Radosavljević, D. (2013) Theatre-Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance in the 21st Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

• “having the wisdom to understand that ‘postdramatic’ does not have to imply ‘non-dramatic’…” (20)
• “Małgorzata Sugiera notes that the reception of Kane, Ravenhill, McDonagh […] was also shrouded in controversy. […] In addition, she notes that Sarah Kane was criticized in this context ‘either for an unpardonable ignorance of the basic rules of the playwright’s craft, or, at least, for an ostentatious refusal to respect them’ (Sugiera, 2004, 17). Presumably, the call for ‘basic rules’ was invoking the Aristotelian heritage.” (93-4)

My notes:

• “unpardonable ignorance of the basic rules of the playwright’s craft, or, at least, for an ostentatious refusal to respect them”: Such is the case for An Oak Tree, for certain. Example being how Faber and Faber refused to publish it because the second actor thing meant it “wasn’t a proper play” (there’s a quote for this, find it). So it doesn’t follow the ‘basic rules’ of the dramatic (which supercedes all), but it is also excluded from clearly being labelled postdramatic. In AIDY a similar thing happens – but harder to define. However (in relation to quote) Lehmann includes Kane under banner of postdramatic theatre: “”postdramatic theatre – under which banner he accommodates Bekett, Handke, Strauss, Muller and Kane…” (Rado, 126) – so if Kane is accommodated can Crouch/Unltd be?

Citations

Sugiera, M. (2004) ‘Beyond Drama: Writing for Postdramatic Theatre’. Theatre Research International, 29(1) 16-28.

Jürs-Munby, K. (2010) Text Exposed: Displayed texts as players onstage in contemporary theatre. Journal of Media Practice, 30(1) 101-114.

• “for contemporary postdramatic performance practices […] graphic/literal writing interacts with other ‘writings’ (and ‘readings’) and can be isolated and exposed to subvert the illusion of totality” (103)
• “the world we live in has itself become much more technologically mediated and profoundly more complex in its entwinement of the virtual and the actual.” (104)
• “‘Reading is made possible by temporal discontinuity, by the persistence of a discourse in time, by the disparity between the author’s intention and the reader’s interpretation’.” (106 – from Savran, 1986, 170) – Savran, David (1986), Breaking the Rules: The Wooster Group. New York: Theatre Communications Group.
• “The resistance of performers against text and vice versa can function to disturb ideological normalization and ‘business as usual’.” (112)

Bleeker, M. (2012) Media Dramaturgies of the Mind: Ivana Müller’s cinematic choreographies. Performance Research, 17(5) 61-70.

• “Theoretical debates on the specificity of theatre, on liveness and on presence reflect how the confrontation with other media inspired a reconsideration of what the specificity of the theatre is, and how theatre differs from other media.” (61)
• “theatre that distances itself from drama as organizational principle and develops new modes of organizing the means of theatrical presentation” (61-62)
• “re-theatricalization of the theatre – theatre highlighting its own being theatre and testifying its awareness of the implications of its being theatre”(62)
• “‘shift in axis of theatrical communication’” (Lehmann, 1997, 58) – Lehmann, H. (1997) From logos to landscape: Text in contemporary dramaturgy. Performance Research, 2(1) 55–60.
• “The performance lacks dramatic structure and instead of communicating amongst themselves, the characters on stage directly address the audience. The performance is highly self-reflexive and draws attention to its being theatre. The characters present themselves as the actors behind the characters of an (imaginary) performance that has just ended.” (64)
• “introducing new modes of constructing plots that shift attention away from the unfolding of action on stage towards what has happened before the beginning of the action shown on stage, and what may happen in the future (or not) […] Instead of being absorbed in the unfolding of a tightly structured dramatic action taking place on stage, the audience is taken along in contemplation about other moments before or after, while time unfolding becomes the duration of the contemplation. Simultaneously the strict separation between the world on stage and the world of the audience becomes porous as idealized other worlds on stage make place for theatrical representations closer to the world of the spectator, sometimes even directly responding to contemporary issues and concerns.” (64)

My notes:

• “shift in axis of theatrical communication”: This ‘shift in axis’ also necessitates a shift in axis with regard to dramaturgy: “The implication that follows from Lehmann’s observation (but which is not elaborated by him) is a ‘shift in axis’ with regard to dramaturgy as well, from a focus on constructing worlds on stage towards the relationship between the ‘mind set’ of the beholder and what is presented on stage.” (Bleeker, 2012, 62)
• “The performance lacks dramatic structure and instead of communicating amongst themselves, the characters on stage directly address the audience. The performance is highly self-reflexive and draws attention to its being theatre. The characters present themselves as the actors behind the characters of an (imaginary) performance that has just ended.” (64) – Some of this can be used to justify counting AIDY and AOT as postdramatic
• Both productions throw off the linear progression and cohesive mimetic time structures of the dramatic and place focus on non-linear temporal structures. In AIDY this is done by exploring imagined futures and pasts, breaking from the temporality of the stories being told. Also: where the little girl falls through the ice there is the suggestion that the mother “doesn’t realise because for her it hasn’t happened yet” – challenges the universality of time as an overarching temporality and highlight subjective experience of time as a construct. In AOT the story progresses non-linearly, audience are an imagined one in a year in a different place – temporality and spaciality are skewed.
• NO HOMOGENAIETY OR UNITARY SHARED HERE AND NOW as Bleeker puts it
• In AIDY there are co-existent separate here-and-nows – temporality is not shared between narratives and those narratives’ temporality are at odds with the unitary temporality and spaciality of the performance space and performer-spectator relationship