(No Longer) Dramatic Text for Theater and Post-Dramatic Theater

Abstract

This article examines how the concept of drama has been used in the last three decades, its concept, and the end of history. In a dialogue with the theories of Gerda Poschmann and Hans-Thies Lehmann, it outlines a map of the (no longer dramatic) text for theater and post-dramatic theatre in recent decades, as shaped during the social predomination of the visual and the media culture simulacra. Using Heiner Müller’s and Elfrieda Jelinek’s oeuvres, it touches upon phenomena such as the disintegration of dialogue, the quasi-monologue, expanses of speech (Sprachflächen) as dialogue substitutes, Der nicht mehr dramatische Theatertext (no longer dramatic text for theater), post-dramatic theater, and new models of non-dialogic forms of theater. In addition, some of the most specific entrances of (dramatic) literature into new relationships with the media (contemporary performing arts) are identified. These entrances followed the fact that in the 20^th century the model of literary theater and the logocentrism of dramatic theater experienced relativization, but not termination. Modern art only seemingly destroyed the relative concept of representation, just as post-structuralist theory only seemingly experienced Barthes’ death of the dramatic author. The decision and choice have not taken place, and the dramatic form repeatedly survived various links in its chain of crises and repeatedly found itself in the irreconcilable situation of being trapped between the terms “to end” and “to begin”.