SOCIAL SPECTACLE AND POSTDRAMATIC THEATRE: BLENDING

Text topic: Cultures of Rhythms and Spectacle

Text author: Ана Тасић

This paper examines the influence of media context on the language and structure of contemporary postdramatic theatre. The field of my research is postdramatic theatre, as defined by Hans-Thies Lehmann, authors such as Gledališče Glej, Forced Entertatainment, Rene Pollesch, Constanca Macras, Nicolas Stemann, Robert Lepage, Andras Urban. These authors are very well aware of the changes in social and cultural context due to the mass media influence. Their, most radical, reaction to these changes is transformation of traditional theatre language which includes the break from linear narrative, using different modes of technology etc. That is the way to problematize general spectacularization of society, tendencies to become visible, public, popular. Authors such as Pollesch, Macras, Stemann and others use parody, theatralicity and autoreflexivity in order to deconstruct media context and its basic notion of spectacle. Using technology in their work is also the means to define problem of social and cultutral alienation induced by media domination. All these topics are explored in this paper in which I analyze the postdramatic theatre as a new theatre language, complex and ambivalent.