Postdramatic theatre

Krpič, T. 2011. Spectator’s Performing Body: The Case of the Theatre Project Via Negativa. New Theatre Quarterly 27 (2): 167-175.

by Tomaž Krpič

Theatre is More Beautiful than War: German Stage Directing in the Late Twentieth Century. by Marvin Carlson (Review)

by Michael Shane Boyle

Hero takes a fall: A lesson from theatre for leadership

by Brigitte Biehl-Missal

Leadership (Special Issue: Leadership as an Art, ed. by Donna Ladkin & Steven S. Taylor)

Comparing leaders to actors has a long tradition, and researchers and practitioners in the organizational field have... more Comparing leaders to actors has a long tradition, and researchers and practitioners in the organizational field have tried to learn lessons from theatre. For developing this approach, this article takes an interdisciplinary theatre studies perspective and discusses how leaders in organizations compare to actors in the theatre. It makes the assertion that the actor’s role in (dramatic, epic and postdramatic) theatre over several historic epochs can be seen as a complementary, opposed practice that confronts and challenges audiences rather than ‘playing to them’. Theatre does not provide us with ideal or charismatic leader characters but, quite the opposite, teaches us about contentious and problematic heroes. Theatre presents a fundamental disrespect for tenability and positive affirmation and may offer more critical ideas about aesthetic interaction, leadership performance and leader-follower interaction. This illustrates that aesthetic features do not alone turn leadership into an art. ‘Leadership as an art’ through this lens includes critical interaction through increased aesthetic awareness from the viewpoint of followers.

Using artistic form for aesthetic organizational inquiry: Rimini Protokoll constructs Daimler's Annual General Meeting as a theatre play

by Brigitte Biehl-Missal

Culture and Organization

This paper reviews and analyses an artistic intervention in the context of aesthetic organizational inquiry and... more This paper reviews and analyses an artistic intervention in the context of aesthetic organizational inquiry and theatre in organizations. Having served as inspiration and as a tool within organizations, theatre now has returned the favour: Rimini Protokoll, a group of directors, used Daimler's 2009 Annual General Meeting in Berlin as a ready-made and constructed it as a theatre play entitled Hauptversammlung. Two hundred theatre spectators were channelled into the event via the purchase of shares. This study focuses on the aesthetic experience of the event and underlines the potential of artistic forms for aesthetic organizational inquiry. Implications suggest that a so-called postdramatic, nonlinear aesthetic form can be most promising for enabling critical interpretations of organizational issues.

OpheliaMachine: Gender, Ethics and Representation in Heiner Muller's "Hamletmachine"

by Magda Romanska

Published in "The Cultural Politics of Heiner Muller," Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.

FROM THE EDITOR:

"Magda Romanska in her chapter, provides a brilliant literary and political analysis... more FROM THE EDITOR:

"Magda Romanska in her chapter, provides a brilliant literary and political analysis of Muller's use of the character of Ophelia in his signature play. She traces German's culture use of Ophelia (and Hamlet) from the late 18th Century to the present -- in drama, poetry, the fine arts and psychology -- and explores how the various images, articulations, and manifestations of Ophelia and Hamlet fed into to the coming-into-being German nationalism of the 19th Century and, at the same time, contributed to the specifics of gender identity within German culture. In doing so, Romanska traces the cross-fertilization (if you will) between the shaping of gender and the shaping of nation in Germany. Showing how Muller made use of all this cultural baggage, Romanska provides a non-polemica look at Muller's own conflicted relationship -- in "Hamletmachine" and elsewhere -- to the radical feminism of the late 20th Century. In so doing, she provides not only an erudite look at Muller's digging up of the dead in "Hamletmachine," but points forward to this volume's third section which explores Muller in relationship to the unfolding political culture of the 21st Century."

Between History and Memory: Auschwitz in Akropolis, Akropolis in Auschwitz

by Magda Romanska

Theatre Survey (2009) Vol. 50, No.2: 223-250.

AWARDS:

2011 AQUILA POLONICA ARTICLE PRIZE

The biennial prize, funded by Aquila Polonica... more AWARDS:

2011 AQUILA POLONICA ARTICLE PRIZE

The biennial prize, funded by Aquila Polonica Publishing, is awarded by the Polish Studies Association to the author of "the best article written in English during the previous two years on any aspect of Polish studies."

FROM THE AWARD COMMITTEE:

Romanska’s article "succeeds taking a relatively difficult and opaque subject, Grotowski’s 1962 re-staging of Wyspiański’s Akropolis against the background of Auschwitz, both accessible and rewarding for readers who are not specialists in Polish theatre. While Romanska’s analysis remains grounded in theatre, and her conclusion is ultimately about theatrical production, she raises many questions about history, memory, and national mythology that most readers will want to learn more about. What is particularly impressive is the scope of the article, which ranges over the entire twentieth century. [...] Romanska’s work makes a convincing argument that we need to be paying more attention to theatre in Poland."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2010 GERALD KAHAN SCHOLAR'S PRIZE

Awarded by the American Society for Theatre Research, for “best essay written and published in English in a refereed scholarly journal.” The winning essay is judged as "displaying originality in the broad field of theatre and performance, exhibiting critical rigor, showing an acquaintance with related research in theatre and performance, and promising future professional development in the field.”

FROM THE AWARD COMMITTEE:

Romanska’s essay offers“an excellent unpacking of both Stanislaw Wyspianski’s 1904 drama, Akropolis, and its production history. Her essay made use of extensive sources to tell a complicated story-layered text, performance, and context, paying attention to the original script as well as performances, especially, those directed by Jerzy Grotowski. The essay provides a missing, though essential, analysis of a production that is often cited, but perhaps rarely understood in its full context. The methods of historiography and documentary analysis are excellent and provide an instructive model for future performance scholarship.”

(Re) presenting drama: adaptation in postdramatic theatre

by Sam Bicknell

M.Phil thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham, July 2011.

"Stöckel, Straps und Damenbart. Transvestismus und Theater". Auto(r)erotik: Gegenstandslose Liebe als literarisches Projekt. Ed. Annette Keck and Dietmar Schmidt. Geschlechterdifferenz & Literatur Bd. 2. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1994. 161-186.

by Ralph Poole

Kings of England: Quietude, Restlessness and Uproar: Notes on Silence in Eldersfield

by Simon Bowes

Presented at "Being Seen, Being Heard" (Symposium), Chelsea Theatre, London (27th November 2011). "Quietude..." examines speech and silence in recent performance "Elegy for Paul Dirac" (SPILL Festival, April 2011). "Elegy..." is the first chapter of "In Eldersfield", Kings of England's ten-chapter, decade-long cycle of works all for the twentieth century (2011-2021).

“How hard it is to sit in a silent theatre” (Barker, 1989: 117-119)

“The theatre must start to take its... more “How hard it is to sit in a silent theatre” (Barker, 1989: 117-119)

“The theatre must start to take its audience seriously. It must stop telling them stories they can understand” Barker, 1989: 17-19)

At the Pit in the Barbican, April 22nd 2011, Kings of England premiered Elegy for Paul Dirac the first chapter of “In Eldersfield”, as part of SPILL Festival • Between performance and historiography, In Eldersfield is a decade-long, ten-chapter cycle of works, all for the twentieth century • As the cycle progresses, we seek to invoke pasts to unsettle the present, allowing us, to better imagine the type of future to which we might want to belong • Autistic or Asbergic, probably, Dirac was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, singularly gifted, and singularly shy – always reluctant to speak • We glean something of his character through an anecdote: once in a laboratory at St. John’s College Cambridge, a colleague asked him: “Where are you going on your holidays?” Twenty minutes later (twenty minutes later), he replied • Elegy stages this ‘silence’ in real time, conceived as an invitation into a quiet contemplation, meditativeness • The performance is a dialogue on hope and expectation, by turns austere and ornate, full of withdrawals and reveals • Ultimately, it is an argument for care and attentiveness, but the argument is not without its complications: At the premiere, the silence gave way to restlessness and uproar, shrieks of anguish, walk outs and, finally, applause • Within a live art and performance culture increasingly defined by interactivity, and participation, the terms of the debate are shifting towards agency. The long-held assumption of passive spectatorship has been overturned in accordance with this new orthodoxy • Beyond the disciplines of live art and performance, philosophies of ethics advocate a radical passivity in the face of the other (see Levinas, Blanchot and Agamben) • Notes on Silence in “In Eldersfield” examines the lineages of radical passivity, and asks whether – and how –this philosophical literary approach might be instructive in rethinking the kinds of agency in live events and performative processes • Against the clamour to be heard, we want to ask: is such passivity either possible or desirable? Why-should-and-how-can Performance not only represent but invoke such passivity, and might such passivity accomplish an aesthetic, ethical, or political gesture?

Kings of England: Quietude, Restlessness and Uproar: Notes on Silence in Eldersfield

by Simon Bowes

Presented at "Being Seen, Being Heard" (Symposium), Chelsea Theatre, London (27th November 2011). "Quietude..." examines speech and silence in recent performance "Elegy for Paul Dirac" (SPILL Festival, April 2011). "Elegy..." is the first chapter of "In Eldersfield", Kings of England's ten-chapter, decade-long cycle of works all for the twentieth century (2011-2021).

“How hard it is to sit in a silent theatre” (Barker, 1989: 117-119)

“The theatre must start to take its... more “How hard it is to sit in a silent theatre” (Barker, 1989: 117-119)

“The theatre must start to take its audience seriously. It must stop telling them stories they can understand” Barker, 1989: 17-19)

At the Pit in the Barbican, April 22nd 2011, Kings of England premiered Elegy for Paul Dirac the first chapter of “In Eldersfield”, as part of SPILL Festival • Between performance and historiography, In Eldersfield is a decade-long, ten-chapter cycle of works, all for the twentieth century • As the cycle progresses, we seek to invoke pasts to unsettle the present, allowing us, to better imagine the type of future to which we might want to belong • Autistic or Asbergic, probably, Dirac was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, singularly gifted, and singularly shy – always reluctant to speak • We glean something of his character through an anecdote: once in a laboratory at St. John’s College Cambridge, a colleague asked him: “Where are you going on your holidays?” Twenty minutes later (twenty minutes later), he replied • Elegy stages this ‘silence’ in real time, conceived as an invitation into a quiet contemplation, meditativeness • The performance is a dialogue on hope and expectation, by turns austere and ornate, full of withdrawals and reveals • Ultimately, it is an argument for care and attentiveness, but the argument is not without its complications: At the premiere, the silence gave way to restlessness and uproar, shrieks of anguish, walk outs and, finally, applause • Within a live art and performance culture increasingly defined by interactivity, and participation, the terms of the debate are shifting towards agency. The long-held assumption of passive spectatorship has been overturned in accordance with this new orthodoxy • Beyond the disciplines of live art and performance, philosophies of ethics advocate a radical passivity in the face of the other (see Levinas, Blanchot and Agamben) • Notes on Silence in “In Eldersfield” examines the lineages of radical passivity, and asks whether – and how –this philosophical literary approach might be instructive in rethinking the kinds of agency in live events and performative processes • Against the clamour to be heard, we want to ask: is such passivity either possible or desirable? Why-should-and-how-can Performance not only represent but invoke such passivity, and might such passivity accomplish an aesthetic, ethical, or political gesture?

Forms, Fragments, and Fictions in Adrienne Kennedy's The Owl Answers

by Joshua Edelman

Kings of England: In Eldersfield: Notes on Theatre and the Writing of History

by Simon Bowes

Presented at Authoring Theatre, Central School of Speech and Drama, 14th July 2011, (co-authored with John Pinder)

(Gob Squad's) Revolution Now! Or Never?

by Brandon Woolf

TDR: The Drama Review 55:4 (T212) Winter 2011

Gob Squad—love children of the contemporary European performance scene—have “occupied” the Berlin Volksbühne for their... more Gob Squad—love children of the contemporary European performance scene—have “occupied” the Berlin Volksbühne for their newest action: Revolution Now! So let the Molotov cocktails fly: “this revolution will be broadcast live!”

"The Absurd Training Laboratory"

by Kathryn Syssoyeva

CO-DEVISED WITH: Bryan Brown, Olya Petrokvka, Kris Salata, Alexei Syssoyev;

A performance and teaching shift for PSi 18, in Leeds in June of 2012.

Our project is to challenge the... more A performance and teaching shift for PSi 18, in Leeds in June of 2012.

Our project is to challenge the aims of conference culture, notions of laboratory conditions, and the realities of making viable work in an academic setting. With this in view, our proposed “performance of training” is at once commentary upon the limits and challenges of the institutional structures within which many of us conduct our artistic praxis, and an investigation into the possibilities of spontaneity, collision, leap of faith.

Abstract:
This porous shift is intended as a meeting place for five scholar-practitioners, who have never before gathered as a group, and who share research and artistic interests in practices associated with the theatre laboratories of Russia and Poland. Choosing absurdism, particularly that of the OBERIU, as a springboard for this encounter, our aim is to investigate and problematize the rich complexity that is training, schooling, performance - and the possibilities of art within the institutional structures of academia. Playing with the phrase ‘training for the absurd’ has led us to devise a structure in which performance pedagogies can be proposed, while engaging in a performance of pedagogy.

In what is, on the surface, a “work demonstration” format, a group of PSi and non-PSi performers will be active participants, with an audience invited to watch the work, and, afterward, respond and reflect with us. In order for active participants to have a clear understanding of the supertask, actions and concerns, and a foundation of interpersonal comfort from which to begin the collaboration, we will commence our work with a ‘closed’ session of one hour, directly prior to the open session.

Participants will be given a text by Daniil Kharms to work with, and asked to engage in an accruing montage of “actor-training” tasks, while maintaining the supertask laid out in the closed session. As the shift leaders are from Russia, Poland and America, differences in schooling and theatre training serve as a starting point for the structure. Shift leaders will each adopt a particular pedagogical pose; we might think of this as character work, the performance aspect of our dual role (in this shift) as performers and teachers. While participants engage with very real artistic-pedagogical objectives, the performative dramaturgy of the event plays with the negative dimensions of pedagogy (such as spatial and behavioral constraints imposed upon the child in school, or the batons used to beat out rhythm and threaten the legs of young dancers in Russian ballet training).

The shift will conclude with a moderated reflection and exchange between students, shift leaders, and audience, contextualized by a scholar steeped in history of absurdist theatre and avant-garde performance practices. Taking this critical lens as a starting point, it is anticipated that the reflections will further challenge conceptions of training, schooling and performance interrogated within the shift.

Open to observers from Day 1, Day 2 provides an opportunity for the five shift leaders and the work participants to share approaches to performance practice, in a non-performance mode, in order to further investigate and develop processes and impulses that will have emerged during the performance.

The Laboratory and the Institution: Encounters of The Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in three university settings"

by Kathryn Syssoyeva

Roundtable discussion, in development as a proposal for ATHE 2012 (PENDING).
CO-AUTHORED WITH: Kris Salata, Michael Hunter, Rachel Joseph and Kyle Gillette

SUMMARY
This panel investigates institutional dynamics, tensions and shifts encountered while hosting the... more SUMMARY
This panel investigates institutional dynamics, tensions and shifts encountered while hosting the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in our respective universities (events initiated and organized by Kris Salata, Michael Hunter and Kyle Gillette). We consider interactions of the Workcenter with the university and partner institutions at four levels: administration, faculty, students, and community. Our questions, analysis and documentation examine challenges across a spectrum from institutional structure to student experience. At the heart of our project lies a single question: what are the relational possibilities between art and the university?

PARTICIPANTS
Kyle Gillette, Assistant Professor of Theatre, Trinity University
“Institutional Politics: Shielding the Workcenter”

Rachel Joseph, Instructor of Theatre and English, Trinity University
“Community Reactions: Incorporating San Antonio”

Michael Hunter, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Introduction to Humanities Program, Stanford University
“Institutional Collaborations: Stanford, SF MOMA, and the Performance Art Institute”

Kris Salata, Associate Professor of Theatre, Florida State University
“The Encounter of Apprenticeship and Pedagogy”

Kathryn Syssoyeva, Visiting Assistant Professor of Performance, Florida State University
"...strangely, suddenly, deliciously slanted...": Nurturing and Demonstrating Student Experience


ABSTRACT
In Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics, Shannon Jackson writes: “Like any coordination of human welfare, performance requires an encounter with some very difficult problems that are both formal and institutional.” This panel investigates institutional dynamics, tensions and shifts encountered while hosting the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards in our respective universities (events initiated by Professors Salata, Hunter and Gillette). We consider interactions of the Workcenter with the university environment at four levels: administration, faculty, students, and community. Our questions, analysis and documentation examine challenges across a spectrum from institutional structure to student experience. At core, our investigation asks a single question: what are the relational possibilities between art and the university?

The praxis of the Workcenter proposes a form of "public" which insists on intimacy and direct connection as its basic condition. It depends upon slowness, accrual, rigour: both in the group’s work and, proportionally, in our approach to witnessing that work. If one meaningful definition of civic action is nourishing the quality of life in a community, then the meeting between the Workcenter and our institutions - the introduction of the laboratory model, the relational action of the performance, the transcultural interaction - constitutes a deeply civic engagement.

Panel members will briefly present challenges and solutions involved in the Workcenter’s encounter with their institutions and communities, as the prelude to a broader conversation about the university’s potential role in supporting forms of performance that might be compromised by the “interests” of bureaucracies, governments, even rigid communities.

THE WORKCENTER OF PONTADERA
After decades of influential and groundbreaking work, in 1986 Jerzy Grotowski founded his Workcenter in Pontedera, Italy, which eventually became the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards. Until his death in 1999, Grotowski worked intensively with Richards and a small group of actors, developing a systematic, continuous line of “performance research.” This research continues today at the Workcenter, under the leadership of Richards and Mario Biagini, and involves both extremities of what Grotowski called "the chain" of performing arts: "Art as vehicle" and "Art as presentation". The distinction between these two poles of performance is that "Art as vehicle" has as its aim the performer’s work on him/herself, with a view towards analysis of the ways in which certain modes and techniques of performance might lead to expansions of individual cognitive and perceptual capacities; while "Art as presentation," is oriented towards the perception of the spectator, with a view towards investigating questions regarding intersubjective communication and relationships.

THE RESIDENCIES
Richards and his Workcenter team engaged with the FSU community over eight days, through an extensive acting workshop, classroom visits, performances of The Living Room, and a conference. The FSU School of Theatre is a home for 400 students and multiple programs: BA, BFA, MA, MS, and Ph.D. Because of this broad range of training and educational focus, the visit by the Workcenter created a perceptional challenge, as their “post-representational performance” is not driven by dramatic text, doesn’t seem to have a plot, invests very little in theatrical illusion, and doesn’t seek the spectator’s engagement in the ways traditional performance might. In addition, the workshop revealed seemingly irreconcilable differences between the modes of work, expectations, and methodologies employed by the host and the visitors.

The workshops and performances in San Antonio took place at Trinity University and were largely attended by the Trinity community. The institutional framework of the visit made the participation of the larger theatre community small yet meaningful. Members of the community that attended the performances were skeptical at the outset, but enthusiastic after witnessing The Living Room. As the large proscenium theatre and black box space traditionally used for theatre productions at Trinity were not right for The Living Room, we utilized a space elsewhere on campus, typically used as a meeting room for faculty and administrators. The Faculty Gold Room's conventional uses intersected with the hospitality and warmth of the Living Room in several significant ways, framing it within the civic life of the university.

In the Bay Area, Stanford’s initial support of the Workcenter’s visit sparked a broader collaboration with SFMOMA and the Performance Art Institute. Together, these institutions were able to support the Open Program of the Workcenter (with a team of 12 people) for a month-long residency, during which performances, workshops, and symposia took place at extremely diverse venues across the Bay Area. In the case of this residency, our focus will shift away from examining encounters directly between the Workcenter and the university, and look instead at how Stanford was able to participate in existing performance communities, as well as to help create a new community: over the course of the month, spectators and local arts professionals returned to participate in multiple performance events, creating a network of support and shared interest that was both based in the particular overlap between, on the one hand, the Workcenter’s traditions and the Open Program’s current explorations (notably the texts of Allen Ginsberg) and the Bay Area’s own social and aesthetic histories.

Kings of England: Where We Live & What We Live For: Some notes on performance and documentation

by Simon Bowes

Sixteen notes on performance and documentation, in response to a citation from Yevgheny Vinokurov by way of John... more Sixteen notes on performance and documentation, in response to a citation from Yevgheny Vinokurov by way of John Berger ("and our faces, my heart, brief as photos" 1984):

"Sometimes I'd live to write a book / A book all about time" (21). The Paper examines the performance as a partial reconstruction, and partial fulfilment, of that wish. 

A series of critical reflections on Kings of England's first performance "Where We Live & What We Live For" an intergenerational work performed by myself and my 73/4/5-year-old father between 2008-2010.

Un Interstice Impalpable (French version, English and Portuguese translation)).

by Armando Menicacci

Published in Scenes d'architecture. Nouvelles architectures françaises pour le spectacle, Paris, Editions du patrimoine, Culturesfrance/Centre des monuments nationaux, Paris, 2006, pp. 18-23

Published for the exhibition representing France at the 7th international Biennal of Architecture in São Paulo

I'm trying to understand how the performing space is changing since the arrival of digital technologies I'm trying to understand how the performing space is changing since the arrival of digital technologies

‘Christoph Marthaler: The Musicality, Theatricality and Politics of Postdramatic Direction’, in Maria M. Delgado and Dan Rebellato (eds.), Contemporary European Theatre Directors (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), pp. 185-203

by David Barnett

The title says it fairly well, but do consider the other essays in the collection, written by esteemed colleagues. The title says it fairly well, but do consider the other essays in the collection, written by esteemed colleagues.

‘When is a Play not a Drama? Two Examples of Postdramatic Theatre Texts’, New Theatre Quarterly, 24:1 (2008), pp. 14-23

by David Barnett

An analysis of Martin Crimp's Attempts on her Life and Sarah Kane's 4:48 Psychosis as examples of postdramatic... more An analysis of Martin Crimp's Attempts on her Life and Sarah Kane's 4:48 Psychosis as examples of postdramatic dramaturgy.

“Ecce Homo: On the Concept of the Face Regarding the Son of God”, Theater der Zeit, Berlin, January 2011, 67

by Eleni Papalexiou

«Ecce Homo. Περί της Εννοίας του Προσώπου του Υιού του Θεού», Theater der Zeit, Berlin, Ιανουάριος 2011, 67.

Το άρθρο αυτό συνιστά την πρώτη ερμηνευτική προσέγγιση σε διεθνές επίπεδο της πρόσφατης σκηνικής δημιουργίας του Romeo... more Το άρθρο αυτό συνιστά την πρώτη ερμηνευτική προσέγγιση σε διεθνές επίπεδο της πρόσφατης σκηνικής δημιουργίας του Romeo Castellucci με τίτλο Περί της Εννοίας του Προσώπου του Υιού του Θεού. Επιχειρεί να συνδέσει το θεολογικό περιεχόμενο της παράστασης (κρίση, αμαρτία, θυσία, τιμωρία) με τις ανατρεπτικές για την εποχή τους - αλλά και για σήμερα - θεωρίες του Antonin Artaud. Στην κατακλείδα διαπιστώνεται ότι στον πυρήνα του έργου του Castellucci, εδράζει το αρχετυπικό ζήτημα του σφάλματος του δημιουργού.