Tomlin, L. (2009) ‘And their stories fell apart even as I was telling them’: Poststructuralist performance and the no-longer-dramatic text. Performance Research, 14(1) 57-64.

Dr Liz Tomlin, Senior Lecturer and Head of Department of Drama and Theatre Arts, University of Birmingham

• “it appears to be the function of the written text, as predicating the other elements of the production process, that categorizes the work within the logocentric binds of the dramatic. To understand the binary through these terms, however, fails to offer any coherent categorization for writers such as Beckett and Müller, or indeed Crimp and Kane, as identified by Jurs-Munby, whose written texts often predicate all other elements of the production process, thus aligning them, under Lehmann’s terms, with the dramatic, while simultaneously deconstructing the teleological implications of the dramatic, thus aligning them, one would surely argue, with the postdramatic.” (59)
• “Academics and arts development agencies consequently need to reject the easy and misleading binaries that divide new work into text-based/dramatic/ teleological and non-text-based/postdramatic/ deconstructive in order to more precisely define where the logos might lie, be that in the written text, the mise-en-scène of the auteur-director or the virtuosity of the performer. This will enable a more sophisticated ideological and philosophical analysis of new work and safeguard the diverse range and fusion of models and forms being developed in British contemporary theatre and performance today.” (64)

My notes:

• “no-longer-dramatic text”: Is this the middle-ground between ‘dramatic’ and ‘post-dramatic’?
• CONFLICT BETWEEN THE DRAMATIC AND POSTDRAMATIC – and the argument for Am I Dead Yet and An Oak Tree, both of which have texts but both of which also place other elements at the fore consistent with a postdramatic reading.