Postdramatic Theatre and the Political International Perspectives on Contemporary Performance

Is postdramatic theatre political and if so how? How does it relate to Brecht's ideas of political theatre, for example? How can we account for the relationship between aesthetics and politics in new forms of theatre, playwriting, and performance?

The chapters in this book discuss crucial aspects of the issues raised by the postdramatic turn in theatre in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century: the status of the audience and modes of spectatorship in postdramatic theatre; the political claims of postdramatic theatre; postdramatic theatre's ongoing relationship with the dramatic tradition; its dialectical qualities, or its eschewing of the dialectic; questions of representation and the real in theatre; the role of bodies, perception, appearance and theatricality in postdramatic theatre; as well as subjectivity and agency in postdramatic theatre, dance and performance.

Offering analyses of a wide range of international performance examples, scholars in this volume engage with Hans-Thies Lehmann's theoretical positions both affirmatively and critically, relating them to other approaches by thinkers ranging from early theorists such as Brecht, Adorno and Benjamin, to contemporary thinkers such as Fischer-Lichte, Rancière and others

Dr Jerome Carroll is lecturer in German Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK.

Steven Giles is Professor Emeritus of German Studies and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham, UK. He has contributed to Brecht on Art and Politics (Methuen Drama, 2003) as well as authoring books on Modern European Drama and Critical Theory.

Dr Karen Jürs-Munby is a lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Lancaster, UK. She translated and wrote a critical introduction for Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatic Theatre (2006).

Introduction (Jerome Carroll (University of Nottingham, UK; Steve Giles, Emeritus, University of Nottingham, UK; Karen Jürs-Munby, Lancaster University, UK)
Performing Dialectics in an Age of Uncertainty, or: Why Post-Brechtian Does Not Mean Postdramatic (David Barnett, University of Sussex, UK)
Spectres of Subjectivity: On the Fetish of Identity in (Post-)Postdramatic Choreography (Peter M Boenisch, University of Surrey, UK)
Political Fictions and Fictionalisations: History as Material for Postdramatic Theatre (Mateusz Borowski, Jagiellonian University, Poland, and Malgorzata Sugiera, Jagiellonian University, Poland)
Phenomenology and the Postdramatic: A Case Study of three plays by Ewald Palmetshofer (Jerome Carroll, University of Nottingham, UK)
Christoph Schlingensief's 'Rocky Dutschke, '68': A reassessment of activism in theatre (Antje Dietze, University of Leipzig, Germany)
Postdramatic Reality Theatre and Productive Insecurity: Destabilizing Encounters with the Unfamiliar in Theatre from Sydney and Berlin (Ulrike Garde, Macquarie University, Australia, and Meg Mumford, University of New South Wales, Australia)
Parasitic Politics: Elfriede Jelinek's 'Secondary Dramas' and their staging (Karen Jürs-Munby, Lancaster University, UK)
A future for Tragedy? Remarks on the Political and the Postdramatic (Hans-Thies Lehmann, Visiting Professor at University of Kent, UK)
Acting, disabled: Back to Back Theatre and the politics of appearance (Theron Schmidt, King's College London, UK)
Performing the Collective: Heiner Müller's 'Alone with these Bodies' ('Allein mit diesen Leibern) as a piece of Postdramatic Theatre (Michael Wood, University of Edinburgh, UK)
Crises of Representation: Towards a Postdramatic Politics? (Brandon Woolf, University of California, USA)