Back to Verbal Theatre: Post-Post-Dramatic Theatres from Crimp to Crouch
The beginning of the 21st century is marked by a revival of verbal theatre: a theatre ‘In-Yer-Ear’ rather than In-Yer-Face. In recent plays by Dennis Kelly, Simon Stevens or debbie tucker green, nothing actually takes place but language, yet this verbal theatre collides with the 1999 critical concep...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
2013-10-01
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| Series: | Études Britanniques Contemporaines |
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| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/ebc/862 |
| Summary: | The beginning of the 21st century is marked by a revival of verbal theatre: a theatre ‘In-Yer-Ear’ rather than In-Yer-Face. In recent plays by Dennis Kelly, Simon Stevens or debbie tucker green, nothing actually takes place but language, yet this verbal theatre collides with the 1999 critical concept of ‘post-dramaticity’ brought about by Hans-Thies Lehmann. The new constellations currently mapping out today’s English stages help us understand how post-dramatic theatre is not only concerned with the downfall of logocentricity but with the deconstruction of the frontier between fiction and reality. This article concentrates on Crimp’s Attempts on her Life (1997), because it defined the bases of the post-dramatic play, and on Tim Crouch’s 2009 play, The Author, because, twelve years later, it brings postdramaticity to its most extreme form. I show that on the contemporary stage, a number of experiments belonging to the so-called ‘post-dramatic theatre’ eventually, end up re-dramatising whatever it was they strove to un/de-dramatize. |
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| ISSN: | 1168-4917 2271-5444 |