THEATRICAL COLLOQUIA

DOI Number: 10.2478/tco-2018-0001

Theatre Performance in Postmodernism

Radu TEAMPĂU

Absract: The present paper aims to investigate, in brief, the

controversial relationship between postmodernism and modernism; to outline,
synthetically, the specific procedures of conceiving theatre performance in
postmodernity; to analyze the performance narrative that, in postmodern era,
reveals the indicible and the existential fragmentation. The research is carried
out taking into consideration the end of postmodernism which was announced
since the middle of the first decade of the 21st century. At the same time,
besides the attempt to observe the phenomenon in its theatrical implications,
the study pursues to delineate the decontextualization of theatricality from
theatrical space and its recontextualization in sociopolitical space. In
conclusion, the perspective beyond the end of postmodernity from which
theatricality is evaluated intends to avoid the partisan thinking that any attempt
to treat postmodernity requires.

Key words: modernism, postmodernism, postdramatic, theatricality,

multidisciplinary

1. Reflections on the relationship between modernism and

postmodernism

Much has been said about postmodernism and its relationship with
modernism. It may easily be noticed that postmodernism gave birth to
postmodernists even though they have never reached an agreement regarding
an accurate definition of postmodernism. Taking, one by one, the definitions


Assistant Professor, PhD, Babeș-Bolyai University, Faculty of Theatre and Television

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elaborated by both partisans and adversaries of postmodernism, seeking, in

vain, a critically equidistant statement, it often seems that a proper explanation
might be the following: postmodernism is what it is not. However, even this
formulation doesn’t appear to be entirely appropriate to the phenomenon.
Alain Kirby notes that prolonging the debate on postmodernism might
suggest that: “postmodernism is contemporary, but the comparison actually
shows that it is dead and buried.”1 In the same sense, we draw attention to the
opinion of Tom Turner who claims that: “The Postmodernist age of anything
goes is on the way out.”2 Of course, the examples may continue. However, the
idea is that postmodernism, nowadays, faces tremendous challenges. Its
manifestation as a cultural trend appears to be exhausted and therefore ways of
overcoming it are being sought. Thus, we’ve come to deal with post-
millennialism, trans-modernism, post-postmodernism, meta-modernism, digi-
modernism, which is Kirby’s subsequent elaboration of his concept of pseudo-
modernism, launched in 2006, in the article mentioned above.
If postmodernism emerged as a cultural reaction to the fact that
modernism involves or generates ideological-totalitarian behaviours, recently,
taking into account Jordan Peterson’s criticism, postmodernism is confronting
the same reproach. In fact, the unclear relationship between modernism and
postmodernism has led to a continuous dynamic between these two cultural
trends. “Modern and postmodern are terms that define rather complementary
states of mind, which are, at the same time, in relations of rupture, continuity
and interpenetration.”3 And yet, this relationship between the two poles,
complementary or not, seems to remind us of the failure to avoid the state of

1
Kirby A., 2006, The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond, at
https://philosophynow.org/issues/58/The_Death_of_Postmodernism_And_Beyond, accessed:
19.03.2018
2
Turner T., 2005, Essays on Cities and Landscapes - a Post-Postmodern View of Design and
Planning, at
https://www.gardenvisit.com/history_theory/library_online_ebooks/architecture_city_as_lan
dscape/after_post_postmodernism, accessed: 19.03.2018
3
Cărtărescu M., 1999, Postmodernismul românesc, București: Humanitas, p. 107, our
translation; original text: „Modern și postmodern sînt termeni care definesc mai curînd stări
de spirit complementare, aflate în același timp în relații de ruptură, continuitate și
întrepătrundere.”

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belligerence between classics/ancients and modernists, since the conditions of

peace were unacceptable: “… to avoid a war, offered them the choice of this
alternative, either that the Ancients would please to remove themselves and
their effects down to the lower summit, which the Moderns would graciously
surrender to them, and advance into their place; or else the said Ancients will
give leave to the Moderns to come with shovels and mattocks, and level the
said hill as low as they shall think it convenient.”4 Even postmodernism has
the temptation to argue the cultural value on juvenile criteria, reducing
everything to a generation-to-generation conflict. Time has passed,
postmodernism, in its turn, has grown old, has become classic, and has lost,
thus, the aplomb of its favourite arguments.
And yet, paradoxically, even if the postmodern discourse/rhetoric
claims the end of the modern values, a contrary intention, embedded in the
substance of the postmodern argument, becomes noticeable: namely, the
consolidation of modern values. Actually, postmodernism seems to be merely
a staging of modernism’s end, and not the real end of it.
Today, after the end of postmodernism, the relationship between
modern and postmodern is becoming clearer. On the one hand, we may
recognize a conflict similar to the one that placed Charles Perrault and Jean de
la Fontaine one against the other; on the other hand, postmodernism was not a
clearly conceived trend radically opposed to modernism. At one point in
history, postmodernists represented the new ones, while the modernists
represented the old ones. But non-combat positions between modern and
postmodern may also be mentioned: “I do not mean to take my stand with the
postmoderns against the (ancient) moderns.”5 However, in this context, it is
interesting that postmodernism has not succeeded to detach itself completely
from modernism. Moreover, it is noticeable that postmodernism is followed by
modernism in its form of neo-modernism: “In the sixth edition of The

4
Swift J., 2007, The Battle of the Books and Other Short Pieces, at
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/623/623-h/623-h.htm, published: January 15, 2007, accessed:
March 21, 2018
5
Hassan I., 1982, The Dismemberment of Orpheus – Toward a Postmodern Literature,
Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, p. 261

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Language of Post-Modern Architecture, Jencks takes heart from his critics’

proclamation of the death of postmodernism and classifies them, deftly, as
Neo-Moderns.”6 According to this paradigm, postmodernism appears only as
a stage in the evolution of modernism. Like Updike, we doubt that
postmodernism has touched “… the canonical permanence of Post-
Impressionism or Post-Kantianism, for the reason that Impressionism and
Immanuel Kant were phenomena more distinct and limited than modernism
was. We still live in modern (from Latin modo, just now) times, and so will our
descendants, until the dictionary falls to dust.”7 Even so, Umberto Eco
identifies a permanence of postmodernism: “Actually, I believe that
postmodernism is not a trend to be chronologically defined, but, rather, an ideal
category – or, better still, a Kunstwollen, a way of operating. We could say that
every period has its own postmodernism, just as every period would have its
own mannerism (and, in fact, I wonder if postmodernism is not the modern
name of mannerism as metahistorical category).”8 Therefore, postmodernism
may be another term for mannerist-modernism.
Due to these characteristics, we appreciate that an important aspect may
be foreseen in the intimate fabric of postmodern philosophy, as Gemünden
remarks: “Heiner Müller, whose Hamletmachine constitutes for many the post-
modern play par excellence, has disqualified the term by saying, I cannot keep
politics out of the question of postmodernism – but why should he?”9 Modern-
mannerism, i.e. postmodernism, implies a cultural position that overcomes
aesthetics and penetrates politics. There is no space here to analyze this
dimension, but we keep in mind the information in order to be able to discern
this relevant aspect of the relation between modernism – postmodernism –

6
Turner T., 2005
7
Updike J., 2012, Modernist, Postmodernist, What Will They Think of Next in Odd Jobs –
Essays and Criticism, New York: Random House, p. 763
8
Eco U., 2014, Postmodernism, Irony, the Enjoyable in The Name of the Rose, translated from
Italian by William Weaver / Richard Dixon, with the Author’s Postscript, New York: Mariner
Books, p. 570
9
Gemünden G., 2001, Framed Vision – Popular Culture, Americanization, and the
Contemporary German and Austrian Imagination, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan
Press, p. 39

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(...)10modernism. The political dimension is accessed in postmodernism

through mass media. Obviously, if modernism appealed to written press,
postmodernism appealed to radio, film and television, and (...)modernism to
social networks. In this sense, we believe that, according to Kirby’s model of
thinking, this is the easiest way to distinguish between the three steps of
modernism: modernism, postmodernism, (...)modernism.
The postmodern emphasis on metanarrative had as a secondary,
deliberate or not, effect the apparent pulverisation of narrative itself and not
just of narrative structures. But the narrative infrastructure resisted this assault.
Perhaps, in terms of theatricality, the resistance to dismemberment was given
precisely by the fact that the multidisciplinarity involved in the construction of
the performance led to the stage practitioners’ habit with the interpretative
deconstruction meant, in its turn, to coagulate the narration on multiple
narrative levels, spaces and times. This dismantling and the subsequent
reconstruction are possible due to the preservation of information units in the
infrastructure elements, which, however disassembled would be exposed to the
scenic succession, make possible the isotopy of a theatre performance. The
scenic information, at the level of narrative infrastructure, has been and will be
redundant, thus creating the premise of narrative unity. Everything depends on
the director’s mastery to organize the flow of narrative unfolding. Regarding
theatre, Roland Barthes’ observation seems almost indisputable: “The
complexity of a narrative can be compared to that of an organization profile
chart, capable of integrating backwards and forwards movements; or, more
accurately, it is integration in various forms which compensates for the
seemingly unmasterable complexity of units on a particular level. Integration
guides the understanding of the discontinous elements, simultaneously
contiguous and heterogeneous (it is thus that they appear in the syntagm which
knows only one dimension – that of succession).”11

10
Any prefix that illustrates the surpassing of postmodernism.
11
Barthes R., 1977, Image Music Text, Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath,
London: Fontana Press, p. 122

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2. Theatre performance in postmodernity

The outline of a balanced discourse should be fundamented on the idea

that, in terms of performing arts, the method of realizing and consuming the
event is a constant: a group organizes a spectacular event involving a larger
group. The differences, the evolution of performance genres, the apparition of
new tendencies do not depend on the method of making a performance, but on
the mere fact that the ephemeral performance itself makes possible its
realization by other generations, or even by the same creative person found in
different spaces or living conditions, with different purposes and
preoccupations.
Therefore, any attempt to define a theatre performance as postmodern,
in principle, should take into consideration the existence of a postmodern text,
a postmodern scenography, a postmodern lighting, postmodern costumes, a
postmodern soundtrack, a postmodern acting, etc. Because “… theatre is a
discipline that is inherently multidisciplinary in terms of skill-sets, say, but also
interdisciplinary in its capacity significantly to engage other disciplines...”12
Just to put on a stage a postmodern text does not guarantee that the performance
will automatically become a postmodern performance.
We know that theatre performance is often defined as being alive, a
work of living art: “Space is our life, it creates Space, the body expresses it.”13
But space as a stage space can’t exist as entirely objective or entirely
subjective, but at the junction of these two states of being: “There is no theatre,
there is no stage without us or outside of us. [...] We are the play and the stage,
we, our living body, because it created them.”14 The articulation of stage life
occurs partially in the immediate reality, partially in the mediated reality and
partially in a fantastic imagery which may either degenerate into stage

12
Kershaw B. and Helen Nicholson, 2011, Research Methods in Theatre and Performance,
Edinburgh: University Press, p. 11
13
Appia A., 1921, L’Oeuvre D’Art Vivant, Genève: Édition Atar, p. 71, our translation;
original text: “... l’Espace est notre vie; notre vie crée l’Espace et en sommes le centre...”
14
Idem, p. 72, our translation; original text: “Il n’y a pas de salle, pas de scène sans nous et
hors de nous. [...] Nous sommes la pièce et la scène; nous, notre corps vivant; parce que c’est
ce corps qui les crée.”

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phantasmagoria or be minimized, by stage conventions, to an aspect close to

daily expression.
This desire to organize a live theatre performance was the sign of the
theatrical reform of the early twentieth century which led, at the beginning of
the 21st century, to the way theatre performance is perceived today: “The goals
of the reform were: to reject romantic naturalism and psychologism in favor of
an aesthetic which was not based on mimesis but on a system of signs and
symbols; to break the barriers between actor and spectator, the famous ‘fourth
wall’, through the invention of new relationships between the stage and the
audience; and, finally to shatter the unities of classical drama by means of a
montage of actions in symbolic spaces and time.”15
We are no longer referring to performance art which, at least on the
part of its creator, is imagined and rigorously incarnated on the basis of the 20th
century theatre reformers’ discoveries, theatrical systems that contain true
lessons of the craft. The performance does not explain by itself because many
fields of human knowledge intersect in the spectacular narrative in a united
effort to achieve a correct perception and appropriate revelation of the
mutations suffered by the way the individual interacts with his surroundings.
Therefore, the performance narrative does not pay any attention to what
is considered to be fashionable at a certain point in time but gives birth to the
novelty. As Gilbert Durand observes: “… art, far from following the fashion
dictated by history or society, on the contrary precedes history – without
works, where would the past be? – and shapes, prefigures the social.”16 This
type of narrative launches new ways, directions, modes to explain the
individual caught in the complex network of his existence. The perspectives of
approaching and narrating a performance are therefore intimately related to the

15
Savarese N., 2010, Eurasian Theatre – Drama and Performance Between East and West
from Classical Antiquity to the Present, translated from the Italian by Richard Fowler, updated
version revised and edited by Vicki Ann Cremona, Holstebro – Malta – Wrocław, p. 447
16
Durand G., 1979, Figures mythiques et visages de l’oeuvre: de la mythocritique à la
mythanalyse, Paris: Berg International, p. 120, our translation; original text: “… l’art, bien loin
de suivre la mode dictée par l’histoire ou par la société, précède au contraire l’histoire – sans
«oeuvres» où serait le passé? – et modèle, préfigure le social.”

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new ways the individual has come to consider the problematics of time, space,
and image.
When making reference to theatre or performance, some narratologists
believe that the director’s work consists in formulating didascalia. This remark
used to be valid as long as the dramatic text would be treated as a literary
species, according to a logocentric vision in which the performance is centered
on the utterance of a text. The emphasis was, however, shifted from the texts
to the actor’s living presence on stage. The Artaudian vision considers the
actor’s presence a controlled act of delirium. However, Jerzy Grotowski brings
the theatre to its essence, namely, the actor; in this sense, he states: “… we
consider the personal and scenic technique of the actor as the core of theatre
art.”17 Obviously, we can no longer claim that, in terms of theatre and
performance, we deal with a text written by a dramatic author, but with a
performance text.
The entire arsenal of elements that make up a performance are
orchestrated by the director in a performance narrative. Not only the word
spoken on stage is part of a narrative, but also any tiny action performed by an
actor, everything that is contained in the stage frame, in the spatial and
temporal proximity of this frame, as well as any reference to the frame. The
actor’s narrative and the director’s narrative make a definite contribution to the
performance narrative. From the encounter of these two types of narration,
often, in the process of creating the performance narrative, an alteration of
dramatic texts or texts from various narrative sources occurs.
Regarding postmodernity, “The postmodern would be that which in the
modern invokes the unpresentable in the presentation itself ...”18, for “Finally,
it should be made clear that it is not up to us to provide reality, but to invent
allusion to what is conceivable but not presentable.”19 If “Derrida considers,

17
Grotowski J., 2002, Towards a Poor Theatre, Edited by Eugenio Barba, preface by Peter
Brook, New York: Routledge, p. 15
18
Lyotard J.-F., 1997, The Postmodern Explained. Correspondence, 1982-1985, Translation
edited by Julian Pefanis and Morgan Thomas, Translation in English by Don Barry, Bernadette
Maher, Julian Pefanis, Virginia Spate, and Morgan Thomas, Afterword by Wlad Godzich,
Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, p. 15
19
Ibidem

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therefore, collage/montage as the primary form of postmodern discourse”20, it

can be asserted that a whole theatre/performance of the 20th century, both
European and American, is based on the technique of montage as one of the
main means of performance experimenting and transposing. This conceptual
device (system / mechanism / procedure / trick / will) is used during the process
of making the performance as well as one of its constituent elements.
The performance montage or sequencing, marked apparently by
ambiguity, reveals, despite the traditional laws of theatre, the multiplicity of
perspectives, the simultaneity specific to stage complexity and inherent to
individual existence, a simultaneity that underlines “… what appears to be the
most startling fact about postmodernism: its total acceptance of the
ephemerality, fragmentation, discontinuity, and the chaotic…”21 We note that
the theatrical montage can’t be reduced to “… an epic narrative technique…”22
unless we take into account the temporal dimension of the performance
narrativity. The particular attention for the narration, given by
theatre/performance researchers in their recent works, is centred on the
distinction between narrative and story, a distinction that highlights the role of
performance narrativity to express the unpresentable.
From this necessity to express the unpresentable, stage literally has
come to face a huge challenge: how to present, how to scenically translate the
idea that “We learn to live with events and acts that are not only not-yet-
explained but (for all we know about what we will ever know) inexplicable.”23
How to enchant (capture and fix attention) the spectator depriving him
of illusion? In a scenic bios or research laboratory or experiment centre or
work centre, the re-discovery and incarnation of an anatomic theatre are
initiated. We are dealing with a theatre in which, besides the spoken word, the
gesture, the sound, the movements in space, the lights, the macro-actions and

20
Harvey D., 1992, The Condition of Postmodernity – An Enquiry into the Origin of Cultural
Change, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, p. 51
21
Idem, p. 44
22
Pavis P., 1998, Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis, translated in
English by Cristine Shantz, Preface by Marvin Carlson, Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
p. 220
23
Bauman Z., 1993, Postmodern Ethics, Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, p. 33

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micro-choreographies that weave a texture capable of englobing a plurality of

meanings and signals, become significant. Such a theatre, drawn at the criss-
cross between involvement and detachment as fundamental elements of
performance art, is claiming from the exemplary meeting with texts and
performance means belonging to cultural values.

3. The stage language of postmodernity

Theatre performance draws its existence from a weaving of

heterogeneous texts and performative techniques. Beyond an intertextual
texture that appeals to written texts, one may notice the conceiving of text at
the confluence between actor and personage. The actor who projects his role
and discovers it through his body language and through sound goes further into
the chaos organized on countless layers of semantic sense. The language, in
which he manifests his condition of vagabond or pilgrim without a destination,
nomad without an itinerary, the eternal exiled, deported, expelled, unrooted, is
strange, distorted, reminding that “One wants to say what it does not know how
to say, but what one imagines it should be able to say.”24
Many times, the text as a constitutive element of the performance is
based on an intertwining of texts preserved even in the ultimate form of the
performance ceremony. Countless performances eliminate an essential means
of communicating with the audience: namely, the communication based on a
shared linguistic code. Thus, the lack of interest in reasoning, in semantics, is
further emphasized. The focus centres on “… concentrating upon the
schizophrenic circumstances induced by fragmentation and all those
instabilities (including those of language) that prevent us even picturing
coherently, let alone devising strategies to produce, some radically different
future.”25
Programmatically, the authors of performance choose to re-invent
language: the individual language is assiduously experimented by Robert

24
Lyotard J.-F., 1997, p. 89
25
Harvey D., 1992, p. 54

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Wilson in training and performance; it is explored and magnificently

transposed on stage by Dario Fo. The final performance texture is often
configured at the intersection of the texts invented by the group of
artists/scholars with extracts/texts taken from famous dramatic writings.
At times, the optimal texture is found in the meeting between the word
conceived by a writer, the word conceived through collective creation and the
word resulted from a study on living beings: e.g., the Bouffes du Nord actors’
performance, The Man Who… Starting from Oliver Sacks's book, The Man
Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Peter Brook, working with Yoshi Oida,
Maurice Benichou, David Bennent, Sotigui Kouyate, created the work during
their explorations focused on the method from outside to inside through series
of improvisations, constantly confronting the invented material with the
statements of the patients at the Salpêtrière hospital. But we're not sure we can
treat Brook as a postmodernist.
An entirely different case is Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead. Hamlet reveals unexpected meanings at the
conjunction between Shakespeare’s words and those of Stoppard. Examples
may continue, given the goal pursued by these creators: they are not interested
in the scenic transposition of a single point of view, of a sole perspective, that
is why they renounce to reflect upon and give shape, on stage, to dramatic texts
belonging to a unique dramaturg. In the postmodern period, the creator is no
longer, for he can no longer be, an ingenuous creator.
However, in Notes et contre-notes, Eugène Ionesco remarks that
novelty may emerge only after the assimilation/(maceration) of tradition. And
yet, Jung once observed that: “It is the tragedy of all innovators that they empty
out the baby with the bath-water.”26 The goal pursued by postmodernist
innovators was also to generate countless perspectives of approaching and
interpreting a theatrical sequence based on a melange of ideas, concepts,
visions different from past/tradition and thereby new.

26
Jung C. G., 1981, The Development of Personality, translated in English by R. F. C. Hull,
New York: Princeton University Press / Bollingen Paperback, p. 145

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In this regard, we are witnessing a deconstruction of “the power of the

author to impose meanings or offer a continuous narrative.”27 This intertwining
of texts, techniques, stylistic methods often takes shape appealing to means of
alienation: comment, parody, self-parody, irony, cultural references, tricks,
easily generating and displaying a new convention emerged from the
demolition of all pre-existing conventions. The continuous story narrative or
the dramaturg’s unique point of view is replaced by the performance narrative,
which is articulated as a multitude of personages’ points of view within the
referential horizon of a temporality made of the tangents of the personages’
horizons of existence. It results from at least the minimum intertwining
between director’s narrative and actor’s narrative, to which other types of
narratives can be added. Until recently, the narrative aspect was viewed from
the perspective of the finished product, the perspective of the theatre
performance consumer.
From a certain point of view, it can be acknowledged that, during
postmodernism, we are witnessing, also in the theatre the utterance of a
vehement no in front of the mimetic mirroring, subjective projection, objective
record of facts, more or less exemplary, great ideals to enlighten all humanity.
If “Modernity had the uncanny capacity for thwarting self-
examination; it wrapped the mechanisms of self-reproduction with a veil of
illussion without which those mechanisms, being what they were, could not
function properly…”28, and that’s because “… modernity had to set itself
targets which could not be reached, in order to reach what reach it could”29,
then we must note that “The postmodern perspective […] means above all the
tearing off the mask of illusions; the recognition of certain pretences as false
and certain objectives as neither attainable nor, for that matter, desirable.”30
Also in the theatre, postmodernism or “modernity without illusion”31 aims to
bring “re-enchantment of the world after the protracted and earnest though in

27
Harvey D., 1992, p. 51
28
Bauman Z., 1993, p. 3
29
Ibidem
30
Ibidem
31
Idem, p. 33

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the end inconclusive, modern struggle to dis-enchant it”32, definitively

renouncing trompe l'oeil, exploring new ways to embody the invisible, the
indicible. Is this endeavour possible? Hence, a whole and extremely complex
exploration was initiated on the realm of theories and stage praxes through
which it becomes possible to re-discover or re-awaken, materialize the sound
and body potentialities, after a long period of theatre in which the artistic
message seems to have been reduced to the scenic transposition of a so-called
coherence specific to a slice of reality. However, even postmodernism didn’t
seem to avoid this artistic message.
“What the postmodern mind is aware of is that there are problems in
human and social life with no good solutions, twisted trajectories that cannot
be straightened up, ambivalences that are more than linguistic blunders yelling
to be corrected, doubts which cannot be legislated out of existence, moral
agonies which no reason-dictated recipes can soothe, let alone cure.”33 In the
so-called postmodern theatre, there are many examples of renouncing the rules,
norms, structures dictated by reason. There is an increasing necessity to detect
the subconscious impulses, to recognize and approach reality through dream,
introspections, in a constant appeal to the return to theatre’s dreamed sources.
Thus, a sort of modernization, actualization of the ritual through a
confrontation of the contemporary individual with archaic myths, is being
attempted. If “The post-modern mind does not expect any more to find the all-
embracing, total and ultimate formula of life without ambiguity, risk, danger
and error, and is deeply suspicious of any voice that promises otherwise. […]
The post-modern mind is reconciled to the idea that the messiness of the human
predicament is here to stay. This is, in the broadest of outlines, what can be
called postmodern wisdom”34, then, again, we may notice how, in the theatre,
ambiguity, the absence of tendentious messages, the lack of solutions, etc. find
their place, with mathematical precision. In this sense, theatre aims to alert,
even to whip the spectator’s senses.

32
Ibidem
33
Idem, p. 245
34
Ibidem

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Beyond “the use of parodies or quotations of modern or modernist

work” , theatre, in postmodern times or the “… age of lost innocence”36,
35

implies, besides a rigorous development of the actor’s intelligence and culture,

the fact that the latter is supposed to be able to present through body and voice
a multitude of signs and signals, the continuous practice of reconstruction
through deconstruction based “on the sort of emptiness that has to be obtained
from mind and body by […] an actor when acting: the kind of suspension of
ordinary intentions of mind associated with habitus, or arrangements of the
body.”37 However, these performances required by the re-creation and
interpretation of theatre art cannot be achieved but in laboratory conditions as,
more and more, in the field of arts “pragmatics of scientific knowledge replaces
traditional knowledge or knowledge based on revelation.”38 What we consider
to be important is that, in theatre, postmodernism englobes major areas of
exploration, research, and manifests itself not only as a means of appropriating,
comprehending theatrical essence, but also of incarnating it in the spectacular
act. Thus, we observe how the performance narrative appears as a result of the
theatre practitioners’ necessity to present, on stage, a fractured reality,
alterations of individual self, captures of the invisible, attempts to transpose
the indicible. Indicible that, despite all the fractures theatrically experimented,
remains the sole unit impossible to be disassembled in component elements.

4. Theatre and daily existence

Not any fragmented, altered or incomprehensible performance is a

postmodern performance. It may be just an unsuccessful one. The limit, the
boundary between the two is, indeed, unclear. The theatre critic should be the
person to make the difference and to identify the form of performance in order

35
Lyotard J.-F., 1991, The Inhuman: Reflection on Time, translated in English by Geoffrey
Bennington and Rachel Bowlby, Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 34
36
Eco U., 2014, p. 571
37
Lyotard J.-F., 1991, p. 18
38
Lyotard J.-F., 1984, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, translated in
English by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, Foreword by Frederic Jameson,
Manchester: University Press, p. 44

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to categorize it. Thus, a gesture of literaturization would close the circle of

theatricality. Yet the credibility of the theatre critic, in postmodernity, seems
to have been exhausted.
However, it appears that the lack of confidence the spectator feels in
his relationship with the theatre critic is a symptom that accompanies
postmodernity from the dawn of its existence. Analyzing the postmodern
performance in a sociopolitical context, it becomes observable an ineluctable
and transhistorical constant of the relationship between the world of
performance and the world of media; they might be regarded as two worlds
that exist to provide a mediation between the observable element and the
observer. The modality to communicate between them, as Ion Luca Caragiale
remarked, more than a hundred years ago, can be described as: “A systematic
corruption of the press people by the theatre people.”39 Nevertheless, while
reading Caragiale’s sentence, we must grasp it in the context in which it
appears. The corruption the playwright speaks about might refer to the fact that
the journalist’s status, which should be a channel of mediation between the
product and the beneficiary of the product, is altered, and thus from a party
position he can no longer fulfill his primary function.
Beginning with postmodernism, theatre performance seemingly ceases
to sediment itself in memories through distortion, fabulation, or creation of an
unverifiable legend around it. Creating the legend of the performance is, in
fact, the journalist’s work. This work enwraps the performance in a system of
cultural references, strictly geographically and temporally determined by
ideological assumptions, suppressions of any information that might question
the set of prejudices and presuppositions established within a social group.
From this point of view, often, the theatre conceived in the postmodern
era of lost innocence tends not to critically observe both a dysfunctional inner
reality and a dysfunctional external reality, even if, rhetorically, it claims a
critical observation of reality. What is the price paid for this cecity?

39
Caragiale I. L., 2000, Cercetare critică asupra teatrului românesc în Opere. Scrieri despre
teatru. Versuri, vol II, ed. îngrijită de Stancu Ilin, Nicolae Bâna, Constantin Hârlav, cuvânt
înainte de Eugen Simion, Bucureşti: Univers Enciclopedic, p. 754, our translation; original
text: „O corupţie sistematică a oamenilor presei de către oamenii teatrului.”

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“Reductions and more reductions. That’s the price. Reductions to narrow slices
of reality and hence to slices of consciousness, perceptions, social functions,
reduction to mechanism.”40
Furthermore, Peter Szondi’s observation, reinforced by Hans-Thies
Lehmann, reveals that the most important aspect of postmodern theatre
represents the conflict between theatricality and dramatic text. The dramatic
text is accused of authoritarianism. The consequence of fragmenting the
dramatic makes us believe that these narrow slices of reality, slices of
existence, with which theatricality is preoccupied, lead not to a
retheatricalization of theatre, drama, dramatic text, but to a retheatricalization
of life. Thus, according to Erving Goffman or Guy Debord, human life in
society is a staging, a framing of existence in a limited / global scenic space,
playing space.
Lehmann notes that “The desire of the avant-garde to overcome the
boundaries between life and art […] was just as much a motif of
retheatricalization.”41 This retheatricalization of daily life has, in fact, the
aspect of narrowing the horizon of individual existence. In this sense, we are
dealing with the reduction of the grotesque to a sort of naturalness, in the daily
reality. This natural-grotesque reverberates on the actor’s interpretation,
actually claiming: “The democratization of intimate relations and the quest for
possibility in late modernity of pure relationship, which are relations
determined and defined solely on their own internal terms and not in terms of
any external factors.”42 However, to democratize intimate relationships, as
regards theatre, it is nothing more than to publicly expose intimate

40
Cozma D., 2005, Dramaturgul practician, Cluj-Napoca: Casa Cărții de Știință, p. 60, our
translation; original text: „Reduceri și iar reduceri. Acesta este prețul. Reduceri la felii înguste
de realitate și de aici la felii de conștiință, de percepții, de funcții sociale, reducere la
mecanism.”
41
Lehmann H.-T., 2007, Postdramatic Theatre, Translated in English by Karen Jürs-Munby,
London: Routledge, p. 51
42
Kivisto P., 2014, Postmodernity as an Internal Critique of Modernity, in Postmodernism in
a Global Perspective, edited by Samir Dasgupta and Peter Kivisto, New Deli: SAGE
Publication, p. 111

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relationships on stage. Thus, the spectator is practically reduced to the status

of a peeper.
And yet, these procedures of theatricalization are not a postmodern
invention: “Process, heterogeneity or pluralism in turn are true for all theatre –
the classical, modern and postmodern.”43
In conclusion, we observe that the relationship between postmodernism
and theatre was outlined also from a perspective often ignored nowadays:
“Ideologically (read: theatrically), postmodernism in this instance is nothing
but the projection – the performance – of the last but one act from the great
Marxist masque.”44 It seems that, in postmodern times, the theatrical means of
realizing the dramatic conflict left the scenic frame and erupted in daily reality,
in a somehow ritualistic way, perhaps even Hellenistic, as it may be grasped
from Michel Foucault’s postmodern philosophy. At the present time, however,
after postmodernity’s announced end, it remains to be seen whether theatre will
regain its stature or will continue to be used for the retheatricalization of
individual life in society.

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