Hi All,

Week five already?

Utter madness to think I’ve done just over a month’s worth of MA study.

Right to continue with this post about the post-dramatic theatre. Looking at play writing, scripting and devising theatre!!

“The audience’s relationship with the piece they are seeing might not be what they were expecting to see”. (Bolton,2016).

Looking closely  at the work by Hans-Thies Lehmann, he writes about the theory on the Post-Dramatic movement in the arts world. Originally he wrote the post-dramatic theatre in German back in 1999. He explains in his work that “Post Dramatic theatre does not follow the form of more traditional theatre and text. The stage is the vehicle of the dramatic play text”. (Bolton, 2016).

What is the fiction in Drama?

Well, I discovered that Post Dramatic theatre is the latter of Drama with characters. Yet when it comes to live art, the artists are making work outside the ‘normal’ theatre. Similar to creating and devising a theatre performance – you create a performance without the use or need of a playwright. It has a triangle method of rejecting the text itself. ‘comprehensive and accessible theory articulating the relationship between drama and the ‘no longer dramatic’ forms of theatre that have emerged since the 1970s’ (Lehmann, 2006, p. 1).

Deconstructing theatre from drama…

Peter Szondi has a method of Time, Place, Action. When creating and writing a play text.

So in terms of a traditional pantomime, mentions and interacts with the audience (sort of breaking down the fourth wall).

• Action & Plot – A clear narrative throughout the text.
• Catharsis – The brining about of a collective & reciprocal feeling or emotion from the audience, in response to what is shown on stage.
• The primacy of the text– The staging consists of what has been constituted by an author.
• The constructive of a fictive cosmos – The ability for the audience to enter the world of the play.

Theatre is not a product you can buy and take home. You are buying the experience of the performance. If you buy a play text you not just reading the words but the symbols of the performance.

In the seminar, we discussed Tim Crouch as a playwright and theatre maker going against the post-dramatic movement as Lehmann wrote about. Crouch creates the complete opposite with his works. looking at An Oak Tree (2005), the text asks for a member of the audience to join the actor on stage with a script. Also having a quick look at Martin Crimp’s The City (2008) you see the difference in writing styles. I felt that The City play felt more of a conversational play that was like normal everyday conversations you would have with people around you.

Some would see Crouch as a Post-Dramatic Theatre Artist than a playwright. I can see why that would been seen.

Right then, till next time.

Bye x

Works Cited:

Bolton, Jacqueline (2016) ‘Week Five: The Postdramatic’ [Lecture] Current Issues in Drama, Theatre and Performance. University of Lincoln.  27^nd October 2016.

Lehmann, Hans-Thies (2006) Postdramatic Theatre, Translated from German by K. Jürs-Munby, London: Routledge.

Szondi, Peter (1987) Theory of the Modern Drama. University of Minnesota Press.