 77 (see also Great Recession) Fitch, Lizzie 102, 106 flow, total 17, 104, 112 folk dance 175, 177 Foreman, Richard 29 form/formalism arguments against 7–8 dialogic form 27–30 drama and 2–3 as a form of giving order 11 historicity of 100 new 11–15 in performance studies 7–11 politics and 98–9 postdramatic 2, 3, 15–19 postmigrant theatre and 179–81 production and 98–100 as a relationship 96–8 as shared language 10–11 and the social 11, 12, 98 term 6–7 theatre and 1, 3, 7–11 A Formalist Theatre 9 formless, notion of the 38–9, 42 Forms 11 4.48 Psychosis 52, 70 The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis 138 France, theatre in 148, 153–4, 155, 161–2 Franklin, Seb 12 Franko, Mark 166 Fried, Michael 134 Friedman, Andrew 17 Frizzelle, Christopher 49, 54, 62 Fuchs, Elinor 2–3, 5, 19, 89, 152 funding agencies 15

257

The Future Show 67–8, 72–5, 76, 77–8, 79, 80 futurity, role of 70 Garner, Stanton B. Jr. 6, 19 gender formalism and 10 gender relations in dance 176–7 postdramatic theatre and 162 Genet, Jean 148–9 genetic criticism 216n.3 genetic studies, on theatre 34 Genette, Gérard 41 Genius Award 2008 64 genres, form and 97 geography performance geography 50–1 postdramatic 16, 49, 50, 51, 55, 63 Georgelou, Konstantina 38, 42 Gergen, Kenneth J. 86 Germany citizenship 181, 183–4 colonialism and 187 racism and 186–7 Turkish immigrants in 180, 183–4 Germinal 147, 150, 155–60, 161 Gerould, Daniel 24 gesture 97 Get Deutsch or Die Tryin’ 192 Giannachi, Gabriella 82, 89 Gilbert, Helen 182, 183 Giles, Steve 137 Ginsberg, Marsha 143 Giulio Cesare 35, 39 globalization 4 Goerger, Halory 147–8, 150, 155–62 Goodmann, Nelson 169 Gorki Theater. See Maxim Gorki Theater Graves, Jen 56 Great Recession 49, 50, 58–9, 62–3 (see also financial crisis (2008))

258 Greenwich + Docklands International Festival, London 2014 66 Gross, Kenneth 208 Grosz, Elisabeth 171 Grote, Jason 143 Grotowski, Jerzy 84 ‘The Ground on Which I Stand’ 61 Guillén, Claudio 97 Haas, Birgit 6 Habit 18, 133, 134, 142, 143–6 Hamlet 25 Hamlet vs. Hamlet 43 Harding, James 116 Hardt, Yvonne 5, 18 Harrell, Trajal 119 Harvey, David 71, 101 Hass (Hatred) 171–2 Hatch, Ryan Anthony 5, 18, 186, 188 Hayles, N. Katherine 83, 85, 89 Hays, Michael 22 Hegel, Georg W. F. 22–3, 25, 75, 78, 89–90, 94 Heilman, Robert 8 Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti) 79 hierarchical structures, ballet and 168–9 Hift, Gabi 192 Hillje, Jens 179, 180, 189, 190 history aesthetic forms and 13–14 historical memory 173 historical narrative 170 historicization of drama 25 performative 165 postdramatic theatre and 14 process of historicization 80 Hitler, Adolf 20 holocaust 20, 21 Holzapfel, Amy 144 Homo Sacer 185 HORA theatre 198

Index Horthy, Miklos 20 Horwitz, Andy 125, 129 How We Became Posthuman 83 Hoyer, Dore 171–2, 174 Höyng, Peter 24, 28 human emballage 87 ‘Human Nature Preserve’ 87, 90 human rights 183, 184 humanism 83 human(s) category of the 92 nonhuman and subhuman and 92–3 objects and 86–7 Hündesohne (Sons of Dogs) 191 Hungary, Jews in 20–1 hypotheticality, retrospection and 73–4, 76 I Shall Never Return 92 ‘I Wish She Were Right’ 125 Ibsen, Henrik J. 24 identity dance and 174, 177 dementia and 206 French 148 migrants and 182 politics 178 Turkish-German 180 Im Dickicht der Städte (In the Jungle of Cities) 191 immersion, as a theatrical experience 109 Implied Violence 16, 48–55 BarleyGirl 48–9, 59–64 Come to My Center You Enter the Winter 56–7 inclusion, postdramatic theatre and 5 (see also exclusion) Inferno 38, 40 l’informe 38 innovation, disruptive 77–8 Inside Out of Mind 210 Institute for Applied Theatre Studies, Giessen 29

Index Inter(a)nal F/ear 115, 120, 121 interconnectivity 83 intermedial reference 45, 46 intermediality, Guy Cassiers’s use of 45 intratextuality 46 inversion strategies 39 Iny, Danny 110 Italian Futurists 119 Item Falls 111, 112 JACK 126 Jackson, Shannon 8, 10, 12 Jameson, Fredric 17, 97, 98, 100–1, 102, 104–5 Jans, Erwin 44, 45 Jarcho, Julia 44–5 Jelinek, Elfriede 187–8 Jewish people, transported to Auschwitz 20 Junior War 107 Jürs-Munby, Karen 47, 137 Kane, Sarah 52, 70 Kantor, Tadeusz 17, 81, 84, 85–95, 186 Kasztner, Rudolf (Reszõ) 20–1 Kasztner train 20–1 katharsis 47 Kierkegaard, Søren 75 Kiley, Brendan 49, 53 Kirby, Michael 9, 10 Knowles, Christopher 198 Knowles, Ric 7, 147, 162 Kobialka, Michal 88 Kokosowski, Michelle 35 Kourlas, Gia 116 Kraus, Rosalind E. 38 Kreuzberg, Berlin 180 Krushova, Krassimira 166 Lacan, Jacques 136–8, 139, 145, 146 Laet, Timmy De 16 Lakeside Arts Centre, Nottingham 210 Landry, Olivia Ryan 184

259

Langhoff, Shermin 180, 183, 188, 189–90, 192–3, 195 language autonomization of 196 materiality of 39–40 meaning and 39 and Romeo Castellucci 37 Larson, Renya 200 Le Cid 25, 148 Lechte, John 185 Lehmann, Hans-Thies artificiality of representation and 60 avant-garde/postdramatic practices and 117 dance and 163 form and 9, 15, 98–102 French theatre practitioners and 148 Implied Violence and 49–50 material conditions of theatre and 14 narration and 203–4 palimpsestuous intertextuality/ intratextuality 46 Peter Szondi and 21–2, 25–8, 29–30 post-epic narration and 197 Postdramatic Theatre. See Postdramatic Theatre postdramatic theatre and 1–2, 3–4, 90, 132–3, 134–6, 140–1 the real and 135–6, 139–40 Samuel Beckett and 89–90 subjectivity, consciousness, narrative and 196 Tadeusz Kantor and 81, 86, 90 venue size and 55, 56 Lepage, Louise 83, 196 Lepore, Jill 77 Less Than Nothing 141 Let the Artists Die 91, 92 Levine, Caroline 11–12, 15 Levine, David 18, 131, 132, 133–4, 142, 143–6

260 Levinson, Marjorie 11–13 Linke, Susanne 171 literary genre 97 literary studies 11 literature, theatre and 9 Lo, Jacqueline 182, 183 logic of threes 24–6 logic-of-two 27–30 Loher, Dea 186 Lorenz, Renate 204 Lukács, Georg 7, 23 Luley, Waltraud 171, 172, 174 Luria, Isaac 38 Macaulay, Alastair 126, 130 Macbeth 34 Magyar Táncok (Hungarian Dance) 167, 174–8 Mahmoud, Jasmine 16 Malabou, Catherine 68, 75–6, 78, 80 male chauvinism 10 The Man Who . . .? 197 Mandel, Ernest 101, 102 Mann, Paul 116, 118, 127 Marinetti, F.T. 119 market pressures, on artistic development 117, 128–9 Martens, Günther 41 Marx, Karl 71 material theatre 147 Maxim Gorki Theater 180, 181, 182, 188–95 Mazzili, Mary 5 meaning, language and 39 media capitalism and 101–2 in everyday life 4 form and 100 media combination 45 media society 99, 102 Netflix 110 postdramatic theatre and 99 theatre aesthetics and 45 Meerzon, Yana 184

Index La mélancolie des dragons 147, 150, 151–5, 161 Melissa is a Bitch 121 memory dementia and 205 folk dances and 175 historical 173 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 148 Method acting 143 Michael 121 migrant theatre 182–8 Mihaylova, Stefka 10 Mijatov, Pamala 58 Miller, Arthur 24 ‘The Minister’s Black Veil’ 37–8 mirroring, spaces and 55 Miss Sara Sampson 26 Mitchell, Ryan 51–5, 56, 57, 61–2, 65 Monfort, Anne 149–50 Motel #1 55–8 Müller, Heiner 191 Müller, Tobi 192 Multicultural theatre 183 Mumot, André 192 Munby, Karen-Jürs 22 Muñoz, José Esteban 73 Murphy, Kirk 199–200, 201, 208 Myers, Tanya 210 Nach uns das All (After Us Comes Space) 192 Nachbar, Martin 165, 167, 170–4 Nadj, Josef 184 narration in contemporary dance 18, 167–70 emotional 167 Magyar Táncok and 177 narrative and 72–3 postdramatic theatre and 203–4 postdramatic use of 76 technology and 44 in Véronique Doisneau 169

Index narrative(s) in Castellucci’s theatre 35 dementia 205 disruptive 77 historical narrative 170 of migration and adaptation 182 narration and 72–3 the past as 74 Nayar, Pramod K. 85, 88 Nelson, Robin 83 neo-dramatic theatre 149 Netflix 110 New Criticism 8–9, 11 New Formalism 11–13 New German Dance Studies 164 Newman, Saul 185 Ngai, Sianne 13–14 Nguyen, Lily 59, 60, 61 North, Joseph 13 Northwest New Works Festival 2007 53, 64–5 nostalgia 70, 74 Nübling, Sebastian 192 object(s) actors as 92 BIO-OBJECTS 86, 87–8, 91, 94 humans and 86–7 narrative and 74 subhumans as 92–3 subject and 39, 94–5, 104 things and 93–4 O’Connell, Mandie 51–5, 56, 57, 59, 63 On the Boards 53, 64–5 Once Upon a Time 199 Ontological-Hysteric Theatre 29 Oresteia 35 others/otherness nonhuman and subhuman 85 postdramatic work and 134 reality and 139 ‘Our Sequence in Series’ 48–9 outsiderhood, of Ann Liv Young 124 Öziri, Necati 192

261

Pal, George 70 palimpsest, postdrama as 41–6 Palimpsests 41 Pan, DK 55–6 Pao, Angela 61 Papp, Joseph 61 Parable of the Cave 25 Paradistical Rites 65 Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute (PHI) 200 Paris Opera 167–8 Parisse, Lydie 39 participation, audience 147 Patek, Rebecca 17, 115–16, 120–2, 124, 125–6, 128–30 patriarchy 10 Pavis, Patrice 5, 68–9, 72, 77, 79 Pearson, Deborah 67–8, 72–5, 76 Perceval, Luk 42 performance avant-garde/postdramatic 117 experimental 17, 116–17, 118, 129 form and 9 performance art, theatre and 132, 134 Performance Club 125 performance geography 50–1 performance studies, formalism in 7–11 performance theory 81–2 performers. See acting/actors performing dance history 165–7 Performing Exile, Performing Self 184 Performing Garage, Wooster Street 29 Performing Unification 180 personal, the 204, 209–10 Phaedo 47 philosophical criticism 24–5 Pioneer Square, Seattle 51–2 Plato 25, 47 Pleśniarowicz, Krzysztof 91 politics aesthetic form and 185 dance and 177 disruption and 120 form and 98–9

Index

262

identity 178 political theatre 5–6 postdramatic practice and political economies 50 postmigrant theatre and 181 The Politics of New Media Theatre: Life  TM 82 Pollesch, René 70 Poschmann, Gerda 196 postdrama drama and 27 as palimpsest 41–6 postdramatic geography 16, 49, 50, 51, 55, 63 Postdramatic Theatre 1–2, 4, 16, 25, 28, 29, 33, 83, 98, 133, 134–5, 136, 137, 146, 148, 196–7, 198 Postdramatic Theatre and the Political 5, 137, 138, 224n.9 postdramatic theatre, term 1–2, 4–5 postdramatic theory, temporality in 67 Postdramatisches Theater. See Postdramatic Theatre ‘Posthuman Perspectives and Postdramatic Theatre’ 83 posthuman/posthumanism concept of 84–92, 228n.16 defined 85 postdramatic theatre and 82–3 posthuman bodies 17, 82, 84, 85–6, 88–9 posthuman theatre 17, 83, 84, 93, 95, 186 postmigrant performance/theatre 18–19, 179–81, 185, 189–95 Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism 100 poststructuralist critique, of drama 187 potentiality 73 The Power of Theatrical Madness 135, 138–9 pre-drama 23, 26 prediction, act of 74–5

®

presentism 68–9 Priority Innfield 106 production cultural 100 form and 98–100 video and 103 Pryor, Benjamin Snapp 115, 126–7 psychoanalysis, the real and 137–8 Puchner, Martin 9 puppet theatre (see also D-Generation: An Exaltation of Larks) dementia and 198 Sandglass 19, 198, 200 pure dialogue 25 pure gesture, dance as 163, 166, 178 Purgatorio 36 Quesne, Philippe 147–8, 150, 151–5, 160–2 race/racism colourblindness 61, 223n.38 formalism and 10 Germany and 186–7 postdramatic theatre and 186 racial erasures 62 radicalism, postdramatic theatre and 187 Rajewsky, Irina 45, 46 Rakow, Christian 192 Rancière, Jacques 108–9 Rathbun, Charlie 58 re-contextualization, in contemporary dance 176–7 re-enactment 171 reading practice 14 Real-of-the-Symbolic 138 real/realness 135 art and 133 escape from the 141 impossibility of the 138 interruption of 134–5, 146 in performance 18 the postdramatic 135–6 psychoanalysis and the 137

Index the symbolic and the 138, 139 theatre and 132 realism, the postdramatic and 27 reality fiction and 169–70 others/otherness and 139 Reality TV 109 (re)construction 170 recontexualizing, in contemporary dance 167–70 reflection, emotionality and 169 refugees European refugee crisis 181, 182, 187, 191 human rights and 184 theatre groups 185 ‘Rehearsing Detachment’ 185 Reinelt, Janelle 5–6 Reinhardt, Max 34 Remote Mitte 193, 195 repeatability 166 Repetition 75 repetition nostalgia and 74 the past and present and 75, 76 Tadeusz Kantor and 91–2 representation, artificiality of 60 research, genetic theatre 34 retrospection, hypotheticality and 73–4, 76 rewriting 41 Richter, Falk 191, 192 Ridout, Nicholas 17 Roeck, Sam 115, 121 Roma Armee (Roma Army) 192 Romanska, Magda 17, 186 Ronen, Yael 190, 192 Ruhrorter theatre group 185 Ruiz, Alan 7 Russell, Mark 118 Sahimi, Sadeq 89 Saint Genet 65 Salamon, Eszter 167, 174–8

263

Salzmann, Marianne 190–1 Sandglass Theatre 19, 198, 200 scenography 147, 149, 151 Schechner, Richard 118, 128 Schellow, Constanze 164, 166 Schleef, Einar 79 Schober, Regina 46 Schumpeter, Joseph 77 Schwarze Jungfrauen (Black Virgins) 183 Seattle (see also Implied Violence) Bridge Motel 55–6 Great Recession and 58 International District/Chinatown 53–4 Pioneer Square 51–2 racialization in 62 SoDo warehouse 53 South Lake Union 48–9 The Seattle Times 54 Seattle Weekly 52 Second World War 8, 93 self, posthuman 89 Selimović, Simonida 192 Sell, Mike 117, 186 Sellar, Tom 151 semi-documentary theatre 183, 184 Senkel, Günter 183 set writing (l’écriture de plateau) 18, 147–62 sexual difference 145–6 Shaughnessy, Nicola 201 Shaw, Helen 118 Sherry Show 121–2 ‘Shit-Show Circus on Ice’ 127 shrinking, dynamics of 38 Sieg, Katrin 183, 184, 185, 186 Signéponge/Signsponge 94 ‘A Slap In the Face of Public Taste’ 119 Snow White 121 Snyder, Benjamin H. 77 social communication 4 social forms 11, 12, 98 social function

264

Index

of postdramatic theatre 78 of time 79 social sciences 10 Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio 35, 37 society, art and 11, 12 socio-political context, of the Time Machine 76 socio-political processes, postdramatic aesthetics and 70 SoDo warehouse, Seattle 53 Sollers, Philippe 142 Solo 121 Sound & Fury 210 South Lake Union, Seattle 48–9 sovereign states exclusion and 184 mistrust of 195 spaces mirroring and 55 unconventional 50, 54 Spare Tyre 199 spectatorship (see also audiences) postdramatic 71–2, 78–80 spectators as active seers 147 stadium seating 108 temporal implications of 70 video and 104 St Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery 29 Stadttheater 180 Stanley Niaah, Sonjah 50, 51 Stewart, Lizzie 183 Stewart, Susan 74 storytelling, vignette mode of 182 The Stranger 49, 53, 54, 59, 62, 64 Studio Я 190, 191 subhuman, category of the 92–3 subject, object and 39, 94–5, 104 subjectivity dementia and 207–8 postdramatic 19, 197, 210 in theatrical performance 196, 198 Swan Lake 168 symbolic, the real and the 138, 139 Symbolists 119

Szondi, Leopold 21 Szondi, Peter 2, 3, 4, 9, 19, 21–4, 26, 27–8, 83, 90 Tackels, Bruno 18, 148, 149, 150 Tanzfond Erbe (Dance Heritage Fund) 166, 172 TDR: The Drama Review 5, 9 technology(ies) screen-based 102 translating novels to theatre and 44, 45 Telemachos 184 television, Reality TV 109 temporality capitalist 77, 78, 80 postdramatic 70, 73, 77, 78 text dramatic and postdramatic theatre and 33–4 in postdramatic theatre 41 and Romeo Castellucci 37 Thalheimer, Michael 79, 186 Theater 151 Theater an der Ruhr, Mülheim 185 Theater der Zeit 186, 195 Theater ist endlich ist Theater (Theatre is Finally is Theatre) 191 Theater of Death 92 theatre antitheatricality 131–2 art and 134 audience revolution in the 102, 108–9 the becoming-sculpture of 143–6 Brechtian 14 dementia theatre 199, 203 documentary theatre 182 drama and 3, 26 exilic theatre 184 form/formalism in 1, 3, 7–11 French 148, 153–4, 155, 161–2 Great Recession and 58–9 material 147

Index migrant theatre 182–8 Multicultural theatre 183 neo-dramatic 149 performance art and 132, 134 political 5–6 post-Brechtian 79 postdramatic 93, 95, 99 posthuman 17, 83, 84, 93, 95, 186 postmigrant 179–81, 182–3, 185, 189–95 postmodern 89 the real and 146 semi-documentary 183, 184 Theatre & Migration 182 Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers 161 The Theatre of Form and the Production of Meaning 7 ‘theatre of the speech act’ 61 Le Théâtre Postdramatique: vers un chaos fécond? (Postdramatic Theatre: Towards a Fertile Chaos) 148 Theorie des modernen Dramas (Theory of the Modern Drama) 2, 21, 22, 24, 28, 83 Theory and History of Literature series 22 The Theory of the Novel 23 Thiériot, Gérard 148 thing theory 93–4 time instantaneous present in Time Machine 71–2, 76 postdramatic 68–70, 73–4, 78 postdramatic and capitalist 77–9 role of in postdramatic/epic theatre 79–80 to see (what is) coming 75–7, 80 social function of 79 spectator’s potential to modify 78–9 unsettling of the present 68, 72, 76–7, 78, 79, 80 Time Machine 66–7, 69–70, 71–2, 76, 78–9, 80

265

The Time Machine (1960) 70 TimeSlips 200, 205, 210 Tinius, Jonas 185 Today Is My Birthday 91, 92 Tomlin, Liz 116, 117, 128, 187 tone 97 total flow 17, 104, 112 ‘Toward a Topology of CrossCultural Theatre Practice’ 182 ‘Towards a Genetic Study of Performance – Take Two’ 34 trauma, dealing with 75 Trecartin, Ryan 102, 106–7, 110 tsimtsum 38 tuché 138 Turkish immigrants, in Germany 180, 183–4 Turner, Cathy 83 Under the Radar Festival 118 Under the Volcano 45–6 Underground Theatre, Abrons Art Center 115 Unschuld (Innocence) 186 Urheben Aufheben (Undertaking Uptaking) 165, 167, 170–4 Van den Dries, Luk 16 Velasco, David 128–9 Veltruský, Jiří 207 Venice Biennale 2013 106 venues, unconventional spaces 50, 54 Véronique Doisneau 165, 167–70 Verräter (Traitors) 192 Verrücktes Blut (Crazy Blood) 179–81 via negativa 39 video 100, 101, 102–12 videographic notes 42 Vienna, University of 188 Vivarium Studio 151, 162 vivification 207 Volksbühne Berlin 190 Von Heiduck 203

266

Index

voyeurism 152 Vrba-Wetzler Report 21 Wahjudi, Claudia 193 Waiting for Godot 70 Washington Mutual (WaMu) bank 58 Watkinson, Philip 16 Wegman, Jay 116 Weill, Kurt 186 What Is Posthumanism? 95 White, Hayden 170 white male supremacy, French theatre 162 whiteness 10 Wiecking, Steve 52 Wielopole, Wielopole 92, 94 Wigman, Mary 171 Williams, Raymond 7 Wilson, August 61, 223n.38 Wilson, Melanie 206 Wilson, Robert 117, 198

Winterreise (Winter Journey) 192, 194 Wirth, Andrzej 24 Wolfe, Cary 95 Wooster Group 29 words, detachment and 37, 39 Worthen, W. B. 8 Writing and the Modern Stage 44 WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) 204 Young, Ann Liv 17, 115–16, 122–6, 128–30, 233n.9 YouTube 109 Zaimoðlu, Feridun 183 Zeller Bass, Ines 199–200, 201, 207, 208 Zimmer, Elizabeth 118 Žižek, Slavoj 75, 141 Zupančič, Alenka 137, 138, 140