Post Modernism CAPS Content
• Background and context: social, political, religious, economic,
artistic, historical, theatrical as relevant to theatre movement
• Characteristics: structure and form, language, characters,
themes
• Stylistic elements such as: design, setting, costume, lighting,
use of language, characterisation
• Staging: performance space, acting style and movement
• Difference between Realism and Post-Modern Theatre
• Notable playwrights, directors and theatre makers (local and
international)
• The influence of Postmodernist Theatre
Post Modernism
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Have you ever experienced information
overload?
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Do you ever feel overwhelmed or anxious
because there are so many choices out there –
 what to wear
 what music to enjoy
 what toothpaste to use?
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Do you mistrust anyone who tells you that there
is only one way of looking at the world?
Post modernism
the bigger picture
Background and context
• It is hard to fix it in time
or space, because it is not
clear exactly when
Modernism ends or
Postmodernism begins.
• The movement of
Postmodernism began
with architecture, as a
reactionary movement
against the seeming
dullness and hostility
The term postmodernism indicates a way present in the Modern
of thinking, or even non-thinking, more
movement.
than it refers to a particular historical
period.
Background and context
Postmodern Western theater responds to the multicultural, ironic, cynical, and chaotic social,
political, philosophical and artistic developments
of the last quarter of the 20th century and the first
decade of the 21st century.
It does not view the world as an absurd,
meaningless place of existence on the edge of
destruction, but rather as a place where meaning
and truth are relative and subject to different
understandings and interpretations
Post Modernism defined
Postmodern Western theatre serves, mainly, to
attack and deconstructs (takes apart) a number of
the central ideas often presented in Modernist
theatrical productions while highlighting the
Postmodern notion of “truth” as ultimately
unverifiable. It suggests that it is up to the audience
to decide what is and is not “true” in terms of the
drama being presented on the stage.
It is generally accepted that the Western world
remains in the midst of the age of Postmodern
theater
Characteristics
1. The accepted norms of seeing and representing the world are
challenged and disregarded
2. A pastiche of different texts and media forms is used, including the
simultaneous use of multiple art or media forms
3. The narrative needs not be complete but can be broken. Uses nonlinear storytelling conventions. A postmodern play proceeds in almost any
order the playwright wishes to construct, and such time warping no longer
seems surprising.
4. Characters are fragmented
5. Each new performance of a theatrical piece is a new Gestalt, a unique
spectacle
6. The audience is central to the shared meaning making of the
performance process and its members are included in the dialogue of the
play.
7. The production exists only in the viewer's mind as what the viewer
interprets - nothing more and nothing less. Acknowledgement of a play’s
fictionality.
Characteristics continued
8. The rehearsal process in a theatrical production is driven more by
shared meaning-making and improvisation, rather than the scripted
text.
9. The play steps back from reality to create its own self-conscious
atmosphere. This is sometimes referred to as meta-theatre
10. Radical experimentations in language and thought
11. The abandonment of any attempt to replicate reality
12. The deliberate combination of wild humor with terrible tragedy
13. A postmodern play proceeds in almost any order the playwright
wishes to construct, and such time warping
14. An audience can expect cross-association and is able to keep
several ideas and chronologies in mind at the same time, blending them
into a satisfying dramatic experience.
What is pastiche?
The word comes from French, and is used to
describe a visual art technique similar to
collage
Different texts, images and media forms are
pasted together to create one piece
Borrowing, referencing, and layering different
texts and images together is a typical feature
of Postmodern Drama
Stylistic elements
Objective is to bring attention to the medium and message. Not random
and arbitrary but sophisticated rationale/thinking for choices
• Design- no prescribed rules on how it should look e.g. sergeant could
use cup that look like a gun from which he drinks.
• Setting-use architecture of existing spaces and buildings as context
for performance
• Costume-does not have to reflect an era that is presented- it could be
defied, an interpretation (sergeant doesn’t have to wear stereotypical
costume but a medal could signify his status, wearing underpants
could show his vulnerability
• Lighting-multi-media
• Use of language- several genres from tragic to comic, from
Elizabethan to rap in the same performance. Inter-textual, may have
beginning, middle and end but not necessarily in that order
• Characterisation-it could be deliberate cross-gender casting
Staging
Actors played scenery and props, and played themselves using story
and character merely as vehicles for direct interactions with audiences.
De-familairising the familiar: Rejected conventional notions of where
theatre should be presented. It could be in restaurants, in a restroom, in
an abandoned railway station etc
Set: It is no longer in a building
site-created e.g. at a cemetry and create play using gravestone,
epitaphs, existing landscape etc. to create performance.
site-specific- rehearse performance and perform in venue different to
rehearsal space.
Performance, instead of conventional presenting of lines, could be
done as rap
Character, time, space does not have to be from same era. Can be
pastiche (collage) of different strea
Difference between Realism and Post-Modern
Theatre
Access to universal truths can be achieved through formal
devices like plot, cause and effect, and character
development
There are many possible truths, depending on the point of
view. Playwrights, actors and audience members all lend their
perspectives to the creative process.
To be able to create this illusion it was imperative for the
actors to become the character on stage. No more makebelieve, but an actor who really experiences each and every
emotion and feeling of the character he portrays on stage.
Rejects the notion of make-believe and instead sees theatrical
performance as a real life event or happening in which the
audience participates. Grand narrative is shatteredoverturning the promise of grand stories to provide absolute,
permanent, and universal Truth for their audiences
Acting to be believable
Primary focus upon the actor, the ”body in the space”. The
actor embodies the narrative, playing multiple roles and
engaging the audience with their craft and versatility:
It could be deliberate cross-gender casting — as, for
example, actors switching roles as well as genders between
the first and second acts of Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine
(1983), or a young actress with an obviously fake beard
playing the old Jewish rabbi at the opening of Tony Kushner’s
Angels in America (1993) — forces us to confront a
meaningful separation between the actor and his or her
role.
Characters were well- rounded with full historical and
psychological backgrounds
Deconstructing drama into storytelling and disconnecting
actors from characters in order to toss the play’s issues
directly into the audience (see visual on next slide)
Script
*Texts are collaboratively authored, they are not singular, stable, or
consensual
*Can be re-created from an existing script or it can be a new script. It is
fluid and can be reconstructed as it is developed.
*No longer a hierarchy with theatre elements: script, a playwright,
director
*The script was absolute in era prior to this. In post modern
performances, texts can be made out of lights with quotes projected
onto screen.
*Texts are changed, revised, updated and transformed through
performance practices
*The emphasis is on process rather than product
*The rehearsal process in a theatrical production is driven more by
shared meaning-making and improvisation, than by the scripted text
Difference between Realism and Post-Modern
Theatre
To sustain the illusion it was necessary to hide all devices
In the postmodern theatre, the “showing” is part of the
“show.”
Theatre practitioners were frantic about recreating life on
Devices like standard plots and character development are
stage The audience was to be lured into believing that what minimized.
they see on stage is really happening; therefore the play was
generally set in a short space of time ('real time') with only
a few characters.
Use of a box set on a Proscenium stage was the most
popular setting.
Box set represents real life in every detail eg period, social
standing
Props were the real thing
Lighting realistic and appears to come from real sources
e.g. a lamp
Multi-media forms
The postmodern disconnect
between actor and character
is helpful in creating this
openness, as playwrights or
directors seek to create
“roles” more than characters,
inviting the audience to see
an actor not as a character but
rather as an actor playing a
character.
Difference between Realism and Post-Modern
Theatre
The proscenium arch (in front of the scene) or picture frame Flexible staging depending on text
remained as the surround for the stage - framing the action
that the audience, who were seated in the dark, viewed
through the invisible fourth wall. Three dimensional sets
were the order of the day and great attention was paid to set
dressing in order to create a realistic environment in which
the actor could 'live' his role. Hence the use of sofas, vases,
light-fittings, carpets, paintings, portraits, curtains, windows
and doors that opened and closed etc.
To be able to create "a slice of life" on stage it was necessary
that all theatrical devices such as lights and sound equipment
be hidden from the view of the audience.
Not creating a slice of life on stage hence no need to use
devices to create illusion. Increasingly, the raw mechanics of
theatrical practice are visible e.g. microphones, worn on the
actor’s body, forcing us to acknowledge the actor and the
theatrical technology the actor employs, beneath the character
being played.
Audience never witnessed the set changes which took place
behind the closed curtains thereby reinforcing the illusion of
reality
Plays increasingly comment on their own dramatisation—
their dramaturgy — as well e.g. in Urinetown (2001) a
character
asks another, “Is this where you tell the audience about the
water shortage?”
Some notable playwrights
Tom Stoppard: meta-fictional plays often offer pastiches
of different literary and historical sources.
David Mamet: plays tend to focus on the ways in which
people relate to, assault, and manipulate one another
through language.
Sam Shepard: plays tend to examine clashes between
different generations and social classes.
Eric Bogosian: distinctly self-conscious plays consider the
influence of mass media on postmodern American life.
The influence of Postmodernist Theatre
• Post modernism reminds us that meaning is never universal,
total, neutral, or permanent.
• t uses the strategies of blankness, irony, and reflexivity (going
back and forth) to heighten our awareness.
• Revolt against realism- of one belief/ one answer. Post
modernism says there are multiple realities, perspectives,
styles, use of language, performance space, themes, stories
e.g. Shortcuts
• Playwrights had liberty to experiment with various genres,
styles, etc. Disassembling a text and uncovering its tensions,
contradictions, absences, and paradoxes. In this view, meaning
is not contained in the superficial content of the text
• creates a condition in which “anything goes,” and therefore no
interpretation should assume priority over an alternative.
Post Modern drama
The reader is the creator of meaning
 The author does not hold any ultimate truth the product
created
 Scripts often just a starting point
 Performance itself layered with images, soundscapes and
multi-media experiences that could not have been captured
in a script
 The text for Hamletmachine, for example, is more like a
score for an orchestra than a script for actors to follow
faithfully. The director might interpret, add images or choose
styles to flesh out the script.
 In Ben Elton’s Popcorn, a debate rages as to whether or not
movies are responsible for violence in society. The
playwright does not offer one point of view, rather leaving the
audience to construct their own ‘ultimate’ message.
 This concept, known in literature as ‘reader response theory’

Examples of Post modernist plays
Peter Shaffer’s Equus
• In Peter Shaffer’s Equus- Alan Strang , made clear
that staged nudity, though perhaps no longer
shocking, retains its tremendous power to create
an intense theatrical impact.
• In Equus, the way the scenes shift seamlessly
and different locations blend together in the
telling of the story, supports the theme of a
psychological reality that is impossible to pin
down.
Hamletmachine (in German, Die
Hamletmaschine)
Hamletmachine (in German, Die
Hamletmaschine)
• Hamletmachine (in German, Die
Hamletmaschine) is a postmodernist drama by
German playwright and theatre director Heiner
Müller. Written in 1977
• Characteristic of the play is that it is not centred
on a conventional plot, but partially connects
through
• The play is constituted of scenes. The whole text
is roughly nine pages long. The script itself is
extremely dense and open to interpretation;
recurring themes include feminism
The play is loosely
based on Hamlet by
William Shakespeare.
The play originated in
relation to a translation
of Shakespeare's
Hamlet that Müller
undertook. Some
critics claim the play
problematises the role
of intellectuals during
the East German
Communism area;
others argue that the
play should be
understood in relation
to wider post-modern
concepts.
Characteristic of the
play is that it is not
centred on a
conventional plot, but
partially connects
through sequences of
monologues, where
the protagonist leaves
his role and reflects on
being an actor.
Top Girls deals
with women’s
losing their
humanity in
order to attain
power in a
maledominated
environment
The book depicts the
differences between
different social groups in
America, from rich people
with guards like Bruce
Delamitri to poorer people
Wayne and Scout.
The play expands upon
the exploits of two minor
characters from
Shakespeare`s hamlet,
the courtiers Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern. The
action of Stoppard's play
takes place mainly "in the
wings" of Shakespeare's,
with brief appearances of
major characters from
Hamlet who enact
fragments of the original's
scenes. Between these
episodes the two
protagonists voice their
confusion at the progress
of events of which—
occurring onstage without
them in Hamlet—they
have no direct knowledge.
Theatre
which
depicts the
fragmentati
on of the
American
nuclear
family in a
context of
disappoint
ment and
disillusionm
ent with
American
mythology
and the
American
dream, the
1970s rural
economic
slowdown
and the
breakdown
of
traditional
family
structures
and values.
Wilson structured Einstein on
the Beach as a repeating
sequence of three different
kinds of space. Between major
acts are shorter entr'actes
known as "knee plays," a
signature technique that
Wilson has applied throughout
his oeuvre. Propelling idea of
"non-plot" within Einstein on
the Beach, its libretto employs
syllables, numbers, and short
sections of poetry. In an
interview, Glass comments
that he originally intended for
his audience to construct
personal connections with
Einstein as a character and
with the music that he assigns
to the icon.
POSTMODERN DRAMA
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Glossary
aesthetic: a set of principles underlying an artistic movement
centre: Europe and the rest of the Western world were traditionally regarded as the centre of
philosophical thought and culture, but Postmodern thinking questions this idea, saying that there
is not one centre and there is not a margin, rather many different sites, or locations, which are
just as important as each other
deconstruction: to take apart an idea, or a set of ideas. A literary and philosophical movement
that emphasises that a text has an unlimited amount of interpretations
disembodied: separated from the body
juxtapose: to place two or more contrasting images or ideas next to each other
meta-text: text that self-consciously refers to itself
meta-theatre: theatre that comments on itself
multiplicity: a large number
nonlinear constructions: when a play is structured in such a way that the plot leads in a number
of different directions rather than in a straight line
plurality: a large number of people or things
polyphonic: many voices
pastiche: an artistic work that is made up of an assortment of different pieces imitating a variety
of sources
paradigm: worldview
periphery: the edge or margin
reflexivity: something that refers back to itself, comments on itself or reflects on itself