When is a Play not a Drama? Two Examples of Postdramatic Theatre Texts

THE LONG OVERDUE translation of HansThies Lehmann’s Postdramatisches Theater into English finally gives a new readership an insight into a sophisticated and sensitive dis quisition on forty or so years of innovative theatre and its aesthetics. The study looks at many aspects of theatre and primarily con centrates on directors and performers. This essay considers how Lehmann’s ideas can be applied to plays themselves by approaching two recent British plays dramaturgically. In the past couple of decades, texts written for the theatre have been displaying qualities that have made their association with ‘drama’ increasingly difficult to sustain. Before app roaching the exemplary texts I have chosen to discuss, I shall take a little time to intro duce the postdramatic as a category for theatre writing. As the name suggests, the term sees drama as a moment, however en during, in the history of theatre and proposes a dif ferent kind of instance which critically inter rogates some of drama’s fundamental aspects. As Karen Jürs-Munby points out: