Table of Contents

List of Figures Introduction: Postdramatic Theatre and the Political by Jerome Carroll, Karen Jürs-Munby and Steve Giles Chapter 1: Towards a Paradoxically Parallaxical Postdramatic Politics? By Brandon Woolf (University of California, USA) Chapter 2: Performing Dialectics in an Age of Uncertainty, or: Why Post-Brechtian Does not Mean Postdramatic by David Barnett (University of Sussex, UK) Chapter 3: Political Fictions and Fictionalisations: History as Material for Postdramatic Theatre by Mateusz Borowski and Malgorzata Sugiera (Jagiellonian University, Poland) Chapter 4: A Future for Tragedy? Remarks on the Political and the Postdramatic by Hans-Thies Lehmann (University of Kent, UK) Chapter 5: Spectres of Subjectivity: On the Fetish of Identity in (Post-)Postdramatic Choreography by Peter M. Boenisch (University of Kent, UK) Chapter 6: Christoph Schlingensief’s Rocky Dutschke, ‘68: A Reassessment of Activism in Theatre by Antje Dietze ( University of Leipzig, Germany) Chapter 7: Postdramatic Reality Theatre and Productive Insecurity: Destabilising Encounters with the Unfamiliar in Theatre from Sydney and Berlin by Ulrike Garde and Meg Mumford (Macquarie University, Australia, and University of New South Wales, Australia) Chapter 8: Postdramatic Labour in The Builders Association’s Alladeen by Shannon Jackson (Berkeley, University of California, USA) Chapter 9: Acting, Disabled: Back to Back Theatre and the Politics of Appearance by Theron Schmidt (King's College London, UK) Chapter 10: Parasitic Politics: Elfriede Jelinek’s ‘Secondary Dramas’ Abraumhalde and FaustIn and Out by Karen Jürs-Munby (Lancaster University, UK) Chapter 11: Phenomenology and the Postdramatic: A Case Study of Three plays by Ewald Palmetshofer by Jerome Carroll (University of Nottingham, UK) Chapter 12: Performing the Collective. Heiner Müller’s ‘Alone with these Bodies’ (‘Allein mit diesen Leibern’) as a Piece for Postdramatic Theatre by Michael Wood (University of Edinburgh, UK) Notes Notes on Contributors Index

Promotional Information

This edited volume explores the relationships between postdramatic theatre and the political from different perspectives and using examples from contemporary theatre and performance.

About the Author

Dr Jerome Carroll is lecturer in German Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. Steven Giles is Professor Emeritus of German Studies and Critical Theory at the University of Nottingham, UK. He has contributed to Brecht on Art and Politics (Methuen Drama, 2003) as well as authoring books on Modern European Drama and Critical Theory. Dr Karen Jürs-Munby is a lecturer in Theatre Studies at the University of Lancaster, UK. She translated and wrote a critical introduction for Hans-Thies Lehmann's Postdramatic Theatre (2006).

Reviews

In this collection, various case studies ground a series of arguments ascribing political force – variously conceived – to experimental theatre. As a whole, the book offers an important rejoinder to claims about postdrama’s political apathy.
*Modern Drama*

The first of many such projects ... there is some fascinating work in development here.
*Platform*

This is a timely text, given that the politics of aesthetics has become an increasingly vital issue to contemporary theatre scholars and practitioners alike. ... The essays gathered here succeed in bearing vivid witness to the diversity of contemporary postdramatic practices.
*PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art*

This is a timely text, given that the politics of aesthetics has become an increasingly vital issue to contemporary theatre scholars and practitioners alike. … The essays gathered here succeed in bearing vivid witness to the diversity of contemporary postdramatic practices, and a few of them stand out as genuinely incisive case studies.
*PAJ: Performing Arts Journal*