Module Document
Q3110 Postdramatic Theatre
Autumn 2013
Course Convenor: Dr David Barnett
Email: d.j.barnett@sussex.ac.uk
Office hours : Tuesday 11-12, Thursday 11-12
Module description
The module will introduce students to ideas of a postdramatic theatre by examining
both theoretical positions and practical manifestations. Students will consider what
might constitute a theatre beyond representation and the ways in which the
fundamentals of dramatic theatre – character, plot and dialogue – are called into
question. They will also examine the aesthetics of the postdramatic through practice
and will be invited to develop approaches to performance that seek to bracket or banish
representation in the theatre. Students will study a selection of plays and directors in
order to grapple with the tensions between the dramatic and the postdramatic.
Module Aims
 To introduce and explore concepts of postdramatic theatre
 To offer theoretical and practical approaches to postdramatic theatre
 To encourage the critical examination and practical articulation of a theatre
beyond representation in performance
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this module, the successful student should be able to :


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understand and discuss the tenets and implications of a postdramatic theatre
demonstrate a practical and critical understanding of postdramatic theory and
performance techniques
apply principles of postdramatic performance to theatre practice
Modes of Teaching and Assessment
Teaching:
Alternating three-hour workshops and two-hour seminars with at least five hours of
independent study/rehearsal per week. Some of this will be group work/rehearsal so be
prepared to coordinate meetings outside of class with fellow students.
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Assessment submission deadlines
Essay, 2,500 words (60%)
Group Presentation, 20 mins (40%)
Details of each assessment to be circulated separately, together with assessment
criteria.
Please check Sussex Direct for definitive information on due dates
Core Reading
As you will know, Postdramatic Theatre by Hans-Thies Lehmann (Abingdon: Routledge,
2006) is no longer a set text, due to its high price. You will, however, find referring to it
useful, especially when considering your essay later in the term. There are four copies in
the library.
The one compulsory text on the module is Elfriede Jelinek, Sports Play (London: Oberon,
2012). This is available in the University Book Shop and will provide the textual basis for
the Group Presentation in Week 10.
Weekly Plan
The timetable itself varies week on week so please check times AND venues on Sussex
Direct.
Week 1
Workshop: Introduction to Postdramatic Practices
Chekhov, Handke and Chekhov
Week 2
Seminar: Introduction to Postdramatic Theatre
Hans-Thies Lehmann, ‘Prologue to Postdramatic Theatre’, in Teresa
Brayshaw and Noel Witts (eds.), The Twentieth Century Performance
Reader, third edition (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), pp. 301-15 (available
in EBL books online via the library ‘online resources’ tab)
David Barnett, ‘When is a Play not a Drama? Two Examples of
Postdramatic Theatre Texts’, New Theatre Quarterly, 24:1 (2008), pp. 1423 (online journal)
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Susie Mee, ‘Chekhov’s Three Sisters and the Wooster Group’s Brace Up!’,
TDR: The Drama Review, 36: 4 (1992), pp. 143-53 (online journal)
Week 3
Workshop: The Demands of the Postdramatic Text
Text: Heiner Müller, The Hamletmachine (Module Reader)
Malgorzata Sugiera, ‘Beyond Drama: Writing for Postdramatic Theatre’,
Theatre Research International, 29:1 (2004), pp. 16-28 (online journal)
Week 4
Seminar: René Pollesch Michael Thalheimer: Text and Performance
Text: René Pollesch, Insourcing the Home. People in Crap Hotels
(available on Study Direct)
Paul A. Youngman, ‘Civilization and its Technological Discontents in René
Pollesch’s World Wide Web-Slums’, German Studies Review, 31: 1 (2008),
pp. 43-63 (online journal)
Peter M. Boenisch, ‘Exposing the Classics. Michael Thalheimer’s Regie
Beyond the Text’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 18: 1 (2008), pp. 30-43
(online journal)
Week 5
Workshop: A Theatre of States
Text: Sarah Kane, 4:48 Psychosis (Module Reader)
Alicia Tycer, ‘"Victim. Perpetrator. Bystander": Melancholic Witnessing of
Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis’, Theatre Journal, 60:1 (2007), pp. 23-36
(online journal)
Week 6
Seminar: Wilson and Marthaler: Directing Beyond Representation
Shomit Mitter, ‘Robert Wilson’, in Mitter and Maria Shevtsova (eds.), Fifty
Key Theatre Directors (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), pp. 185-90 (Module
Reader)
David Bathrick, ‘Robert Wilson, Heiner Müller, and the Preideological’,
New German Critique, 98 (2006), pp. 65-76 (online journal)
Marvin Carlson, Theatre is More Beautiful Than War: German Stage
Directing in the Late Twentieth Century (Iowa: University of Iowa Press,
2009), on Marthaler: pp. 116-38 (Module Reader)
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Week 7
Reading Week
Read: Hans-Thies Lehmann, ‘Panorama of Postdramatic Theatre’ (Module
Reader)
Week 8
Workshop: Approaching Einar Schleef and Jelinek’s Sports Play,
Matthias Dreyer, ‘Prospective Genealogies: Einar Schleef’s Choric
Theatre’, Theatre Research International, 34:2 (2009), pp. 138-45 (online
journal)
Karen Jürs-Munby, ‘The Resistant Text in Postdramatic Theatre:
Performing Elfriede Jelinek’s “Sprachflächen”’, Performance Research, 14:
1 (2009), pp. 46-56 (online journal)
Week 9
Workshop: Preparation week
Week 10
Group Presentations
Week 11
Seminar: Debrief and Essay Preparation
Week 12
Essays tutorials (in DB’s Office: Arts B 242)
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Postdramatic Theatre: Select Reading List
NB:
You should not consider this reading list exhaustive or definitive: it is a starting point for
further reading. You will find other books in the library and other essays and articles by
using the MLA, EBL Library, Project Muse or JSTOR.
On Postdramatic Theatre
David Barnett, ‘Taking Stock and Looking Forward: Postdramatic Theatre. David Barnett in
Conversation with Hans-Thies Lehmann and Karen Jürs-Munby’, Contemporary Theatre
Review, 14:4 (2006), pp. 483-9
Maaike Bleeker, ‘Look who’s Looking!: Perspective and the Paradox of Postdramatic
Subjectivity’, Theatre Research International, 29:1 (2004), pp. 29-41
Mark Fortier, Theory/Theatre, second edition (London: Routledge, 2002)
Elinor Fuchs, The Death of Character (Indiana: Indianapolis UP, 1996)
Beliz Güçbilmez, ‘An Uncanny Theatricality: The Representation of the Offstage’, New Theatre
Quarterly, 23:2 (2007), pp. 152-60
N. Katherine Hayles, How we became Posthuman (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999)
Bernd Stegemann, ‘After Postdramatic Theater’, Theater, 39: 3 (2009), pp. 11-23
On Texts in Postdramatic Theatre
‘When is a Play not a Drama? Two Examples of Postdramatic Theatre Texts’, New Theatre
Quarterly, 24:1 (2008), pp. 14-23
Peter M. Boenisch, ‘Towards a Theatre of Encounter and Experience: Reflexive Dramaturgies
and Classic Texts’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 20:2 (2010), pp. 162-172
Karen, Jürs-Munby, ‘Text Exposed: Displayed texts as players onstage in contemporary theatre,
Studies in Theatre and Performance, 30: 1 (2010), pp. 101-114
Patrice Pavis, ‘Writing at Avignon (2009). Drama, Postdramatic and Post-Postdramatic’,
Theatreforum, 38 (2010), pp. 92-100
Malgorzata Sugiera, ‘Beyond Drama: Writing for Postdramatic Theatre’, Theatre Research
International, 29:1 (2004), pp. 16-28
On Postdramatic Performance
Bettina Brandl-Risi, ‘The New Virtuosity. Outperforming and Imperfection on the German Stage’,
Theater, 37: 1 (2007), pp. 9-37
Marvin Carlson, ‘Has Video Killed the Theatre Star? Some German Responses’, Contemporary
Theatre Review, 18:1 (2008) , pp. 20-29
Liz Mills, ‘When the Voice Itself is Image’, Modern Drama, 52: 4 (2009), pp. 389-404
David Roesner, ‘The Politics of the Polyphony of Performance: Musicalization in Contemporary
German Theatre’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 18: 1 (2008), pp. 44-55
Phillip B. Zarrilli, ‘An Enactive Approach to Understanding Acting’, Theatre Journal
59 (2007) 635–647
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On the Wooster Group (Brace Up!)
Euridice Arratia, ‘Island Hopping: Rehearsing the Wooster Group’s Brace Up!’, The Drama
Review, 36:4 (1992), pp. 121-42
Phaedra Bell, ‘Fixing the TV: Televisual Geography in the Wooster Group’s Brace Up!’, Modern
Drama, 48: 3 (2005), pp. 565-584
Christine Mangone, Transforming the Theatric Event: Checkov on the American Stage, 19772003, doctoral dissertation (2003), on Brace Up!: pp. 133-49
Susie Mee, ‘Chekhov’s Three Sisters and the Wooster Group’s Brace Up!’, The Drama Review, 36:
4 (1992), pp. 143-53
Paul Schmidt, ‘The Sounds of Brace Up! Translating the Music of Chekhov’, The Drama Review,
36: 4 (1992), pp. 154-7
On Heiner Müller and/or The Hamletmachine
David Barnett, Literature versus Theatre. Textual Problems and Theatrical Realization in the
Later Plays of Heiner Müller (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1998), on The Hamletmachine:
pp. 83-115
David Barnett, ‘Resisting the Revolution. Heiner Müller’s Hamlet/Machine at the Deutsches
Theater, March, 1990’, Theatre Research International, 31:2 (2006), pp. 188-200
David Barnett, ‘Some notes on the difficulties of operating Heiner Müller’s Die Hamletmaschine’,
German Life and Letters, 48:1 (1995), pp. 75-85
Andrea Christin Deeker, Locating the Image. Heiner Müller and the Acoustic, doctoral
dissertation (2009), on The Hamletmachine: pp. 97-172 (access through the online
resource MLA)
Kimberley Jean Kelly McLeod, Adaptation and the Postdramatic: A Study of Heiner Müller in
Non-European Performance, masters dissertation (2009), on an Argentine production of
The Hamletmachine (access through the online resource MLA)
Sanja Bahun-Radunović, ‘History in Postmodern Theater: Heiner Müller, Caryl Churchill, and
Suzan Lori-Parks’, Comparative Literature Studies, 45: 4 (2008), pp. 446-470
Michael D. Richardson, ‘Allegories and Ends. Heiner Müller’s Hamletmaschine’, New German
Critique, 98 (2006), pp. 77-100
Kirk Williams, ‘The Ghost in the Machine: Heiner Müller’s Devouring Melancholy’, Modern
Drama, 49: 2 (2006), pp. 188-205
On René Pollesch, Christoph Marthaler and Michael Thalheimer
David Barnett, ‘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
David Barnett, ‘Political Theatre in a Shrinking World. René Pollesch’s Postdramatic Practices on
Paper and on Stage’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 16:1 (2006), pp. 31-40
David Barnett, ‘Resisting Easy Consumption. The Politics of Form in Selected Plays of the Berlin
Republic’, in Birgit Haas (ed.), Macht: Performativität, Performanz und Polittheater seit
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1990 (Königshausen and Neumann: Würzburg, 2005), pp. 167-81: not available in the
library but is here: http://eprints.sussex.ac.uk/1740/
Peter M. Boenisch, ‘Exposing the Classics. Michael Thalheimer’s Regie Beyond the Text’,
Contemporary Theatre Review, 18: 1 (2008), pp. 30-43
Marvin Carlson, Theatre is More Beautiful Than War: German Stage Directing in the Late
Twentieth Century (Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2009), for material on Marthaler and
Thalheimer
Jonathan Kalb, ‘Nothing to Do with Patience [Interview with Michael Thalheimer]’, Theater, 39:
1 (2009), pp. 29-39
Patrick Primavesi, ‘A Theatre of Multiple Voices: Works of Einar Schleef, Christoph Marthaler
and René Pollesch’, Performance Research, 8: 1 (not available online, but in hard copy in
the library)
Nicholas Till, ‘On the Difficulty of Saying “We”. The unheimliche Heimat in the Music Theatre of
Christoph Martaler’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 15: 2 (2005), pp. 219-33
Klaus van den Berg, ‘Michael Thalheimer: Seducing the Audience with Suggestive Images’,
Theater, 30 (2007), pp. 65-72
Paul A. Youngman, ‘Civilization and its Technological Discontents in René Pollesch’s World Wide
Web-Slums’, German Studies Review, 31: 1 (2008), pp. 43-63
On Sarah Kane and 4:48 Psychosis
Antje Diedrich, ‘Last in a Long Line of Literary Kleptomaniacs. Intertextuality in Sarah Kane’s 4.48
Psychosis’, Modern Drama, 56: 3 (2013), pp. 374-98
Cristina Delgado-García, ‘Subversion, Refusal, and Contingency: The Transgression of LiberalHumanist Subjectivity and Characterization in Sarah Kane's Cleansed, Crave, and 4.48
Psychosis’, Modern Drama, 55:2 (2012), pp. 230-50
Amanda McCoy, ‘Staging Revolt. Feminist Performances of the Abject Body’, doctoral
dissertation (2009), on 4:48 Psychosis: pp. 152-98 (access through the online resource
MLA)
Graham Saunders, Love Me or Kill Me. Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes (Manchester:
MUP, 2002)
Annabelle Singer, ‘Don’t Want to Be This. The Elusive Sarah Kane’, The Drama Review, 48:2
(2004), pp. 139-71
Alicia Tycer, ‘"Victim. Perpetrator. Bystander": Melancholic Witnessing of Sarah Kane's 4.48
Psychosis’, Theatre Journal, 60:1 (2007), pp. 23-36
Ken Urban, ‘An Ethics of Catastrophe. The Theatre of Sarah Kane’, Performing Arts Journal,
23(2001), pp. 36-46
On Robert Wilson:
Katherine Arens, ‘Robert Wilson: Is Postmodern Performance Possible?’, Theatre Journal, 43: 1
(1991), pp. 14-40
Gordon S. Armstrong, ‘Images in the Interstice: The Phenomenal Theater of Robert Wilson’,
Modern Drama, 31: 4 (1988), pp. 571-87
David Bathrick, ‘Robert Wilson, Heiner Müller, and the Preideological’, New German Critique, 98
(2006), pp. 65-76
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Ellen Halperin-Royer, ‘Robert Wilson and the Actor: Performing in Danton’s Death’, in Phillip
Zarilli (ed.), Acting (Re)Considered. A Theoretical and Practical Guide (London: Routledge,
2002), pp. 319-33
Arthur Holmberg, ‘A Conversation with Robert Wilson and Heiner Müller’, Modern Drama, 31: 3
(1988), pp. 454-8
Bonnie Marranca, ‘Robert Wilson and the Idea of the Archive. Dramaturgy as an Ecology’,
Performing Arts Jounal, 15: 1 (1993), pp. 66-79
Ann-Christin Rommen with Maria Shevtsova, ‘Experiencing the Movement: Working with Robert
Wilson’, New Theatre Quarterly, 23: 1 (2007), pp. 58-66
On Elfriede Jelinek and Einar Schleef
Brechtje Cornelia Maria Beuker, Stage of Destruction. Performing Violence in Postdramatic
Theater, doctoral dissertation (2007), on Sports Play: pp. 107-113 (access through the
online resource MLA)
Matthias Dreyer, ‘Prospective Genealogies: Einar Schleef’s Choric Theatre’, Theatre Research
International, 34:2 (2009), pp. 138-45
Gitta Honneger, ‘Beyond Berlin, Beyond Brecht. Offenbach, Horváth, Jelinek, and Their
Directors’, Theater, 29: 1 (1999), pp. 5-25, particularly pp. 11-15
Karen Jürs-Munby, ‘The Resistant Text in Postdramatic Theatre: Performing Elfriede Jelinek’s
“Sprachflächen”’, Performance Research, 14: 1 (2009), pp. 46-56
Georgina Paul, ‘Terrorist in the Theatre. Elfriede Jelinek’s/Nicolas Stemann’s Ulrike Maria Stuart
(2006), German Life and Letters, 64: 1 (2011), pp. 122-32
Jens Peters, ‘Crowd or Chorus? Howard Barker's Mise-en-Scène and the Tradition of the Chorus
in the European Theatre of the Twentieth Century’, Studies in Theatre and Performance,
32: 3 (2012), pp. 305-15
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