Postdramatic theatre Lehmann

With the end of the 'Gutenberg galaxy' and the advent of new technologies the written text and the book are being called into question. The mode of perception is shifting: a simultaneous and multi-perspectival form of perceiving is replacing the linear-successive. p16

In the emergence of a new paradigm, the 'future' structures and stylistic traits almost unavoidbaly appear mixed in with the conventional. p24

certainly, even throughout the modern era, the modern theatre for its devotees was an event in which dramatic text played only one part - and often not the most important - of experiences sought. Yet despite all the individual entertaining effects of the staging, the textual elements of plot, character (or at least dramatic personae) and a moving story predominately told in dialogue remained the structuring components. They were associated with the keyword 'drama' and informed not only its theory but also the expectations of theatre. p31

Lehman can show that theatre and drama as such have drifted apart in the second half of the twentieth century. Intro p3

Artaud and Adorno also insists, however, that the spasm (Zuckung) organises itself into a sign or - as Adorno says - tha mimesis is realized through a process of aesthetic rationality and 'construction'. It gains its logic, as much as its sound material, through a musical organisation. It would not represent a logic (for example a ploy) given prior to the theatrical signs. p38

Gorki himself, he wrote [Peter Stein], had not called his piece a 'drama', 'play', tragedy' or 'comedy' but 'scenes'. The theatre here showed 'less a succession, a development of a story. more an involvement of inner and outer states'. p68

According to Richard Schechner, the plot of a drama can easily be summer up by compiling a list of the changes that occur to the dramatis personae between the beginning and the end of the dramatioc process. p77
cv>>> so if there is a plot in DO it is the list of changes that occur within each individual audient.

---

The impact of media onstage on performance manifests itself not only in the use of high-tech 'multimedia' onstage. [...] Given that the new thetare in this way is much more immediately informed by cultural practices other than traditional drama (from visual art and live art, to movies, TV channel hopping, pop music and the internet), the question may be asked why it would still be necessary or even appropriate to relate new theatre and performance work to drama at all. intro p 10

Such postdramatic theatre has thus not given up on relating the world but crucially no longer represents the world as a surveyable whole. p12 intro