Boenisch, P. M. (2010) Towards a Theatre of Encounter and Experience: Reflexive Dramaturgies and Classic Texts. Contemporary Theatre Review, 20(2) 162-172.

• “bears the mark of an obsolete authorial ‘dictatorship of the dramatic text’.” (162)
• “postmodern unease about that central place of the logic of the logos, as articulated most powerfully by Derridian deconstruction, has in this context led to a contest fought over semiotic primacy within the performance text: between the assertion of continued hierarchical superiority for the written playtext and the privilege in performance for the body and visual signs that allegedly escape that logic.” (162)
• “With the term ‘dramaturgy’, I refer both to the resulting ‘texture’ of a theatre production and to the process of ‘texturing’, whether or not facilitated by a designated ‘dramaturg’. Complementing the function of ‘performing’, dramaturgy is thus understood as a core constituent of any theatre performance, located in two central operations: the (external) contextualization of a ‘text’ (whether a play, a classic text, or the stimulus for a devising process); and the (internal) mise en scene of a ‘texture’ for performing. As a result, dramaturgy most vigorously shapes and directs the spectators’ experience of a performance. A dramaturgic analysis, consequently, above all revokes the unapt separation of ‘production’ and ‘reception’ aesthetics.” (163)
• “Hans-Thies Lehmann’s seminal study of the Postdramatic Theatre of the 1980s and 1990s must now not be misunderstood as an argument for a ‘theatre without dramatic texts’, and thus as simply taking a side in the stated dispute” (163)
• “‘Dramatic theatre’, for Lehmann, is thus not simply identical to ‘text-based theatre’, but is instead defined as theatre that ‘clings to the presentation of a fictive and simulated text-cosmos as a dominant’,6 regardless of whether the dramaturgic texture was ‘prewritten’ or ‘devised’. Postdramatic theatre, at its very heart, challenged the earlier paradigmatic aim for synthesis, coherence, and closure.” (163)
• “dramaturgic approaches (which from an Anglo-American perspective are often reductively categorized as ‘directors’ theatre’, thus reiterating the quest for hierarchical authority)” (163)
• “such dramaturgies exploit a quintessentially postdramatic ‘rift between the discourse of the text and that of the theatre’, foregrounding presentational, self-reflexive, and experiential mises en sce`ne instead of the traditional representation of a play-text.” (164)
• “Lacan-inspired psychoanalytic cultural critique offers an apt framework to articulate reflexive dramaturgies, since Lacan himself reminded us that signs do not primarily mean something, but they mean something to someone”(164 –idea from Lacan, 1973, 144) – Lacan, J. (1973) Le Séminaire, livre XI: Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychoanalyse. Paris: Seuil.
• “Zizek continues to liken them to ‘the opposed sides of a Moebius strip [. . .] – although they are linked, they are two sides of the same phenomenon which, precisely as two sides, can never meet’. This accurately reflects the position of the dramatic text and the act of its theatrical presentation and perception in reflexive dramaturgy: ‘We do not have two perspectives, we have a perspective and what eludes it, and the other perspective fills in this void of what we could not see from the first perspective’. As a result, the spectators’ unifocal, singular central viewing perspective which has underpinned the logic of dramatic theatre and continues to haunt many devised performances is effectively refracted.” (164)
• “how the dialectic gap between a text and its production is navigated” (164)
• “the decisive difference
• between contemporary theatre modes should not, therefore, be identified with the decision between staging a (classic) text or devising ‘from scratch’, but rather with the respective underlying dramaturgic (and, hence, always also ideological) configuration and resulting inscribed spectatorial relation with the performance” (171)
• “Where reflexive dramaturgies highlight and exploit the parallax of fictional representation and performative presence, of appearing and event, the spectators, as a direct effect, are confronted with their own dislocation and disorientation facing the performance of the text. Their situation of spectating is thus turned from the traditional aesthetic attitude of ‘reception’ into an act of encounter” (171)
• “The parallax, however, also guarantees that spectating is not celebrated as an ultimately individual event either, which would in itself fill the dialectic gap between the text and its production through a synthesis accomplished by each individual audience member in the very moment of performance; this position, in fact, too uncannily reiterates the ideology of the alleged ‘power of the individual consumer’ propagated by the globalized market economy.” (172)

My notes:

• “must not now be misunderstood as an argument for a ‘theatre without dramatic texts'”: This is perfect for describing why Lehmann’s postdramatic theory can be applied to both texts but esp. An Oak Tree – it is still logocentric but the text is one constituent of the theatrical event
• “Anglo-American perspective are often reductively categorized as ‘directors’ theatre’, thus reiterating the quest for hierarchical authority”: Contention with dramaturgy in Anglophone theatre – dismissive term director’s theatre
• “We do not have two perspectives, we have a perspective and what eludes it, and the other perspective fills in this void of what we could not see from the first perspective”: This could be argued between live performance and text – both shows rely on the live interaction of spectator, actors and artwork to fully exist – something lacks in the text alone
• “globalised market economy”: Postdramatic dramaturgical approaches challenge the idea of performance as consumer product to be consumed by the individual